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patheticprogrammingperson · 6 months

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Welcome to Flight 714 (from London & to Sidney), which joins the Moon duloagy as the only sci-fi Tintin books, due to its canonisation of extra-terrestrial life in the Tintin universe.

Plot-line

So Tintin&Co are flying to Sidney for a conference on Space Stuff, when at a stop in Djakarta, they happen to meet Skut, who you may remember from a few books ago, who is now working as a private jet pilot, and his employer, a Mr Laszlo Carreidas, and as he happens to be going to the same Space Stuff conference as them, invites them on his private jet.

After some cheating at Battleships, they're promptly abducted mid-flight by a traitorous, Skut excluded, crew.

They land at a nice little island, Rastapopulus reveals himself as the perpotrator, and his entire plot, as is tradition.

He plans to use an expermentla "truth serum" in order to aquire the number of a Swiss bank account held by Carreidas.

Tintin&Co, and Skut, are shoved into a bunker, they debunker themselves, and head to rescue Carreidas, who's otherwise engaged with confessing to a lifetime of crime, with such crimes as:

Stealing an apple at age four

Getting a maid fired for stealing a ring he himself stole

Cheating at Battleships

Not following the comedic rule of three

Resurecting long-dead jokes

Ol' mate Rasta's not that pleased at this, however in Tintin&Co, just in time for the doctor responsible for that "Truth Serum" to accidentally jab Rasta in the arm with his needle that had a little serum left, causing him to join in the crime-confession-a-thon, with such hits ass

Planning to murder said doctor

Planning to murder the traitorous aircrew

Planning to murder his assorted henchmen

This prompts an argument between the two, which goes as they are dragged away by Tintin&Co, until Rasta eventually escapes via monitor distraction.

At this point, the voices in Tintin's head not only start to exist, but tell him to go under a certain rock, which they do, and after some caving, meet a man named Mik Kanrokitoff. who acts as a link between extra-terrestrial life and humans.

The island turns out to be a volcano which promtly detonates and Tintin&Co evacuate via UFO, with only minimal dangers on the way.

They end up in a rubber dinghy, are rescued by a seaplane, and give a television interview, however Mik wiped their memories, the end.

Characters

We have a full one (1) new characters of interest here, our resident evil millionaire, Mr Laszlo Carreidas.

He’s interesting, because of how much his presentation shifts through the book, from Haddock calling him as “human flotsam”, to a generous millionaire, to morally dubious, to quite evil, and eventually he ends up a rather unpleasant individual.

Now, a seemingly good character turning out to be bad is an incredibly common trope, but is normally presented as a betrayal, instead of the gradual descent, or rather, reveal, we see here.

Things I like

This, in terms of the actual time-frame presented, is the shortest Tintin book by far, as its events take place within just one day, seemingly, excluding the end segment which is “several days later”

This makes the action a lot more granular, and you get a better idea of the layout, so to speak, of the island.

Of course, the art is excellent, with a great deal of small details, notably in the hijacked jet’s cockpit, just look at all those dials drawn in proper perspective, and just the details of the jet in general.

Things I don't

Guess what time it is, that’s right, it’s stupid nitpick o’clock

A Proboscis Monkey (Nasalis Larvatus) is shown, but they are endemic to the island Borneo, a phrase here meaning they are only naturally found there, however Pulau-Pulau Bomba is not Borneo

That’s it, one single nitpick I could find, really shows the grade of refinement.

Troublesome bits

As always these days, nothing of issue really presented itself.

Silly bits

Haddock assumes a random man looking board in an airport is in severe poverty, and describes him as “Human flotsam, one of life’s failures”

Carreidas on hearing Haddock has in fact played Battleships promptly offers them a flight on his private jet, on order to cheat in the game against him

Carreidas goes from not caring about three Picassos, two Baraques, and a Renoir, to impulse buying them from hearing “Onassis”, presumably a rival of some sort, is trying to buy them

Conclusion

Yet more grade-a Tintin, with far more depth of character than the regular standard, go read it

Sources

Proboscis monkey

Djakarta

#include <stdio.h>#book review #tintin

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