Land of Black Gold () is the fifteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper for its children's supplement , in which it was initially serialised from September 1939 until the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940, at which the newspaper was shut down and the story interrupted. After eight years, Hergé returned to Land of Black Gold, completing its serialisation in Belgium's Tintin magazine from September 1948 to February 1950, after which it was published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1950. Set on the eve of a European war, the plot revolves around the attempts of young Belgian reporter Tintin to uncover a militant group responsible for sabotaging oil supplies in the Middle East.
At the request of Hergé's British publisher, Methuen, in 1971 he made a range of alterations to the Land of Black Gold, transferring the setting from the British Mandate for Palestine to the fictional state of Khemed. As with the revised edition of The Black Island, most of the changes to this third version of the volume were carried out by Hergé's assistant, Bob de Moor. Hergé followed Land of Black Gold with Destination Moon, while The Adventures of Tintin itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. Critical approaches to the story have been mixed, with differing opinions expressed as to the competing merits of the volume's three versions. The story was adapted for the 1991 animated series The Adventures of Tintin by Ellipse and Nelvana.
Plot Across Europe, car engines are spontaneously exploding; this coincides with the spectre of a potential war throughout the continent, resulting in Captain Haddock being mobilised into the navy. Detectives Thomson and Thompson initially suspect that the oil crisis is a scam intended to drive up business for a local roadside assistance company. While at a meeting, Tintin learns from the managing director of Belgium's leading oil company, Speedol, that it is a result of someone tampering with the petrol at its source, and discovers a conspiracy involving a crew member stationed on one of their petrol tankers, the Speedol Star. The three work undercover as new members of the Star'''s crew as it sets off for the Middle Eastern kingdom of Khemed. Recognising Snowy from Tintin's earlier scouting of the ship, the treacherous mate attempts to drown the dog, but becomes amnesiac in an altercation with Tintin.
Upon arrival, Tintin and the detectives are framed and arrested by the authorities under various charges. Thomson and Thompson are cleared and released, but Tintin is kidnapped by the Arab insurgent Bab El Ehr, who mistakenly believes that Tintin has information for him concerning an arms delivery. Tintin escapes and encounters an old enemy, Dr. Müller, sabotaging an oil pipeline. He reunites with Thomson and Thompson during a sandstorm and eventually arrives in Khemed's capital city of Wadesdah. When Tintin narrates the sabotage orchestrated by Müller to the Emir Mohammed Ben Kalish Ezab, one of the Emir's attendants, Ali Ben Mahmud, informs the Emir that his son Prince Abdullah is missing. Suspecting that Müller has kidnapped Abdullah, Tintin sets out to rescue the prince.
While on Müller's trail, Tintin meets his old friend, the Portuguese merchant Oliveira da Figueira. With Figueira's help, Tintin enters Müller's house and knocks him unconscious. Tintin knocks Abdullah down and as Abdullah throws tantrums, Tintin starts arguing with him. He finds the prince imprisoned in a dungeon and rescues him as Haddock arrives with the authorities. Müller is revealed to be the agent of a foreign power responsible for the tampering of the fuel supplies, having invented a type of chemical in tablet form, codenamed Formula 14, which increases the explosive power of oil by a significant amount. Thomson and Thompson find the tablets and, mistaking them for aspirin due to their being packaged as such, swallow them, resulting in them growing long hair and beards that change colour. After analysing the tablets, Professor Calculus develops an antidote for Thomson and Thompson and a means of countering the affected oil supplies.
History Background and influences
Georges Remi—best known under the pen name Hergé—was employed as editor and illustrator of ("The Little Twentieth"), a children's supplement to ("The Twentieth Century"), a staunchly Roman Catholic, conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels, formerly run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez, who had subsequently been removed from the paper's editorship following a scandal. In 1929, Hergé began The Adventures of Tintin comic strip for , revolving around the exploits of fictional Belgian reporter Tintin.
Hergé incorporated several characters into the story who had previously been introduced in earlier Adventures; this included Dr. Müller, a German villain who had previously appeared in The Black Island, and the Portuguese merchant Oliveira da Figueira, who had first appeared in Cigars of the Pharaoh. Hergé also included a reference to the recurring character Bianca Castafiore, whose singing appears on the radio in one scene. He also introduced a number of new characters in the story; this included the Emir Ben Kalish Ezab, a character who was based largely on Ibn Saud, the king of Saudi Arabia, whom Hergé had learned about from a 1939 book by Anton Zischke. It has also been suggested that the character was partly inspired by the deceased Iraqi leader, Faisal I. The character of the Emir's son, Prince Abdullah, was inspired by the King of Iraq, Faisal II, who was appointed monarch in 1939 aged four, although in creating this character Hergé had also been influenced by an obnoxious child character that appears in the work of O. Henry.
