The Seven Crystal Balls (French:
Les Sept Boules de Cristal)
Original publication dates: December 1943 – September 1944/September 1946 – December 1946
First collected edition: 1948
Author: Hergé
Tintin visits: Belgium (Brussels, Marlinspike), France (Saint-Nazaire [renamed Westermouth], La Rochelle).
Overall rating:
Plot summary available here.
Publisher's synopsis:
Seven explorers are home from Peru; among their trophies is the mummy of Rascar Capac, looted from an Inca tomb. One by one the explorers are struck by a mysterious illness, and beside each lie the fragments of a crystal ball. Tintin and Captain Haddock are soon involved. They learn of the ancient curse upon those who violate the Inca's tomb. Then one night the mummy vanishes; later, Professor Calculus is kidnapped. Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock take up the chase in the first part of a remarkable South American adventure.Comments:
The Seven Crystal Balls is the first part of Hergé's second, proper two-part storyline (
The Secret of the Unicorn/
Red Rackham's Treasure being his first), with the story continuing in
Prisoners of the Sun. Just like the last four Tintin albums,
The Seven Crystal Balls started out being published in serial form in the Belgian newspaper,
Le Soir. The adventure began in December 1943, during the darkest days of the German occupation of Belgium. It continued throughout early 1944, until Hergé began to suffer from bouts of flu and sinusitis, as well as attacks of exhaustion and depression. After a brief hiatus between May and July 1944, the strip restarted, but came to an abrupt end in September 1944 with the Allied liberation of Belgium and Hergé's arrest on charges of collaboration with the Nazis.
These accusations sprang from the fact that Hergé had accepted the job with
Le Soir after the Germans had taken control of the newspaper. During the occupation, the paper was published under heavy German censorship, unlike many other publications, which went underground instead. Although the Tintin strip itself avoided any overtly political content during this period,
Le Soir nonetheless supported the German war effort, featured pro-Nazi propaganda, and regularly espoused anti-Semitic sentiments.
Shortly after the liberation of Belgium, Hergé was publicly named as a collaborator by a resistance group called
L'Insoumis ("The Undefeated" or "Unbowed") in a document known as the "Gallery of Traitors"...
This pamphlet was, it said, published "for the benefit of all true Belgians", and included Hergé's photo, home address, and some biographical information. It also commented on Hergé's working relationship with the former Editor-in-Chief of
Le Soir, Raymond De Becker, who was a known supporter of the National Socialist ideology. The pamphlet also suggested that the artist might be a Rexist (a member of a far-right, Catholic, Nationalist Belgian party), though it admitted that this could not be proven.
The naming of Hergé in the "Gallery of Traitors" and his subsequent arrest prompted other public humiliations for the author. For instance, the Belgian newspaper
La Patrie lampooned him as a collaborator by issuing a satirical cartoon strip entitled
The Adventures of Tintin and Snowy in the Land of the Nazis...
Like many other journalists accused of collaboration with the Germans, Hergé was blacklisted from practising his profession and ended up unemployed for over a year. A judicial enquiry into his case urged lenience on the part of the prosecution, since Hergé had been producing "an inoffensive children's book", rather than any serious political content. The author's case was finally closed in December 1945, due to the innocuous nature of the Tintin strip, and the fact that bringing him before a war tribunal for such contributions would be inappropriate and risky.
Although Hergé never produced any pro-Nazi material for
Le Soir, and had, in fact, taken a stand against Nazi expansionism in Europe with
King Ottokar's Sceptre, he admitted in the early '70s that he had felt some hope that the future of the West might benefit from the Nazi's New Order. He, like many other Catholics, felt that democracy had proven deceptive in the pre-war years, and that the New Order brought fresh hope. However, he also admitted that, given everything that happened during the war, it had been a terrible error on his part to have believed even for one instant in the New Order.
With Hergé now free from the threat of prosecution or even execution,
The Seven Crystal Balls resumed publication in September 1946 in the pages of the all-new
Tintin magazine. It concluded in December 1946 (although the story continued in
Prisoners of the Sun for another 16 months) and was collected into the standard 62-page album format in 1948. Hergé saw fit to redraw some of the artwork for the collected edition, and some additional backgrounds were provided by the author's friend and fellow cartoonist Edgar P. Jacobs.
