The Calculus Affair (1956) or “how scientific inventions can serve humanity without being coveted by military powers”: in the tense climate of the Cold War, this new adventure takes Tintin back to Syldavia and Borduria. After inventing an ultrasound machine, Professor Calculus has been kidnapped. Jolyon Wagg, an insurance sales rep makes his entrance in this episode. He will reveal himself as the perfect nuisance.Thrilling chase, surprises, old friends getting back together, headlong fights … all this for a stake which seems limited to an ordinary umbrella: this is probably the most “detective-like” episode of the series.

The Calculus Affair (French: L’Affaire Tournesol) is the eighteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly in Belgium’s Tintin magazine from December 1954 to February 1956 before being published in a single volume by Casterman in 1956. The story follows the attempts of the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock to rescue their friend Professor Calculus, who has developed a machine capable of destroying objects with sound waves, from kidnapping attempts by the competing European countries of Borduria and Syldavia.

Like the previous volume, Explorers on the Moon, The Calculus Affair was created with the aid of the Hergé’s team of artists at Studios Hergé. The story reflected the Cold War tensions that Europe was experiencing during the 1950s, and introduced three recurring characters into the series: Jolyon Wagg, Cutts the Butcher, and Colonel Sponsz. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with The Red Sea Sharks, and the series as a whole became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. The Calculus Affair was critically well-received, with various commentators having described it as one of the best Tintin adventures. The story was adapted for both the 1957 Belvision animated series Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin, the 1991 Ellipse/Nelvana animated series The Adventures of Tintin, and the 1992-3 BBC Radio 5 dramatisation of the Adventures.

During a thunderstorm, glass and porcelain items at Marlinspike Hall shatter inexplicably. Insurance salesman Jolyon Wagg arrives at the house to take shelter, annoying Captain Haddock. Gunshots are heard in the Hall’s grounds, and Tintin and Haddock discover a wounded man with a foreign accent who soon disappears. The next morning, Professor Calculus leaves for Geneva to attend a conference on nuclear physics. Tintin and Haddock use the opportunity to investigate Calculus’ laboratory, there discovering that his experiments were responsible for the glass-shattering of the previous night. While exploring, they are attacked by a stranger, who then escapes. While escaping, Snowy rips the stranger’s coat only for a cigarette packet to fall off. On the packet, the name of “Hotel Cornavin, Geneva” where Calculus stays was written on it. Tintin feared that Calculus is in danger. Tintin, Haddock, and Snowy head for Geneva. In Geneva, they learn that Calculus has gone to Nyon to meet Professor Topolino, an expert in ultrasonics. The group travel there in a taxi, but their car is attacked by two men in another car, who force the taxi into Lake Geneva. Surviving the attack, Tintin, Haddock and Snowy continue to Nyon, where they find Topolino bound and gagged in his cellar. As Tintin questions the professor, the house blows up, but they all survive.^[1]

Tintin and Haddock meet the detectives Thomson and Thompson, who reveal that the wounded man at Marlinspike was Syldavian. Tintin surmises that Calculus had invented an ultrasonic device capable of being used as a weapon of mass destruction, which both Syldavian and Bordurian intelligence agents are now seeking to obtain. Discovering that Bordurian spies have kidnapped Calculus and are holding him hostage in their Rolle embassy, Tintin and Haddock seek to rescue him, but during the attempt he is captured by Syldavian agents, who are able to escape by plane to their home country. The next morning, Tintin and Haddock learn that Bordurian fighter aircraft forced down the Syldavian plane and captured Calculus, who is now being held in Borduria. They travel to Borduria’s capital, Szohôd, intent on rescuing him.^[2]

In the city, they are escorted to their hotel by agents of the Bordurian secret police, who have been ordered by police chief Colonel Sponsz to monitor the duo. Aware that they are being monitored, Tintin and Haddock escape the hotel and hide in the opera house, where Bianca Castafiore is performing. When police come searching for them, they hide in Castafiore’s closet. When Sponsz comes to visit Castafiore in her dressing room, Tintin is able to steal papers from his overcoat pocket that will secure Calculus’ release from the fortress of Bakhine. After disguising themselves as officials from the Red Cross, Tintin and Haddock are able to get Calculus released from prison. During their escape, they drive off the road, but are able to steal a tank and narrowly escape across the border. Back at Marlinspike Hall, Jolyon Wagg moves his family in. Meanwhile, Calculus reveals that he forgot to take his plans for the ultrasonic device with him to Geneva, and that he had left them at home all along; he announces his intention to destroy the plans so they cannot be used to create a weapon.^[3] Haddock lights his pipe with the intention of smoking it, but Calculus uses it to burn the plans. Haddock’s fit of rage over the plans literally burning up in his face leaves the hard-of-hearing Calculus believing that Haddock has chickenpox; Calculus relays this to Wagg, who moves his family out of Marlinspike Hall to avoid a contagious disease.

Reflecting Cold War tensions, The Calculus Affair was published at a time when espionage thrillers were popular in France and Belgium.^[4] [5] The Calculus Affair marked a return to the single volume format which was to persist for the rest of The Adventures of Tintin.^[6] The volume started its publication in Tintin magazine on December 1954.^[6] Before working on the book, Hergé would make sketches in pencil; subsequently he would work over the drawings and text in ink. With the development of his own Studios Hergé, he selected the best sketch from a number of versions and traced it onto the page he was creating.^[6]

In The Calculus Affair Hergé introduced Jolyon Wagg, a Belgian insurance salesman, who appeared in each subsequent adventure with the exception of Tintin in Tibet.^[7] Jolyon Wagg was intended as “the proverbial bore”, who provides comic relief by repeatedly annoying Captain Haddock and inviting himself to Marlinspike.^[8] For the name, Séraphin Lampion in the original French version, Hergé initially chose Crampon, which was derived from the French expression “Quel crampon!” (English: “What a leech!”), but ultimately preferred the less explicit and harsh-sounding Lampion.^[9] Lampion’s insurance company was Assurances Mondass, which in the English translation became the Rock Bottom Insurance Company.^[10]

Also introduced in this volume were Cutts the butcher (originally Sanzot from the French sans os (“without bones”))^[11] and the Bordurian chief of secret police Colonel Sponsz, whose name is derived from the Brussels dialect term for a sponge (éponge in French).^[12] Hergé used his brother, Paul Remi, as the model for Sponsz, although he was also influenced by the image of the Austrian American filmmaker Erich von Stroheim.^[12]