The Adventures of Tintin Totally Explained

Everything about The Adventures Of Tintin totally explained

The Adventures of Tintin is a series of comic books created by Belgian artist Hergé, the pen name of Georges Remi (1907–1983). The series first appeared in French in a children's supplement to the Belgian newspaper on January 10, 1929. Set in a painstakingly researched world closely mirroring our own, The Adventures of Tintin presents a number of characters in distinctive settings. The series has continued as a favourite of readers and critics alike for over 70 years.
   The hero of the series is Tintin, a young Belgian reporter and traveller. He is aided in his adventures from the beginning by his faithful fox terrier dog Snowy (Milou in French). Later, popular additions to the cast included the brash, cynical and grumpy Captain Haddock, the bright but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (Professeur Tournesol in French) and other colourful supporting characters such as the incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson (Dupond et Dupont in French).
   The success of the series saw the serialised strips collected into a series of albums (23 in all), spun into a successful magazine and adapted for both film and theatre. The series is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, with translations published in over 50 languages and more than 200 million copies of the books sold to date.
   The comic strip series has long been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature style. Engaging, well-researched plots straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, mysteries, political thrillers, and science fiction. The stories within the Tintin series always feature slapstick humour, offset in later albums by sophisticated satire and political/cultural commentary.

Overview

Tintin is a reporter, and Hergé uses this to present the character in a number of adventures which were contemporaneous to the period in which he was working (most notably, the Bolshevik uprising in Russia and the Second World War) and sometimes even prescient (the moon landings). Hergé also created a world for Tintin which managed to reduce detail to a simplified but recognisable and realistic representation, an effect Hergé was able to achieve with reference to a well-maintained archive of images.
Though Tintin's adventures are formulaic—presenting a mystery which is then solved logically—Hergé infused the strip with his own sense of humour, Hergé also had a great understanding of the mechanics of the comic strip, especially pacing, a skill displayed in The Castafiore Emerald, a work he meant to be packed with tension in which nothing actually happens. Hergé's personal life also affected the series, with Tintin in Tibet heavily influenced by his nervous breakdown. His nightmares, which he reportedly described as being "all white",

Tintin comic titles published in English

ť 1. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929–1930)

   2. Tintin in the Congo (1930–1931) ť 3. Tintin in America (1931–1932)

   4. Cigars of the Pharaoh (1932–1934) ť 5. The Blue Lotus (1934–1935)

   6. The Broken Ear (1935–1937) ť 7. The Black Island (1937–1938)

   8. King Ottokar's Sceptre (1938–1939) ť 9. The Crab with the Golden Claws (1940–1941)

   10. The Shooting Star (1941–1942) ť 11. The Secret of the Unicorn (1942–1943)

   12. Red Rackham's Treasure (1943–1944) ť 13. The Seven Crystal Balls (1943–1948)

   14. Prisoners of the Sun (1946–1949) ť 15. Land of Black Gold (1948–1950)

   16. Destination Moon (1950–1953) ť 17. Explorers on the Moon (1950–1954)

   18. The Calculus Affair (1954–1956) ť 19. The Red Sea Sharks (1958)

   20. Tintin in Tibet (1960) ť 21. The Castafiore Emerald (1963)

   22. Flight 714 (1968) ť 23. Tintin and the Picaros (1976)

   24. Tintin and Alph-Art (1986-2004)
Published posthumously A comic was also released based on the film Tintin au lac des requins.

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972)

