The Crab with the Golden Claws

The Crab with the Golden Claws
(Le Crabe aux pinces d'or)
Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock ride camels in the desert; a distant army has fired a shot, shattering Haddock's bottle.
Cover of the English edition
Date
  • 1941 (black and white)
  • 1943 (colour)
SeriesThe Adventures of Tintin
PublisherCasterman
Creative team
CreatorHergé
Original publication
Published inLe Soir Jeunesse (supplement to Le Soir), then Le Soir
Date of publication17 October 1940 – 18 October 1941
LanguageFrench
Translation
PublisherMethuen
Date1958
Translator
  • Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper
  • Michael Turner
Chronology
Preceded byKing Ottokar's Sceptre (1939)
Land of Black Gold (1939) (abandoned)
Followed byThe Shooting Star (1942)

The Crab with the Golden Claws (French: Le Crabe aux pinces d'or) is the ninth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised weekly in Le Soir Jeunesse, the children's supplement to Le Soir, Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from October 1940 to October 1941 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. Partway through serialisation, Le Soir Jeunesse was cancelled and the story began to be serialised daily in the pages of Le Soir. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to Morocco to pursue the international opium smugglers. The story marks the first appearance of main character Captain Haddock.

The Crab with the Golden Claws was published in book form shortly after its conclusion. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with The Shooting Star, while the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. In 1943, Hergé coloured and redrew the book in his distinctive ligne-claire style for Casterman's republication. The Crab with the Golden Claws introduces the supporting character Captain Haddock, who became a major fixture of the series. The book is the first Tintin adventure published in the United States and the first to be adapted into a motion picture. The Crab with the Golden Claws was adapted for the 1947 stop motion film of the same name, the 1956 Belvision Studios animation Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, the 1991 Ellipse/Nelvana animated series The Adventures of Tintin, the feature film The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn (2011) directed by Steven Spielberg, and the film's tie-in video game.