[22] From December 1945 to May 1946 it then 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").
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 exponentially increases the explosive power of oil. The atmosphere of international tension at … [22] Rather than continuing at the point where he had previously left off, Hergé restarted the story from scratch. English translation [27] This modernised third version was issued by Casterman in 1971. Tintin escapes and encounters an old enemy, Dr. Müller, sabotaging an oil pipeline. … Tintin suspects that Müller is responsible and assures the Emir that he would rescue Abdullah. Harry Thompson described Land of Black Gold as a "patchwork effort", believing that the final result owed little to the "story's original satirical thrust". After analysing the tablets, Professor Calculus develops an antidote for Thomson and Thompson and a means of countering the affected oil supplies. [49] Differing from Thompson's assessment, Hergé biographer Pierre Assouline felt that the inclusion of Haddock into the story was successful, "precisely because [it] defied all logic". 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. Critical approaches to the story have been mixed, with differing opinions expressed as to the competing merits of the volume's three versions.
[15] [43], Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier believed that Land of Black Gold suffered from having been "rebaked", being "pulled between the 'old' pre-war Tintin and the more modern one. 2013-02-21. 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. [44], Michael Farr believed that Land of Black Gold illustrated how "shelved material could be usefully resuscitated. Land of Black Gold was the thirteenth episode of The Adventures of Tintin to be produced. [28], On 4 August 1949, the story was suspended part way through its serialisation as Hergé left Belgium for a holiday near to Gland in Switzerland. [21] With Figueira's help, Tintin enters Müller's house and knocks the criminal unconscious. [6] ", 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. While on Müller's trail, he happens to meet his old friend, the Portuguese merchant Oliveira de Figueira. This incident coincides with the spectre of a potential war throughout the continent, resulting in Captain Haddock being mobilised into the navy. [13][34] These changes were also applied to a scene which a Supermarine Spitfire drops propaganda leaflets on Bab El Ehr's camp: in the earlier versions, the plane is British and Bab El Ehr threatens to shoot anyone who reads the leaflets; in the revised scene, the plane is from an unidentified rival Arabic nation and Bab El Ehr laughs off the bombardment as his men are illiterate. Land of Black Gold (French: Tintin au pays de l'or noir) is the fifteenth of The Adventures of Tintin.It was first published in Le Petit Vingtième from 1939 to 1940, but ended in mid-adventure. [51] Focusing on those fake documents, he believed that it represented the theme of fakery which recurs throughout the series.