Characters

Tintin and Snowy

   Tintin is a young Belgian reporter 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's rarely seen actually turning in a story without first getting caught up in some misadventure. He is a young man of more or less neutral attitudes and is less colourful than the supporting cast. In this respect, he represents the everyman.
   Snowy, a white Fox terrier, is Tintin's four-legged companion. They regularly save each other from perilous situations. Snowy frequently "speaks" to the reader through his thoughts (often displaying a dry sense of humour), which are supposedly not heard by the characters in the story except in Tintin in America where he explains Tintin about his absence for a period of time in the book.
   Like Captain Haddock, Snowy is fond of the Loch Lomond brand of whisky, and his occasional bouts of drinking tend to get him into trouble, as does his raging arachnophobia. The French name of Snowy, "Milou", has nothing to do with snow or the color white. It has been widely credited as an oblique reference to a girlfriend from Hergé's youth, Marie-Louise Van Cutsem, whose nickname was "Milou".
   Another explanation to the origins of the two characters is possible. The first 3 adventures of Tintin visit places originally visited by photographer-reporter Robert Sexé, recorded in the Belgian press from the mid to late 1920s. At that time Sexé had made numerous trips round the world on a motorcycle, in collaboration with Grand-Prix champion and motorcycle record holder René Milhoux, and these trips were highly publicised at the time. Sexé has also been noted to have a similar appearance to Tintin, and the Hergé Foundation in Belgium has admitted that it isn't too hard to imagine how Hergé could have been influenced by the exploits of Sexé. In 1996, a biography of Robert Sexé by Janpol Schulz was published, titled "Sexé au pays des Soviets" (Sexé in the Land of the Soviets) to mimic the name of the first Tintin Adventure.

Captain Haddock

Captain Archibald Haddock, a seafaring captain of disputed ancestry (he may be of English, French or Belgian origin), is Tintin's best friend, and was introduced in The Crab with the Golden Claws. Haddock was initially depicted as a weak and alcoholic character, but later became more respectable. He evolves to become genuinely heroic and even a socialite after he finds a treasure from his ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock (François de Hadoque in French), in the episode Red Rackham's Treasure. The Captain's coarse humanity and sarcasm act as a counterpoint to Tintin's often implausible heroism; he's always quick with a dry comment whenever the boy reporter seems too idealistic. Captain Haddock lives in his luxurious mansion called Marlinspike Hall ("Moulinsart" in the original French).
Haddock uses a range of colourful insults and curses to express his feelings, such as "billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles", "ten thousand thundering typhoons", "troglodytes", "bashi-bazouk", "kleptomaniac", "ectoplasm", "sea gherkin", "anacoluthon", and "pockmark", but nothing that's actually considered a swear word. Haddock is a hard drinker, particularly fond of Loch Lomond whisky, and his bouts of drunkenness are often used for comic effect.
Hergé stated that Haddock's surname was derived from a "sad English fish that drinks a lot". Hergé used the supporting characters to create a realistic world in which to set his protagonists' adventures. To further the realism and continuity, characters would recur throughout the series. It has been speculated that the occupation of Belgium and the restrictions imposed upon Hergé forced him to focus on characterisation to avoid depicting troublesome political situations. The major supporting cast was developed during this period.

Professor Cuthbert Calculus ( in French), an absent-minded and half-deaf physicist, is a minor but regular character alongside Tintin, Snowy, and Captain Haddock. Introduced in Red Rackham's Treasure, and based partially on Auguste Piccard, his appearance was initially not welcomed by the leading characters, but through his generous nature and his scientific ability he develops a lasting bond with them.

Thomson and Thompson are two bumbling detectives who, although unrelated, They provide much of the comic relief throughout the series, being afflicted with chronic spoonerism and shown to be thoroughly incompetent. The detectives were in part based on Hergé's father and uncle, identical twins who wore matching bowlers.

Bianca Castafiore is an opera singer whom Haddock absolutely despises. However, she seems to constantly be popping up wherever they go, along with her maid, Irma, and pianist, Igor Wagner. Her name means "white and chaste flower", something Prof. Calculus understands when he offers a white rose to the singer he's secretly in love with in The Castafiore Emerald. She was based upon opera divas in general (according to Hergé's perception), Hergé's Aunt Ninie, and in the post-war comics on Maria Callas.
Hergé's use of research and photographic reference allowed him to build a realised universe for Tintin, going so far as to create fictionalised countries, dressing them with specific political cultures. These were heavily informed by the cultures evident in Hergé's lifetime. Pierre Skilling has asserted that Hergé saw monarchy as "the legitimate form of government", noting that democratic "values seem underrepresented in [such] a classic Franco-Belgian strip." Syldavia in particular is described in considerable detail, Hergé creating a history, customs, and language. He set the country in the Balkans, and it is, by his own admission, modeled after Albania. The country finds itself threatened by neighbouring Borduria with an attempted annexation appearing in King Ottokar's Sceptre. This situation parallels the Italian conquest of Albania and of Czechoslovakia and Austria by expansionist Nazi Germany prior to World War II.
Hergé's use of research would include months of preparation for Tintin's voyage to the moon in the two-part storyline spread across Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon. His research for the storyline was noted in New Scientist: "[T]he considerable research undertaken by Hergé enabled him to come very close to the type of space suit that would be used in future Moon exploration, although his portrayal of the type of rocket that was actually used was a long way off the mark.". The moon rocket is based on the German V2 rockets.

