“Tim and the Picaros” would be Hergé’s last -completed band, but fortunately one of the most important questions is clarified in the final adventure of the reporter. Of course, it is not about Tim, but about the wild, choleric captain Haddock. This was thrown into the back of the head in the jungle in the jungle, a drunk monkey has broken, and now the man suffers from amnesia. “Who is Captain, you or me?” He asks his friend Tim. He replies: “Of course, you are captain Haddock!” And Tim tells him – and us – his first name for the first time: “Archibald”. Haddock finds: “Still alberner”.
Hergé drew until death
A performance round in the jungle. Previously, Tim and Haddock had traveled to Latin American San Theodoros to free their friend Bianca Castafiore. Head of State General Tapioca holds her and has now invited the reporter and his captain’s friend to his country to clarify the matter. Although everything indicates a trap, Haddock, Professor Bienlein and later also Tim take care of the matter. With the help of the Rebel General Alcazar, the political overthrow is also to be initiated.
Nobody could have ancested that the 23rd volume (which first appeared as a series, part one at the end of 1975) would also be the last Hergés; George Prosper Remi, as the draftsman and author was called in bourgeois, still worked on “Tim and Alpha-Kunst” after the “Picaros”-this comic, which makes him no less valuable for readers, came into sale after Hergé’s death in 1983. 1979, three years after the “Picaros”, an osteomyelofibrosis (bone marker disease) was diagnosed in the Belgian. He continued to end until his end, he died at 75.
“Tim and the Picaros” can be read as a farewell greeting, but the story was not meant. However, so many old acquaintances are gathered in the 64-page comic as if the narrator wanted to open one last parade. That was only good for the ensemble. Schulze and Schultze and Bianca Castafiore are sold under value due to their short appearances (to address Haddock with false names, at least the opera singer has enough time).
Hergé brings characters into play that had not been expected. The researcher Ridweell, General Alcazar or servant Pablo, from the fifth volume, “The Arumbaya fetish”; Or the villain Colonel Sponsz, whom we recently met in the “Bienlein case”.
Struppi without task
The poor dog Struppi, once a second main character, has to make bigger space, as in the comics before, captain Haddock. In the “Picaros” he finally no longer fulfills a function, he has been degraded to the companion. And Tim himself? He wants to stay in the Mühlenhof Castle instead of flying to South America – he, the great traveling journalist Tim, who is now sending his friend Haddock into the tropics with the strenuous Bienlein. Tim has become tired.
The biggest heroes in history are once again Bienlein and Haddock. Both are closer than ever. Is there a happy ending for the alcoholic captain? The professor invented a pill that makes alcohol inedible, and which he secretly mixes up to people. Haddock spits out the whiskey, the gin, everything again, and it is great to look at how it becomes more and more desperate because its life is stolen.
Even sober, he remains the Wüterich, it even seems that his impulse control fails more often in the dry. So readers can breathe a sigh of relief! Haddock’s swear words fill whole lexicons, here he curses the dictator Tapioca as “carnival mussolini”, a title that is almost as great as his “vegetarian!” Or the very best, “fresh water pirate!” Here it becomes clear once again what Hergé had done before: of all places to have created one of the most loved comic characters at all with an alcoholic.
After appearing in 1976, “Tim and the Picaros” mostly received bad meetings. Allegations: Main character Tim zu lethargisch, story too confused and overambitious, too many nostalgic links to previous stories, Hergé’s attitude too indifferent to political revolutions. If you had enough time, Hergé even held a pandering to the zeitgeist because Tim now had a light blow in his pants and a Peace sign adorned his moped helmet. These are details that no child would disturb. And children were the readers that Hergé first addressed. Only the adults thinking in fashions and time covers have complained.
One dictator replaces the other
In the end, Tim and his friends let the new Republic, which the former rebel Alcazar have mastered, literally behind them with the plane. This shows the sad, very last picture of the comic. But the slums continue to exist, except that the signs no longer announced “Viva Tapioca”, but “Viva Alcazar”. One dictator replaces the other.
