40 ms·

Tintin, Hergé and Chang

372 points by webmobdev 3y ago

culopatin 3y ago
My mom would read these to me when I was a kid in Argentina. I’m surprised to see it here. It was something I had almost forgotten about. Now I’m curious about how my mom got to Tintin in the first place.
- aaron695 3y ago
  What else is there? The Phantom is more male orientated. Asterix was kinda comical. Marvel and DC to be frank are garbage with no coherent story line. Disney have proven that. Since Tintin was syndicated in newspapers that might be an entry point. But it's huge world wide, it had to be translated from French to English so the system to translate was already set-up. The Tintin store in Singapore is cool. The full set, minus Tintin in the Congo which has to be bought separately, is on Amazon etc - https://www.amazon.com/Tintin-Paperback-Boxed-Set-titles/dp/1405294574 https://www.amazon.com/Tintin-Paperback-Boxed-Set-titles/dp/...
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The closest adventure stories were the “good duck artist” Scrooge McDuck comics - Carl Barks. Followed by Don Rosa’s which may actually be better adventure stories sometimes.
NeutralForest 3y ago
As a Belgian, it is always a surprise to see people from all around the world mention Tintin! I think a lot of us grew up with it as well as The Smurfs, Lucky Luke or "Spirou" and it's only when I was in my teens that I realized most of those were known internationally! Even though I'm in my twenties, I feel like this is one of the truly inter-generational piece of culture we share in a somewhat divided country.
- nborwankar 3y ago
  I remember TinTin from high school in India in the 1970’s.
  - Arnavion 3y ago
    I read them in India in the 90s and 2000s. IIRC the books were imported (price was printed in GBP) and made from very high quality paper, so they were too expensive for us to buy. But the book store owner was a school friend of my parents so he let me read them for free :D
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    It's pretty cool, that these comics have been read so far and for so long. Being from a bit later, I had no idea they were already famous all the way to India.
  - flashgordon 3y ago
    Oh man this brings back memories. Internet was not a thing and I couldn't afford to buy them. So we had these makeshift "libraries" where you can "rent" books. Id pester the owner of the rental to get me particular Tintin/asterix books that my friends had read before me!!
  - indus 3y ago
    In order to not let the copy of Tintin deteriorate—-I would get them bound—-a few of them together. A faint memory recalls that they were in sequence eg. Explorers of the moon after Destination moon!
    - indus 3y ago
      I wish I still had them. All the treasure left behind when I moved to the United States.
  - 8s2ngy 3y ago
    Tintin was, and still is, immensely popular in my part of India. My parents were fond of Tintin while growing up, and they introduced me to it as a child in the mid-2000s. I loved reading the comic books; in fact, I read some of them many times over. One thing I found out later was that the names of the characters are changed across translations. For instance, in Bengali (the language I first read it in), Tintin's pet is called Kuttush, while in English it is Snowy. Anyways, it's interesting to think that one of the things I share in fondness with my parents is a comic book series from a country that is very far away from my own. Art can indeed transcend boundaries.
jeremy_wiebe 3y ago
I remember borrowing Tintin books from my local library in rural Manitoba, Canada! I would get every one that I could transferred to my branch. That was in the early ‘80’s
- nmstoker 3y ago
  Likewise I did so with my local library. There was a natural rotation of the books but some were definitely harder to get transferred!
thealienthing 3y ago
I was big into Tintin as a kid as well in 2000. I checked out library books and eventually began to purchase my own volumes every time we went on a family road trip. My nephews recently found them at my parents and I’m happy to see they are enjoying them as much as I did.
qawwads 3y ago
IMHO Tintin is at his best when dealing with international politic like in Le Lotus bleu, L'Oreille cassée, Le Sceptre d'Ottokar, L'Affaire Tournesol, Au Pays de l'or noir.
- bombcar 3y ago
  I remember really liking that the different areas were really different. Not where everything is basically a copy of Los Angeles.
grandiego 3y ago
A friend of my mother in Peru had those books. I'm fond of my memories about Milú (the dog, not sure about the spelling), the captain, the scientific, the silly detectives, and Tintin. Specially the book about the travel to the moon (in those years the moon was a hot topic.)
- NayamAmarshe 3y ago
  Snowy is the name of the dog, in English at least.
  - EinguterTag 3y ago
    It’s Milou in the original French.
NayamAmarshe 3y ago
