A de-Nazified meteorite

The canonical version of “The Shooting Star” is my favorite Tintin adventure. The slapstick humor and the, shall we say, Haddockisms are kept down to a minimum. The actual plot takes centre stage, as Tintin and his friends embark on a scientific expedition to the Arctic Sea in order to claim a huge meteorite containing a mysterious metal. The story contains a few science fiction elements, and lampoons both distracted scientists and doomsday prophets (in the Swedish version, the prophet Philippulus is actually called Pythagoras). Naturally, a greedy banker from “Sao Rico”, a certain Mr Bohlwinkel, also wants to lay his hands on the valuable piece of space debris, and does everything in his power to sabotage the legitimate expedition. Parallels to Jules Verne's “The Golden Meteor” have been duly noted.

Unfortunately, “The Shooting Star” is seriously marred by the fact that the original version was published in Nazi-occupied Belgium and contained anti-Semitic propaganda. The greedy banker was named Blumenstein in the original, and his expedition sailed from the United States, a nation the Nazis claimed was controlled by Jews. It also contained other examples of anti-Semitism. Tintin's creator Hergé cleaned up the story after World War II, but that simply made matters worse, since he came across as an opportunist (which he, of course, was).

The de-Nazification of “The Shooting Star” also created a number of anomalies. I always wondered why most characters from the purported Latin American nation of “Sao Rico” look White and have English names. That's because they *were* North Americans in the original version. Bohlwinkel (ex-Blumenstein) still looks pretty “Jewish”, however, and even spouts a red star-like emblem on his tuxedo! Meanwhile, defenders of Hergé has claimed that the original story contains secret anti-Nazi codes, such as the menacing spider being called “fasciata” (compare “fascism”), or the crazy prophet's name Phillipulus (compare Phillip Petáin). I'm not sure if I buy this, and I wonder whether anyone ever noticed at the time?

It's a shame that such a good story has such a colorful background (and, occasionally, foreground), but at least the fate of “The Shooting Star” shows that the Allies won the shooting war…