Prisoners of the Inca

“Prisoners of the Sun” is one of the best Tintin adventures, being the second part of a story arc began in “The Seven Crystal Balls”. The plot is inspired by Pharaoh Tutankhamun's curse and horror fiction about mummies coming back to life.

In the Tintinesque version, the curse afflicts archaeologists who have disturbed the royal grave of an Inca ruler. The poor scientists are hypnotized and tortured through magickal means, while the royal mummy disintegrates and turns into a demon. Meanwhile, the distracted professor Cuthbert Calculus is kidnapped by person or persons unknown bound for South America. In pursuit, Tintin and his friend Captain Haddock travel to Peru, where they are harassed by a mysterious brotherhood (and annoyed by llamas).

Eventually, our heroes discover an ancient Inca civilization hidden in the Andes, where ritual human sacrifice is still offered. Naturally, it turns out that the voodoo-like curse is the work of Inca priests who hereby want to punish the sacrilegious “pale faces” for their theft of the royal mummy and various Inca treasures. I'm not an expert on the Incas, but apparently a few Aztec elements have been sneaked in here and there by Hergé. The Aztecs, of course, were a somewhat different civilization in Mexico.

I won't reveal the plot twists, except to say that one of them has become something of a classic in the Franco-Belgian comic universe…

“Prisoners of the Sun” was one of my favorite Tintin albums as a kid. It's also one of the least realistic. I gladly give it five stars.