The Crab with the Golden Claws
The Crab with the Golden Claws is the ninth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised weekly in Le Soir Jeunesse, the children's supplement to Le Soir, Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from October 1940 to October 1941 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Partway through serialisation, Le Soir Jeunesse was cancelled and the story began to be serialised daily in the pages of Le Soir. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to Morocco to pursue a gang of international opium smugglers. The story marks the first appearance of main character Captain Haddock.
Cover of the English edition
A 1943 copy of Le Soir dating to the occupation
When the book was published in America, Hergé was asked to redraw scenes that depicted the mixing of black and white races. Initially, Jumbo was black (left), while in the redrawn edition he is white (right).
The Adventures of Tintin is a series of 24 comic albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a century after Hergé's birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film.
The early Adventures of Tintin naïvely depicted controversial images, which Hergé later described as "a transgression of my youth". In 1975, he substituted this sequence with one in which the rhino accidentally discharges Tintin's rifle.
Tintin and the Black Island at the Arts Theatre in the West End of London, by the Unicorn Theatre Company, in 1980–81
The Tintin Shop in Covent Garden, London
Belgian Post's series of postage stamps "Tintin on screen" issued 30 August 2011 featuring a chronological review of Tintin film adaptations made through years.