I don’t normally read comics, but the comic albums by Belgian Georges Remi aka Hergé I think are very amusing and very well-made and well-drawn.
Scherp, this journalist and adventurer character Tintin must be something of a national symbol in Belgium? I know that comics on the whole are very big in Belgium too.
Hergé made 24 Tintin albums between 1929 and 1986, the last one was published after his death in 1983. They have been translated in many different languages, but I don’t know if Tintin is very big and well-known in America?
There have also been animated Tintin movies and TV series, and in the early 1960s there was even a couple of movies with real people playing the characters. Young Belgian actor Jean-Pierre Talbot played Tintin in both films. I have these films on DVD and they’re not bad.
Yes he’s popular over here, but in the Flemish, Dutch speaking part of Belgium another cartoon, Suske en Wiske is more popular:
They even have a page in Swedish:
And German:
We call Tintin by the way Kuifje (little forelock, watch his hair); it’s popular here, but it’s more popular in the French speaking part of Belgium, where Hergé is considered as some kind of national (!) symbol, just like Siménon, who created Maigret.
It’s written in French, and although it’s a cartoon, the language used is quite complicated, especially the invectives used by Captain Haddock. Those invectives are even difficult for French speaking people, a few years (actually more than a decade) ago a book was published in french with all of his original lines explained. Most lines you find in modern copies of the Tintin stories have been censored quite a lot: the original texts contained a lot of words and expressions no longer acceptable, because they showed racist tendencies. Hergé was a great artist, but sadly enough he wasn’t a great man: he had some pretty rotten ideas about mankind and society.
Only one Tintin book was really racist (“Tintin in the Congo”) and in later life Herge admitted that it was a mistake. I have read all the Tintin books and I don’t see any “rotten ideas about mankind and society.”
[quote=“John Welles, post:8, topic:1831”]Like I said, John, the books were censored
One other book was completely banned, there are a few old copies in circulation, you’ll probably have to go to Brussels to find one
Of course the books were a product of their times, like Lindberg said[/quote]
I have most of the books and the complete box set of the nelvana produced animated series. Tintin was a curious character. No friends, family, girlfriend or hobbies outside of his adventures.
I´ve allways loved Tintin and now my son does it too, and even more than me. Lindberg, as a swede are you familiar with the tape/LP-versions of the Tintin books? I get to listen to them more or less every day and it´s been so for a few years now… thankfully they´re really good, but we both know almost all dialoge by heart to most of the tapes by now… I think my favorite adventure is the one in Tibet with the Yeti.
The old animated tv-series are quite fun (Belvista i believe the company that made them were called), but to be honest not very well done and also not to close to the original books. I found copies recorded of swedish tv from the early 80s, my youth, and it´s 8 minutes episodes with extensive prologue and credits, they showed it on tv here once a week and i remember how important it was to turn on the tube at the right minute because the show was so short…
The two live action films are ok, but it´s incredible how much the actors resembles the cartoon carachters, got to be seen to be believed!
There also was two animated featurefilms made in 70s/early 80s, i remember going to the cinema as a kid to watch them, the first one Temple of the Sun has some musical numbers in it that i didn´t like (but the voice of Tintin was over here done by a guy who now is one of Swedens biggest sportscommentators) and the second Sharklake (freely translated) wasn´t based on an Hergé book and a bit dissapointing.
Scherpschutter: What was the completly banned Tintin book??
I know many of them were re-done in color and cut down in leght from black and white original books after the war (or something like that). And probably at that time the more unacceptable stuff went out (thankfully). The first one, where Tintin goes to Sovietunion to expose the bolsheviks (about the only time he actually does some working!) didn´t get re-drawn, i guess Hergé figured nothing could save that one, but the black-and-white 120+ pages book was put out here in swedish so i´ve read it. Lots of slapstick and propaganda… is this the banned book you´re thinking of?¨
The Congo book is the only one i don´t have, to be honest wouldn´t want a 10 year old to read it. The tape version is much toned down and the actor playing Tintin actually apologises for the dated views of the story at the end…
[quote=“magnus, post:19, topic:1831”]Scherpschutter: What was the completly banned Tintin book??
I know many of them were re-done in color and cut down in leght from black and white original books after the war (or something like that). And probably at that time the more unacceptable stuff went out (thankfully). The first one, where Tintin goes to Sovietunion to expose the bolsheviks (about the only time he actually does some working!) didn´t get re-drawn, i guess Hergé figured nothing could save that one, but the black-and-white 120+ pages book was put out here in swedish so i´ve read it. Lots of slapstick and propaganda… is this the banned book you´re thinking of?¨
The Congo book is the only one i don´t have, to be honest wouldn´t want a 10 year old to read it. The tape version is much toned down and the actor playing Tintin actually apologises for the dated views of the story at the end…[/quote]
I suppose it was the Soviet book. I don’t remember exactly, but a decade or so ago, there was a furious discussion in Belgium on Hergé and in that period several books were discussed. I know there are still original copies available in Brussels, but you have to pay an awfull lot of money for them. Personally I don’t think it’s too important (like I said he was a great artist) but he was a friend of the Rex-leader Léon Degrelle, one of the worst nazis in Belgian history and unlike people say, he never really apologized for his ideas (he apologized for some parts of Tintin in Africa). A few years ago there were new discussions on the ‘Africa book’: an African student thought it was racist and wanted to have it banned.
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