Flight 714 (The Adventures of Tintin) Hardcover – Import, January 1, 1985

Book arrived in perfect shape. As always, a great Tintin classic story!!

Flight 714 is a great aerial kidnapping adventure story. Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus are en route to a Congress in Sydney, Australia, but their plane makes its first stop in Djakarta. There, they encounter their old friend Piotr Skut, who is one of the pilots of evil and childishly petty millionaire Laszlo Carreidas's private plane. Because he is also headed for Sydney, Carreidas invites the three to instead ride with him on his private plane. But it is is hijacked to Pulau-Pulau Bompa, a Polynesian island, by Carreidas's male secretary and two crooked pilots. They are greeted by none other than Tintin's old enemy Rastapopoulos and the Captain's corrupt former first mate, Captain Allan. Also prominent in the story is the creepy Dr. Krollspell, a specialist in truth serum.Tintin and Captain Haddock escape from captivity and battle the crooks, while Skut, the Professor, and the plane's steward stay in place. Rastapopoulos has won some of the native Sondonesians over, and they serve as his goons. There is a revolution, and Allan coaxes them against Tintin and company with "death to the enemies of the Sondonesian revolution."Tintin always has his share of helpers in his fight against evil throughout the series, but in Flight 714 this aspect enters a new realm -- literally. Also, there is an upheaval of nature on the island that brings the story to a climax.Carreidas is clearly as evil as the kidnappers, but through constant cutthroat, devious deceit he has managed to become rich and powerful within the law (or at least without being caught). Rastapopoulos and Allan have always tried to succeed outside the law, but they are always up against Tintin. One of the all-time greatest moments in the Tintin series takes place when Carreidas and Rastapopoulos face off in an extended competitive "who is worse" exchange. Carreidas had been injected with a truth serum, intended to pull from him a Swiss bank account number. However, Krollspell had accidentally hit Rastapopoulos with the needle too, while the evil tycoon had been raging that the serum was only causing Carreidas to confess how evil he was. In their exchanges, each would not tolerate the other saying he is more evil.Flight 714 has much more of a story than its predecessor "The Castafiore Emerald." However, it continues in the same vein in setting forth heavy psychological portraits of the characters, through their emotional speech and intense facial expressions (many grimaces, etc.), which are even stronger here and sometimes approach caricature. Surprisingly, this even includes Tintin, who has some real emoting. But comic relief usually imbues the situation. There were no villains in "The Castafiore Emerald," but the reader gets satisfaction by seeing Herge pick on the villains here, especially Rastapopoulos and Allan. Indeed, Rastapopoulos is not the slick guy of the past in this adventure, and there is no longer an aura of mystery about him. He is a victim of slapstick and his own klutziness, just like Captain Haddock always is, and he rages throughout the story, including raging at his underling Allan when things go wrong. But while Rastapopoulos is a beaten man, this does not really apply to Carreidas. His ranting cheap conceit and pettiness do not endear him well to either the heroes or the villains, and he gets some come-uppance. However, his evil self-absorption and selfish manner stick until the end.I give this book merely four and a half stars for personal reasons, just below five, but I think to many it would be a 5-star entry.

The book is published by "Farshore", which is different from what the seller has advertised.The content gets 5-satr, as expected.

The image for the book Flight 714 to Sydney showed Egmont as the publisher. The book I received was published by Farshore. Farshore uses a lower quality paper. If the actual book is not the same as the image shown, it needs to be stated in the description.

"Flight 714" is sort of the generic Adventure of Tintin, with a little bit of everything that Hergé put into his stories to make this one of the landmark comic book series since Cortes discovered pre-Columbian picture manuscripts in 1519. Consequently, it is okay but a bit unsatisfying after some of the great stories of the past. But this actually works out okay because when you get to the end of the road with Tintin you really do feel like it is time for the series to end, which helps take the edge off of being sad there are no more tales to read.A Qantas Boeing 707, Flight 714 from London touches down at Kemajoran Airport in Djakarta, java, last stop before Sydney, Australia. Disembarking is our hero, Snowy, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus. As they stretch their legs the good Captain spots a forlorn figure and slips a $5 bill into the man's hat. Of course no good deed of Haddock's goes unpunished and it turns out the old man is Mr. Carreidas, "The millionaire who never laughs." Well, Professor Calculus quickly takes care of that and Carreidas insists on flying Tintin and his friends to Australia on his special jet. Haddock is looking forward to a pleasure trip, an ordinary flight and no adventures, but fate has something else in mind."Flight 714," which actually does not have a single panel of the titular plane being anyplace other than on the ground, offers up a hijacking, a cutting edge prototype means of transportation, an exotic island in the middle of nowhere, an evil scientist with truth serum, a gigantic stone head pagan idol, a threatening lava flow, the return of an old familiar villain, a space ship, and Tintin running around a lot with a gun. Pretty much all of these elements have popped up in the previous twenty Adventures of Tintin that Hergé had told over the previous decades. For that reason this particular adventure strikes me as something of a curtain call for Tintin and his friends, even though this is the penultimate tale and the Thom(p)sons are no place to be seen. The chief charm is that Calculus has somebody new to tangle with in Carriedas, thereby relieving Captain Haddock of the responsibility for testing the eccentric professor's patience. Therefore, "Flight 714" is an average offering from Hergé, which still means it is an above average comic book adventure.

Great collectors book for adults -- and one you can read to your children.