Welcome back to another episode of Totally Tintin! This week Ian and Dave take a look at Tintin’s first adventure in South America, his first adventure that starts and ends in Brussels and his last adventure as a “reporter” – The Broken Ear. Dave loves it, as usual, but Ian thinks it’s repeating some material from the earlier books. Listen to the show and find out why.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Not one of my favourites.
I hadn’t thought about the Chaco War as a background for the Broken Ear but it makes sense. Of course when I read it the first time I had not yet heard of the Chaco War. However, in tone it seems to me to be based less on a conventional war like the Chaco and more like a satire on the confused and bloody revolutionary war of coups and masscares that convulsed Mexico for a decade, ending in 1920. Perhaps as seen through the movies, there was a Harold Lloyd silent comedy, Why Worry? (1923), set in the same Latin American revolutionary milieu.
Krupp Industries is remembered with loathing in much of Europe as the creator of the German artillery that proved so devastatingly effective in World War 1.
Maybe the sculptor was annoyed with Tintin for bringing up the sad memory of his brothers murder?
By the way, those classic “Anarchist” bombs, the round one with the wick, really did exist. They were the first grenades, used on the battlefield in the 17th centaury, which is why elite troops are called Grenadiers. There use faded away in the 18th centaury as they were as dangerous to the thrower as the enemy, but the name stuck. Grenades continued to be used in siege and naval warfare until there revival in WW1. And anarchists did use them, famously to assassinate the Czar of Russia.
I love your historical tidbits, Colin!