Figure 1.--Tintin is seen here in his trade-mark long knickers with some of the strip's main characters.

The most famous Belgian boy literary character is Tintin, the comic character created by author Hergé. The Tintin books are the most well known comics for French-speaking children, as Hergé says from 7 to 77 years. The name of Hergé has been made out of author's reversed initials (R. G. pronounced in French "air-jay")--Georges Rémi (1907-1983). Hergé as a young boy was a devoted Boy Scout and actually started his career in comic strips by publishing comics in Scouts magazines. His first book, Tintin au pays des Soviets ( Tintin in the land of the Soviets) was published 1930 and his last book, Tintin et les Picaros in 1979. In total Hergé published 23 books, translated into 45 languages, sold 180 million copies.

Character

Tintin is a teenager without a known family. He works as a reporter. In fact, it is adventurous as much as detective. Although ready for adventures, Tintin never seeks these: they always come to him as by chance. Courageous, he never hesitates to face the forces of evil, while defending the weak, minorities, and oppressed. Clever, reasonable and arguer??, he is, by his modesty and his sense of concrete, all the opposite of a superman. He is most probably the strangest character of all the history of the comic strip. In opposition to the majority of the heroes, he is indeed not characterized by any particularly remarkable feature. Admittedly, he is intelligent, astute, fast and almost invincible. It is by its almost total unreality that strikes us if one takes the trouble to examine it more closely. An unreality which makes of him, well more that an anti-hero, a kind of pure abstraction.

Figure 2.--Tintin is seen here in his trademark knickers on one of his many adventures. Click on the image to see more of Tintin's various adventures.

Figure

Observe his face: this round face where mouth and eyes are only points, this head that very few situations manage to animate and that touch of the famous bunch of hairs manages that gives him his unique particularity. If one considers his profession, except in the first album, one will never see him being an actual reporter. Tintin is a reporter, but what is a reporter if not a relay, a reflection, a pure mediator who carries from one point to another information that he is only temporarily the holder? It should be concluded: Tintin is nothing. He does not have a true age: sometimes it seems he is still a child, other times one believes to see in him a teenager, most of the time his behaviors evoke those of an adult. Not only the stories of the albums of Tintin are well built and captivating, reflecting a social reality that Hergé actually analyzed at the time of many voyages, but also the decoration is invariably of a meticulousness and an unusual exactitude in the comic strips.

The name Tintin has been kept as is in most translations except in below languages where it became: Afrikaans: KUIFIE, Dutch: KUIFJE, German: TIM, Esperanto: TINCJO, Greek: TENTEN, Iranian: TAINETAINE, Islandic: TINNI, Japanese: TAN TAN, Latin: TINTINUS, Russian: TAHMAH, Turkish: TENTEN. Interestingly while most of the world use "Tintin" or a cognate, in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking area of Belgium) he is known by the Dutch "Kuifje". Incidently, a 'kuif' (of which kuifje is a dimunitive) means a forelock.

Clothes

Tintin usually wore knickers. In fact over time they became his trade-mrked outfit. Normally they were long knickers bloused just a little above the ankles. This would be what an older boy night wear in Belgium during the late 1920s and 30s. Younger boys wore short pants. Tennagers by the time they were 15 or 16 would commonly wear knickers. We note images of European boys wearing knickers just like the ones worn by Tintin. While this changed as time progressed, Tintin's clothes were never updated. The storylines were updated, but not Tintin's fashions. Sometimes Tintin wore garments typical of the country where the story takes place.

Characters

Milou, the little dog, kind of shadow of Tintin, bringing many touches of humor. Captain Haddock, famous for his extraordinary swearwords Professor Tournesol, an imaginative scientist... Dupond (D) and Dupont (T) the two detectives appearing and acting like twins although not at all brothers. In the attached illustration I gathered the main characters that can be found in every single adventure, although there are many others that reappear in several stories. These are the names in the French speaking areas of Belgium. All characters in Dutch speaking Flanders have different names (which is not always the case with strip figures, e.g. many characters in Disney strips have a different name in Holland and Flanders!) Dupond and Dupont = Janssen en Jansen Milou = Bobby professeur Tournesol = professor Zonnebloem (Tournesol = Zonnebloem = Sunflower).

Movies

Several films have been made about the famous Belgian reporter-detective from the cartoon series. HBC has noted several stills from the films. We do not know, however, what the actual titles are or what the plots were. They appear to be be very low-cost productions. As films they have little merit, but because they feature one of Belgium's pop-culture icons they are of some importance. They also often feature children. HBC has, however, no information on the costuming. Often in low-budget European films, the children wore their own clothes rather than being costumed. I do not know if this was the case in these films. Tintin has different names in different countries. In neighboring Netherlands he is "Kuifje". As explained above, "Kuifje" is also used in Flanders. We know one film was made in the late 1960s.

Created: April 17, 2001
Last updated: 2:22 AM 2/18/2006