The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin (Les Aventures de Tintin), (Bande dessinée) drawn and written by the Belgian writer-artist Georges Remi a.k.a. Hergé, is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. According to BBC magazine, over 200 million copies of the comic books have been sold to date, with translations into over 58 languages.

The hero of the series is a young reporter and traveller named Tintin, aided by his faithful dog Snowy (originally named "Milou" in French which does not mean Snowy in English), Captain Haddock and a variety of colourful supporting characters.

The comic book series has long been admired for its clean yet expressive drawings executed in Hergé's signature ligne claire style, their engaging plots and the painstaking research done while creating the later stories. They straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy; mysteries; political thrillers; and science fiction. All the titles in the Tintin series include plenty of slapstick humour, offset in later albums by dashes of sophisticated satire and political/cultural commentary.

Tintin lives in Brussels, the capital city of Belgium and the birthplace of Hergé. This is evidenced most notably in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets where the text states that Tintin arrives in Brussels as he returns home after his adventure, and in Tintin in Tibet, where the letter sent to Tintin by his friend Chang is addressed to Brussels. There are other more subtle hints in some of the other books, such as recognisable locations, car numberplates, etc. However, after Red Rackham's Treasure, Tintin moves into Marlinspike Hall, whose geographical location is debatable. It is to be noted though that Marlinspike's original name is Moulinsart, the -sart ending being typical of the Walloon Brabant region - we are still probably in Belgium.

A perennial question concerning Tintin is his age: it is far from clear whether he is a teenage rookie reporter, or a senior journalist in his thirties. While his manner of dress suggests the former, the high-profile stories he covers (not to mention his apparently bottomless expense account) strongly imply the latter. The matter has never been resolved.

Characters

Tintin

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Tintin and Snowy(Tintin et Milou)

Tintin is a young Belgian reporter (as well as an accomplished fighter and pilot) who becomes involved in dangerous cases in which he takes heroic action to save the day. Almost every adventure features Tintin hard at work at his investigative reporting, but he is rarely seen actually turning in a story. He is a young man of more or less neutral attitudes and is less colourful than the supporting cast.

The earlier version of Tintin was apparently inspired, at least in part, by Hergé's youngest brother Paul Remi, a career soldier.^[1] Hergé later became estranged from his brother and depicted him as the villainous Colonel Sponsz in The Calculus Affair. Tintin and Sponsz, although physically very different, have quite similar hair spikes.

Captain Archibald Haddock (Capitaine Archibald Haddock)

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Captain Haddock (Capitaine Haddock)

Captain Haddock, a seafaring captain of French ancestry, is Tintin's best friend, who was introduced in The Crab with the Golden Claws. Haddock was initially depicted as a weak and alcoholic character, but in later albums he became more respectable and genuinely heroic. The Captain's coarse humanity and sarcasm act as a counterpoint to Tintin's often implausible heroism; he is always quick with a dry comment whenever the boy reporter gets too idealistic.

Haddock uses a range of colourful insults and curses to express his feelings, such as "blistering barnacles", "thundering typhoons", "bashi-bazouk", "kleptomaniac", "anacoluthon", and "pockmark", but no words that are actually considered swear words. Haddock is a hard drinker, especially of whisky of the fictitious Loch Lomond brand, and his bouts of drunkenness are often used for comic effect. See also: List of exclamations used by Captain Haddock

Haddock's surname was derived from a conversation that Hergé had with his wife, in which she mentioned that the haddock was a "sad English fish". Hergé chose this name accordingly. Haddock remained without a first name until the last completed story, Tintin and the Picaros (1976), when the name Archibald was suggested.

Professor Cuthbert Calculus (Professeur Tryphon Tournesol)

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Professor Calculus (Professeur Tournesol)

Professor Cuthbert Calculus is a distracted, hard-of-hearing professor, who invented many objects used in the series, such as a one-person shark-shaped submarine, the Moon rocket and an ultrasound weapon. Calculus seeks to benefit mankind by inventions such as a pill that cures alcoholism by making alcohol taste horrible to the patient.

