Year: 1940

Important Characters: Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, The Thompsons, Omar Ben Salaad, Allan

French Title: Le Crabe aux Pinces d'Or

Hergé was halfway through Tintin in the Land of Black Gold when German troops invaded Belgium on May 9, 1940. He took his family to Auvergne for six weeks and waited for events to unfold. He returned to Brussels on June 30 to find Le Petit Vingtième finished. In a letter of August 10 to Charles Lesne, he announced "Wait for the sequel".

The wait was not a long one. In early September, the Brussels daily, Le Soir, asked him to establish an illustrated weekly for children. On October 17, Le Soir Jeunesse appeared for the first time, containing The New Adventures of Tintin. By September 23 of the following year, however, this supplement disappeared due to pressures of war. The Crab with the Golden Claws continued to be published in daily strips in Le Soir itself.

This new format forced Hergé to revise his methods completely. This different rhythm of one a day instead of two a week led to a noticeable change in style. He had more time to work on the accuracy of his drawings and he now found himself having to hold the readers attention at the end of every line instead of every page, and therefore at almost every moment.

It is the first appearance of Captain Haddock which makes this adventure so memorable. It seems that Hergé now decided that his hero needed another companion in addition to Snowy. We first see the Captain as a pathetic drunk on page 14 of the book. Tintin, however, sees past his drunken exterior and takes Haddock with him when he escapes the Karaboudjan. Hergé is realistic in his portrayal of Haddock. He doesn't immediately justify Tintin's trust and suddenly become sober. Instead, he has a number of lapses. There is a difference between the Captains alcoholic side in this book and in the others. In subsequent adventures, Haddock has a comical weakness for alcohol, but here he becomes positively brutish during his lapses. He almost sets fire to a lifeboat, crashes a plane and throttles Tintin at different parts of the book.

It is the crossing of the North African desert that subjects the Captain to the drying out he so badly needs. After this shock, he becomes truly worthy of a reappearance in later adventures.