Motorboat (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.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

As I’ve said before, I have nothing much to say about The Black Island. I like all the stories, but this one is not one of my personal favourites. Much like Tintin in America, I think a big reason for that is a trip to the United Kingdom does much feel like an exotic locale. Now mind you, except one mad dash transfer through Heathrow Airport, I’ve never actually been to the U.K., but for whatever reason, the English countryside and the Scottish coast aren’t exactly the streets of Shanghai or the jungles of India.

I suppose though, that it does have one hint really going for it… that cover!

I’ve spoken before (both here and here) about how much of the fertile modelling ground in The Black Island was created by Hergé sending his assistant, Bob De Moor on a fact finding mission to England in preparation of the updated English-language edition. So I won’t go into that again, but what’s probably less well known is that Bob De Moor also contributed to the iconic cover to the album. Sure, Hergé had the final decision, but he made that decision based on A choice between three cover options as submitted by De Moor.

So, I suppose I should amend what I said earlier about The Black Island not being one of my favourites… while the story is a bit middle-of-the-road for me, the cover image is one of the better ones. You can really get a sense of Tintin bravely setting out to face some unknown danger. The ominous dark castle ruins really set the tone, and the flock of black birds sell the seas-going setting – you can almost taste the salt on the air and hear the cacophony of the birds overhead.

And through it all, Tintin maintains a steady hand on the small outboard motor, with his kilt barely ruffled by the wind.

The build:

The build itself was pretty straightforward. In fact, this was really a case of the kit driving the build. With so many choices to choose from in The Black Island, I hadn’t really planned on building a motorboat, cool cover or no.

What changed that though was my experience with the Zvezda “Medieval Life Boat” kit during my Karaboudjan Lifeboat build project. It was such a neat little kit, that, even after sawing it in half, the build left me wanting more. So it didn’t take long to figure out what ELSE I might do with that kit. The Motorboat seemed almost a no-brainer.

Just like before, the kit went together very easily… especially since I wasn’t trying to marry together two front halves and light a fire in he middle! It’s so nicely engineered, it was almost a shame to discard (in the spares box mind you) some of the interior pieces. However, the subject dictates the build, so to turn it into a motorboat, some modifications were necessary. Besides trimming off the oar-locks, I also scratchbuilt some internal ribbing, a foot plank, and some bench seating.

The real star though, was the tiny outboard motor. I stretched it together out of some odds and ends, a bit of leftover styrene bits and rods. Once it was painted though it looked quite convincing to me. Feel free to tell me if you agree: