| Explorers on the Moon (On a marché sur la Lune) | |
|---|---|
 Cover of the English edition | |
| Date | 1954 |
| Series | The Adventures of Tintin |
| Publisher | Casterman |
| Creative team | |
| Creator | Hergé |
| Original publication | |
| Published in | Tintin magazine |
| Date of publication | 29 Oct 1952 – 29 Dec 1953 |
| Language | French |
| Translation | |
| Publisher | Methuen |
| Date | 1959 |
| Translator |
|
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Destination Moon (1953) |
| Followed by | The Calculus Affair (1956) |
Explorers on the Moon (French:On a marché sur la Lune; literally:We walked on the Moon) is the seventeenth volume ofThe Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonistHergé. The story wasserialised weekly in Belgium'sTintin magazine from October 1952 to December 1953 before being published in a collected volume byCasterman in 1954. Completing a story arc begun in the preceding volume,Destination Moon (1953), the narrative tells of the young reporterTintin, his dogSnowy, and friendsCaptain Haddock,Professor Calculus, andThomson and Thompson who are aboard humanity's first crewed rocket mission to the Moon.
Developed in part through the suggestions of Hergé's friendsBernard Heuvelmans andJacques Van Melkebeke,Explorers on the Moon was produced following Hergé's extensive research into the possibility of human space travel – a feat that had yet to be achieved – with the cartoonist seeking for the work to be as realistic as possible. Hergé continuedThe Adventures of Tintin withThe Calculus Affair, while the series itself became a defining part of theFranco-Belgian comics tradition. Critics have held the illustrative detail of the book in high regard, but have expressed divided opinions of the story; some consider it to be among the most mature and emotionally resonant entries in the series, while others fault it for downplaying the humour seen in previous volumes in favour of the scientific focus of the narrative. The story was adapted for the 1957Belvision animated seriesHergé's Adventures of Tintin, the 1989 computer gameTintin on the Moon, the 1991Ellipse/Nelvana animated seriesThe Adventures of Tintin, and the 1992-3BBC Radio 5 dramatisation of theAdventures.
Professor Calculus,Tintin,Snowy,Captain Haddock, and Calculus's assistantFrank Wolff are aboard an atomic rocket-poweredspacecraft leaving theEarth bound for theMoon. Soon after takeoff they discover that the detectivesThomson and Thompson have accidentally stowed away on board, thinking the launch was set for 1:34 P.M., and not A.M., putting a strain on the oxygen supply.
The detectives accidentally turn off thenuclear motor, disrupting theartificial gravity and sending everyonefloating until Tintin corrects the problem. They then suffer a relapse of the Formula 14 drug (seen inLand of Black Gold), resulting in their hair growing rapidly in multiple colours, until Calculus subsequently administers a cure.Haddock, who has smuggled whisky aboard the rocket,gets drunk and takes an impromptuspacewalk, during which he briefly becomes asatellite of theasteroidAdonis, but Tintin is able to rescue him.[1]
The rocket lands in theHipparchus Crater, with Tintin being the first human to step on the Moon. Next day, Calculus and Wolff set up optical instruments to begin observational work on the Moon while Tintin and Haddock build the Moon tank. Two days later, Haddock, Wolff and Tintin take the Moon tank to explore somestalactite caves in the direction of thePtolemaeus Crater; inside a cave Snowy slips into an ice-covered chasm, but Tintin rescues him.