I still watch Tintin's animated series and the movie from time to time. They're just so well made, such amazingly adventurous stories. Idealistic guy, always standing up for righteousness, not afraid to be in difficult situations for people who are close to him. Many great moral lessons can be found in Tintin. They're on YouTube so whenever I feel like watching the 'Uncharted before Uncharted was a thing', I put up Adventures of Tintin (1991).
- bigmattystyles 3y ago
  Just don’t read the original version of the Congo one. Even the corrected version to be honest.
  - swores 3y ago
    +1 This was the one Tintin my mum wouldn't let me have as a child - at the time I thought it grossly unfair, and argued that surely she could just point out the aspects that were offensively racist the way she'd point out problematic aspects of anything else she might read to me / introduce to me to read myself. I don't remember the specifics, as it's the only Tintin story I've only read once rather than many times, but when I did read it in my early 20s I immediately told her that I no longer disagreed with her decision to keep it out of the hands of her children.
  - SomeoneOnTheWeb 3y ago
    Quite the opposite. It's very interesting so see how his point of view on strangers and especially black people changed. In an interview, he told his story wasn't racist on purpose ; he truly believed that was how black people were based on the very few informations he had at the time - he never traveled outside of Belgium. When he made the next one with a chinese person, he contacted a student who was originally from China to educate himself on how Asia really was, the culture, the people, etc. And that's how he came up with one of the best books of this career.
    - bigmattystyles 3y ago
bigmattystyles 3y ago
Fun fact, Herge’s real name was George Rémy and his initials backwards are RG or Herge.
underlipton 3y ago
Tangential observation: "I don't understand why diversity in higher education admissions is important." Imagine if Hergé had met a Congolese student before writing "Tintin in the Congo". The atrocities committed in the Congo Free State (which many credibly term a genocide) were in living memory at the time of publishing; the youngest survivors would have been in their twenties. This is an example of how universities often serve a public good for humanity as a whole, far and away from the notion that they exist simply to grab the highest-scoring domestic students possible and shove knowledge and elite connections down their throats. As TFA tells it, Sino-Western relations were altered for the better by Hergé and Chang's encounter and subsequent friendship.
- trompetenaccoun 3y ago
  Hergé never had any higher education. The argument is also questionable in general, because why bring up children segregated and then force "diversity" later? Why don't people push for diversity in kindergartens? By the time someone is grown up they can already be a well developed racist. Also on that note there were certainly plenty of Jews around when Hergé grew up and still he stereotyped them with the typical antisemitic stereotypes of the time. Just because he had a Chinese friend doesn't mean he was any less racist for it. That's a misconception, that's exactly what the US gets terribly wrong these days. Diversity is almost like a religion over there, yet some of the most racist things I've heard were from people that went to those kinds of universities. Racist or not depends on the upbringing, the ideology one follows and generally if one subscribes to the pseudoscientific idea that there are separate human "races". What color people you know does not directly influence that. Else the world's racism could be cured by everyone knowing someone with a different skin color. South Africa is another sad example for how that doesn't work.
  - underlipton 3y ago
    Your contrarianism and pessimism is contradicted plainly by TFA; it is a positive example of higher education playing a crucial role in bringing together people of disparate and diverse expertise and background, who otherwise likely would not have met. I assume that something about my comment has caused you discomfort, and in being unable to argue against its central holding, you've instead invoked several tangentially-related tropes as straw men. I invite you to instead introspect wrt what about my comment caused you such discomfort that you felt compelled to write your reactionary reply.
bazoom42 3y ago
Several Tintin stories were re-drawn and updated by Herge to be more modern, some of them multiple times. The article mention Tintin in Congo, one of the earliest stories. It was later redrawn to tone down the “white mans burden”-vibe, but the redrawn version is still pretty racist by modern standards. And Tintin blows up a rhinocerus with dynamite. In “The Black Gold”, Tintin travels to British Palestine and gets kidnapper by zionist terrorists. In the updated version, it is changed to a fictional Arab country, and there are no Jews involved. The article suggest Chang cured Herge of racism, but this is simplistic. A later album, The Shooting Star, drawn during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, contains some strongly antisemitic stereotypes (obviously removed in the re-drawn version, which also changes the evil Americans into a fictional country). Herge worked for a newspaper friendly to the Nazis, and this was close to destroying his career after the war. Tintin is a brilliant series and I find it fascinating how the changing values and politics are reflected in it.
- trompetenaccoun 3y ago
  Redrawing means erasing the racist history, little by little. Just like they've started to rewrite novels (see the recent Penguin controversy for example). Over time, without the majority noticing, this becomes reality: >Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
  - bazoom42 3y ago
    You can still get the original versions. The market for Tintin completionist is big enough that you can purcase basically every iteration of the Tintin albums. Btw the redrawing were much more than just toning down racism. Eg in The Black Island all backgrounds were redrawn based on careful research to be more realistic and detailed, and cars and trains redrawn to more contemporary models. This was part of Herges evolution from an initially more cartoonish style to the detailed “ligne claire”-style. (Fans debate which version is best) The earlier stories were initially published as newspaper strips, but was later colorized and edited to fit in album format. Note that all edits and redrawings were done by Herge, or by his assistants under his oversigt. After the death of Herge no modifications have been made. Herge didn’t want anyone to continue Tintin ater his death, and amazingly the estate have respected this.
gettodachoppa 3y ago
I didn't know Franco-Belgian comics were so popular outside of french-speaking countries. IMO here are the main differences between Franco-Belgian and American comics: 1. not a single comic (at least the ones written before the Marvel movies began dominating the culture) is about superheroes. Every protagonist is a normal person, though sometimes extremely competent. This results in much more variety in the industry. I'm not sure why they didn't even try to copy the American model if only for business reasons, but I'm thankful for it. 2. Each comic usually gets a single 50-page issue per year. (Seriously, there's a series I've been reading since I was 8, and you can marathon it in a few sittings.) I think this reduces the amount of "filler issues" or low quality churn, as the author has lots of time to get things right. 3. Most of the time the comics are written by the same author, usually the creator of the characters. They're not getting pimped out to every author out there for a run. It makes things more cohesive IMO. My favorite series is Thorgal, by the author of XIII and Largo Winch. It's a fantasy series set at the time of the vikings, with light sci-fi and magical elements. Think of it like Conan but with a non-violent hero. Read issue 9, The Archers, for an standalone story that can give you an idea of what it's like before you commit. It's been running since the 80s, but once the author retired a decade or so ago, some younger guy took over the writing, and you can see the quality of the writing drop off, so I never kept up. But you got 30 years worth of good books, about 35 issues IIRC.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > Every protagonist is a normal person, though sometimes extremely competent. Or extremely incompetent! Gaston LaGaffe springs to mind, it's one of the most endearing and nice comics that I've had the pleasure to read. And in a way Asterix is a superhero. What strikes me about European comics from that era is that they are in general much more interesting culturally.
  - matthewaveryusa 3y ago
    asterix heros are kind of brilliant like that. asterix is like superman but superman has superpowers that can be thwarted by kryptonite while asterix is simply the cleverest gauleois that makes the most out of getafix’s potion (wait, get a fix?? is that a pun I just discovered after 20 years?) On the other hand obelix is a big dummy that always has the potion superpowers (by virtue of falling in a coldron of it when he was young) and is terrible at using his superpowers without the help of the cunning asterix.
trm42 3y ago
Ooh, Tintin is one of the first comics I was introduced after Donald Duck (the Carl Barks stories are still as good as then!) Luckily the Franco-Belgian comics have been readily available in Finland and usually with good translations as well although not all jokes can be translated. From what I've heard, Asterix is notorious on the French wordplays that cannot be translated. There's so much more ideas and humanity in those compared to Marvel/DC stuff (which I happen to read occasionally as well but they are repeating the same stuff from decade to decade). The Franco-Belgian comics are the reason why I'm contemplating on learning French enough to be able read them in the original language. And don't forget that the Metal Hurlant comics anthology affected quite a lot of English comics as well.
- StephenAmar 3y ago
  Let's not forget the Donald Duck comics from Italy. They were huge in France.
  - ttepasse 3y ago
    … and from Denmark. Those pocket books were huge in my childhood in the 80s and findable in multiple european countries so I was surprises to learn later that they weren’t really a thing in the Duck’s origin country.
  - LelouBil 3y ago
    I read a lot of Disney comics when I was 12-15. I don't know in what format people read them overseas but in France I was subscribed to two things : "Le journal de Mickey" (Mickey's newspaper) Which was a weekly 30-35 pages book with two Disney comics and some articles. "Mickey Parade Géant" (don't know a good translation sorry) which was a monthly ~200 pages pocket-sized Book aimed more at 15+ children, it had the best stories imo with reccuring ones. Both of these contained a lot of translated comics from Italy, Spain, etc... But Mickey Parade Géant always had a page before a story which indicated where it was from and a couple of facts about it's authors, sometimes even small interviews ! These stories remind me of all the multiverse stuff going on in movies nowadays, because each time it was the same characters (Mickey, Donald, Goofy...) With (often) the same personalities but in different roles and times ! I remember one where they were all superheroes (Ultra heroes I think), another where Mickey was a reporter in a big city, or one where he was a doctor ( and a bit unfriendly) in a parody of Dr House. I should re-read them all in the correct order someday !
lencastre 3y ago
Shout out to Bric-a-Brac series from Gotlib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubrique-%C3%A0-Brac?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubrique-%C3%A0-Brac?wprov=sft... and an American one called The Spirit from Will Eisner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(comics_character)?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(comics_character)?wpro...
alexdong 3y ago
Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Chongren https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Chongren “Zhang had been a street sweeper during the Cultural Revolution,[1] before becoming the head of the Fine Arts Academy in Shanghai during the 1970s.”
rubenv 3y ago
All this love for comics from Belgium and nobody mentioned the great Michel Vaillant?
cubefox 3y ago
I remember reading those comics as a kid. They always felt special in a way that e.g. Spirou didn't. I think the article is right that the relatively higher amount of realism was one thing that set these comics apart. Also their "international" approach, with Tintin traveling around the world to investigate. Some of them were written like action/crime thrillers aimed at adults. The TV series was also pretty good. I still remember the dramatic intro with Tintin jumping from a train on a bridge into a river: https://youtube.com/watch?v=APrxbp3zpBw https://youtube.com/watch?v=APrxbp3zpBw The more recent Tintin movie by Spielberg was also great. It had blockbuster vibes entirely comparable to Spielberg classics like Indiana Jones, but he kept it close enough to the source comic. Unfortunately Peter Jackson never made the second part.
desi_ninja 3y ago
How is The Wire news publication(India) still in business after their Meta/Facebook fake news debacle last year ? https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425377/the-wire-subject-deception-member-team-meta-india https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425377/the-wire-subjec...
- dundarious 3y ago
  Probably for the same reasons that most research institutions continue to exist after a researcher commits major academic fraud.
  - desi_ninja 3y ago
    If you read through entirety it, the journalist was thrown under the bus and the editor was saved. Classic VW vibes.
fuzztester 3y ago
King Ottokar's Sceptre is a good one in the Tintin series.
amir734jj 3y ago
I'm a 30 year old male and I still read Tintin comics.
Jun8 3y ago
Tintin is fantastic, as a little kid I learned so much about the world from those. On related note, anyone here familiar with the following Italian comic book series? I grew up reading these, esp. Zagor: * Martin Mystère - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Mystère https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Mystère * Mister No - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_No https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_No * Zagor - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagor_(comics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagor_(comics)
mav88 3y ago
>Fans of the Adventures of Tintin comics by Hergé will remember the opening scene in Tintin in Tibet. Tintin has dozed off during a game of chess with Captain Haddock in a crowded café. He suddenly yells, “CHANG!!” so loudly that everyone in the restaurant jumps! Hah. I just reread Tintin in Tibet recently and that panel is genius. Everyone in the restaurant jumps out of their seat with the exception of Professor Calculus who is course too deaf to hear.

372 points by webmobdev 3y ago

My mom would read these to me when I was a kid in Argentina. I’m surprised to see it here. It was something I had almost forgotten about. Now I’m curious about how my mom got to Tintin in the first place.

aaron695 3y ago
What else is there? The Phantom is more male orientated. Asterix was kinda comical. Marvel and DC to be frank are garbage with no coherent story line. Disney have proven that. Since Tintin was syndicated in newspapers that might be an entry point. But it's huge world wide, it had to be translated from French to English so the system to translate was already set-up. The Tintin store in Singapore is cool. The full set, minus Tintin in the Congo which has to be bought separately, is on Amazon etc - https://www.amazon.com/Tintin-Paperback-Boxed-Set-titles/dp/1405294574 https://www.amazon.com/Tintin-Paperback-Boxed-Set-titles/dp/...
- bombcar 3y ago
  The closest adventure stories were the “good duck artist” Scrooge McDuck comics - Carl Barks. Followed by Don Rosa’s which may actually be better adventure stories sometimes.

NeutralForest 3y ago

As a Belgian, it is always a surprise to see people from all around the world mention Tintin! I think a lot of us grew up with it as well as The Smurfs, Lucky Luke or "Spirou" and it's only when I was in my teens that I realized most of those were known internationally! Even though I'm in my twenties, I feel like this is one of the truly inter-generational piece of culture we share in a somewhat divided country.

nborwankar 3y ago
I remember TinTin from high school in India in the 1970’s.
- Arnavion 3y ago
  I read them in India in the 90s and 2000s. IIRC the books were imported (price was printed in GBP) and made from very high quality paper, so they were too expensive for us to buy. But the book store owner was a school friend of my parents so he let me read them for free :D
- agumonkey 3y ago
  It's pretty cool, that these comics have been read so far and for so long. Being from a bit later, I had no idea they were already famous all the way to India.
- flashgordon 3y ago
  Oh man this brings back memories. Internet was not a thing and I couldn't afford to buy them. So we had these makeshift "libraries" where you can "rent" books. Id pester the owner of the rental to get me particular Tintin/asterix books that my friends had read before me!!
- indus 3y ago
  In order to not let the copy of Tintin deteriorate—-I would get them bound—-a few of them together. A faint memory recalls that they were in sequence eg. Explorers of the moon after Destination moon!
  - indus 3y ago
    I wish I still had them. All the treasure left behind when I moved to the United States.
- 8s2ngy 3y ago
  Tintin was, and still is, immensely popular in my part of India. My parents were fond of Tintin while growing up, and they introduced me to it as a child in the mid-2000s. I loved reading the comic books; in fact, I read some of them many times over. One thing I found out later was that the names of the characters are changed across translations. For instance, in Bengali (the language I first read it in), Tintin's pet is called Kuttush, while in English it is Snowy. Anyways, it's interesting to think that one of the things I share in fondness with my parents is a comic book series from a country that is very far away from my own. Art can indeed transcend boundaries.

jeremy_wiebe 3y ago

I remember borrowing Tintin books from my local library in rural Manitoba, Canada! I would get every one that I could transferred to my branch. That was in the early ‘80’s

nmstoker 3y ago
Likewise I did so with my local library. There was a natural rotation of the books but some were definitely harder to get transferred!

thealienthing 3y ago

I was big into Tintin as a kid as well in 2000. I checked out library books and eventually began to purchase my own volumes every time we went on a family road trip. My nephews recently found them at my parents and I’m happy to see they are enjoying them as much as I did.

qawwads 3y ago

IMHO Tintin is at his best when dealing with international politic like in Le Lotus bleu, L'Oreille cassée, Le Sceptre d'Ottokar, L'Affaire Tournesol, Au Pays de l'or noir.

bombcar 3y ago
I remember really liking that the different areas were really different. Not where everything is basically a copy of Los Angeles.

grandiego 3y ago

A friend of my mother in Peru had those books. I'm fond of my memories about Milú (the dog, not sure about the spelling), the captain, the scientific, the silly detectives, and Tintin. Specially the book about the travel to the moon (in those years the moon was a hot topic.)

