Comic review - Tintin # 6 - "The Broken Ear" by Herge

I have a lot of affection for this Tintin, written at a time Herge was growing in confidence. It starts with a bang, with a missing piece from a museum and various people chasing it, and keeps strong as it goes off to South America - Tintin gets really drunk, gets caught up in a revolution, we meet General Alcazar, there is some brilliant satire over the horrible Gran Chaco Wars of the 1930s.

But as the action goes on Herge seems to run out of puff - the drawings get more simple (note how he doesn't even bother with backgrounds for some) and all the exposition comes in a big rush at the end (except for one plot point which Tintin admits he'll never find out - this was a bit slack). The final sequence with the American millionaire is a sequence too many - it feels as though the story should have ended in South America. Plenty of pace, fun and colour and the spoof banana republics is fun - there is a higher body count than usual (a solider is blown up, two people drown)