The Adventures of Tintin. The Crab with the Golden Claws

Life throws Tintin a new puzzle. This time, his attention is drawn to an empty tin can and a scrap of label with the word “Karabudzhan” roughly scrawled on it. Our hero soon discovers that this is the name of a cargo ship about to sail. Intrigued, Tintin boards the ship and… finds himself in the hold, tied hand and foot. Luckily, Milu manages to gnaw through the ropes. Freedom! While exploring the ship, sailing in an unknown direction, Tintin stumbles upon boxes of canned crab. But what’s even more curious is that Milu fished exactly the same can out of the trash can at the very beginning of the story! Tintin decides that it’s high time to have a snack: in a moment it will become clear what secret the yellow label with the big red crab is hiding…

"The Adventures of Tintin" is a world-famous comic book series by Belgian artist Georges Remi, who worked under the pseudonym Hergé. Risking his life, the brave reporter Tintin investigates mysterious events, but emerges victorious from all troubles. And no matter what happens, his faithful friend, the snow-white fox terrier Milou, is always nearby.

The ninth comic book, The Crab with the Golden Claws, created by Hergé in 1941, became a turning point for both the series and its author. Firstly, the magazine versions of The Adventures of Tintin began to be published not in the children's supplement to the newspaper XX Century, which closed due to the war, but in the main Belgian newspaper Le Soir, first in the weekly youth supplement Soir - Jeunesse, and then in the main publication. Secondly, The Crab was the last volume, the first version of which was published in black and white (then there was only color, right away). Thirdly, it was during the work on this album that the publisher Casterman decided to reduce all the albums to a standard size: 62 comic strips (64 typographic pages). Curiously, the decision was dictated not by artistic intent, but by the acute shortage and high cost of paper. The publisher wanted to reduce the price of the album, making it more accessible to the general public (the black and white versions of the albums included over 100 pages). This decision forced Hergé to seriously rework all the previous stories, adjusting them to the new format. Fourthly, the incredible success of the album edition of "The Crab" convinced everyone - readers, the publisher, and the author - that the future of BD (from the French bande dessinée) was not in magazine publications, but in albums. And finally, fifthly - and most importantly! - Captain Haddock appeared in the series.

Recommended reader age: 7+

Author: Hergé
Artist: Herge
Translation: Mikhail Khachaturov
Number of pages: 64
Publisher: Melik-Pashayev
Cover type: Hardcover
Dimensions: 290 × 217 × 10 mm
ISBN: 978-5-00041-508-5
Series: The Adventures of Tintin