REVIEW
TITLE: The Silence Of Unicorns (A Tara Togs Adventure)
WRITER/ARTIST: Stref (Stephen White)
FORMAT: 66 Pages A4 Full Colour
PUBLISHER: Comics Scene
AVAILABLE FROM:https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tara-Silence-Unicorns-Stephen-White/dp/1739681975
This is a charming all-ages adventure comic in the style of Herge's Tintin books of the 1930s and 1940s. Set in the present-day and starring Tara Togs, a teenage female would-be photo-journalist protagonist who gets mixed up with art thieves and forgers. Set in a fictional corner of writer/artist, Stref's, native Scotland.
Although Herge and Tintin aren't mentioned anywhere on the support material or advertising for this European-style 'album', their influence is worn very clearly on it's sleeve. As such I feel it's justified to compare this comic to that series of books when that might normally come across as an unjustifiable and unfair yard-stick to measure someone's work by. I have loved Tintin since childhood, no doubt sucked in by those terrible Belvision cartoons of the 1960s where that booming American voice would announce, 'HERGES ADVENTURES OF TINTIN!' at the start of every ten minute episode, shown daily in every school holiday of the 1970s. Well, that and the fact that every library (including my school libraries) would have a selection of hard-backed Tintin books to choose from. I now own all 24 Herge Tintin books and read them so many times during my youth and I can practically resite all of them word for word. They are of course masterclasses in comic storytelling. I can't begin to measure how much I have learnt from them about the craft. Funny, exciting and clever.
If you enjoyed the books of the second great era of the Tintin stories (where stronger mystery/quest plots came in, after the more aimless wanderings of the first few books) you will like this too. Even though this book is set in the twenty-first century, so strong is the influence of those pre-World War Two books that The Silence Of Unicorns often feels like it's taking place in a surreal otherworldly age where these periods are mixed together (similar to how the 1990s Batman Animated series occupied another undefined time.) This is no bad thing for me, but might be slightly off-putting for younger readers who might be unfamiliar with those early Tintin works.
Even the title of this work is clearly paying tribute to Herge's 'The Secret Of The Unicorn' – a book very firmly from the era that this book is styled after. The story too, features elements from another of Herge's other 1930s books 'The Broken Ear' – as both stories start when thieves steal something from a museum, only for it to be seemingly returned the next night. There are parallels too from a much later Tintin book – the one that remained incomplete on Herge's death 'Tintin And Alph Art' – as both feature art forgers.
Of course it's hugely ironic and presumably deliberate that this story is all about art forgers! When all's said and done Stref's art-style is an amazingly accurate recreation of Herge's style and in most cases, if you pulled out random pictures and mixed them with Herge ones I would have trouble picking out which was by whom. There are however some places where Stref doesn't quite manage to have Herge's eye for framing a shot... Sadly one of these places is the cover of 'The Silence Of Unicorns', which just looks very empty and a bit dull compared to the more dynamic covers of the Tintin books. (Sorry!)
Story-wise this is also a fairly faithful riff on Herge's style. There is plenty of jeopardy, mystery and story-twists here. Mostly it hangs together, although there's at least one redundant dead-end plot thread here that is clearly just padding (where Tara goes to a car hire firm to try and discover if the villains rented their van? You could cut it without affecting the rest of the story at all and doesn't quite fit the logic of the plot either... If the villains rented the van in their own names, the police would have them bang to rights – story over!)
My biggest criticism however is the way that Stref handles the numerous exposition scenes here. There are far too many of these and they go on for too long, with too much dialogue in too many balloons which just make some parts of this drag a little too much. In fact I think Stref has made his lettering smaller than that which appears in the Tintin books (the English language ones anyway) just to cram it all it. Herge had a way of keeping his exposition scenes short and lively, often by lacing the scenes with jokes, background business (Snowy chasing a cat or something) and other visual tricks to keep young minds engaged. And I'm reminded of one important lesson taught to me by an old friend of mine about writing... After you have finished a script, go back and see how much dialogue you can strip out of it and still keep it understandable... I feel this would have been a valuable exercise here.
Some might say Tara herself is a little low on personality, but I feel this is deliberate and quite similar to the Tintin character. It has the effect of allowing the reader (especially in this case young girls) to put themselves into the place of Tara. Of course Herge surrounded the bland Tintin with a cast of colourful characters to liven things up and provide humour. Snowy is naughty but brave. Captain Haddock is a drunken rogue, but loyal. Professor Calculus is deaf, eccentric and doesn't much like being compared to a goat.
This is something Stref is a little uneven on. Tara's main adult co-star and Captain Haddock substitute is something of a dud. Even by the end of the story I couldn't really get a handle on his personality. Mr. Lemmens is a little more successful as the Calculus stand-in, but he hasn't much beyond his hay-fever to pick him out. The real break-out funny/helpful/characterful side-kick here is Major the myna bird. With his old-fashioned military-style dialogue he's a lot of fun as a kind-of Snowy-if-Tintin-could-understand-his-dialogue-style character. If only he had met up with Tara earlier in the adventure, instead of the last few pages?! Oh well, maybe next time?
When Herge died in 1983 I was heartbroken. Although there were a few more of his books still due to come out in English at that stage, I knew there wasn't much and I had seen the best of it. No new Tintin books were to follow. And they had been so good in that last golden era of the 1960s and 70s. Getting more and more clever and funny and exciting. I hate that there isn't a new Tintin book out every year for me to read. So was very pleased to see the coming of Tara Togs.
If you love Tintin like me, then I think you'll find this a pleasure to discover. This deserves to sit on the shelf next to your Herge collection and I hope Comics Scene can get it into school libraries (if such things exist now) not to mention every bookshop in the country. I hope it's translated into French in particular and can be taken into the hearts of future generations of children like the Tintin books were in the past (but there's so many rivals out there now for kid's attention, so I don't know what the chances are.)
I'm aware this review has been a bit too eschewed towards the negative as on the whole I hugely enjoyed this book. It's caused by the fact that it's far easier to articulate what things have gone wrong, than what has gone right... And most of this has gone very right. I hope my criticisms are taken as constructive not destructive.
To put it into perspective let me rate this next to Herge's works... This is at least the equal of Herge's non-Tintin books (like the Jo, Zette & Jocko books) and it's clearly better than Herge's early 'travelogue'-style Tintin adventures (Soviets, Congo & America) I might even put it above 'The Shooting Star'? I hope that's taken as the high praise it's meant to be.
Brilliant, but not perfect.
I hope there's more to come.
John A. Short 2024
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