Loved your well-researched review, and man do I love Tintin in America. It goes on and on and on in the best way with all these different worlds - the city, the wild west, the castle, the meat factory, and I love the atmosphere and dark humor. The villains are great - I love Smiles, and the minor thug with the guitar case was always a favorite. The scene where the Native Americans are driven off their land is indeed a testament to Hergé's potential for more enlightened political thinking, and quite powerful. On the subject of racism, I remember reading in the Farr companion as a child about the reference to lynching and, being unable to find the racism aspect in my color edition, I concluded that "they hanged a couple'a fellas" (paraphrased) meant "fellas" was a bad word. Finally, a fun fact and a question. Fact: America is the only one where Tintin unambiguously understands Snowy's "talking". Question: what kind of gangster sees a gang member about to rat out the gang and decides the solution is to temporarily knock him out with a boomerang??
