Tintin Meets Thomson, Thompson, and Captain Haddock

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

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

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

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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Keep Up with Tintin News, Books, and Films

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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The Twenty-four Tintin Adventures

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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