Later aboard the ship, Tintin is ambushed and left bound in the hold by a third stowaway,Colonel Jorgen, a spy who had been smuggled aboard by Wolff, who has been blackmailed by a foreign power for which Jorgen works and Snowy's leg gets injured while being ambushed by Jorgen. Tintin finally places the bandages around Snowy's injured leg to heal completely. With Wolff's help, Jorgen seeks to hijack the ship and return it to Earth, but Tintin escapes and foils him through emergency sabotage that cuts power to the engine.[2]
Due to the strain on the oxygen supplies, the crew decides to abandon the Moon tank and the optical instruments and to cut short the lunar stay. The repair work is completed slightly ahead of schedule, and the rocket is cleared for lift-off. After launch, Jorgen escapes his bonds due to the detectives' bungling and tries to kill Tintin and the others with a gun; Wolff seeks to prevent him, and in their struggle over the gun, Jorgen is shot through his heart, killing him. When it is revealed that there will not be enough oxygen aboard for the crew to survive the journey, Wolff sacrifices himself by opening theairlock andfloating out into space to his death. Upon approaching Earth, the crew falls unconscious, but Tintin wakes long enough to set the rocket to auto-pilot and it arrives back inSyldavia safely. After landing, the crew is rescued in the nick of time. During the heroes' welcome home party, Calculus hopes they may return to the Moon someday, but Haddock refuses, revealing that the expedition has taught him that "Man's proper place is on dear old Earth".[3]
Hergé first devised the idea of sendingTintin on a mission to theMoon while he was working onPrisoners of the Sun (1949).[4] His decision to move into the field ofscience fiction might have been influenced by his friendly rivalry with his colleagueEdgar P. Jacobs, who had recently had success with his own science fiction comicThe Secret of the Swordfish (1950–53).[5] He decided that it would be a two-volumestory arc, as had proved successful with his earlier arcs,Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934) andThe Blue Lotus (1936),The Secret of the Unicorn (1943) andRed Rackham's Treasure (1944), andThe Seven Crystal Balls (1948) andPrisoners of the Sun.[4] He had initially intended on beginning this story after the culmination ofPrisoners of the Sun, but both his wife Germaine Remi and his close friend Marcel Dehaye convinced him to proceed withLand of Black Gold (1950), a story that he had previously left unfinished, instead.[6]
Seeking advice on the story, Hergé consulted his friendBernard Heuvelmans, who had authored the non-fiction bookL'Homme parmi les étoiles ("Man Among the Stars") (1944).[5] In autumn 1947, Heuvelmans andJacques Van Melkebeke developed a script for the story, which they gave to Hergé. This version based Calculus' lunar expedition in a fictional location, Radio City, in the United States. It featured a return of Professor Decimus Phostle, a character who had previously appeared inThe Shooting Star (1942), but this time as an antagonist; Phostle had sold the secrets of the mission in order to attain funds to buy a diamond for the actressRita Hayworth.[7] In early 1948, Hergé produced two black-and-white pages of this version of the story before abandoning it.[8] Hergé retained some elements of this original script in his finished version, namely the scenes in whichCaptain Haddock drinks whiskey in a gravity-free environment and that in which Haddock goes for a space walk and nearly becomes a satellite of Adonis, which appear on pages 5 and 8 ofExplorers on the Moon.[9]
Nevertheless, Heuvelmans thought his influence on the story to be more significant, stating that "in going through the two books we [he and Van Melkebeke] really had the impression that it was what we had originally done at the beginning. In broad outline, that was it".[10]
Hergé hoped for the story to be as realistic as possible, and sought to eschew fantastical elements.[11] In his own words, it contained "no moonmen, no monsters, no incredible surprises".[12] To ensure this realism, he collected a wide range of documents aboutrockets and space travel with which to conduct research.[13] In this he was aided by Heuvelmans, who collected pictures of rockets and atomic research facilities for him.[14] Hergé's research archive includedan article from the American magazineCollier's which discussed how humanity could reach the Moon,[13] as well as books byPierre Rousseau andAuguste Piccard.[15] A further work that he used wasL'Astronautique (1950), a book on putative space travel by the physicistAlexander Ananoff,[16] with whom Hergé began a correspondence in April 1950.[17] He also visited theAteliers de Constructions Electriques de Charleroi's Center for Atomic Research, striking up a subsequent correspondence with its director,Max Hoyaux.[18] Hergé incorporated much of this technical information into the story, but juxtaposed it with moments of humour to make it more accessible to his young readership.[19]
