Looking for a comic book scene... fell under ice... Tintin? Boy’s Life?
June 5, 2019 12:55 PM   Subscribe

Looking for a half remembered series of comic panels... A comic-book protagonist falls beneath the ice on a frozen lake or river, is thought lost but survives by breathing thin layer of air under the ice with his nose, breaks through the ice with a hatchet and in doing so, strikes either the antagonist or his long-suffering friend on the bottom of the foot with the tip of the hatchet.

I have a picture in my mind of a series of panels in a comic/graphic novel. I feel like maybe it’s Tintin, but maybe I’m getting it confused/mixed with one of those “edutainment” comics that would be published in the middle of Boy’s Life magazine (I remember they were a 1 or 2 page comic that would show a story about some child doing something heroic or something).

Anyway, the image I have in my mind is a protagonist (Tintin?) falling under some ice, and he is thought lost, but then he uses a hatchet to break through the ice, and in doing so hits the bottom of the foot of someone (Captain Haddock? Dr. Müller?) with the part of the hatchet that broke through the ice. Aftr getting out from under the ice, the protagonist then goes on to explain how there’s a slight layer of air just between the bottom of the ice and the top of the water, and that by pressing his nose against that, he was able to breathe long enough to find a spot where the ice was thin enough to break through.

Does this sound familiar to anyone else? It’s kind of driving me nuts.
posted by blueberry to Media & Arts (5 answers total)
 
Can't help you with what it is, but it's not Tintin. 100% sure.
posted by Athanassiel at 1:43 PM on June 5, 2019 [5 favorites]


Not sure how much this helps but I have read all the Tintin books that I know of once, and many of them multiple times. I don't recall this scene.

On preview Athanassiel and I agree!
posted by pilot pirx at 1:45 PM on June 5, 2019 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: WCityMike, thanks, I copied this question over there on your suggestion.

Also, I found that the Boy’s Life mini-comic I referred to is called “Scouts in Action”.

posted by blueberry at 8:10 PM on June 5, 2019


Response by poster: Thanks, WCityMike—what a so-easily-petty environment Reddit seems to be.

Maybe I”ll have resort to using Cunningham’s Law in my “question”, in order to get an actual answer over there...
posted by blueberry at 12:56 PM on June 6, 2019


Best answer: I figured it out on my own; turns out it wasn't Tintin at all.

The image of Reggie (of Archie comics fame) popped into my mind as the one who might've gotten hit by the hatchet.

Here's the story—called “A Christmas Tale”—that I had been thinking of.
posted by blueberry at 2:04 PM on July 30, 2019


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