Calculus's deafness is a frequent source of humour, as he repeats back what he thinks he has heard, usually in the most unlikely words possible: "attachez votre ceinture" (fasten your belt) is repeated as "une tache de peinture?" (a paint stain). He does not admit to being near-deaf and insists on having poor hearing in only one ear. Notably in the "Moon" books, Calculus has a hearing aid inserted, and for the duration of the album has near-perfect hearing: this made him a more serious character (as long as the word "goat" is not uttered in his presence). However, in later adventures Calculus once again lost his hearing aid and went back to his old deaf self. Calculus is a fervent believer in dowsing, and carries a pendulum for that purpose.

Calculus first appeared in Red Rackham's Treasure, and was the end result of Hergé's long quest to find the archetypal mad scientist or absent-minded professor: for instance, Dr. Sarcophagus in Cigars of the Pharaoh, and Prof. Alembick in King Ottokar's Sceptre.

NOTE: A literal translation of his French name would be Tryphonius Sunflower or Tryphonius Litmus Paper

Snowy (Milou)

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A severely inebriated Snowy (Milou).

Snowy, an exceptionally white fox terrier, is Tintin's four-legged companion, who travels everywhere with him. The bond between the dog and Tintin is deeper than life, and they have saved each other from perilous situations many times.

Like Captain Haddock, Snowy is fond of whisky of the Loch Lomond brand, and his occasional bouts of drinking tend to get him into trouble, as does his raging arachnophobia.

Thomson and Thompson (Dupond et Dupont)

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Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond)

Thomson and Thompson are two clumsy detectives who, although unrelated, look like twins with the only discernible difference being the shape of their moustaches.^[2] They provide much of the comic relief throughout the series, as they are afflicted with spoonerism. They are thoroughly incompetent, and always bent on arresting the wrong character, but in spite of this they somehow get entrusted with delicate missions, such as ensuring security for the Syldavian space project. When they get into a terrible mess (like falling over) they come up with lazy excuses such as 'Well I was following you' to make themselves seem less buffoonish.

The detectives usually wear bowler hats and carry walking sticks, except when abroad, when they insist on wearing the "national costume" of the country they are visiting so as to blend into the local population, but in general only manage to find some ridiculous folkloric attire that makes them stand apart.

The detectives were in part based on Hergé's father and uncle, identical twins who wore matching bowlers.

Minor characters

See: List of The Adventures of Tintin characters and Minor characters in Tintin

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Rastapopoulos, the most heavily featured antagonist throughout the series.

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Bianca Castafiore, the only female main character.

Some of the notable characters are:

Fictional countries

Hergé devised several fictional countries later in the series.^[3] Syldavia in particular is described in considerable detail (history, customs, language etc.).

Syldavia in the Balkans is by Hergé's own admission modelled on Albania^[4], and is threatened by neighbouring Borduria — an attempted annexation appears in King Ottokar's Sceptre — this situation parallels respectively Czechoslovakia or Austria and expansionist Nazi Germany prior to World War II. In The Calculus Affair, Borduria is used as a metaphor of a Communist state.

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Ben Kalish Ezab, emir of Khemed.

Khemed, in Arabia. Khemed is subject to a revolution in The Red Sea Sharks.
The events of Flight 714 take place on the island of Pulau-Pulau Bompa.
Sondonesia, a country in South East Asia. Said to be undergoing a civil war, with rebels for hire. Rastapopoulos's hired gun, Allan, recruits Sondonesians as gun-toting muscle in Flight 714. They appear to be thinly disguised Khmer Rouge, and Hergé's insistence that Sondonesia is in a state of civil war shows amazing clarity of vision as to the true state of the conflict in Cambodia at that period. The name Sondonesia is a portmanteau of Sunda and Indonesia. However, the location of the Kemajoran airport of Jakarta and the latest radio message from 'Makassar' before the plane was hijacked to one of the Sondonesian islands suggests that the location itself is not far from the Malay/Indonesian archipelago. Herge gave further evidence by some 'Sondonesian' conversations (the angry sailor on the boat, and the two bunker guards) which were spoken in Indonesian Malay.