Influences

In his youth Hergé admired Benjamin Rabier and suggested that a number of images within Tintin in the Land of the Soviets reflected this influence, particularly the pictures of animals. René Vincent, the Art Deco designer, also had an impact on early Tintin adventures: "His influence can be detected at the beginning of the Soviets, where my drawings are designed along a decorative line, like an 'S'...". Hergé also felt no compunction in admitting that he'd stolen the round noses from George McManus, feeling they were "so much fun that I used them, without scruples!"
   During the extensive research Hergé carried out for The Blue Lotus, he became influenced by Chinese and Japanese illustrative styles and woodcuts. This is especially noticeable in the seascapes, which are reminiscent of works by Hokusai and Hiroshige.
   Hergé also declared Mark Twain an influence, although this admiration may have led him astray when depicting Incas as having no knowledge of an upcoming eclipse in Prisoners of the Sun, an error attributed by T.F. Mills to an attempt to portray "Incas in awe of a latter-day 'Connecticut Yankee'". and scholars of Hergé such as Harry Thompson have claimed "Hergé did what he was told by the Abbé Wallez", 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'm going to talk to you today about your fatherland: Belgium"). Hergé redrew this in 1946 to 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". 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". 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.
   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. This proved to be controversial, as the character looked very stereotypically Jewish. Blumenstein 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 - São Rico. Hergé later discovered that 'Bohlwinkel' was also a Jewish name.

Films

There have been both live-action and animated film adaptations of The Adventures of Tintin.

The Crab with the Golden Claws (1947) - animated, based on the book.

Tintin and the Golden Fleece (1961) - live action, developed from an original script.

Tintin and the Blue Oranges (1964) - live action, developed from an original script.

Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969) - animated, based on the book.

Tintin et la SGM (1970), animated promotional short film by Belvision (10', see (External Link

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Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972) - based on an original script and subsequently adapted into comic book form. Steven Spielberg bought an option on the Tintin characters shortly before Hergé's death in 1983. However, at that point Spielberg wasn't confirmed to be directing and hence Hergé refused to sign the contract. In November 2002, Dreamworks bought the film rights to the Tintin series. Spielberg is collaborating with Peter Jackson for a motion capture film trilogy, starring Thomas Sangster and Andy Serkis. Spielberg and Jackson said a live action adaptation wouldn't do justice to the comic books. Steven Moffat signed on in November 2006 to write the screenplay for the three films. The story will be taken from among the twenty-three Tintin books published between 1929 and 1976. Spielberg is directing the first film, and filming begins in September 2008. The auditions tend to suggest that the three films will include The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn and its sequel, Red Rackham's Treasure.

Documentaries

Two documentaries have been made about Tintin and his creator Hergé.

I, Tintin (1966), a French documentary

Tintin and I, by Danish director Anders Høgsbro Østergaard in 2003, a co-production of companies from Denmark, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. This documentary was based on a taped interview with Hergé by Numa Sadoul from 1971. Although the interview was published as a book, Hergé was allowed to edit the work prior to publishing and much of the interview was excised. The documentary was broadcast in the United States as "Tintin and I" on the PBS network, July 11 2006.

Television

Two animated television series have been made, both adaptations of the comic strips rather than original stories.
The first was Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, produced by Belvision. The series aired from 1958 to 1962, with 104 five-minute episodes produced. It was adapted by Charles Shows and then translated into French by Greg (Michel Regnier), then editor-in-chief of Tintin magazine. This series has been criticised for differing too greatly from the original books and for its poor animation.

