Tintin in America

Tintin in the News

2010-02-12T17:12:00.002-05:00

Tintin the Reporter Continues to Make News

Tintin, the timeless, ageless boy reporter, created by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé (Georges Remi), hangs onto a place in the news in the United States, a country which has never embraced him as other countries have, because Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are collaborating on three films of his adventures.

The premiere of the first is scheduled for December 23, 2011 (more), with us Tintin fans in the United States hoping that after that film premieres, we will not be so lonely.

Find out about Tintin the terrorist, Tintin in Australia, Tintin in Quebec, Tintin in China (and in a Chinese restaurant), as well as Tintin and Avatar.

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Tintin Meets Thomson, Thompson, and Captain Haddock

2009-06-03T11:50:00.002-04:00

Tintin's Adventures Are Enriched with a Cast of Intriguing Characters

Besides Tintin's dog Snowy, his creator Hergé gives Tintin a circle of companions who reappear in various stories to bring distinct personalities and humor to the tales of Tintin. Hergé was associated with the Boy Scouts throughout his life, and in some ways, Tintin is a squeaky clean perennial Scout, with a Scout's bag of tricks. Need a propeller for an airplane? No problem, Tintin whittles one... and then flies the plane. Got a sick elephant? No problem, Tintin finds a remedy, just to kill time, learns the elephant language... and makes his own trumpet so that he can communicate with elephants in their own medium.

Thomson and Thompson, the two detectives with their bumbling and stumbling, contribute slapstick humor to the stories. That is a humor Tintin could not pull off, and we really do not want him to.

The most enduring and endearing of the all of Tintin's friends is Captain Haddock, a character that Charles Dickens or Mark Twain would be proud to claim. When he is introduced in The Crab with the Golden Claws, he is a ship captain with such alcoholism that he has no idea of the criminal activity in his ship. At the end of the book, as he is recovering, he passes out after accidentally drinking a glass... of water.

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Tintin's War on Drugs

2009-06-03T11:37:00.003-04:00

Cigars of the Pharaoh & the Crab with the Golden Claws

Tintin fought a one-man (or one-boy) war on drugs, ably assisted by his dog Snowy. While drug abuse seems like a modern problem, it has been around for a long time. The fictitious Sherlock Holmes and the real Sigmund Freud shared an addiction (dealt with in the 1976 film, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution - more). The Shadow encountered drug smuggling in the 1937 radio episode, The Temple Bells of Neban. The classic anti-drug film, Reefer Madness or Tell Your Children came out in 1936 (more - and you can watch it online here), not long after Tintin's first (1929-1930) appearance, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (more).

Although Cigars of the Pharaoh (1932-1934) and The Crab with the Golden Claws (1940-1941) are not the only Tintin stories that refer to drug smuggling, both of them center on the issue. Even their titles refer to...

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Tintin on Facebook, Twitter, EBay, Blogs, and Online Forums

2009-04-27T17:06:00.001-04:00

Tintin's Adventures on the Internet

In the twenty-four books that Belgian comic artist Georges Remi, under the penname Hergé, wrote about the indefatigable reporter Tintin (who somehow hardly ever got around to reporting), the one-named hero traveled far, all the way to the moon.

As the Internet has grown, so have Tintin's online adventures. If you are not familiar with Tintin (and that should change in the next couple of years, as we get ready for the release of the first of three Tintin movies by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson), certainly the best way to "meet" him is online. Then, of course, don't forget to read the books.

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Gangsters, Cops, Cowboys, Indians, Tycoons Welcome Tintin to America

2009-04-24T20:50:00.004-04:00

Tintin's American Adventures Are Very Adventurous

In Tintin in America, the third Tintin story, Hergé gets so many things right. Tintin has a very specific purpose in this book. Following his encounter with some of Al Capone's henchmen in the previous adventure, Tintin in the Congo, Tintin comes to America, specifically to Chicago, to clean up Capone's operations at home.

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Acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma,

2009-04-11T21:37:00.001-04:00

Or Tintin goes to the neurologist

We describe the unique case of a public figure who is well known for having delayed pubertal development and statural growth. We believe we have discovered why Tintin, the young reporter whose stories were published between 1929 and 1975, never grew taller and never needed to shave.

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Why Are There Calls for Tintin's Congo Adventure to Be Banned?

2009-04-11T02:00:00.002-04:00

Alleged Racism Still Makes Hergé's Early Story Unpleasant

Ironically, a blogger from Malawi, recently writing to defend Tintin in yet another controversy (here), stated, "Tintin is beloved by many Africans from Malawi, South Africa and all over the world." According to Michael Farr, in his authoritative, Tintin, the Complete Companion (p. 27), Tintin in the Congo is "today the one [of Tintin's adventures] most likely to be encountered in Africa, particularly French-speaking countries where it enjoys special favor."