According to literary criticsJean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier, possible fictional influences on Hergé's story includeJules Verne's 1870 novelAround the Moon and the 1950 American filmDestination Moon.[20] Hergé was certainly inspired by a number of photographic stills from theDestination Moon film which had been published.[21] The computer system at the Sprodj space centre was visually based upon theUNIVAC I, the first computer to be created for non-military purposes.[22] Hergé based his Moon rocket on the designs of theV-2 rocket which had been developed by Nazi scientists duringWorld War II.[13] The red-and-white checker pattern on Hergé's rocket was based upon an illustration of a V-2 which Hergé had come upon inLeslie Simon's 1947 bookGerman Research in World War II.[20] He commissioned the construction of a model rocket with detachable parts from his assistant Arthur Van Noeyen. He took the model toParis where he showed it to Ananoff, asking him if it was a realistic representation of what a Moon rocket might look like. He and his assistants then used the model from which to accurately sketch when producing the comic.[23]Hergé introduced into the story the character of Boris Jorgen, who had previously appeared as an antagonist inKing Ottokar's Sceptre (1939).[24]He added evidence forwater on the Moon on the advice of Heuvelmans.[25]
On 7 September 1950, Hergé broke off the story with the statement "end of part one".[26] He felt the need for a break from work, having fallen back into clinical depression. He and his wife Germaine went on holiday toGland in Switzerland, before returning to Brussels in late September.[27] Many readers sent letters toTintin magazine asking whyExplorers on the Moon was no longer being serialised, with a rumour emerging that Hergé had died.[28] On 18 April 1951, he published an open letter in the magazine explaining his absence as a result of illness caused by exhaustion and included an illustration of himself sprawled out on an armchair.[28] As Hergé planned his return to work, covers ofTintin magazine announced the imminent return of the story.[29]
Explorers on the Moon would resume after an eighteen-month hiatus,[30] returning in the 9 April 1952 issue, accompanied with a summary of the story so far.[31] Its final installment appeared on 31 December 1953.[10]
Upon the serial's publication, Hergé faced criticism for including Wolff'ssuicide in the story; suicide was widely viewed as a sin in Catholic-dominated Belgium. In deference to these critics, for the published book version he added Wolff's line of "perhaps by some miracle I shall escape too", to make the scene seem a less obvious suicide. Years later, Hergé expressed regret that he had capitulated on this issue, as he felt that the change was "stupid" as Wolff knew that he was "condemned" the moment he jumped into space and no miracle was possible.[32]The story was collected together and published by Editions Casterman asOn a Marché Sur La Lune in 1954.[33] Casterman were unhappy with this title, which translates as "We Walked on the Moon", but Hergé resolutely refused to make a change.[34]
Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier believed that the two-part story "belongs" to Calculus as his "cosmic vision moves the story forward".[24] They further expressed the opinion that Wolff was a unique character in theAdventures of Tintin, suggesting that he is akin to a character from aJohn le Carré novel.[24] Referring specifically toExplorers on the Moon, they opined that it was "a true epic of the human imagination", believing that its depiction of the Moon has "withstood the test of time" more than other "proto-space exploration novels".[35] They felt that the Moon adventure was "Hergé at his best... a triumphant achievement on every level", awarding both halves of the story five stars out of five.[35]
Hergé biographerPierre Assouline felt that the two Moon adventures "mark a stage in the development of Hergé's work".[37] Hergé biographerBenoît Peeters praised the "gradual introduction into the story of a real dimension of evil" as being something particularly effective.[38] He also expressed the view that Wolff brings "a tragic note" to the story, comparing him to the characters in the stories ofGraham Greene.[38] He was critical of the two-part story arc, stating that they had "neither the liveliness and dynamism" ofThe Secret of the Unicorn andRed Rackham's Treasure, "nor the supernatural quality" ofThe Seven Crystal Balls-Prisoners of the Sun.[38]
