Tintin

[Tim Little]

Tintin turns 80 this week, and the BBC has this to say:

The 1938 album L'Ile Noire (The Black Island), which takes its inspiration from The Thirty-Nine Steps, is, for many the Tintin's coming of age. It is this album that refines his trademark thrill-a-minute adventure format, and saw Herge perfect his clear-line style, which proved a major influence upon Andy Warhol and the pop artists. Arguably L'Ile Noire is to Herge what Macbeth is to Shakespeare.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7820247.stm

I loved reading these comics as a kid.

(Hat tip to Ozone for his previous post on Tintin's tartan.)

Anywho, here's to you, Tintin!

[RadioKen]

Tintin! I used to love reading Tintin when I was younger (and I still do, when I take the time to sit down with him). I was always thrilled with the exotic locations and used to imagine myself there with him, trodding across the desert sands or threading the streets of some large city, hiding, chasing, looking for clues. This is a great cover shot and I'm going to have to see if my library has this book on it's shelves.

~Ken

[pdcorlis]

TINTIN is Brilliant!

[###KILTEDKIWI###]

I grew up on these comics, they were brilliant, didnt they get into strive somewhere because some felt that they were racist?

[O'Callaghan]

I grew up on these comics, they were brilliant, didnt they get into strive somewhere because some felt that they were racist?

I think it was actually worse than that. Something to do with sympathising with the Nazis, but I don't know the details.

Nonetheless, I still enjoy the Tintin comics very much. It's hard to believe ill of Herge.

[Tim Little]

I grew up on these comics, they were brilliant, didnt they get into strive somewhere because some felt that they were racist?

I think it was actually worse than that. Something to do with sympathising with the Nazis, but I don't know the details.

The BBC has this to say:

Unfortunately the boy scout may have ruined his chances of becoming an all-American role model in his subsequent adventures by belittling the natives in Tintin au Congo (1930) and then unveiling Mafia strangleholds and cruelty to native Americans in Tintin en Amérique (1932). Nonetheless, Europeans have largely forgiven him his flirts with Nazi sympathies (L'Étoile Mystérieuse, 1942).

Wikipedia yields the following:

The Second World War and the invasion of Belgium by Hitler's armies saw the closure of the newspaper in which Tintin was serialised. Work was halted on Land of Black Gold, and the already published Tintin in America and The Black Island were banned by the Nazi censors, who were concerned at their presentation of America and Britain. However, Hergé was able to continue with Tintin's adventures, publishing four books and serialising two more adventures in a German-licensed newspaper.

During and after the German occupation Hergé was accused of being a collaborator because of the Nazi control of the paper (Le Soir), and he was briefly taken for interrogation after the war. He claimed that he was simply doing a job under the occupation, like a plumber or carpenter. His work of this period, unlike earlier and later work, is politically neutral and resulted in stories such as The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure; but the apocalyptic The Shooting Star reflects the foreboding Hergé felt during this uncertain political period.

And on "Tintin in the Congo":

Tintin in the Congo has been criticised as presenting the Africans as naïve and primitive. In the original work, Tintin is shown at a blackboard addressing a class of African children. "Mes chers amis," he says, "je vais vous parler aujourd'hui de votre patrie: La Belgique" ("My dear friends, I am going to talk to you today about your fatherland: Belgium"). Hergé redrew this in 1946 to show a lesson in mathematics. Hergé later admitted the flaws in the original story, excusing it by noting: "I portrayed these Africans according to ... this purely paternalistic spirit of the time". The perceived problems with this book were summarised by Sue Buswell in 1988 as being "all to do with rubbery lips and heaps of dead animals" although Thompson noted this quote may have been "taken out of context". "Dead animals" refers to the fashion for big game hunting at the time of the work's original publication. Drawing on André Maurois' Les Silences du colonel Bramble, Hergé presents Tintin as a big-game hunter, bagging 15 antelope as opposed to the one needed for the evening meal. However, concerns over the number of dead animals did lead the Scandinavian publishers of Tintin's adventures to request changes. A page which presented Tintin killing a rhinoceros by drilling a hole in the animal's back and inserting a stick of dynamite was deemed excessive, and Hergé substituted a page which saw the rhino accidentally discharges Tintin's rifle whilst the erstwhile hunter snoozes under a tree. In 2007 the UK's Commission for Racial Equality called for the book to be pulled from the shelves after a complaint, stating that "it beggars belief that in this day and age that any shop would think it acceptable to sell and display 'Tintin In The Congo'." In August 2007, a complaint was filed in Brussels, Belgium, by a Congolese student, claiming the book was an insult to the Congolese people. Public prosecutors are investigating, the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism warned against political over-correctness.

[GG]

Did you know that Tintin had his kilt redesigned?

‘The Black Island’ was first published as weekly comic strips in a Belgium newspaper 1937-1938. It was in black and white and so it was when it in 1938 was published as a book by Casterman Bruxelles (124 pages).
I have never seen Tintin’s kilt in black and white.
The first color version (Casterman) is from 1943 (according to the Danish publisher) and 62 pages. Here Tintin wears a red/orange kilt with thin black stripes.
In 1965 Hergé redraw the ‘Black Island’ completely and now Tintin’s kilt is red with green horizontal and vertical stripes. It is this version we normally see.
Also Tintin’s cap and kilt hose are different. A closer look also indicates that Tintin’s kilt has become slightly longer in the 1965 version, even if still to the short side.
In the Danish versions, at least, the translation is not quite the same.




Greg

[###KILTEDKIWI###]

Tintin killing a rhinoceros by drilling a hole in the animal's back and inserting a stick of dynamite was deemed excessive

...how did he manage to get the rhino to hold still whilst he drilled the hole?

I say old chap, do you rather mind standing still while I auger an opening in your rump...

[###KILTEDKIWI###]

ah on reflection, the above statement may be misconstrued...

[MacMillan of Rathdown]