The Black Island

''The Black Island'' (french: link=no, L'Île noire) is the seventh volume of ''The Adventures of Tintin'', the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper for its children's supplement , it was serialised weekly from April to November 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to England in pursuit of a gang of counterfeiters. Framed for theft and hunted by detectives Thomson and Thompson, Tintin follows the criminals to Scotland, discovering their lair on the Black Island.

''The Black Island'' was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion. Hergé continued ''The Adventures of Tintin'' with ''King Ottokar's Sceptre'', while the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1943, ''The Black Island'' was coloured and re-drawn in Hergé's distinctive style for republication. In the mid-1960s, Hergé's British publishers requested a major revision of the story, for which he sent his assistant Bob De Moor to Britain on a research trip; on his return, Studios Hergé produced a revised, third edition of the story, serialised in ''Tintin'' magazine. ''The Black Island'' introduces the recurring villain Dr. Müller, and has been widely cited as one of the most popular instalments in the series. The story was adapted for the 1957 Belvision animation ''Hergé's Adventures of Tintin'', the 1980-1 West End play ''Tintin and the Black Island'', the 1991 Ellipse/Nelvana animated series ''The Adventures of Tintin'', and the 1992-3 BBC Radio 5 dramatisation of the ''Adventures''.

Synopsis

Tintin witnesses a plane land in the Belgian countryside, and is shot by the pilot when he offers his help. While he recovers in hospital, detectives Thomson and Thompson visit him and inform him that the plane subsequently flew to Sussex, England, where it crashed. Tintin and Snowy proceed to Sussex, but along the way, two criminals frame Tintin for robbery, and he is arrested by Thomson and Thompson; he escapes, but is pursued by the detectives. After arriving in England by ferry in Newhaven, Tintin is ambushed by the same criminals, who attempt to kill him over the cliffs of Seaford, but he escapes with Snowy's help. Discovering the plane wreckage, he finds a torn-up note in the pilot's jacket, and following the writing on it arrives at the estate of Dr. J. W. Müller, a German who owns a mental institution, affiliated with the criminals. Müller captures Tintin, but, during a fight, Müller's house catches fire. The fire brigade arrives just in time to extinguish the fire and rescue Tintin from the burning house, while Müller escapes with his accomplice Ivan.

The following morning, Tintin finds electric cables and red beacons in the garden, surmising that they are there designed to attract a plane drop. At night, he lights the beacons, and a plane drops sacks of counterfeit money, revealing that Müller is part of a gang of forgers. Tintin pursues Müller and Ivan by car and by train across the country. Along the way, Thompson and Thomson try to arrest him again, but Tintin convinces them to join him in the pursuit of the criminals. When Müller takes a plane north, Tintin and Snowy try to follow, but hit a storm and crash land in rural Scotland. The detectives commandeer another plane, but discover - too late - that the man they told to fly it is actually a mechanic who has never flown before, and after a harrowing air-bound odyssey they end up crash-landing into (and winning) an aerobatics competition.

Learning that Müller's plane had crashed off the coast of Kiltoch, a Scottish coastal village, Tintin travels there to continue his investigation. At Kiltoch, an old man tells him the story of Black Island — an island off the coast where a "ferocious beast" kills any visitors. Tintin and Snowy travel to the island, where they find that the "beast" is a trained gorilla named Ranko. They further discover that the forgers are using the island as their base, and radio the police for help. Although the forgers attempt to capture Tintin, the police arrive and arrest the criminals. Ranko, who was injured during Tintin's attempts to hold off the forgers, becomes docile enough to allow Tintin to bring him to a zoo.

History

Background and research

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 which was run by the ''Abbé'' Norbert Wallez. In 1929, Hergé began ''The Adventures of Tintin'' comic strip for , revolving around the exploits of fictional Belgian reporter Tintin. Wallez ordered Hergé to set his first adventure in the Soviet Union as anti-socialist propaganda for children (''Tintin in the Land of the Soviets''), to set his second adventure in the Belgian Congo to encourage colonial sentiment (''Tintin in the Congo''), and to set his third adventure in the United States to use the story as a denunciation of American capitalism (''Tintin in America''). Wallez was subsequently removed from the paper's editorship following a scandal, although Hergé was convinced to stay on the condition of a salary increase.

For his next serial, Hergé planned to put together a story that caricatured the actions of Nazi Germany, developing the plot for ''King Ottokar's Sceptre''. However, he temporarily set aside that project when he began to experience dreams of white and a car stuck in the snow, having ideas of sending Tintin to the north, considering Greenland or the Klondike as potential locations. The result was ''The Black Island'', although Hergé only sent Tintin as far north as Scotland, and he instead used the idea of the car stuck in a snowdrift on a greetings card that he designed. He also had an idea of Tintin combating a group of anarchists bent on destroying Europe's iconic buildings, but again this idea did not make it into the eventual story. Having decided to set most of his story in Britain, Hergé briefly visited London and the southern English coast to learn more about the country. There, he purchased a stainless steel Gillott's Inqueduct G-2 pen, a type that he would continue to use throughout his life. His positive depiction of Britain was in part due to an Anglophilia that he had received from his childhood, with the British government having been a longstanding ally of Belgium, supporting its 1831 creation and liberating it from German occupation during the First World War.

Hergé retained the anti-German sentiment that he had first considered for ''King Ottokar's Sceptre'' through the inclusion of a German villain, Dr. Müller, who would go on to become a recurring character in the Tintin series. He based the character largely on , a Scottish forger who had been a vocal supporter of the Nazi regime, and who he had learned about from a February 1934 article of the anti-conformist Belgian magazine ''La Crapouillot'' (''The Mortar Shell''). Müller's counterfeiting operations were inspired by Bell's actions, as he was involved in a plot to destabilise Soviet Russia through counterfeiting Russian roubles. Rather than Germans, Müller's henchmen were given the Russian names Ivan and Wronzoff, although the latter would be renamed Puschov by Michael Turner and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper for the English translation.
Forging banknotes was a topical crime at the time, while the idea of villains using superstition to hide their lair was a common trope, one that Hergé had used previously in ''Tintin in the Land of the Soviets''.
The idea of Ranko brought together two popular fictional creatures of the 1930s; the giant ape King Kong, who had been introduced in the film ''King Kong'' (1933), and the Loch Ness Monster, a cryptid who was to have lived in Loch Ness. Gaston Leroux's character of Balaoo the gorilla, who had appeared in a 1911 book and a 1913 film, might also have been an influence on Ranko. The plot and themes of the story were also influenced by Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 film '' The 39 Steps'', itself an adaptation of John Buchan's 1915 adventure novel.

Original publication

''The Black Island'' was first serialised in ''Le Petit Vingtième'' from 15 April to 16 November 1937 under the title ''Le Mystère De L'Avion Gris'' (''The Mystery of the Grey Plane''). From 17 April 1938, the story was also serialised in the French Catholic newspaper, '' Cœurs Vaillants''.
In 1938, Éditions Casterman collected the story together in a single hardcover volume, publishing it under the title ''L'Île noire'' (''The Black Island''). Hergé however was unhappy with this publication due to errors throughout, most egregiously that the front cover omitted his name.

The inclusion of a television in the original version would have surprised many readers. The BBC
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