Perhaps the first thing of note about
The Seven Crystal Balls is just what a creepy and disturbing story it is. The adventure finds Tintin and his companions investigating why members of the Sanders-Hardiman archaeological expedition – which had recently returned from Peru, having discovered the tomb of the ancient Incan monarch Rascar Capac – are all falling into strange comas, with fragments of a shattered crystal ball lying near each victim. Speculation is rife that the archaeologists are the victims of an ancient Inca curse.
Of course, the so-called "Curse of Tutankhamun" or "The Mummy's Curse", which had allegedly caused the death of George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, in 1923, and which supposedly stalked other archaeologists who had disturbed ancient Egyptian tombs, was firmly established in the public imagination by the mid-1940s. By invoking this then-modern horror trope, the story is reminiscent of Hergé's earlier
Cigars of Pharaoh. The similarities with the earlier book extend to
The Seven Crystal Balls' brooding, sinister atmosphere, and in Hergé's use of a dramatic thunder storm, which rages outside, while the "curse" strikes down someone closely involved with the mystery.
These supernatural elements turn what was already a damn good mystery story into something much more gripping. The appearance of the reanimated mummy of Rascar Capac – which had been brought back to Brussels by Professor Tarragon – is arguably the story's scariest and most memorable moment. Certainly this sequence creeped the hell out of me when I first encountered it as a 10 or 11-year-old...
As if to reinforce the scene's weirdness, shortly before it takes place, Hergé has a blast of ball lightning whip down Professor Tarragon's chimney to terrorise our heroes, seemingly as part of an ancient Incan prophecy. The fireball ends up vaporising the mummy of Rascar Capac in its display case...
This rare – possibly non-existent – weather phenomenon, is something that was treated with widespread scepticism by the scientific community until the late 1960s, despite numerous people having claimed to have witnessed such lightning effects. Even today, in our high-tech 21st century world, scientists still can't agree on whether or not ball lightning can actually occur naturally. By using this potentially real or unreal phenomenon in an already supernaturally charged adventure, Hergé is, I think, attempting to demonstrate that the boundary between the natural and the supernatural may not always be exactly where we think it is.
Unlike other supernatural elements that have appeared in earlier Tintin stories, Hergé is in no rush to disprove the "curse" or offer up any rational explanation this time. As a result, the reader is left to wonder whether there really are occult forces at work here.
Nowhere is the possibility of the supernatural being real made more explicit than in the scene where the seven comatose explorers are shown to be having seizures at the same time everyday. We eventually learn, in
Prisoners of the Sun, that these disturbing episodes are the result of a spell that the Inca High Priest has cast over the explorers. As the Inca prince in Peru tortures tiny effigies representing each of the seven, they experience writhing agony far away in Brussels. Again, there is no rational explanation offered by Hergé; this really does seem to be a case of genuine witchcraft.
The Seven Crystal Balls is the first Tintin adventure to have begun with the entire extended supporting cast in place. There are many fantastic character moments throughout the book which show Hergé clearly having a lot of fun with his ensemble cast. Interestingly, Tintin and Snowy aren't living with Captain Haddock at Marlinspike Hall, as we might have imagined they would be, following the events of
Red Rackham's Treasure. Professor Calculus, on the other hand, is residing at Haddock's country estate – which is only fair, since he bought the stately château and generously gifted it to the Captain at the end of the last adventure.[/div]
Haddock himself is living (and loving) the role of the country squire to the hilt, with his butler Nestor providing him with a never ending supply of monocles...
However, the Captain's upper-class affectations are quickly discarded when his friend Calculus is kidnapped: amply demonstrating the affection that the Captain feels towards the professor, in spite of the irritation that his deafness and eccentricities might cause. Actually, I must say that Calculus's disappearance and Haddock's obvious angst over the kidnapping, along with his determination to rescue his friend, gives the latter-half of the book a sense of poignancy not often found in Tintin.
