Tintin thread

[J Ed]

milles sabords! and thundering typhoons!! etc
I gather the Tintin movie is already out in Europe but we still have to wait over here, those few of us who know who Tintin is
I will by definition have to go see the movie, in the same way I had to see the Lord of the Rings movies .... Tintin is my favourite comic book series of all time and was formative in how I see the world and what kind of stories I like to read
thus Im real worried about what Speilberg has done to my favourite character

what are folks favourite Tintin stories? post some pix to show us please in case we've forgotten which stories certain scenes happened in (not me of course, the complete Tintin canon is permamently engraved into my most prized braincells)

for me the highpoint in Tintins career of travel and adventure was the Seven Crystal Balls > Prisoners of the Sun
though when Cigars of the Pharoah was finally translated into English that one rivalled it: it gave reason for a 9years old J Ed to ask "mommy, whats 'opium' mean?"
and also I really like the 2nd last completed adventure Flight 714: I like the ones where he goes underground

[Meandthem]

Great idea, J Ed!
I dig the ones, that continue in two books - "Unicorn", "Chrystal balls", "The moon", but several oneshots are really good adventures, story and drawing-vice, ex. "Ottokar", "Black Island", "Black gold", "Calculus" et al.
Did you get the original "Land of Black gold" i the US?
Or "King Ottokar" and "The Red Sea sharks"...?
Those, for me, were especially great 'cause they were referring to real historical events, that show us Geopolitical inside-knowledge from Hergé...

[danielcaux]

...thus Im real worried about what Speilberg has done to my favourite character

Are you worried about anything in particular?

[J Ed]

two things:
that he'll be pumped up on steroids and know kung fu and grunt things like "this time its personal" and expensive looking props will explode every 5 minutes, just like every other movie made since Star Wars
(actually Tintin does know KungFu, he can knock out big baddies like Dr Muller or Captain Allan, so that part would be authentic)

thing is, with all comic book adaptations, or any other book adapted to the big screen (including Tolkien or Fleming), the filmmakers make a generic cookiecutter blockbuster that loses all the charm of the original, and from that point on all people ever consider is did they like the movie, yes: then I dont need to read the comic, or no: then I already know I wont like the comic because the movie stunk
eg: I have never met a single person who tried reading Tolkien after seeing the film first, not a one
if the source material is any good, its better off the film never gets made

Did you get the original "Land of Black gold" in the US?

I'm in Canada not the States, we got a slightly different Tintin history here
short answer: unless the magazine it was serialised in was distributed in Quebec I doubt the original Land of Black Gold was published anywhere in North America
youre referring to the aborted 1st draft which explicitly placed the story in late 40s later-to-be-known-as-Israel?
was that ever published in book form or just serialised?

in the US Tintin is still little known
I understand someone tried publishing a few volumes in the late 50s with no success
they were heavily censored to cover up Captain Haddocks beverage habits
thing is comics in the states were perceived as something disposable you purchased for a dime, not an expensive looking trade paperback/album as was acepted in Europe
and only a few years earlier there had been a public panic about the comic book industry in general, as a threat to corrupt the nations children, so comics as a format still had an inherently bad reputation, never mind an expensive European comic with extended scenes of alcoholic hilarity

Canada however includes Quebec, which always seemed to have the full Herge canon in every bookstore, including nontintin stuff like Quik & Flupke
and in English speaking Canada we used to have a chain called WHSmith, which I believe was English owned, so we got the English translations as published in England (Methuen) starting in the mid70s
I remember they started with 6 (Black Island, King Ottakars Sceptre, Crab w the Golden Claws, Shooting Star, Red Sea Sharks, and ...in Tibet)then added 4 more every year for the next coupl years ... I dont think American markets got Tintin again until an American publsher picked up the rights years later

[Meandthem]

(...) youre referring to the aborted 1st draft which explicitly placed the story in late 40s later-to-be-known-as-Israel?
was that ever published in book form or just serialised?

Yes, it was published in Denmark in 1960. This is the 2. draft from 1948-50 in the Tintinmagazine, redrawn from the serialized weekly B/W Belgium Le Petite Vingtième Siècles from 1939-40.
And the story was situated in the British protectorate of Palestine with British troops occupying the deserts while Arabic and Jewish civilians are trying to gain power of the land.

[J Ed]

interesting, I'll have to seek it out
I've seen excerpts from it in books about Tintin
and Ive seen upscale facsimiles of most of the original prewar books, before he had his studio redraw them in his latter style
but that one seems to have been changed more than most
theres a pg reproduced on wikipedia

[nosaj]

I can remember having six of those issues for sure in the 70's, quite possibly more. I don't remember any specific stories at this point, but little pieces. Ah, I would love to revisit them all. Mind you, I have been a little nostalgic about my childhood recently.

EDIT: I just noticed what J Ed said about when Tintin came to Canada in the 70's. That makes SO much sense to me. Hmmmm. I am going to have to talk to my mother about this. She always preferred if I read, rather than watch the televisual medium.

[Stephen]

There was a documentary on Tintin shown a couple of weeks ago on the BBC. I found some links to it that might still be available here

[wiped]

There was a documentary on Tintin shown a couple of weeks ago on the BBC. I found some links to it that might still be available here

I watched that documentary - really enjoyed it. It was great to hear about where Herge got his inspiration and how the character / series developed.

Ive always loved Tintin since I was in primary school and our forthnightly school trips to the library would see me make a beeline for the Tintin section over and over again.

I have most of the books and the 75th Anniversary DVD boxset (all of which I made sure to leave lying around my sons bedroom at an early age - he now digs them too).


Haven't seen the movie yet ... I want to and I dont want to ... if you know what I mean.