NayamAmarshe 3y ago
Snowy is the name of the dog, in English at least.
- EinguterTag 3y ago
  It’s Milou in the original French.

NayamAmarshe 3y ago

I still watch Tintin's animated series and the movie from time to time. They're just so well made, such amazingly adventurous stories. Idealistic guy, always standing up for righteousness, not afraid to be in difficult situations for people who are close to him. Many great moral lessons can be found in Tintin. They're on YouTube so whenever I feel like watching the 'Uncharted before Uncharted was a thing', I put up Adventures of Tintin (1991).

bigmattystyles 3y ago
Just don’t read the original version of the Congo one. Even the corrected version to be honest.
- swores 3y ago
  +1 This was the one Tintin my mum wouldn't let me have as a child - at the time I thought it grossly unfair, and argued that surely she could just point out the aspects that were offensively racist the way she'd point out problematic aspects of anything else she might read to me / introduce to me to read myself. I don't remember the specifics, as it's the only Tintin story I've only read once rather than many times, but when I did read it in my early 20s I immediately told her that I no longer disagreed with her decision to keep it out of the hands of her children.
- SomeoneOnTheWeb 3y ago
  Quite the opposite. It's very interesting so see how his point of view on strangers and especially black people changed. In an interview, he told his story wasn't racist on purpose ; he truly believed that was how black people were based on the very few informations he had at the time - he never traveled outside of Belgium. When he made the next one with a chinese person, he contacted a student who was originally from China to educate himself on how Asia really was, the culture, the people, etc. And that's how he came up with one of the best books of this career.
  - bigmattystyles 3y ago

bigmattystyles 3y ago

Fun fact, Herge’s real name was George Rémy and his initials backwards are RG or Herge.

underlipton 3y ago

Tangential observation: "I don't understand why diversity in higher education admissions is important." Imagine if Hergé had met a Congolese student before writing "Tintin in the Congo". The atrocities committed in the Congo Free State (which many credibly term a genocide) were in living memory at the time of publishing; the youngest survivors would have been in their twenties. This is an example of how universities often serve a public good for humanity as a whole, far and away from the notion that they exist simply to grab the highest-scoring domestic students possible and shove knowledge and elite connections down their throats. As TFA tells it, Sino-Western relations were altered for the better by Hergé and Chang's encounter and subsequent friendship.

trompetenaccoun 3y ago
Hergé never had any higher education. The argument is also questionable in general, because why bring up children segregated and then force "diversity" later? Why don't people push for diversity in kindergartens? By the time someone is grown up they can already be a well developed racist. Also on that note there were certainly plenty of Jews around when Hergé grew up and still he stereotyped them with the typical antisemitic stereotypes of the time. Just because he had a Chinese friend doesn't mean he was any less racist for it. That's a misconception, that's exactly what the US gets terribly wrong these days. Diversity is almost like a religion over there, yet some of the most racist things I've heard were from people that went to those kinds of universities. Racist or not depends on the upbringing, the ideology one follows and generally if one subscribes to the pseudoscientific idea that there are separate human "races". What color people you know does not directly influence that. Else the world's racism could be cured by everyone knowing someone with a different skin color. South Africa is another sad example for how that doesn't work.
- underlipton 3y ago
  Your contrarianism and pessimism is contradicted plainly by TFA; it is a positive example of higher education playing a crucial role in bringing together people of disparate and diverse expertise and background, who otherwise likely would not have met. I assume that something about my comment has caused you discomfort, and in being unable to argue against its central holding, you've instead invoked several tangentially-related tropes as straw men. I invite you to instead introspect wrt what about my comment caused you such discomfort that you felt compelled to write your reactionary reply.

bazoom42 3y ago

Several Tintin stories were re-drawn and updated by Herge to be more modern, some of them multiple times. The article mention Tintin in Congo, one of the earliest stories. It was later redrawn to tone down the “white mans burden”-vibe, but the redrawn version is still pretty racist by modern standards. And Tintin blows up a rhinocerus with dynamite. In “The Black Gold”, Tintin travels to British Palestine and gets kidnapper by zionist terrorists. In the updated version, it is changed to a fictional Arab country, and there are no Jews involved. The article suggest Chang cured Herge of racism, but this is simplistic. A later album, The Shooting Star, drawn during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, contains some strongly antisemitic stereotypes (obviously removed in the re-drawn version, which also changes the evil Americans into a fictional country). Herge worked for a newspaper friendly to the Nazis, and this was close to destroying his career after the war. Tintin is a brilliant series and I find it fascinating how the changing values and politics are reflected in it.

trompetenaccoun 3y ago
Redrawing means erasing the racist history, little by little. Just like they've started to rewrite novels (see the recent Penguin controversy for example). Over time, without the majority noticing, this becomes reality: >Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.
- bazoom42 3y ago
  You can still get the original versions. The market for Tintin completionist is big enough that you can purcase basically every iteration of the Tintin albums. Btw the redrawing were much more than just toning down racism. Eg in The Black Island all backgrounds were redrawn based on careful research to be more realistic and detailed, and cars and trains redrawn to more contemporary models. This was part of Herges evolution from an initially more cartoonish style to the detailed “ligne claire”-style. (Fans debate which version is best) The earlier stories were initially published as newspaper strips, but was later colorized and edited to fit in album format. Note that all edits and redrawings were done by Herge, or by his assistants under his oversigt. After the death of Herge no modifications have been made. Herge didn’t want anyone to continue Tintin ater his death, and amazingly the estate have respected this.

gettodachoppa 3y ago

I didn't know Franco-Belgian comics were so popular outside of french-speaking countries. IMO here are the main differences between Franco-Belgian and American comics: 1. not a single comic (at least the ones written before the Marvel movies began dominating the culture) is about superheroes. Every protagonist is a normal person, though sometimes extremely competent. This results in much more variety in the industry. I'm not sure why they didn't even try to copy the American model if only for business reasons, but I'm thankful for it. 2. Each comic usually gets a single 50-page issue per year. (Seriously, there's a series I've been reading since I was 8, and you can marathon it in a few sittings.) I think this reduces the amount of "filler issues" or low quality churn, as the author has lots of time to get things right. 3. Most of the time the comics are written by the same author, usually the creator of the characters. They're not getting pimped out to every author out there for a run. It makes things more cohesive IMO. My favorite series is Thorgal, by the author of XIII and Largo Winch. It's a fantasy series set at the time of the vikings, with light sci-fi and magical elements. Think of it like Conan but with a non-violent hero. Read issue 9, The Archers, for an standalone story that can give you an idea of what it's like before you commit. It's been running since the 80s, but once the author retired a decade or so ago, some younger guy took over the writing, and you can see the quality of the writing drop off, so I never kept up. But you got 30 years worth of good books, about 35 issues IIRC.

jacquesm 3y ago
> Every protagonist is a normal person, though sometimes extremely competent. Or extremely incompetent! Gaston LaGaffe springs to mind, it's one of the most endearing and nice comics that I've had the pleasure to read. And in a way Asterix is a superhero. What strikes me about European comics from that era is that they are in general much more interesting culturally.
- matthewaveryusa 3y ago
  asterix heros are kind of brilliant like that. asterix is like superman but superman has superpowers that can be thwarted by kryptonite while asterix is simply the cleverest gauleois that makes the most out of getafix’s potion (wait, get a fix?? is that a pun I just discovered after 20 years?) On the other hand obelix is a big dummy that always has the potion superpowers (by virtue of falling in a coldron of it when he was young) and is terrible at using his superpowers without the help of the cunning asterix.

trm42 3y ago

Ooh, Tintin is one of the first comics I was introduced after Donald Duck (the Carl Barks stories are still as good as then!) Luckily the Franco-Belgian comics have been readily available in Finland and usually with good translations as well although not all jokes can be translated. From what I've heard, Asterix is notorious on the French wordplays that cannot be translated. There's so much more ideas and humanity in those compared to Marvel/DC stuff (which I happen to read occasionally as well but they are repeating the same stuff from decade to decade). The Franco-Belgian comics are the reason why I'm contemplating on learning French enough to be able read them in the original language. And don't forget that the Metal Hurlant comics anthology affected quite a lot of English comics as well.

