Tintin in America

Tintin and Snowy are kidnapped by Al Capone immediately after arriving in the United States. Of course they escape - and spend the rest of the book rounding up gangsters. They chase Mr Smiles from the big city to an Indian reservation and through the wild west, so you get a good variety of American adventure landscapes. Finally they return triumphant to the city and Snowy gets kidnapped. There is a sequel so you know things end happily. This is probably my favorite Tintin book. It has a lot of ironic moments: in the first pages of the book Tintin succeeds in catching Al Capone but no one believes him, the discovery of oil turns wilderness into big city in a matter of hours, and an animal rights activist is upset that a puma is eating a deer in the wild. Tintin comics are good for reading at a German 2 level, if you are reading this to help learn German. There are a lot of words that aren't basic vocabulary (like "indian reservation") but it is still easy to follow the story because the writing and pictures tend to reinforce each other. *** Tim jagt Gangsters in den Metropolis und die Wildnis *** Al Capone entfuehrt Tim und Struppi gleich an die Ankunft nach Vereinigten Staaten. Naturlich entkommen sie - und jagen Gangsters durch die ganze Buch. Sie jagen Herr Smiles von Chicago nach der Indianerreservate und durch die WIldnis. Deschalb seht man viele amerikanische Landschaften. Endlich kommen die zwei Siegreicher nach die Stadt. Dann ist Struppi wieder entfuehrt. Man wisst dass die Ende frohlich ist, weil es eine Forsetzung gibt. Tim in Amerika ist mein lieblings Tim-Buch. Es hat viele Ironie: In den ersten Seite fangt Tim Al Capone, aber niemand wird Tim glauben. Die Oelentdeckung im Reservate macht Wildnis ab Metropolis in ein paar Stunde. Eine Frau mit dem Tierschutzvereins veraengert weil ein Puma einen Hirsch im Wildnis angrifft. Entschuldigung fur mein Duetsch.

Although it begins with a precise date (1931) and location (Chicago) and features a real historical figure (Al Capone), 'Tintin In America' is Herge's tribute to the mythical America of dime novels and silent serials (especially gangster stories and Westerns). There's a real 'Perils Of Pauline' quality to Tintin's misadventures, which see the young reporter and his faithful terrier Snowy attempt to clean Chicago of gangsters, and which includes trapdoors, underground passages, falls from cliffs broken by handy branches, tetherings to railway lines etc. On their arrival, the pair are plunged into a hectic series of mishaps - they are kidnapped by a mob stooge in a steel-shuttered limousine; sawing their way out, they are met by police, and give chase; just as the nabbed hood is about to squeal, he is knocked out by a boomerang, whose owner they pursue in a gun-stuttering chase which ends in the first of many vehicular accidents. Throughout, Tintin will be gassed, dumped into Lake Michigan, shot at by a professional sniper, captured by Red Indians, have his brakeless train dynamited, and be thrown into a mincer. Welcome to America!The simple-minded pleasures of these melodrama cliches are supplemented by a sophisticated and often quite savage critique on modern America (having tackled Bolshevik Russia in the previous adventure), an America on the brink of globalising superpowerdom, a critique that invokes the past to indict the present. The Red Indian sequence at first seems in dubious taste, with the warriors easily manipulated by a gang leader into mutilating Tintin - their knee-jerk savagery and comical rituals are the sad cliches of many a Western. But in the book's most perturbing sequence, Tintin accidentally hits oil on their land; they are speedily thrown off the reservation, and oil wells, banks and a new city erected in its place; a brilliant, shocking encapsulation of the long and terrible history that underlies bright modern America. The gangster epidemic is linked to police and presidential corruption, while the tendency of famed American democracy and justice to degenerate into mob rule and lynching is unflinchingly pinpointed, as are the ecological crimes of big business. In fact, Herge sees American capitalism as a form of cannibalism - a sausage-grinding plant is a front for disposing of gangland enemies, their flesh mingled with animal meat for sale (the leader of the gang is a dead ringer for Foucault!). Conversely, Tintin is at one point rescued by a labor strike! One frame must have registered on the young Jean-Luc Godard, in which Tintin passes a landscape of car-wreckage overlooked by advertising hoardings. The irony of the story is that America, once so new, innocent, a beacon of hope where the world's oppressed could find refuge, has become as corrupt as the Old World, to which Tintin must return ito protect HIS innocence.Herge's satirical instinct does not preclude a great love for the LOOK of America, with its

What a fun book. We bought the entire Tin Tin series for our oldest son over a period of a year when he was 9 years old( He is now 13 years old). He and his now 4 year old brother read them every morning with breakfast and every afternoon with tea. Every book is so absorbing. Be advised of occasionally guns and racial stereotyping(Indians and gangsters) but not enough to sway our family.

This book has a very different feel from the rest of the series, along with the "Shooting Star" story. He's definitely all over America's criminals. Some pretty amazing escapes as well. Definitely worth the money!

This is one of my favorite Tintin books. It's pure action from the begining to the end. JAW