The Adventure of TinTin

Reading the entire series of The Adventures of TinTin since Junior High, I was so entertained that I had not realized time had flown. This week, I took a graphic narrative class considering the history of comic books that lectured about pleasures of reading comic books with episodes or series. Then I was assigned to read some specific types of comic books. The Adventures of TinTin was included in one of the lists, so I chose it. It was a nice experience to re-read the book.

The Adventures of TinTin was created by a Belgian cartoonist, Herge. The TinTin series is regarded as a popular Franco-Belgian comic series with the French cartoon, Asteriks. On the 10^th of January in 1929, Herge published the first series of TinTin in The Little Twentieth, called the TinTin in the Land of the Soviets. The story is simple and general; TinTin who is a reporter goes to adventure in the world with his friend dog, Snowy, to help people and fight against antagonists. This concept was attractive to young readers and became one of the reasons why it became a hit.

Before the cartoon became popular and serialized, it started as an anti-communist styled cartoon because The Little Twentieth was a far right styled publishing company. However, since the TinTin in the Land of the Soviets made a hit, Herge changed the setting that TinTin goes everywhere in the world and fight villains. Also, when the author befriended a Chinese international student, Chang Chong-Chen, he created the TinTin series, The Blue Lotus. Since then, more serious and political contents were added to the TinTin series.

For the assignment, I read TinTin in Tibet, which is about a search for TinTin’s missing friend, Chang. The main difference with this series compared to others, is that it features only a few characters.

The TinTin series ended with twenty-four volumes of books because Herge passed away in 1983. Therefore, the final series, TinTin and Alpha-Art, was not completely finished.