REVIEW: The Rocketeer - The Island #1 (IDW)

I'm not going to bury the lede here: this latest comic book adventure for The Rocketeer features a young Tintin and a surly Popeye. The former revelation sold me on the comic without knowing anything more, while the latter was just the cherry on the cake.

Set in 1938, The Rocketeer: The Island #1 sees Cliff Secord hired by a shady government operative to lead a hunt for the lost aviatrix Amelia Earhart, who may - or may not - have been spying on the pre-war Japanese military build-up.

Tintin & Snowy

Cliff, his buddy Goose and mechanic Peevy, end up on a boat heading towards the Caroline Islands in The Pacific, under the stewardship of Captain "Popeye" Segar, along with the team's researcher Justin 'Tintin' Martin, his pet dog Snowy, archaeologist Alexandra Payne, Cliff's estranged former girlfriend Betty and her new beau Marco.

I'll admit, at this stage, I'm not 100 per cent sure how Betty and Marco ended up on Popeye's ship as well, but I'm also not that bothered as the pulp adventure is already in full swing. 

After the set-up and cast introductions, the balance of the comic is the nautical journey.

This eventually guides the ship into a tropical storm that takes out the communications and damages the attached seaplane meant to transport those in the party without ready access to a rocketpack.

Tintin has already confided in Secord a story he's heard of an "uncharted island untouched by time... filled with prehistoric wonders and beasts so bizarre they boggle the imagination." But Cliff isn't buying any of it.

As they approach the area where Earhart is thought to have vanished, Secord dons his iconic flying gear and jets off to scope out what's ahead.

Maybe Tintin's story wasn't that fanciful after all?

"I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam,"

Based on an unused story idea from The Rocketeer's late creator Dave Stevens, The Rocketeer: The Island just oozes pulp sensibilities from every page, with its comic character cameos and very strong suggestion that they're heading to The Skull Island, just ramping up the nostalgic excitement.

Kudos to writer John Layman for his intelligent handling of these characters that he clearly has a lot of affection for, while Jacob Edgars' delightful, cartoonish art style also accentuates the devil-may-care ambience that pervades this comic book.

I don't think we'll be getting anything particularly deep here, instead The Island miniseries looks like it's going to be old school fun, fun, fun for its entire three-issue run.

There's also a strong suggestion that King Kong himself will also appear!

It's almost as though this comic book was being written just for me.

MY HEADCANON: Tintin As A Reporter

An Hergé illustration of Tintin presenting Hergé with books detailing his adventures

There's a lot of good-natured 'mockery' of Tintin's "reporter credentials" in fandom, as he never really does - on the page, at least - much of what most people would call "reporting".

However, I have a theory on this, which forms the basis of my personal headcanon, justifying Tintin's right to be known as the world's most famous "boy reporter".

Tintin in The Land of The Soviets, not grasping the term 'brevity'

More attention is drawn to the act of reporting in the early albums, with Tintin attempting to file a ludicrously large pile of copy in The Land Of The Soviets  and the fact that he carries around a camera while touring The Congo.

But to my mind, Tintin isn't so much a generic hack, but rather a feature writer. He's a "gonzo journalist" (before such a term was even coined), writing about adventures he becomes a part of, rather than reporting on incidents that have happened, as seen through the eyes of other witnesses. 

"Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story using a first-person narrative."

- Wikipedia

Not only is this held up by the framing device of BBC Radio adaptations of the stories, with Tintin dictating - over the sound of him typing - to his editor the introduction to his latest yarn, but - more crucially, by the scene with Patrash Pasha in Cigars of The Pharaohs.

Patrash Pasha is a such a fan of Tintin that he has books about his future adventures!

Upon learning who his "guest" is, the Sheik proudly shows Tintin that he has been following his written adventures... by getting his manservant to bring out his copy of Destination Moon (which was, at that time, 20 years in Tintin's future, having been updated from the original drawing of Tintin in America, as the books were translated and republished out of order). 

