The Black Island

The Black Island (French: L'Île noire) is the seventh volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children's supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from April to November 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to England in pursuit of a gang of counterfeiters. Framed for theft and hunted by detectives Thomson and Thompson, Tintin follows the criminals to Scotland, discovering their lair on the Black Island. The Black Island was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with King Ottokar's Sceptre, while the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1943, The Black Island was coloured and re-drawn in Hergé's distinctive ligne-claire style for republication. In the mid-1960s, Hergé's British publishers requested a major revision of the story, for which he sent his assistant Bob De Moor to Britain on a research trip; on his return, Studios Hergé produced a revised, third edition of the story, serialised in Tintin magazine. The Black Island introduces the recurring villain Dr. Müller, and has been widely cited as one of the most popular instalments in the series. The story was adapted for the 1957 Belvision animation Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, the 1980-1 West End play Tintin and the Black Island, the 1991 Ellipse/Nelvana animated series The Adventures of Tintin, and the 1992-3 BBC Radio 5 dramatisation of the Adventures.