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Tintin and General Alcazar, the on-and-off dictator of San Theodoros. From the Swedish edition of Tintin and the Picaros.

San Theodoros in South America, a prototypical banana republic where US-based companies and Borduria (meant as an allusion to the USSR) vie for power, with "advisors" of local generals.
São Rico in South America. Sao Rico was added as a reference in a later versions of The Shooting Star. The original version had the villainous masterminds as stereotypical Jewish American puppet-masters — the later version darkens their skin tone and inserts Sao Rico as a reference.
Nuevo Rico, bordering San Theodoros. The two countries go to war over oil in The Broken Ear, which is parallel to the 1930s Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia.
El Chapo, after the South American Chaco region. The Broken Ear is set in a war inspired by the Chaco War.
Pilchardania and Poldavia are both mentioned in The Blue Lotus. Pilchardania is mentioned on a newsreel that Tintin views while hiding in a cinema from the police. The Poldavian consul gets mistaken for Tintin in a beard and wig in the Blue Lotus opium den.
Gaipajama, an Indian principality based on those that existed during the British Raj, is mentioned in Cigars of the Pharaoh.

Race and colonialism

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Chang Chong-Chen

The earliest stories in The Adventures of Tintin have been criticised for racist and colonialist leanings, including caricatured portrayals of non-Europeans. However, Hergé by his own admission was rather naive at the time and was largely informed by the then conventional views of his editor. The alleged racism in the earliest stories is more absurd than anything else. The adventure which is largely seen as the first "serious" Tintin adventure is The Blue Lotus, published in 1936. This story, set in China during the then-current Sino-Japanese War, was the first for which he did extensive background research. His research was aided by Zhang Chongren, a Chinese student in Belgium, who would become a character in the Tintin comics under the name of Chang Chong-Chen. The Blue Lotus criticised Japanese and Western colonial meddling in China and helped to dispel popular myths about the Chinese people (though it does contain flagrant stereotyping of Japanese people, who are portrayed as sinister and cruel). From then on, meticulous research would be one of Hergé's trademarks.

Some of the early albums were altered by Hergé in subsequent editions, usually at the demand of publishers. For example, at the instigation of his American publishers, many of the black characters in Tintin in America were re-coloured to make their race white or ambiguous. The Shooting Star album originally had an American villain with the Jewish surname of Mr. Blumenstein. He was changed to an American with a less ethnically specific name, mr. Bohlwinkel, in later editions and subsequently to a South American of a fictional country.

Stage adaptations

Hergé himself helped to create two Tintin stage plays: Tintin in India: The mystery of the blue diamond and The disappearance of Mr. Boullock.

A musical based on The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun premièred on 15 September 2001 at the Stadsschouwburg (city theatre) in Antwerp, Belgium. It was entitled Kuifje – De Zonnetempel (De Musical) and was broadcast on Canal Plus, before moving on to Charleroi in 2002 as Tintin – Le Temple du Soleil.

The Young Vic theatre company ran a musical version of Tintin in Tibet at the Barbican Arts Centre in London from December 2005 to January 2006.^[5]

Memorabilia

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Dutch Tintin and Snowy (Kuifje en Bobbie) stamp from 1999.

The Belgian Post issued a Tintin stamp in 1979 to celebrate the day of youth philately. This was the first in a series of stamps with the images of Belgian comic heroes to be issued in later years, and was the first stamp in the world to feature a comic hero.

The Royal Dutch Post released a set of Tintin stamps on October 8, 1999 which sold out within hours of release. Belgium minted a limited edition (50,000) silver 10-euro commemorative coin to celebrate the 75th birthday of Tintin in January of 2004.