So, while Tintin may file the occasional front-page story about a crime or major incident, I see him more as a feature writer and journalist in the mould of Hunter S Thompson and PJ O'Rourke, throwing himself into quirky and dangerous situations so he can write about them (i.e. the illustrated books we call Hergé's Adventures of Tintin).

This is why we rarely see him actually "reporting" in the pages of the albums, because the important writing comes afterwards.

He has to experience the adventure before he can type it all up.

As his very first album shows, he doesn't have the time to actually file copy during his usual non-stop, breath-taking antics. 

It also wouldn't make for an interesting break in the rhythm of the story.

Thus, we've established he's a reporter in his early outings, and get the occasional reminder as the series progresses, meaning there's really no need to keep to returning to the minutiae of 'genuine' journalism. 

For me, this is why, even though he becomes more of a pulp "adventurer" as the albums progress, he is still regarded as the celebrity "world-famous boy reporter" - both within the world of Hergé's books and our own world. 

In my headcanon I firmly believe that between his daredevil escapades, Tintin squirrels himself away with a typewriter, in a quiet room in Marlinspike, bashing out the next book based upon his thrilling exploits.

We may not see him interviewing many people, taking copious shorthand notes, checking sources etc, but Tintin still managed to inspire many of us, from an early age, to pursue a career in journalism.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, TINTIN!

Joyeux anniversaire, Tintin: Ninety-seven years old today... and he wears it well!

On this day in 1929, young journalist Tintin and his faithful wire fox terrier Snowy set out on their first adventure, travelling to "The Land of The Soviets" at the behest of the editor of Le Petit Vingtième to unearth the truth of what was happening to the country under Bolshevik rule.

Appearing in the weekly children's supplement of the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle (The Twentieth Century), Tintin was initially very much a right-wing, anti-communist propaganda tool.

And yet from this unlikely start a global star of children's - and adult's - literature would eventually blossom, as he shook off those initial influences and became his own fully-developed person in later stories.

Created by 21-year-old Belgium cartoonist Georges Prosper Remi aka Hergé, the eternally young protagonist and his growing family of friends and associates would go to star in 24 canonical adventures (although the final one, Tintin and Alph-Art, was unfinished at the time of Hergé's death in 1983, and remains so).

A stipulation in Hergé's will was that no-one else could create fresh Tintin adventures and so this canon of two dozen stories will remain sacrosanct for the foreseeable future, with any upcoming projects only drawing on plots that have already been set in stone by Tintin's creator.

The animation below was created for Tintin's 90th birthday celebrations back in 2019:

Happy 90th birthday, Tintin!!! Our tribute.#tintinbirthday #Tintin90 #Tintin @SCMPgraphics pic.twitter.com/mBqLxh8hge

— Adolfo Arranz (@adolfux) January 10, 2019

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Boy Reporter

The world-famous "Boy Reporter" Tintin has always been part of my life. I can remember getting Hergé's beautiful comic strip albums from the library as a wee nipper and seeing them displayed in revolving stands in old-timey book stores.

I've long considered Tintin as one the major fictional inspirations (along with Clark Kent) that steered me towards a career in journalism at the tender age of 18.

When Rachel's firm went on a day trip to Bruges (in Belgium) back in 2009 my only request was a Tintin-related gift, and she picked me up an artistic mouse mat (from when they were a thing) decorated with an Hergé sketch.

This nicely complemented my small, but precious, collection of Tintinalia that I've accumulated over the years.

Until recently, I only actually owned a small number of the Tintin albums, including my original 1972 copy of The Crab With The Golden Claws (pictured at the top and bottom of this article), which has been in my possession since I was about six or seven.

To date, this is my favourite story of Tintin and Snowy, also introducing us to Captain Haddock, but I have to confess I know for certain that I've only read a handful of the books... and most of those when I was very young.

Back when I was working as an editor of trade magazines - in the years before going university - one of the 'perks' of being paid to jet around Europe was the ability to hunt for Tintin merch (it was more interesting than the trade shows about plastic extruding machinery that I was actually there to cover). 

