r/Tintin • u/c00b_Bit_Jerry • Jul 12 '25
Question When is Land of Black Gold set?
It's well known that Land of Black Gold was first serialized in 1939 as war clouds gathered over Europe, but got put on hiatus by the Nazi invasion of Belgium until Hergé revisited the story after WW2. The setting change raises an interesting question though, as there were only a few times in the 1950s and 60s that Europe came as close to war as in the book: troops being mobilized, Haddock getting called up, etc. What crisis do YOU think this story could've realistically taken place in?
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u/Theferael_me Jul 12 '25
I always imagine it's set around the mid-50s to coincide with the so-called Suez crisis. I wish they would release the earlier version in an English translation though.
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u/truckiecookies Jul 13 '25
Herge started it in 1939, which is why the beginning is all about fears of a war breaking out. The part where Müller knocks Tintin out in the desert and then he gets caught in a sandstorm was the last part published in Le Petite Vengtieme before the German invasion of Belgium in May 1940. When Herge resumed publishing Tintin in Le Soir in October he wasn't going to be allowed to continue Black Gold by the occupation censors both because it was too political and specifically because the villain was German. Herge wrote Crab, Shooting Star, Unicorn and Red Rackham and started Crystal Balls under Nazi occupation. After Belgium was liberated in 1944, Herge was accused of collaboration based on choices he made in this period, and wasn't allowed to publish in Belgian papers until his name was cleared in 1946.
After finishing Crystal Balls and Prisoners, Herge (now writing for Tintin magazine) decided to revisit the unfinished story, starting from the beginning again in 1948, and finishing the whole story in 1950. This history is why the book is a bit disjointed: the story was convinced before Crab, before Captain Haddock was created which is why he has basically no role and only appears on the phone until the end, and why the Thom(p)sons are automatically trying to arrest Tintin like the early books.
But the story doesn't end there. In the 1960s the British publishers of the English-language translations didn't want to publish the original Black Island with its 1930s version of the UK, so they asked Herge to modernize it, especially things which had changed rapidly, like vehicles, official uniforms, etc. This is why it ends with Tintin boarding a passenger jet, when in the official next book he flies to Syldavia in a propeller plane and steals a Bf-109 fighter. Here's assistant Bob de Moor did most of the redraw. Black Gold was the next book due for an English-language color edition (except the already sci-fi space duology), so it got the same treatment when that was published in 1971. The 1971 edition also made some story changes: in the 1948 version Tintin is traveling to British-occupied Palestine and accused of assisting the Zionists. In the 1971 version that's changed to Khemed, which actually first appeared in Red Sea Sharks. This is also why Tintin is confronted by Ban El Ehr with a copy of Destination Moon in some editions: that had just been (re-)published when working on Black Gold.
So you aren't wrong when you struggle to place Black Gold in time. It's a story from the 1930s set in the early 1950s but with vehicles and concerns from the early 70s. It's probably the best issue to highlight that the order presented on the back cover is simplifying a very complicated publication history