Year: 1976

Important Characters: Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, Madame Castafiore, General Alcazar, Peggy, General Tapioca, Ridgewell, Colonel Sponsz, Pablo

French Title: Tintin et Les Picaros

The first thing we notice about Tintin in this final completed adventure is his new lifestyle. No longer does he wear the knickerbockers we are so familiar with, but he now sports a pair of fashionable jeans. He enters the story riding a motorcycle, and on his helmet there is a ban the bomb sign. Later in the adventure, deeper changes become evident. The characters are now more passive, allowing things to happen rather than instigating them. Tintin's thirst for adventure seems to have been quenched. He declines at first to go with Captain Haddock to Tapiocapolis, but joins him a few days later.

While the regular characters are somewhat diminished, others are magnified. For example, General Alcazar, nothing more than an extra in earlier adventures, here plays a major role. We also meet his wife Peggy, whom Hergé created from the sketches he had taken of a woman interviewing a Klu Klux Klan representative on TV. Now we have two frightening women, the Milanese Nightingale and General Alcazar's "dove", although Calculus finds the latter a perfectly acceptable example of womanhood. Then there is the appearance of General Tapioca, much spoken of but until now never seen. The "fancy dress fascist" certainly fits our pictures of him. Other returns are made by Ridgewell and Pablo from The Broken Ear and Colonel Sponsz from The Calculus Affair.

This is the first book for a while to deal with politics and, like King Ottokar's Sceptre, Tintin intervenes directly in a country's affairs. Hergé's political views, hence those of his characters, seem to have changed considerably from the denunciation of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and the militancy of The Blue Lotus. He seems disillusioned. Tintin helps the Picaros topple Tapioca more to free his imprisoned friends than out of any political sympathies. The book appears to keep us constantly in a "show". Castafiore is arrested after a curtain call, set free during a carnival and at her trial she gives a rendition of the Jewel Song from Faust. Alcazar seizes power dressed up as a "Jolly Folly", but this is not surprising considering he was once a music-hall knife thrower.

It seems that, having aged, Hergé and his characters have lost their energy and belief that good will prevail. The end of Tintin and the Picaros is the most bitter the author ever drew: "Blistering barnacles, I shan't be sorry to be back home in Marlinspike..." says Haddock. "Me too, Captain..." Tintin replies laconically. The two heroes are this time really weary.