Two of my Tintin reference books... one of which I can actually read!

I can't remember exactly where I picked up my French-language guide to Hergé's universe, Tintinolatrie by Albert Algoud, but it was probably the same trip where I found a Tintin shop around the corner from my hotel and snagged a pair of Tintin: Boy Reporter socks (sadly long gone).

Around this time (it must have been the late 1980s to mid-1990s) I also used to drive down to Brighton a lot, to visit friends and go shopping, and there was a lovely little store in The Lanes that sold high-end Tintin ware.

So, over a series of visits, I purchased a small selection of Tintin crockery that, to this day, has pride of place in the French dresser in our dining room.

My small, but beloved, collection of Tintin crockery

About a decade or so back, I also recall one of my friends buying me a Tintin t-shirt during their Asian travels (I think it was a bootleg Tintin in Vietnam design), but that too has sadly gone (again, as old clothes tend to).

A few Christmasses ago (or maybe it was my birthday), Rachel got me Michael Farr's highly regarded Tintin: The Complete Companion, a comprehensive overview of the backgrounds to the stories and a look at Hergé's source material, photos, sketches etc

Unfortunately, I think Tintin has always played second fiddle to my love of American comics primarily because the latter always has new offerings every month, making it feel like a "living hobby" (the longer you leave it, the more there is to catch up on) whereas Hergé's Tintin consists of a set canon, never to be expanded upon, and so remains static and always available. 

Where It All Started: My Childhood Treasure

Joe Bob Was My Guru

Over the years, I've talked about how I was inspired to become a journalist by the adventures of Tintin and Clark Kent, and that it was reading a reprint of Fantastic Four #17 that got me hooked on comics, I've talked about my favourite authors (e.g. Philip Reeve, HP Lovecraft et al) and my introduction to the wonderful world of roleplaying games many decades ago.

But I'm pretty sure I've never discussed the man that inspired me to start reviewing movies - particularly movies that other people might consider "bad" (such as trashy horror flicks).

That man was the one and only Joe Bob Briggs (aka film critic John Bloom), and, in particular, his first book, Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In - a collection of his tongue-in-cheek reviews from The Dallas Times-Herald.

Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In

The Penguin Originals edition of the book was published in 1989 and I'm pretty sure I picked it up soon after that.

At that time, mainstream movie critics, epitomised by the BBC's Barry Norman, felt completely disconencted to my own movie-watching experience.

They were a snobbish elite who either ignored the sort of films I loved or looked down their noses at them, dismissing with snarky asides and patronising put-downs.

All they ever praised - it seemed to me - were dull, earnest films that I had zero interest in.

Then I read Joe Bob Goes To The Drive-In.

And suddenly I knew how I wanted to review films.

Joe Bob, for instance, coined the phrase "spam-in-a-cabin" - which I use freely in reviews and conversation - to describe a certain style of horror film where the protagonists are trapped in a small environment by their attackers - supernatural or otherwise - and anyone can die at any time.

He was funny, clever, crass, and carefree. He'd talk about the T&A content in a film as well as the volume of blood spilled and body count.

Suddenly film reviews didn't have to read like dry, academic dissertations in Sight & Sound (a magazine designed to suck the fun out of films since 1932).

Seriously, if you love horror movies, trash cinema, drive-in fodder, you need to find a copy of Joe Bob's book and read it now.

I was surprisingly lucky that when I was allowed to create the position of "film critic" on the local newspaper that I worked for, I was pretty much given free reign.

Although I was never clever enough to go full Joe Bob, I'm pretty sure I was the first to use the phrase "spam-in-a-cabin" in the pages of the Kent & Sussex Courier.

My guru's inspiration shone through even brighter when I broadened my reviewing to the latest, trashy VHS tapes. I somehow got myself onto the mailing lists of several "low budget" video houses and, for a time, was reviewing three or four low-budget sci-fi/horror/action flicks a week.

It was in seeking to ape Joe Bob's style that I found the first inklings of my own "voice".