For those of you that had the distinct misfortune of growing up without Tintin, it can be one of the most challenging comics to access in adulthood. For one, despite the stylistic complexity that can be found within Herge’s signiature ligne claire style of drawing, the strips can seem overly childish to the casual observer. One can therefore be mistaken in thinking that this is a children’s book. Herge definitely started drawing the strips for children (Tintin premiered in Le Petit Vingtième, a children’s supplement to a Belgian newspaper). But just as other books grew up with their readers (a certain Boy Wizard for example), Tintin outgrew its primary youth audience as the wider public began to see it’s universal appeal. This is especially true of those issues published in the Tintin Magazine - such as my personal favourites and my introduction to the comics - Prisoners of the Sun and The Seven Crystal Balls. However, eventually it transcended even this to become a cultural icon as marketing hit fever pitch in the 1960’s. Readers were even able to buy exclusive groceries if they bought the Tintin magazine!
You can probably tell by now that nostalgia and Tintin go hand in hand. I percieve the first two comics I ever read to be my favourites. And it’s hard to stop this from happening, even when you recognise it happening. Those clean lines and neatly filled in colours transport you back to a time when you were new to the world and percieved it in simpler terms. But this is of course the style that most comics started off with - the Golden Age of comics where drawing styles which could be easily printed on newspaper strips remained dominant. And this nostalgia is nothing new. As Jean-Marie Apostolidès argues in his book “The Metamorphoses of Tintin : or Tintin for Adults”:
It is no exaggeration to claim that Tintin was part of the education of most of the young Francophone boys and girls growing up after the Second World War.
Despite this popularity, some readers have yet to discover the joy of Tintin. This had largely been corrected since the release of Steven Speilberg’s recent film. However, there is still that elephant in the room which prevents most people from approaching Tintin in the modern age. And that is the ideology of Tintin. There is racism, misogyny, violence towards animals - and many other archaic views from the 1920’s. This has been discussed so prominently, that i’m not going to dwell on it here. What I’d like to do is try and convince you to look beyond those flaws. Because, just like each one of us - Tintin held views that they were not proud of in their youth (hands up those of you who converted to Ayn Rand’s Objectivism for a week during their teens). And just like each one of us, Tintin’s views matured over the years as he and his author learnt more of the world and how it works. When you read the comics chronologically, you cannot deny the sense of change that permeates the actions, the styles and viewpoints of the characters - and what that indicated about the author.
So I urge you to confront that elephant in the room, tuck your pants into your socks, grab your faithful dog, your inquisitive mind and be transported across time and space to be part of a truly global literary and artistic phenomenon.