The Red Sea Sharks

The Red Sea Sharks (Coke en stock)
Cover of the English edition
Date	1958
Series	The Adventures of Tintin
Publisher	Casterman
Creative team
Creator	Hergé
Original publication
Published in	Tintin magazine
Date of publication	31 October 1956 – 1 January 1958
Language	French
Translation
Publisher	Methuen
Date	1960
Translator	Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper Michael Turner
Chronology
Preceded by	The Calculus Affair (1956)
Followed by	Tintin in Tibet (1960)

The Red Sea Sharks (French: Coke en stock) is the nineteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was initially serialised weekly in Belgium's Tintin magazine from October 1956 to January 1958 before being published in a collected volume by Casterman in 1958. The narrative follows the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock as they travel to the (fictional) Middle Eastern kingdom of Khemed with the intention of aiding the Emir Ben Khalish Ezab in regaining control after a coup d'état by his enemies, who are financed by slave traders.

Following on from the previous volume in the series, The Calculus Affair, The Red Sea Sharks was created with the aid of Hergé's team of artists at Studios Hergé. Influenced by Honoré de Balzac's The Human Comedy, Hergé used the story as a vehicle in which to reintroduce a wide range of characters who had first appeared in earlier installments of the series. The story dealt with the ongoing trade in enslaved Africans across the Arab world, however in the 1960s the story would generate controversy as Hergé was repeatedly accused of having portrayed the Africans in a racist manner. He was upset by these claims, and made alterations to the depiction of the Africans in later reprints. Hergé continued The Adventures of Tintin with Tintin in Tibet, and the series as a whole became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition. The Red Sea Sharks was critically well-received, with various commentators describing it as one of the best Tintin adventures. The story was adapted for the 1991 animated series The Adventures of Tintin by Ellipse and Nelvana.