The Adventures of Tintin: Sharks of the Red Sea

A coup has taken place in Khemed. Tintin and Captain Haddock fly there to help the legitimate ruler, Emir Ben Kalish Ezab, regain power. However, their arrival is already known: at the Wajh ed-Dahab airport, our heroes are put on a plane and sent back. Shortly after takeoff, an engine catches fire, but the pilot still manages to land on the coast of the Red Sea. To top it all off, the plane, abandoned by its passengers, explodes! Realizing that this is no accident, Tintin suggests secretly returning to Wajh ed-Dahab, and by morning, the friends are knocking on the door of Señor Oliveira da Figueira's shop, who tells them where to find the Emir. The heroes make their way into the mountains, meet Ben Kalish Ezab, and learn shocking facts from him about those behind the rebels. Tintin intends to thwart their criminal plans…

The magazine version of the 19th album of "The Adventures of Tintin" began on October 31, 1956, and finished on January 1, 1958; the album edition was released in the same year. This volume concludes the "maritime" theme of the series, which began with "The Crab with the Golden Claws" and continued first with "The Shooting Star," and a little later with the pirate dilogy ("The Secret of the Unicorn" and "Red Rackham's Treasure"). Moreover, in subsequent stories, we will not see Tintin and his companions aboard ocean-going ships; the only vessel they will still have to test in the five concluding volumes is an inflatable boat in "Flight 714 to Sydney." An interesting detail: "The Red Sea Sharks" set a series record for the number of characters already familiar to readers from previous albums. In addition to the immutable members of Tintin's "close family" (Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, Thomson and Thompson, Nestor), on the pages of the album we meet General Alcazar (his eternal rival Tapioca is only mentioned, his image is not in the book), the former police chief of the International Settlement in Shanghai Dawson, Abdullah and his father Emir Ben Kalish Ezab, Sheikh Bab El Ehr (though we only see him in a newspaper photo), the Portuguese merchant Oliveira da Figueira, the odious Dr. Müller (here he hides under the name of Mull Pasha), the infernal millionaire gangster Rastapopoulos, the singer Bianca Castafiore, First Mate Allan Thompson, and the unbearable joker Jolyon Wagg. In contrast, only one of the new characters will appear in the series again: the Estonian pilot Piotr Skut (we will see him in the already mentioned "Flight 714 to Sydney").