Opera singer Bianca Castafiore (the "Milanese Nightingale"), who we met in
King Ottokar's Sceptre, also makes a return to The Adventures of Tintin, with a performance at a music hall near the start of the book. Her painfully ear-splitting singing voice is as violently forceful as ever...
This sequence in the theatre also features the return of General Alcazar, the former dictator of the banana republic of San Theodoros, who we met in
The Broken Ear. Alcazar is currently working as a music hall knife-thrower, following a coup in his country by General Tapioca.
Actually, the appearances of Castafiore and Alcazar are problematic in the English translation of
The Seven Crystal Balls from a continuity perspective. The book was translated when it was published in the UK by Methuen in 1962, but the later story
The Red Sea Sharks (1958) – in which Castafiore and Alcazar both appear – had been published in Britain two years earlier, in 1960. As a result, when the English translators were working on
The Seven Crystal Balls, they no doubt assumed that British readers would already be familiar with the events of
The Red Sea Sharks. This is why, upon seeing both the opera singer and the General, Tintin and Haddock act as if the Captain knows them. In fact, Haddock had never met either character at this point, since both
The Broken Ear and
King Ottokar's Sceptre took place before he had joined the cast of the series.
The Seven Crystal Balls contains some beautiful artwork, with Hergé truly a master of his
ligne claire ("clear line") style of drawing by this time. I've talked about this style of comic art, which the artist pioneered, before in this thread, but it's perhaps worth recapping. The
ligne claire style places emphasis on cinematic realism in the settings and backgrounds, contrasted with slightly cartoonish characters in the foreground, and uses strong, clear lines of the same width, without any hatching or cross-hatching. The following page provides an excellent example of
ligne claire and Hergé's steadfast dedication to mechanical accuracy and detail...
Of course, Hergé was also equally adept at depicting action and slapstick comedy, as this wonderfully comedic sequence backstage at the theatre demonstrates...
Unfortunately, Hergé chose to repeat this same gag later on in the book, with Snowy ending up wearing a Knight's helmet, just as Haddock ends up with a bull's head stuck on his shoulders. That's an uncharacteristically sloppy lapse in judging the humour of this story from Hergé, but it's not an isolated incident.
One of my biggest criticisms of
The Seven Crystal Balls – and something that prevents it from being an absolutely classic Tintin adventure, in my view – is that the comedy scenes feel rather "tacked on" and out of place. The central mystery of the "curse" is so sinister and disturbing that the narrative doesn't actually require much comedy. It's too dark a tale for that. Consequently, the comedy in the book feels a little shoehorned in...as if Hergé had a set "comedy quota" in mind for the book and steadfastly adhered to it, whether the story required it or not. That said, a lot of the comedy in
The Seven Crystal Balls works perfectly well, but it just seems like an unwelcome distraction from the serious mood of the adventure to me.
Some commentators and critics have tended to see evidence of Hergé's depressed state of mind, as he worked on
The Seven Crystal Balls (what with his recurrent illnesses and accusations of collaboration with the Germans), in the brooding nature of the story. Or in Haddock's dejected countenance, as he frets over Calculus's disappearance. Myself, I really don't believe that to be true. I think that, just like
The Secret of the Unicorn and
Red Rackham's Treasure, this story is Hergé writing pure escapist fantasy.
The Seven Crystal Balls is a scary, sinister adventure, yes, but it doesn't have the same tortured, "end of the world is nigh" atmosphere as
The Shooting Star, which was almost certainly a product of Hergé's fears about World War II and the German occupation of Europe.
Overall,
The Seven Crystal Balls is an excellent example of the Tintin series being one of the best adventure/mystery/detective series ever created. It unfolds as a fairly typical Tintin detective story, with the boy reporter piecing together a series of clues, but the sinister, supernatural undercurrents in the story make it one of the most gripping of the boy reporter's adventures. The ensemble character moments are a joy to read, but the book loses a couple of points for its inappropriate and often unwelcome use of comedy, which disrupts the flow of this weird tale on occasion. Still, the incongruous comedy is not enough to spoil what is an otherwise superior, mid-period instalment of The Adventures of Tintin.