For 90 years, fans all over the world have enjoyed the adventures of a plucky boy reporter and his faithful fox terrier as they smash spy rings, solve murders, and generally make nuisances of themselves to public enemies and ne'er do wells. All the world, that is, except in America.
I first encountered Tintin in the pages of Children's Digest magazine. Back in the 70s, Children's Digest was the spin-off magazine for kids as they outgrew Humpty Dumpty. I remember little else about the magazine, except for Tintin. Each month, I would eagerly grab the new issue and turn right to the middle and dive in. A single story was neatly divided into ten installments, often with gut-wrenching cliffhangers.
I was approaching my teens when I discovered The Adventures of Tintin in its original form ... a Life magazine-sized full color graphic novel. My jaw hit the floor. Tintin in full color! The story was "The Secret of the Unicorn," a dandy tale of lost treasure, pirates, and evil antique dealers. Well, two out of three ain't bad!
On the back cover was a listing of all of the different publishers in all the countries in the world that had the reprint rights to these tales, penned by Belgian artist Georges Remi, who signed his work "Herge." To my surprise, this lad was an absolute superstar everywhere but here. Kinda like soccer.
Tintin is a trenchcoated reporter whose closest companion is his fox terrier, Snowy (or Milou, in the original French). Snowy is never seen on a leash, but always trotting along by his master's heel. Tintin's friends include a boisterous, liquor-loving sea salt Captain Archibald Haddock, the hard-of-hearing scientist Professor Calculus, and Chaplinesque twin detectives, Thomson and Thompson. By the way, they are indeed the inspiration for the 80s pop band The Thompson Twins.
Recurring villains include the diabolical Doctor Muller, Arab insurgent Bab El Ehr, and evil film director Rastapopoulos, who is secretly the head of an international group of gangsters.
Other characters drop in and out of Tintin's adventures on a recurring basis, such as opera singer Bianca Castafiorre, who has a crush on Haddock but difficulty in remembering his name; merchant Olievera de Figuera; and Jolyon Wagg, an overbearing tourist who basically barges into stories without purpose or warning.
In the early 90s, HBO and a Canadian production company joined forces and adapted each of the Herge books to animated episodes, extremely faithful to the artwork of the stories, and the popular series is available on DVD.
So who else is a fan of these books? None other than Peter Jackson, who grew up with the stories from childhood. Also Steven Spielberg, who was approached by a Tintin fan at a screening of "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Spielberg was told that Indiana Jones' escapades reminded him of Tintin. Intrigued, the director found a Tintin graphic novel in a French bookstore. While he couldn't read the dialogue, he was amazed to realize that he could follow the story simply by studying the pictures.
Spielberg was determined to direct a Tintin film, and even met with the ailing Herge to secure his blessing. He got it, but realized (after getting some test footage from his pal Jackson, dressed as Captain Haddock and dancing with a CGI Snowy) that the technology did not yet exist for him to be able to make the film the way that he wanted ... by designing characters that looked like Herge's. And certainly, a real dog was out of the question. No real canine can do what Snowy needs to do in the stories.
In 2011, the technology was there, and so were Spielberg and Jackson. Peter produced, and Steven directed "The Adventures of Tintin," the first motion picture to be shot natively for 3D. It's a spectacular re-telling of "The Secret of the Unicorn," wisely jettisoning the evil antique dealers. Daniel Craig portrays the evil Red Rackham, and the Marlon Brando of motion-capture, Andy Serkis, is Captain Haddock. Available on streaming networks, on DVD AND Blu-Ray, it's not to be missed. It is the first of a planned trilogy, with Jackson slated to direct the sequel, with Spielberg producing. As with everything else Tintin, the movie was a smash everywhere but here.
"The Adventures of Tintin" were recently republished in smaller-sized hardback books, three to a volume, which can be had for a very reasonable price on Amazon. But my advice is to seek out the original formats ... single story books, roughly the size of a LIFE magazine ... to truly appreciate the loving detail of Herge's artwork. Pay close attention to the detail ... the sight gags that sometime take place BEHIND the action. These tales will delight the child in all of us, or the children in our lives.
Happy birthday, Tintin! Here's to 70 more!
