Year: 1946

Important Characters: Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus

French Title: Le Temple du Soleil

It was on September 26, 1946, after an interruption of over two years, that the mystery of the crystal balls and Calculus' disappearance was taken up again. It was then that the first issue of the weekly Tintin magazine appeared, and it was there that all the reporter's future adventures would be published. Hergé finally had a prop worthy of his talent. The quality of the paper and colour far exceeded that of the daily strips in Le Soir. Hergé used this new format to exploit all possibilities for the layout and so give the adventure a nature strongly suited to its plot.

The adventure was taken up more or less at the point where it had stopped (about page 50 of The Seven Crystal Balls), but Hergé began with a long press cutting giving a summary of the adventure so far. The characters delved deeper week by week into the Peruvian jungle. Some of these strips are not contained in the modern version, such as Haddock chewing Coca leaves to cure an ailment and stuffing gold nuggets from the Temple of the Sun into his pockets. In recasting from Tintin magazine to Casterman Edition, many frames in the adventures were lost, and it is interesting to see Hergé's selectiveness during this process.

Another interesting aspect in the story's appearance in Tintin magazine was the bottom box giving readers an account of ancient Andes civilisation. Hergé was sure to place this section outside of the story to ensure his readers did not get bogged down by details.

The research undertaken for the story was immense, from pottery to the interior of tombs. Hergé's main source for this was a volume entitled Perou et Bolivie by Charles Weiner. Weiners expedition, in which he made sketches of everything he saw, bears occasional similarities to the Sanders-Hardiman ethnographic expedition in the Tintin book.

This is by far the most popular of all the Tintin adventures, probably because of its exotic setting and the strength of the plot. Years later it was chosen as a starting point for a full-length cartoon.