Blistering Barnacles and Thundering Typhoons! - The Tintin Factor

Those who know me will be aware that I've always held a place in my heart for the adventures of the boy reporter, Tintin.  The intrepid investigator first burst into my life when I was a kid, that iconic and dramatic "dun-dun-dun" theme tune booming out of the television, drawing you in to whatever international plot awaited.  The stories were always sophisticated, involved and utterly enthralling, and this enjoyment has never left me although, as I grew older, I started to find an equal, if not greater pleasure, through the Tintin books. A few years ago I started collecting these and, this New Year, I added the final few of books to my collection, forming a complete library of the Belgian reporter's finest investigations.

Captain Haddock and Tintin in The Secret of the Unicorn

Thomson and Thompson in Land of Black Gold

I absolutely love this series of books.  The artwork is second-to-none, phenomenal given its time, with a detail given to each and every frame that today's comic book artists could certainly learn from.  Equally important in this respect, I've collected the series in hardback, which really shows off the quality and genius of the cover art.  Now, we all know that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but these covers are simply beautiful, proper works of art in their own right, front pages that whet the appetite and invite you to delve a little deeper.

Perhaps what stands out best for me is the depth to which Hergé produced every single one of the characters, across 24 books.  And there are a lot of characters - beyond Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus and Snowy lie a whole host of supporting personalities, many regulars throughout the series.  There's Interpol's finest detectives, Thomson and Thompson, criminal mastermind Rastapopoulos, Milanese opera singer Bianca Castafiore, evil dictator General Tapioca, colourful (if not drunkard) military officer General Alcazar... In fact, the list extends to nearly one hundred individuals playing out their lives in both real and fictional parts of the globe, an amazing feat of imagination on the part of the author, created to fit Tintin's adventures into a more realistic world.  Indeed, of all the series' characters, it is Tintin himself that is perhaps the most beige.  As Harry Thompson, radio and TV producer, novelist, and author of Hergé and His Creation said: 

"Tintin is almost featureless, ageless, sexless, and did not appear to be burdened with a personality.  Yet this very anonymity remains the key to Tintin's gigantic international success.  With so little to mark him out, anybody from Curaçao to Coventry can identify with him and live out his adventures..."

The result of this undeniably genius casting makes for brilliant viewing or, as I'm now finding out, brilliant reading, for children and adults alike.  And what better what to escape the drab, cold January evenings than to slip into a world of exotic adventure and intrigue?

A hero's parade in Tintin in America

A plane crash and a missing friend takes Tintin to Tibet

So, what are the origins of this wonderful adventure series?  Well the reporter's creator, Georges Remi - Hergé - was employed as an illustrator at Le Vingtieme Siecle, a Belgian newspaper based not far from Brussels.  Hergé rose to be appointed editor of the Thursday youth supplement, but soon became dissatisfied with his role, and started his own cartoon strip instead, adapting the new innovation of speech balloons to depict words coming out of the characters' mouths.  Hergé already had experience with creating comic strips, having written Les Adventures de Totor, about a boy scout with a strong resemblance to Tintin.  Tintin as we know him first came to print in 1929, when Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was serialised.  Hergé had wanted to send his new hero to America, but was ordered by newspaper boss, Abbe Norbert Wallez, to send Tintin to the Soviet Union, to provide anti-socialist propaganda for the right-wing newspaper.  The cartoon proved popular, and so more stories followed - Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in America, Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh, The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear, The Black Island, then King Ottokar's Sceptre were all serialised and released in black-and-white before the outbreak of a Second World War that would change the direction of Tintin forever.  What happened then, and what happened afterwards, will be the subject of a future blog.

Totor, sometimes referred to as "Tintin's younger brother"

Tintin meets a lifelong friend in The Crab with the Golden Claws

So that's my collection complete and, as with so many of my interests, it's a collection that has a free history lesson thrown in for good measure!  Now I'm sure I know all the stories off by heart already, but there's no harm in revisiting some classics, so if anybody wants me, I'll be in the reading chair...