But the most unfortunate episode is of course the "modernization" Hergé agreed to subject this album under the pressure of his English editor. "Tintin in the Land of Black Gold" would suffer a fate worse than "The black island": in fact, if one may lament the fading of the latter after the orgy of detail and untimely modernization (and anachronistic, given the place of the album Tintin's chronology), the entire geopolitical contextualization that we lose with the new version of "Black Gold". Exit the struggle between Jews and Arabs in Palestine 40 years under British mandate, the references to exit the Irgun, etc. In "Black gold" old version, it is understood that the Khemed is Jordan with oil (the identification is even more evident in "Sea Sharks" because it sees the site of Petra). The new version completely annihilates the link between the work and the news, a specialty of Hergé from "The Blue Lotus" and "The Broken Ear".
Yet it is a great album, especially funny since there Dupondt cross the wall while we Con discovers two of the coolest secondary characters: the Emir Ben Kalish Ezab and his son, "turbulent "Abdallah. A must (as most of Tintin ...), but to read and acquire preferably not in its revised edition.