StephenAmar 3y ago
Let's not forget the Donald Duck comics from Italy. They were huge in France.
- ttepasse 3y ago
  … and from Denmark. Those pocket books were huge in my childhood in the 80s and findable in multiple european countries so I was surprises to learn later that they weren’t really a thing in the Duck’s origin country.
- LelouBil 3y ago
  I read a lot of Disney comics when I was 12-15. I don't know in what format people read them overseas but in France I was subscribed to two things : "Le journal de Mickey" (Mickey's newspaper) Which was a weekly 30-35 pages book with two Disney comics and some articles. "Mickey Parade Géant" (don't know a good translation sorry) which was a monthly ~200 pages pocket-sized Book aimed more at 15+ children, it had the best stories imo with reccuring ones. Both of these contained a lot of translated comics from Italy, Spain, etc... But Mickey Parade Géant always had a page before a story which indicated where it was from and a couple of facts about it's authors, sometimes even small interviews ! These stories remind me of all the multiverse stuff going on in movies nowadays, because each time it was the same characters (Mickey, Donald, Goofy...) With (often) the same personalities but in different roles and times ! I remember one where they were all superheroes (Ultra heroes I think), another where Mickey was a reporter in a big city, or one where he was a doctor ( and a bit unfriendly) in a parody of Dr House. I should re-read them all in the correct order someday !

lencastre 3y ago

Shout out to Bric-a-Brac series from Gotlib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubrique-%C3%A0-Brac?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubrique-%C3%A0-Brac?wprov=sft... and an American one called The Spirit from Will Eisner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(comics_character)?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_(comics_character)?wpro...

alexdong 3y ago

Wikipedia entry: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Chongren https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Chongren “Zhang had been a street sweeper during the Cultural Revolution,[1] before becoming the head of the Fine Arts Academy in Shanghai during the 1970s.”

rubenv 3y ago

All this love for comics from Belgium and nobody mentioned the great Michel Vaillant?

cubefox 3y ago

I remember reading those comics as a kid. They always felt special in a way that e.g. Spirou didn't. I think the article is right that the relatively higher amount of realism was one thing that set these comics apart. Also their "international" approach, with Tintin traveling around the world to investigate. Some of them were written like action/crime thrillers aimed at adults. The TV series was also pretty good. I still remember the dramatic intro with Tintin jumping from a train on a bridge into a river: https://youtube.com/watch?v=APrxbp3zpBw https://youtube.com/watch?v=APrxbp3zpBw The more recent Tintin movie by Spielberg was also great. It had blockbuster vibes entirely comparable to Spielberg classics like Indiana Jones, but he kept it close enough to the source comic. Unfortunately Peter Jackson never made the second part.

desi_ninja 3y ago

How is The Wire news publication(India) still in business after their Meta/Facebook fake news debacle last year ? https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425377/the-wire-subject-deception-member-team-meta-india https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425377/the-wire-subjec...

dundarious 3y ago
Probably for the same reasons that most research institutions continue to exist after a researcher commits major academic fraud.
- desi_ninja 3y ago
  If you read through entirety it, the journalist was thrown under the bus and the editor was saved. Classic VW vibes.

fuzztester 3y ago

King Ottokar's Sceptre is a good one in the Tintin series.

amir734jj 3y ago

I'm a 30 year old male and I still read Tintin comics.

Jun8 3y ago

Tintin is fantastic, as a little kid I learned so much about the world from those. On related note, anyone here familiar with the following Italian comic book series? I grew up reading these, esp. Zagor: * Martin Mystère - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Mystère https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Mystère * Mister No - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_No https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mister_No * Zagor - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagor_(comics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zagor_(comics)

mav88 3y ago

>Fans of the Adventures of Tintin comics by Hergé will remember the opening scene in Tintin in Tibet. Tintin has dozed off during a game of chess with Captain Haddock in a crowded café. He suddenly yells, “CHANG!!” so loudly that everyone in the restaurant jumps! Hah. I just reread Tintin in Tibet recently and that panel is genius. Everyone in the restaurant jumps out of their seat with the exception of Professor Calculus who is course too deaf to hear.