Theatre

Hergé helped to create two Tintin stage plays: Tintin in India: The Mystery of the Blue Diamond (1941) and The Disappearance of Mr. Boullock (1941–1942). These were written with Jacques Van Melkebeke and performed in Brussels.
   In the late 1970s and early 1980s, two Tintin plays appeared at London, adapted by Geoffrey Case for the Unicorn Theatre Company. They were: Tintin's Great American Adventure, based on the comic Tintin in America, which was shown 1976–1977; and Tintin and the Black Island, based on The Black Island, and shown in 1980. This second play later went on tour.
   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. The production was directed by Rufus Norris, and was adapted by Norris and David Greig. Yves Rodier has produced a number of Tintin works, none authorised by the Hergé Foundation, including a 1986 "completion" of the unfinished Tintin and Alph-art.

Exhibitions

Hergé's work on Tintin has formed the basis of many exhibitions, with the Hergé Foundation creating a mobile exhibition in 1991. "The World of Hergé" is described by the Foundation as being "an excellent introduction to Hergé's work". Materials from this exhibition have also formed the basis for larger shows, namely "Hergé the Draughtsman", an exhibition to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Tintin's creation, and the more recent "In Tibet With Tintin". In 2001 the Musée de la Marine staged an exhibition of items related to the sea which had inspired Hergé. In 2002 the Bunkamura Museum of Art in Japan staged an exhibition of original drawings, as well as the submarine and rocket ship invented in the strips by Professor Calculus. Barcelona has also hosted an exhibition on Tintin and the sea, "llamp de rellamp" at the Maritime Museum in 2003. 2004 also saw the Belgian Centre for Comic Strip Art add an area dedicated to Hergé.

Memorabilia and merchandise

Images from the series have long been licensed for use on merchandise; the success of the Tintin magazine helping to create a market for such items. Tintin's image has been used to sell a wide variety of products, from alarm clocks to underpants. There are now estimated to be over 250 separate items related to the character available, with some becoming collectors items in their own right.
Since Hergé's death, the Hergé Foundation have maintained control of the licenses, through Moulinsart, the commercial wing of the foundation. Speaking in 2002, Peter Horemans, the then director general at Moulinsart, noted this control: "We have to be very protective of the property. We don’t take lightly any potential partners and we've to be very selective ... for him to continue to be as popular as he is, great care needs to be taken of his use." However, the Foundation has been criticised by scholars as "trivialising the work of Hergé by concentrating on the more lucrative merchandising" in the wake of a move in the late nineties to charge them for using relevant images to illustrate their papers on the series. NBC Universal acquired the rights to all of The Adventures of Tintin merchandise in North America.

Shops

Tintin memorabilia and merchandise has allowed a chain of stores based solely on the character to become viable. The first shop was launched by Jane Taylor in 1984, located in Covent Garden, London, and there are now branches worldwide, including two in Belgium, located in Brussels and Bruges. The British bookstore chain, Ottakars was named after King Ottokar, from the Tintin book King Ottokar's Sceptre, and their shops stock a large amount of Tintin merchandise. There are also a number of Tintin themed cafés located around the world.

Stamps

postage stamps on numerous occasions, the first issued by the Belgian Post 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, and was the first stamp in the world to feature a comic hero.
In 1999, the Royal Dutch Post released two stamps on October 8 1999, based upon the Destination Moon adventure, with the stamps selling out within hours of release. The French post office, Poste Française, then issued a stamp of Tintin and Snowy in 2001. To mark the end of the Belgian Franc, and also to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the publication of Tintin in the Congo, two more stamps were issued by the Belgian Post on December 31 2001. The stamps were also issued in The Congo at the same time. 2002 saw the French Post issue stamped envelopes featuring Tintin, whilst in 2004 the Belgian post-office celebrated its own seventy-fifth anniversary, as well as the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Explorers on the Moon and the thirty-fifth anniversary of the moon landings with a series of stamps based upon the Explorers on the Moon adventure. In 2007, to celebrate Hergé's centennial, Belgium, France and Switzerland all plan to issue special stamps in commemoration.

