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One night when on a walk with Snowy, Tintin notices a new star has appeared in the Great Bear. When he notices that the star appears to be growing larger, he questions the astronomer Professor Decimus Phostle about it and is told that the star is in fact a meteor that is due to collide with the Earth and cause The End of the World as We Know It.
Fortunately, the next day Phostle's calculations are proven wrong when the meteor misses the Earth. However, a small piece of the meteor still crashes onto the planet and lands in the Arctic ocean, causing a short earthquake. When it is discovered that the meteor contains a hitherto unknown kind of metal, the story becomes a race with Tintin, Phostle, Captain Haddock and a team of scientists on one side and the Peary, a crew hired by the villainous Mr. Bohlwinkel on the other side to be the first to reach the meteor's location and claim the new metal.
Tropes:[]
- Admiring the Abomination: Phostle with the meteor.
- Binocular Shot
- Big Bad: Mr. Bohlwinkel.
- The Cameo: Thomson and Thompson make only a single panel cameo watching the Aurora depart. The same panel also includes a cameo by Quick and Flupke, the titular protagonists of one of Hergé's other series.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Professor Phostle seems to be under the impression that discovering the meteor that will destroy the world is going to make him famous and is severely disappointed when it turns out it doesn't.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Bohlwinkel.
- Depth Deception: The spider running across the lens of Phostle's telescope...
- Eagle Land: In the original version Bohlwinkel (or "Blumenstein") and the crew of the Peary are Type 2 examples. In the later versions they are instead from the fictional Banana Republic São Rico.
- The End Is Nigh: The astronomer Philippulus does this when he sees the meteor, claiming to be a prophet of God.
- Even Evil Has Standards: The captain of the Peary forbids one of his crew members to shoot Tintin when Tintin is about to claim the meteor for the Aurora.
- Friends All Along: Haddock and Chester.
- Fungus Humongous: Fast-growing, exploding mushrooms on the meteor!
- Giant Spider: Tintin briefly mistakes a spider crawling over the lens of Phostle's telescope for this. Later, the radiation of the meteor creates a real Giant Spider.
- Go Mad From the Revelation: Philippulus.
- Greedy Jew:
- In the original edition, two Jews can at one point be talking about the end of the world, with one of them noting that if that were the case, he wouldn't have to pay his debts!
- Mr. Bohlwinkel also comes across to many as a steretypical Jewish caricature. Worse yet, in the orginal version, he was named Blumenstein, which Hergé later changed in order to lessen the implications to Bohlwinkel... which is also a Jewish name.
- Harmless Villain: Philippulus the "prophet".
- Mood Whiplash: The opening section (when it appears The End of the World as We Know It is coming) is very stark, introspective and terrifying with even Tintin's nerve cracking under the sense of unstoppable impending doom. The remaining two thirds are an exciting Race Against the Clock adventure - still tense but far lighter than the first few pages.
- Race Against the Clock
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Captains Haddock and Chester. When they meet in Akureyri Tintin believes they are going to attack each other when they're really performing some odd salutation ritual.