40
Hugo Frey
drawings of Pulau-Pulau Bompa suggest a mystical reverence for artifacts
from an era before the birth of recorded history. Like the writings of Ber-
gier and Pauwels, Hergé’s work celebrates deep and ancient mysteries that
are explained by astounding, futuristic, scientific discoveries. In Flight 714
rationalism and the modern period are displaced by a “cosmic” or “esoteric”
history of the ancient past and a fantastical, science-fiction future, and in
using these ideas Hergé popularizes Bergier’s and Pauwels’s vision of history.
In showing Ezdanitoff/Bergier as an elect being who guides, hypnotizes, and
rescues Tintin and his friends, the comic book legitimates the idea that a
secret elite of visionaries should lead humanity.
7
In its day Planète was roundly criticized for its links to the reaction-
ary, right-wing intelligentsia. André Breton, the veteran surrealist, asserted
that Bergier’s and Pauwels’s work represented “une tentative de lobotomie
généralisée” [an attempt to provide a general lobotomy] (quoted in Torres
1997: 184). Other critics highlighted a sophisticated revisionism in the pages
of the new and fashionable magazine. In his review of Planète, Robert Benay-
oun noted that the magazine ran an insidiously nostalgic line on Nazism and
the Nazis’ links to esoteric traditions (Torres 1997: 184). When alluding to the
Nazis and esoteric traditions, writers in Planète did not concern themselves
with the historical record of Nazism per se. By implication, and by Planète’s
own position, such secular political violence was incomparable to the eternal
mysteries of time and space, which were the editors’ primary concern. How-
ever, other contemporary references were frequently made in the magazine:
for example, positive references to the work of onetime French fascist col-
laborator, Raymond Abellio. Similarly, short book reviews paid special at-
tention to issues related to the Nazi past. Already in the second issue of the
magazine there is a rather glib commentary on the history of the Holocaust
that provides a problematic interpretation of events.
8
The editors of Planète magazine employed Hergé’s friends Bernard
(“Bib”) Heuvelmans and Raymond de Becker, who had both collaborated
with the Nazis in Belgium during World War II (Peeters 2002a: 171–76, 269,
420; Mouchart and Rivière 2003: 201). When de Becker had been editor of Le
Soir “volé” he had overseen the publication of The Shooting Star in its origi-
nal, daily, serial form. Before working for Planète Heuvelmans, another for-
mer contributor to Le Soir “volé,” had closely assisted Hergé on the two Tintin
moon stories, Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (Assouline 1998:
505–8). There were other links between Planète and Hergé or his friends. For
example, in 1962 Planète printed a photograph from, and made a sympathetic
reference to, the first live-action film adaptation of a Tintin story.
9
It has also