Coins

Besides stamps, Tintin has also been commemorated by coin several times. In 1995, Monnaie de Paris issued a set of 12 coins to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hergé's death, made of silver, and in a limited edition of 5000. Another coin was released to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Tintin book Explorers on the Moon, in a limited run of 10,000. Belgium minted a limited edition commemorative coin to celebrate the 75th birthday of Tintin in January of 2004. The coin, composed of silver and featuring Tintin and Snowy, was limited to a minting of 50 000. Although it has a face value of €10, it is, as with other commemorative euro coins of this type (for example not a commemorative issue of a standard euro coin), only legal tender in the country in which it was issued (in this case, Belgium).

Books

A large number of books have been published about Tintin.

Translation into English

The process of translating Tintin into English was a complex affair, commissioned in 1958 by Methuen & Co. Ltd. of London. It was a joint-operation, headed by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, who worked closely with Hergé to attain an accurate translation as true as possible to the original work. The works were also sold in the American market by Golden Books, a branch of the Western Publishing Company in the 1950s. The albums were translated from French into American English with some blocks blanked except for the speech balloons. This was done to remove content considered to be inappropriate for children, such as drunkenness and racial stereotyping. The albums were not very popular and only six were published in mixed order. The edited albums later had their blanked blocks redrawn by Hergé to be more acceptable, and they currently appear this way in published editions around the world. Atlantic Monthly Press, in cooperation with Little, Brown and Company beginning in the 1970s, published the albums again. This time, the text features the originally translated British English text with alterations to localized British words such as gaol, tyre, saloon and spanner. Currently, they're being published under the Joy Street imprint of Little, Brown and Company.
   Due in part to the large amount of language-specific wordplay (such as punning) in the series, especially the jokes which played on Professor Calculus' partial deafness, it was always the intention not to translate literally, instead striving to sculpt a work whose idioms and jokes would be meritorious in their own right; however, in spite of the free hand Hergé afforded the two, they worked closely with the original text, asking for regular assistance to understand Hergé's intentions. Paul Gravett has also noted that the use of detailed reference material and a picture archive, which Hergé implemented from The Blue Lotus onwards, was "a turning point ... in the maturing of the medium as a whole."
   In music, Tintin has been the inspiration to a number of bands and musicians. A British technopop band of the 1980s took the name The Thompson Twins after the Tintin characters. Stephen Duffy, a former member of Duran Duran, performed the minor hit single "Kiss Me" under the name "Tintin"; he'd to drop the name under pressure of a copyright infringement suit. Duffy would later release the album Designer Beatnik under the name "Doctor Calculus" in reference to Professor Calculus. An Australian psychedelic rock band and an American independent progressive rock band have used the name "Tin Tin", and British electronic dance music duo Tin Tin Out was similarly inspired by the character. South African singer/songwriter Gert Vlok Nel compares Tintin to God in his Afrikaans song "Waarom ek roep na jou vanaand", presumably because Tintin is such a morally pure character. Australian cartoonist Bill Leak often portrays the bespectacled neophyte Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd as Tintin.
   Hergé has been lauded as "creating in art a powerful graphic record of the 20th century's tortured history" through his work on Tintin. whilst Maurice Horn's Encyclopaedia of World Comics declares him to have "spear-headed the post World War II renaissance of European comic art". French philosopher Michel Serres noted that the 23 Tintin albums constituted a "" to which "the work of no French novelist is comparable in importance or greatness".
   Tintin has been referenced in The Simpsons episode Husbands and Knives.

Awards

On June 1 2006, the Dalai Lama bestowed the International Campaign for Tibet's Light of Truth award upon the character of Tintin, along with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The award was in recognition of Hergé's book Tintin in Tibet, which the Executive Director of ICT Europe Tsering Jampa noted was "(f)or many ... their introduction to the awe-inspiring landscape and culture of Tibet". In 2001 the Hergé Foundation demanded the recall of the Chinese translation of the work, which had been released with the title Tintin in China's Tibet. The work was subsequently published with the correct translation of the title. Accepting on behalf of the Hergé Foundation, Hergé's widow Fanny Rodwell declared: "We never thought that this story of friendship would have a resonance more than 40 years later".Further Information

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