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Why is Tintin's First Adventure so Controversial?

2009-04-11T01:58:00.001-04:00

Politics Can Still Make Hergé's First Story an Uncomfortable Read

Starving children must declare their allegiance to the communist party to be fed, the communists win an election with guns not votes, and English visitors see what appear to be functioning factories which are just puppet shows. In other words, Tintin, who is arrested and taken to a torture chamber, sees exactly what Hergé's editor, a Roman Catholic priest, wanted him to see in the land of the godless communists.

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Tintin's Adventures Have Already Been Filmed

2009-04-09T15:49:00.004-04:00

Find Tintin on the Internet Movie Database

These are listed in chronological order, with English titles for consistency.

The Crab with the Golden Claws (1947)
Hergé's Adventures of Tintin (television series; 1958 - 1962)
Tintin and the Mystery of the Golden Fleece (1961)
Tintin and the Blue Oranges (1964)
Tintin and the Temple of the Sun (1969)
Tintin et la SGM (1970) - animated promotional short film (not included in IMDB)
Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972)
The Adventures of Tintin (television series; 1991)
The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn (2011)

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Parents, Children: Watch Tintin Films Online for Free

2009-04-08T23:34:00.001-04:00

Jackson and Spielberg Aren't the First to Film Tintin's Adventures

While film fans and Tintin fans anxiously await Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg's 2011 film, The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, you can get ahead of the crowd by watching for free online a number of older films and television series based on Hergé's classic stories of Tintin, the ageless reporter, and his droll canine buddy Snowy (or Milou, in the original French), including the best films in the most nearly complete Tintin series ever made.

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Yes, they are free!

Keep Up with Tintin News, Books, and Films

2009-04-08T23:25:00.002-04:00

Tintin's Adventures in Books and Film Maintain Internet Popularity

Tintin's adventures began eighty years ago, when he first appeared in a conservative Roman Catholic newspaper in Belgium. Tintin was created by Georges Remi, under the penname Hergé (as his initials, reversed, are pronounced in French).

Through twenty-four books (albums, as they are usually called), Tintin rambles around the globe and through the twentieth century with his canine sidekick Snowy (Milou, in the original French), joined by a variety of characters (from an operatic soprano to an abominable snowman) and legions of readers in some seventy languages.

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Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson Bring Tintin Adventures to the Big Screen

2009-04-08T23:21:00.002-04:00

The First of Three High-Budget, High-Tech Tintin Films Premieres in 2011

Steven Spielberg, whose characters range from Indiana Jones to Private Ryan, has dream-teamed with Peter Jackson, who brought the worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to the screen three times (and will return to Middle Earth as producer of two films of The Hobbit), to lens three adventures of Tintin, the most famous comic book character most Americans have never heard of.

Tintin is about to become as big a celebrity in the US, as he is in many other countries, since these two Hollywood legends are throwing amazing technology (and even more amazing sums of money) into a motion-capture trilogy for which the technology of the trans-Pacific collaboration itself is as complex as that of the film.

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The Twenty-four Tintin Adventures

2009-04-08T23:14:00.004-04:00

Georges Prosper Remi (1907-1983), better known by the pen name Hergé, created the character Tintin, who first appeared in 1929. Hergé wrote a total of twenty-four Tintin stories (the last, Tintin and the Alph-Art, was not completed at his death).

He specified that no one else was to write Tintin stories, but due to the popularity of the character, there are quite a few parodies, pornographic versions, and political versions of Tintin, which the Hergé Foundation tries to prohibit.

The following are the English titles of the twenty-four Tintin books by Hergé, with links to articles. The first is available only in black and white; the others are available in color.

Tintin in the Land of the Soviets
Tintin in the Congo
Tintin in America
Cigars of the Pharaoh
The Blue Lotus
The Broken Ear
The Black Island
King Ottokar's Sceptre
The Crab with the Golden Claws
The Shooting Star
The Secret of the Unicorn
Red Rackhams Treasure
The Seven Crystal Balls
Prisoners of the Sun
Land of Black Gold
Destination Moon
Explorers on the Moon
The Calculus Affair
The Red Sea Sharks
Tintin in Tibet
The Castafiore Emerald
Flight 714
Tintin and the Picaros
Tintin and Alph-Art

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Tintin Lives!

2009-04-08T23:07:00.003-04:00

With news of a trilogy of Tintin films by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, I realized that most of us in the United States have no more appreciation for Tintin than we have of soccer. So, with this blog, I hope to change that - about Tintin (I'll leave soccer to someone else). I'll be writing some articles when I can't find the information already available on the Internet, and I'll be pointing you to some unlike Tintin links.

So, welcome. Think of me as Snowy, Tintin's faithful and rather cynical canine sidekick (whether I share Snowy's taste for strong drink, you don't need to know), tagging along on the adventure.