Harry Thompson noted thatExplorers on the Moon was widely regarded as Hergé's "greatest artistic achievement",[39] describing the entire Moon adventure as "a technical masterpiece" as a result of its "uncannily accurate" depiction of the Moon.[40] Thompson expressed his opinion thatExplorers could be compared to the work of science-fiction writersJules Verne andH. G. Wells.[41] Focusing on the scene in which the Thom(p)sons' hair grows rapidly in bright colours, he stated that it provides an abrupt contrast with "the almost scholastic nature of the rest of the story", and that it "injects a few bright splashes" into an otherwise "carefully restrained colour scheme".[42] Philippe Goddin praised the depiction of the rocket's landing as "a magnificent spectacle, well worth the double space spread given by Hergé",[43] also highlighting what he perceived as the ending's "unprecedented dramatic tension".[44]
In hispsychoanalytical study of theAdventures of Tintin, theliterary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès praised theDestination Moon-Explorers on the Moon story arc for its "meticulous attention to scientific facts", but added that this had also resulted in the story's "rather pedagogical tone".[45] He added that in these stories, the main division was "no longer Good and Evil" as it had been in previousAdventures, but "Truth and Error".[45] Apostolidès opined that despite being a "fussy and somewhat ridiculous character", through his scientific achievements Calculus grows to the "stature of a giant" in this arc, eclipsing Sir Francis Haddock (fromThe Secret of the Unicorn) as the series' "founding ancestor".[46] He goes on to claim that in becoming the "sacred ancestor", the voyage to the Moon becomes "a mystical quest" with science as its guiding religion.[47] Drawing comparisons between this arc and thePrisoners of the Sun story, he drew symbolic links between the scientific centre and the Inca Temple of the Sun, but noted that here Calculus was the "high priest" rather than the sacrificial victim as he had been in the previous story.[48]Moving on to discuss the Moon rocket in these stories, Apostolidès described it as a phallic object which penetrated the "virgin territory" of the Moon.[49] At the same time, he described the rocket as a "maternal belly" in which the space explorers slept.[49] Commenting specifically onExplorers on the Moon he commented that the protagonists of the story reverted to childhood when exploring the Moon, believing that they had treated it like atheme park.[50]
Literary criticTom McCarthy stated that in theDestination Moon-Explorers of the Moon story arc, Calculus "embodies Hergé's... own wartime position, spun out into a post-war environment", representing a genius driven by his work whose activities are coincidental to national and political causes.[51] He suggested thatExplorers on the Moon was "perhaps both the most wildly adventurous and the most contemplative" instalment in the series.[52] He felt that the inclusion of Jorgen being smuggled aboard the rocket as a stowaway reflected the idea of the "stranger" penetrating the "home", something which he thought was present in otherAdventures.[53] Commenting on the scene in which Haddock smuggles a whisky bottle inside theGuide to Astronomy, he states "the text, in this case, is hollow, smuggling something else", which he believed was a reversal of the appearance of a parchment hidden within a model ship inThe Secret of the Unicorn.[54]
In 1957, the animation companyBelvision Studios produceda string of colour adaptations based on Hergé's original comics, adapting eight of theAdventures into a series of daily five-minute episodes.Explorers on the Moon was the second to be adapted in the second animated series; it was directed by Ray Goossens and written byGreg, a well-known cartoonist who was to become editor-in-chief ofTintin magazine.[55]
In 1991, asecond animated series based uponThe Adventures of Tintin was produced, this time as a collaboration between the French studioEllipse and the Canadian animation companyNelvana.Explorers on the Moon was the fifteenth story to be adapted and was divided into two twenty-minute episodes. Directed by Stéphane Bernasconi, the series has been praised for being "generally faithful" to the original comics, to the extent that the animation was directly adopted from Hergé's original panels.[56]
