some themes in tintin

Yes.

About realism: as I said, I was talking about increasing realism towards death and violence. The earlier albums (especially the first) are full of near-death escapes which, while not totally unrealistic, are highly implausible. There's also plenty comics-style funny scenes where a bomb explodes too early, yet the people near the bomb only get black faces. Stuff like this, or like Tintin falling from a plane into a haystack and surviving, never happen in the later adventures.

ii. at start of CwGC, a japanese detective is murdered as he tries to contact tintin

He is shot, yes, but he survives and is hospitalized. Tintin meets him at the end of the story. The Syldavian agent in King Ottokar's Sceptre dies, however.

and actually i think the first three possibly skew it back the other way

surely there are bomb-explodes-w/o-death scenes in calculus affair (when they're in the tank just at the border) and red sea (when the aircraft by mistake bomb their own troops/plus also the shark swallowing the mine possibly)?

HOWEVER i am still dubious abt what we're meant to think of the snowball deaths (or not) in PoS: it's true that TT and CH can't actually be blamed for them if they are deaths, but if the aztec bandidos DO die, it wd surely kinda dilute the "TT as a friend of our people" meme which later works for him. I mean, OK, they wd be set free (cz they can control the sun), but wd they be loaded down w.treasure?

but yes, it mainly works as dark slapstick if yr used to the idea that bombs don't kill ppl in tintin, they just give them black faces

It's been ages since I read Prisoners of the Sun, but was it ever implied that the bandidos were Incas (not Aztecs, the story doesn't take place in Mexico)? Maybe they were just some other bad guys?

will have to reread to be honest: i took it to be that true-born incas run a kind of nation w/i a nation (ie the police captain who won't help them), and hadn't the bandidos kidnapped the little (non-inca?) indian kid? ie they are part of the conspiracy?

haha Maybe Hergé just wasn't thinking about all this too deeply? Noooooooo don't say that!! Everything collapses if you start down that path!!

Nestor the butler seemsw v."English" (tho i know nothin abt french or belgian retainers, style-wise). I don't recall any channel-crossing in Secret of the Unicorn though. Are the Bird brothers english?

(Oh: there's a death in SotU also, isn't there!!) (A particularly gratuitous one, in fact...)

No, I think it is quite clear that Secret of the Unicorn takes place in Belgium, and hence Moulinsart/Marlinspike is located there as well. Maybe Haddock's forefather just decided, for some reason, to live in Belgium and required that there should always be an English butler in his castle... ;)

(Oh: there's a death in SotU also, isn't there!!) (A particularly gratuitous one, in fact...)

Can't remember, you'll have to remind me on that.

certainly one of the brothers is notably more murderous than the other

in english: tintin lives at 26 Labrador Road (address mentioned in 7CB and T in Tibet: Chang's letters is addressed to Labrador Rd, the forwarded to Marlinspike, then to wherever they are holidaying together)

of course I forgot what Marlinspike actually LOOKS like: there is no country house in the whole of the British Isles w.that high raked gable style - it is certainly in Belgium (or France).

v.long-running weird science gag: calculus's pendulum

the name archibald is originally german not british (it means "very brave")

Anyway, sorry to be a spoilsport, but this seems to prove that Tintin isn't English.

Also, I was told once by a French BD fan, that T and T are in fact "typical Belgian stereotpyes", and not as everyone thinks "typical Englishmen" -- any Belgians out there agree/or not?

(except actually i think the english translaters seem sometimes to be hoping that you do mistakenly assume he is English, for reasons that baffle grown-up mark s)

my only reasons for wondering about haddock and marlinspike, respectively, were that "sir frances haddock" somehow looked more of an english privateer (bcz i didn't know that belgium wz notorious for pirates in the 18th century); and that nestor somehow looked more of an english butler, dress-wise

FIW, The Avengers TV series was known in France as Chapeau Melon & Bottes de Cuir (Bowler Hat and Leather Boots).

the deaths in explorers haunted me as a kid, frank wolfe's anyway ("by some miracle i will escape too")

i still get anxiety shakes when i think about explorers on the moon, let along pick it up and read it

According to Hergé, he inserted the "perhaps by some miracle I shall esacape too" line on the orders of Tintin magazine. Suicide was still taboo in Catholic Belgium, even if heroic. Hergé later regretted adding this cop out, saying something along the lines of "Wolff was condemned and he knew it".

Yeah, I read that in Harry Thompson's excellent Herge biog.

That's where I got it from too, I think- but the original source is probably Entretiens avec Herge, for which an English translation is long overdue.

another theme in tintin--something gets broken, then fixed, then immediately broken again. happens to the thom(p)son twins all the time

Haddock falls over/walks into something.