The idea of European nations rivaling each other for oil supplies was inspired by a February 1934 issue of Le Crapouillot magazine. The fictional Arabic names that Hergé integrated into the story were parodies based on the Marollien dialect of Brussels; "Wadesdah" translated as "what is that?", "Bab El Ehr" was Marollien for chatterbox, Kalish Ezab derived from the Marollien term for sugarelly, and Moulfrid, the last name of Kalish Ezab's military adviser Yussuf Ben Mulfrid (Youssouf Ben Moulfrid in the original French version), is named after a dish named "Moules-frites"."Boum!", an iconic song by Charles Trenet, appears in parody as the roadside assistance company's advertising jingle, which plays on Thomson and Thompson's car radio at the very beginning of the story. The Supermarine Spitfire, a British single-seat fighter aircraft, was used as the model for Kalish Ezab's plane which drops leaflets onto Bab El Ehr's camp. In creating Land of Black Gold, Hergé adopted many elements from a previously aborted idea about militants blowing up prominent buildings in Europe; rather than European buildings, this story would involve industrial sabotage.
First version: 1939–40
Following the German invasion of Poland, Hergé was conscripted into the Belgian Army and temporarily stationed in Herenthout. Discharged within the month, he returned to Brussels and began Land of Black Gold. The story subsequently began serialisation in Le Vingtième Siècle on 25 September 1939. He was re-mobilised in December and stationed in Antwerp, from where he continued to send the Tintin strip to Le Petit Vingtième. However, he fell ill with sinusitis and boils and was declared unfit for service in May 1940. That same day, Germany invaded Belgium, and Le Vingtième Siècle was shut down part way through the serialisation of Land of Black Gold, on 8 May. The point at which the story was ended corresponds to pages 28 and 30 of the current book edition, when Tintin is caught in a sandstorm following his first confrontation with Müller. This version, which amounts to 58 pages, has never been collected in book form.
Given its portrayal of Germans as the antagonists of the story, it would not have been appropriate for Land of Black Gold to continue serialisation under Nazi occupation. After being published in Belgium, the story began serialisation in neighbouring France; initially appearing in the magazine Cœurs Vaillants-Âmes Vaillantes from 4 August 1940, the story was ultimately interrupted, and would only recommence in June 1945, this time in the magazine Message Aux Cœurs Vaillants. From December 1945 to May 1946, it appeared in a youth supplement to the newspaper La Voix de l'Ouest under the title of Tintin et Milou au pays de l'or liquide ("Tintin and Snowy in the Land of Liquid Gold").
Second version: 1948–49 By the late 1940s, after the end of the Second World War, Hergé was continuing to produce new installments of The Adventures of Tintin for the Belgian magazine Tintin, of which he was the artistic director. After completing serialisation of Prisoners of the Sun in April 1948, he ordered his staff to re-serialise one of his old stories, Popol Out West, while he took a three-month break. At this point, Hergé was depressed and suffering from a range of physical ailments, including boils and eczema on his hands. Although fed up with The Adventures of Tintin, he felt great pressure on him to continue producing the series for Tintin magazine. Hergé was planning on creating a story in which Tintin travels to the moon, but his wife Germaine and close friend Marcel Dehaye both advised him to revive Land of Black Gold instead, recognising that it would entail less work and thus cause him less stress. Thus, Land of Black Gold was revived after an eight-year hiatus. In a letter to Germaine, he stated that "I don't like to restart things that are already finished, or to make repairs. Black Gold was a repair, and I abandoned it".
The story began serialisation in Tintin magazine from 16 September 1948, before beginning its serialisation in the French edition of the magazine from 28 October. Rather than continuing at the point where he had previously left off, Hergé restarted the story from scratch. He nevertheless made revisions to the early part of the story, namely by reworking the characters of Captain Haddock (who now first appears in a new scene on page 3) and Professor Calculus, as well as the location of Marlinspike Hall, into the narrative, all of which were elements that had been introduced to the Adventures of Tintin during the intervening eight years. Other alterations include new scenes of Tintin making a divining rod, Tintin disguising himself as one of Müller's henchmen, and a restructuring of the Thompsons' humorous antics while driving a Jeep (a Peugeot 201 in the original version) prior to their reunion with Tintin; the scene in which they fall asleep at the wheel and crash into a mosque, for instance, originally took place without Tintin's presence. Hergé was contractually obliged to produce two pages of comic for each issue, and in the previous adventure, Prisoners of the Sun, had fulfilled this by producing two pages of new Tintin stories each week. Seeking to limit his workload, he would only produce one page of Land of Black Gold per issue, with the other page being filled by a re-serialisation of old stories from his Jo, Zette and Jocko series.