Things Have Changed

My first comic was Tintin Flight 714. It was the first “book” I ever got into. Things quickly spiraled from there: I discovered ebay, found my mom’s credit card, and soon lost internet privileges. Many years have since passed, but I still have a series of posters from Explorers on the Moon on my dorm walls. Reading Cigars of the Pharaoh and Tintin in America was the first time I opened a Tintin comic in at least nine years. I was taken aback by how different it was from what I imagined. Here’s what stuck out:

Detail and cleanliness in each frame

• These comics are long. Yet Hergé maintains clean, detailed images throughout each frame. His techniques are relatively simple: detailed backgrounds and simple, identifiable characters (I still don’t know how old Tintin is). Tintin’s pants remain the same shade throughout both comics, yet the background will shift drastically from frame to frame.

 Pace

• The comics are packed with non-stop action. There’s not a page where Tintin comes up with a quick, usually flawless plan to escape whatever danger he falls into. Every page. Hergé’s movement falls into this. The use of motion lines creates flawless movement. Again, a simple technique creates detailed and complicated affects (pg 32 has some good movement). The pictorial “movement” makes the story progress rapidly. 

 Humor

• Thompson and Thomson are awesome. I don’t think I ever appreciated their witty back-and-forths. Snowy has similarly droll, and sometimes edgy, remarks, especially since we’re the only ones that can hear what he’s saying. That being said, there is a lot of dialogue in these comics, but they contribute well to the pace of the story.

 Racism

• Granted, this series is from half a century ago. I apparently didn’t recognized the blatant racism during my first go-through. At the time, this was probably the norm, but I was still surprised when to see the Native Americans called “Red Skins” or to see the a Spaniard speaking rudimentary English on pg 36. Later, in Cigars of the Pharaoh, a man in blackface appears out of nowhere, and is later seen carrying out orders from his “master.” Again, this was not unusual practice for the time, but is odd to see nonetheless, since I always viewed Hergé as my hero.