Merchandise & Franchise

Universal Studios has licensed the rights to Adventures of Tintin "merchandise/franchise" in the U.S. & Canada since 1997.

In the future

A collection of twenty-one Adventures of Tintin coloring books based on the original stories is scheduled for release by Dalmatian Press in the United States around 2006.
A limited edition of Ellipse-Nelvana's The Adventures of Tintin TV cartoon series is scheduled for release on DVD in the United States by Universal Studios Home Video around 2006, containing 21 full-length episodes in 7 volumes.
A theme-park attraction called The Many Adventures of Tintin was scheduled to be opened at Universal Studios in Universal Orlando Resort around 2007.
A Tintin-themed merchandise store called The Tintin Shop and a Tintin-themed "steakhouse/seafood" buffet restaurant called Captain's Kitchen are also scheduled to be opened in the CityWalk complex in Universal Orlando Resort around 2007.
A future Universal Studios logo with music from Ellipse-Nelvana's The Adventures of Tintin TV cartoon series are scheduled to be adopted around 2007.

In popular culture

Charles de Gaulle once said "My only international rival is Tintin. We are both little people who are not afraid of big ones".
In the 1979 film Kramer vs. Kramer, Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is seen reading to his son the part of Red Rackham's Treasure where Tintin descends into the ocean.
Indian movie director Satyajit Ray was a Tintin fan, and had shots of Tintin comics in some of his movies.
The American comic strip Get Fuzzy has had several references to Tintin over the years.
Thomson and Thompson appear in the Asterix comic "Asterix in Belgium". In Asterix the Legionary, the Belgian character has the same kind of hair as Tintin.
A British 1980s technopop band was named The Thompson Twins after the Tintin characters, though strictly speaking only one of the characters was named Thompson (The other was "Thomson" - without the p).
Stephen Duffy, A former member of Duran Duran, performed the minor hit single "Kiss Me" under the name "Tintin" around the same time as The Thompson Twins had their success, but had to drop the name under pressure of a copyright infringement suit.
The Australian psychedelic rock band Tin Tin was named after Tintin.
In two early episodes of The Avengers TV show, Mr. Steed (Patrick Macnee) is seen reading Tintin books (Land of Black Gold and Tintin in Tibet).
In his 1999 film The Ninth Gate, Roman Polanski (who is a huge Tintin fan) made his characters Dean Corso (Johnny Depp) and the brothers Ceniza - Pablo and Pedro (both played by Jose Lopez Rodero) look respectively like Cuthbert Calculus and the Thompson twins.
In his films L'Homme de Rio and Les tribulations d'un chinois en Chine , Philippe de Broca made various references to Tintin adventures.
An Arthur episode titled FernFern and the Secret of Moose Mountain features a take-off of Tintin called "ZutZut". An imaginary sequence in that episode featured Fern as ZutZut (known as "FernFern") and Francine as Captain Haddock.
The atmosphere and main character in Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones-trilogy was inspired by the Tintin comics as Spielberg is a huge fan. He even planned to make a movie based on Tintin, but dropped the plans twice.^[6]
Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein claim Hergé as one of their most important influences. Lichtenstein made paintings based on fragments from Tintin's comics and Warhol even made a series of paintings of Hergé.
In the third video of French-teaching series Moustache it shows the French boy, Simon, reading the French version of the Tintin book Explorers On The Moon.(On A Marche Sur La Lune)
In an episode of the first season of the popular TV series Friends, Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry) wears a Tintin shirt in one of the scenes.

References

Anders Høgsbro Østergaard, Tintin and I (2003)
Benoit Peeters (1983) Le Monde d’Hergé, Casterman.
Benoît Peeters (1984) Les Bijoux ravis, une lecture moderne de Tintin. Magic-Strip.
Michael Farr Tintin: The Complete Companion, John Murray (2001) ISBN 0719555221
"Faces of the week" by Andrew Walker, BBC Magazine, December 16, 2005, retrieved January 27, 2005