It’s been a busy weekend, with two long-ish runs and a few hours spent at work trying to make up for lost time. It was the end of the day today by the time I had gotten around to today’s Tintin, so it was some bedtime reading.

This sequel to The Seven Crystal Balls continues in the very polished, accomplished, and self-assured style of mid-/late-period Tintin: everything is beautifully rendered, especially the street scene details, the locals’ faces, and the landscapes. Many compositions in the book are quite striking, panels rendered from interesting angles, such as with Tintin’s back to us, almost cinematic compositions that look wonderful but must have been tough to carry off.

Tintin has another great nightmare a la Cigars of the Pharaoh: giant Incan Haddock, mini-Calculus, and dreams of being burnt alive. The Andes passage is almost like a proto-Tintin in Tibet – and endless search over snow-capped peaks for a missing friend, with encounters with dangerous terrain and animals. The captions go on and on: “Days go by,” “The next day,” “Many hours later,” and so on. I think this journey might be Tintin’s longest – it must be weeks before they actually get to the Temple of the Sun. And Tintin defends another young kid bulled by jerks, as he did in The Blue Lotus and other stories; his kindness is repaid when Zorrino, the young orange seller, helps him find Professor Calculus.

The waterfall incident, where Tintin seems to get sucked away into a roaring cascade but actually has passed through into a secret chamber on the other side of the falls, is one of the more memorable in the books, and, along with the eclipse, is the most striking scene in this book. And of course, ever aware of the details, Hergé renders Tintin’s speech bubbles from the other side of the falls as bubbles of water, rather than everyone else’s ovals.