Soviet Monoplane (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets)

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (French: Tintin au pays des Soviets) is the first volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle as anti-communist satire for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from January 1929 to May 1930 before being published in a collected volume by Éditions du Petit Vingtième in 1930. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who are sent to the Soviet Union to report on the policies of Joseph Stalin’s Bolshevik government. Tintin’s intent to expose the regime’s secrets prompts agents from the Soviet secret police, the OGPU, to hunt him down with the intent to kill.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

THE FINISHED MODEL:

THE VIDEO:

THE (PREVIOUSLY) FINISHED MODEL:

THE STORY:

Usually starting at the beginning is a wise decision. But not, perhaps, in the case of the Tintin adventures. If someone were to ask me, I’d tell them to start reading Tintin almost anywhere, except with Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

Part of the reason for that, is that it hasn’t aged as well as Hergé’s other tales – especially since it is the one story that didn’t get any sort of an update during his long career. Hergé himself regarded Soviets as an error of his youth, a tale too disjointed and maladjusted to consider salvaging – and I’m not sure I disagree with him. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets doesn’t really feel like a Tintin adventure. Events just sort of unfold and Tintin is swept along for the ride. He’s not really the brave and clever boy hero we’ve come to love – in fact he’s much more like Todor, Tintin’s boy scout proto-brother. He’s still a good guy, but he’s got more of an edge.

As for the adventure itself, well, it’s a little hard to follow as it barrels along from one incident to another. It also stretches our ability to suspend our disbelief in some of the improbable or downright impossible situations.

Still, it is part of the Tintin body of work, and the 2017 colourized version does make it a little less stark than it feels strictly in black and white. So, regardless, I wanted to include it in my Tintin 1/72 scale build project. I also have plans to scratch-build a rail car (much in the way Tintin himself does it in the book), but  the Soviet monoplane is the obvious standout subject. However, unlike most people who model the plane in the original Black and White format, I decided to spice it up and do it as it appears in the colour version. Some may call that heretical, but in this case I’m much more interested in the modelling than the art/story itself, so it certainly doesn’t bother me. In fact, quite the contrary, I’ve always thought it a bit odd to see the plane modelled in Black and White. There’s something about the transition from the printed page to the tangible 3D “reality” of a scale model that demands some colour.

Although the plane itself is a rather generic-looking (Soviet) monoplane, most people – and who am I to disagree – seem to think the plane Hergé was going for was the Polikarpov I-1. In much the same way I gave Hergé the benefit of the doubt for my Kawasaki Ki-10 “Perry” build from The Blue Lotus, I decided that if he had gone back to update Soviets, it most likely would have included a more detailed rendition of that real-world plane.

THE BUILD:

For this project, I used the 1/72 scale I-1 (IL-400b) kit from ICM.

The build itself was relatively straightforward. Besides giving the cockpit a bit of a scratch-built  upgrade, I also reshaped the nose, the landing struts and the tail to bring them more in line with how the aircraft is depicted in the album. Nothing particularly challenging. What I did have a bit of trouble with though, was the colour scheme. The colourized version of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets features a very nice shade of grey/green for the main part of the fuselage. I’m not quite sure I succeeded, but after mixing up several witches’ brews of Tamiya acrylics (the only paints I use), I got it close enough to the subject for my liking. Just don’t ask me what the combination was – it was a bit of this grey, a dash of that green, an eye of newt an a toe of frog.

What I’m most proud of (besides perhaps the first homemade decals that really worked as well as I expected), was the propeller. In the story, Tintin decides to use his pocket knife to carve a tree into a replacement prop (I told you there were some eye-brow raising moments!), so I figured I could do no less. Instead of just using the plastic propeller that came with the kit, I decided to carve and then sand one out of wood. It worked better than I expected, I have to admit.

Once the plane was done, I also decided to jazz-up the display stand a bit. Since this was the first airplane that I built after deciding to feature all my Tintin builds on a standard base, I struggled at first with what to do. For ground vehicles, it’s pretty easy and I have a wide selection of grass, mud, stone, and asphalt to choose from. But for planes… hmmm.

In the end I decided to fluff out some cotton balls, stiffen them up with a blast of hairspray and then paint in some grey/black swirls and call it a storm cloud. I was happy with the result and tried to spice it up using some silver wire for lighting – after all, it’s a lighting strike that causes Tintin to crash land and have to repair the propeller. However, the wire just wasn’t getting the job done. So instead, I rummaged through my electronics tool box and found a white LED and a switch that would do the trick instead.

THE UPDATE (2022/02/16):

Since I finished this model, one thing always bugged me. It was a ghost plane. I mean, the lack of appropriate figures made all of my Tintin 1/72 plane models are ghost planes, true. But, maybe it’s the combination of both the open cockpit and the mono-wing design, but this one looked especially empty!

So getting the ability to resize a 3D figure mesh and print it out in (arguably) 1/72 scale using my resin printer was a real game-changer. I was finally able to “complete” this model by adding a Tintin to pilot the plane.

Of course, if you’re going to upgrade… go big or go home.  Sure, I already had a small LED light on this one, but after I discovered that the “flickering tea light” LEDs from the dollar store could be used to add some “lightning flashes”, I knew I had to add them.  Also, since I’ve already set a precedent for DC motors for propellors in my L-749 Constellation (Tintin in Tibet) build, why not add a spinning propellor? After all, a ghost plane might get by with a stationary propellor, but with Tintin piloting, well, that’s a whole ‘nother story, right?

Feel free to leave your comments below!