To blame Hergé here, shoots past the destination. Rather, the author shows how disillusioned it is whenever South Americans announce rebellions in their countries. He was inspired by the Revolution Castros in Kuba in 1959, which initially fascinated him, then made him frightened, as well as the reports by Régis Debray, who was at the Che Guevaras side in Bolivia. Hergés from previous adventures of well-known General Alcazar turns out to be a small man under the bushel of his curlwriter housekeeper in the course of history. As a parodist role -playing game, this may be staged a little too strikingly, but the intention is clear: everything moke heroes.
It is clever how Hergé takes some air out of the sails right at the beginning of its story, on page one, by allowing Haddock to interrupt the Tim lecturizing over the Picaros: “That was a medium lecture, Tim … I got a completely dry throat!”
But there is enough space for Hergé, that should not have noticed critics to fire one broad side after another. The letters in the cityscape of San theodoros contrasted with the slums are one, but also from the characters the author speaks. The Bienlein, as fit as never ever seemed, notes that General Tapioca “kicks the men’s rights with feet”, and Haddock suspects that during his stay he should only see chocolate sides, “confetti” and “Sombreromaniacutures”.
Corruption and mismanagement
The seventies offered enough material for political thrillers, for corruption at the highest level. Here it is the large corporation “International Banana Company” that supports Alcazar, while the Whiskey brand Loch Lomond finances the carnival that fills the third act of history when the rebel forces want to use the carnival to overthrow the dictator.
Hergé spun many punch lines around drunk people and animals in his comics. The devastating effect of the alcohol, this was not only necessary to the tragicomic Haddock, has a lot of space from him. The contras are – until Bienlein appears with its miracle pills – drunk day out, not operational, thanks to Loch Lomond. In the years before the publication of this volume, Hergé went on a world tour, in America he visited the Sioux. He had seen with them what alcohol could do.
Hergé did not live in the 1970s, there was an ex-wife, psychological problems, those legendary “white areas” in his nightmares (which he should manifest for “Tim in Tibet” in Snow Mountains), as well as physical ailments. The pressure was also great to use its comics more and more for the good.
Hergé was considered to be formulated, controversial author. Above all, his first version of “Tim in the Congo”, published in 1930, contained a racist representation of Congolese, which he performed as mentally lagging people. In “The Mysterious Stern” from 1942, according to the anti -Semitic cliché, the crooked banker Blumenstein is available. Defender Hergés sometimes referred to the fact that the draftsman had reflected a certain “zeitgeist” and later revisions of his works. It didn’t wash it in.
Finally, Hergé was unnecessarily worried about the increasing popularity of the comic character Asterix, which Tim threatened to bump from the Franco-Belgian throne. In “Tim and the Picaros” he built the Gauls as a figure in the hidden object of his carnival.
Jungle again!
Of course, many readers were also disappointed with “Tim and the Picaros” for the right reasons. Hergé had used for the work for eight years, many reviewers even believe that he had parts of the comic made by his team of helpers-and the setting of the 23rd story was only too familiar, as in the previous booklet “Flight 714 to Sydney”, Tim and friends are in a jungle.
No comparison with the shattering, quasi-autobiographical friend and survival story of “Tim and Tibet”; No comparison with the hitchcock-like “The Singer’s jewels”, which, formally for the series, plays on only one scene with a whodunnite that is not in the end; No comparison with the cold war thriller of the “Bienlein case”; And certainly no comparison with the spectacular adventures of Tim on the earth’s drabant, whose cave exploration actually thought NASA actually thought is feasible (“travel destination moon”, steps on the moon “).
On the other hand, you also have to defend Hergé in 1976: Where should Tim travel to, what had he not seen yet?
“Tim and the Picaros” is a chaotic comic, especially the title heroes Tim and Struppi have not much to report on politics and corruption – but the band is still important after 40 years. Because the world has not really gotten better since then.
The comic also includes some of the funniest dialogues in the entire series. For example, when Bienlein and Haddock talk in the jungle about the dangerousness of a trembling hall. “You can talk about luck that it was just a small copy,” says the professor. “The largest are two meters long and can kill a horse with a single electric blow.” Haddock, relieved: “It’s good that I’m not a horse.”