[J Ed]

that Tintin tv series was made by Nelvana Studios in Toronto, who also made a Babar series
I like the way it adheres so closely to Herge's style, and his plots, its a very faithful adaptation ... Im sure Speilberg will deviate much more on both counts
but its still more fun actually looking at Herge's own page design, how he laid out the individual panels over a page and made the action flow from one to the next
he was one of the early masters at that aspect of cartooning, he worked out the logic which subsequent cartoonists are still working within to this day

first Tintin adventure I ever read was The Black Island when I was about 8
I assumed for years Tintin was from England, maybe because of the publishing information on the 2nd pg of those Methuen volumes?
totally missed the point that almost immediately in the story Tintin takes a ferry across a large body of water from somewhere else to get to someplace called Sussex
at 8 yrs old I had no idea where Sussex was, let alone there was this place called Belgium!
now I look at that story and realise that Tintins movement across England into the periphary of Scotland in pursuit of a foreign criminal organization is very similar to the 39 Steps, a WWI era spy novel writen by John Buchan, later turned into a classic 1930s Hitchcock film
and it would not surprise me if Herge had been so influenced, a lot of his best stories read like spy thrillers

(EDIT: Im not insane, turns out this very point has been discussed in a forum known as Tintinologist.org)

[walter5]

Did you get the original "Land of Black gold" in the US?

I'm in Canada not the States, we got a slightly different Tintin history here
short answer: unless the magazine it was serialised in was distributed in Quebec I doubt the original Land of Black Gold was published anywhere in North America
youre referring to the aborted 1st draft which explicitly placed the story in late 40s later-to-be-known-as-Israel?
was that ever published in book form or just serialised?

in the US Tintin is still little known
I understand someone tried publishing a few volumes in the late 50s with no success
they were heavily censored to cover up Captain Haddocks beverage habits
thing is comics in the states were perceived as something disposable you purchased for a dime, not an expensive looking trade paperback/album as was acepted in Europe
and only a few years earlier there had been a public panic about the comic book industry in general, as a threat to corrupt the nations children, so comics as a format still had an inherently bad reputation, never mind an expensive European comic with extended scenes of alcoholic hilarity

Actually I had one of those hardbacks, "The Crab W/T Golden Claws" when I was a tot of six or seven, Tintin and the Captain fighting Opium smugglers in Algiers or Tangiers, this was back in '67 or so. I got it for a dime at a second-hand store. Big, 12"x18" format, IIRC. It didn't cut the drunken scenes of Captain Haddock, but as a youngster I had no idea what Opium even was. There was another scene where they inadvertantly got high on ether. If I recall correctly, edited versions of the stories ran here in the U.S. in a children's magazine, perhaps it was "Highlights For Children" or "Children's Digest"? I read 'em when I saw 'em in my doctor's office.

I have some trepidation about this film too, although the promos of the film being broadcast here in the U.S. for release on December 21st look pretty promising.

[danielcaux]

The one thing that kind of bugs me is the animation style they are using. That rounded CGI Polar Express "realness" makes everything looks more phony and lifeless instead, like big puppets moving their lips. I think that a more flat and traditional style would have fit better with the material, like the kind they use in the films of Hayao Miyazaki or the Triplets of Belleville

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_LRQ6d9wdc

Something like the original TV series but with higher quality. Of course that won't do these days, now everything has to have volume and look 3Dish.

[J Ed]

well...
...parts of the Tintin film I liked and parts I didnt
the earlier scenes, in Bruxelles and on the boat, I liked most, and these were the ones that stuck closest to Herge
the Spielberg content grew proportionately the closer the film got to the end

the earliest scenes, esp the opening scene in the antique market, were beatifully done and full of injokes for us longtime fans
the caricaturist who draws Tintin at the beginning is Herge, and his past works displayed behind him are characters from various adventures exactly as they were drawn
and all the textures of the rain on the cobblestones, and the interiors of the apartments and libraries and Marlinspike are persuasively detailed, giving the illusion Herge's art has been brought to life

the ridiculous chase scene in Morocco and the crane duel are pure Spielberg and nothing to do with anything Herge would have ever written *
there even is dialog at this point almost exactly like my dreaded "this time its personal" cliche
I seen it argued that Spielberg is a master of the film medium as much as Herge was of his, and this is a film so Spielberg's bag-o-tricks may have been more appropriate ... but I dont buy that, not for those last couple of scenes ... Spielberg could have just done all that stuff with Indiana Jones or some new character and left Tintin to someone more respectful of the source material

anyway I saw it twice already and will of course be in line for the sequel, which will hopefully feature a shark shaped sub

_______________________________________
*Carl Barks, on the other hand, once wrote a story where Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge took out their frustrations on each other with a pair of steamshovels, and Spielberg has borrowed plot elements form Barks Duck stories before

[danielcaux]

the ridiculous chase scene in Morocco and the crane duel are pure Spielberg and nothing to do with anything Herge would have ever written

I just saw the film. That crane duel was easily the lowest point of the movie, ironic given that it was intended as a climax. It bored the hell out of me, and I'm not even familiar with any of the comics or TV plots, so for me its not a problem of non fidelity with the source material.

Overall I didn't like the movie much really. The plot and characters felt really dumb, with all that over redundant expositon. Also the film lacked a compelling rhythm, and the motion captured animation was like watching lifeless puppets waving around their arms in the air.

Just like you I also liked the early scenes with the kleptomaniac over the rest of the film, but ironically I also enjoyed the Morocco chase scene too. Although I gotta say that that scene actually feels more like a videogame than an actual animated movie, perhaps because the complete lack of cuts in a CGI created scene that's so full of action resembles very closely the experience of fluidly following a game sprite that you are controlling over a screen.

Also disapointing it's that the film totally lacks that francophone/european flavor one associates with Tan Tan: the music, the dialogues, all felt very Hollywood american.