Flight 714 (Adventures of Tintin) [Hardcover]

Although like any Tintin book there are certainly points to recommend about it, like most of the later Tintin books, Flight 714 suffers from there being rather too much going on. Unlike the earlier Tintin books however, it's not just that the storyline here takes on rather a lot and relies heavily on coincidences, or that it is overpopulated by the familiar and growing cast of regular characters, but what is unfortunate is that even Hergé's beautiful clear-line artwork becomes rather messy and overly-cluttered here for the first time.

The characteristics that make the best Tintin adventures are however still to be found here. There's no shortage of adventure in the storyline, which as usual starts off innocently enough as Tintin, Captain Haddock and Calculus stopping off in Djakarta on their way on Flight 714 for a conference in Sydney. An encounter with an old friend Skut introduces them however to eccentric millionaire Lazlo Carreidas, who offers to take them on to Sydney in the luxury of his private plane, just so that he can entertain himself by testing the Captain's naval prowess (and cheating) in a game of battleships. The plane is hijacked however and brought down on a remote volcanic island where Rastapopoulos intends to extract information from the millionaire about his bank accounts.

Increasingly interested in his characters, Hergé attempts to avoid the usual bad guy clichés and automatic plotting by somewhat deflating the pomposity of the villains. They are certainly still menacing and dangerous, but are shown up underneath to be as human as anyone else. They are certainly greedier and have a history of sometimes petty malevolence, but they are proud and vain also, and Hergé has great fun and amusement at their expense, with Rastapopoulos concerned about a disfiguring bump on his head and the shape of his nose being made fun of inadvertently by his henchman Allan, who also looks and sounds rather pathetic when he loses his teeth.

To a large extent this works reasonably well, the volcanic island moreover serving as a terrific exotic backdrop for the action as Tintin and his friends try to escape from the clutches of the villains (some locals hired as gunmen believing they are fighting a homeland rebellion brings just a hint of real-world relevance to an otherwise fantastical story). Even the latter developments involving a volcanic eruption and UFOs add to the story and are really no more outlandish than anything in previous Tintin adventures.

Disappointingly however, it's Hergé's clear-line artwork that suffers the most in Flight 714. With the emphasis on characterisation, there are far more talking-head sequences than we usually see in a Tintin adventure and some large speech-bubbles filling out the frame. The backgrounds, drawn by Hergé's studio, are as detailed and colourful as ever, but there are far too many messy lines conveying movement and impact and brightly coloured stars floating above bumped heads to further clutter the frame. As a whole, the story holds together well and is a welcome return to adventuring after the downtime fun of The Castafiore Emerald, but something crucial has been lost in the characterisation and it seems like it's the innocence of the earlier Tintin works.

This is perhaps the most sophisticated and remarkable of all the Tintin books, a work of imagination and inventiveness, superbly drawn, funny, driven by a compelling narrative and evoking a sense of wonder and mystery beyond any other of Herge's works. Truly this in Tintin at his very best.

We have bought lots of these books and our children keep requesting more (ages 7, 9 and 10). They are an excellent way of encouraging a reluctant reader, although they all seem to love them (boys and girl)