The Adventures of Tintin

Story

Tintin is a brave young Belgian reporter/explorer with a faithful dog, Snowy, who accompanies him on his various adventures. The comics also feature a range of other characters including the irrascible Captain Haddock, the hapless scientist Professor Calculus and the incompetent detectives Thomson and Thompson. Tintin's adventures take him around the world and even into space.

Why we chose it

The Tintin comics are one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. They have been published in more than 70 different languages, as well as being adapted for radio, television, theatre and film. The drawing style is clean and expressive and the plots combine elements of action and thriller genres with slapstick humour. In the stories Tintin travels widely visiting fictional places such as Sydavia and Borduria to real places like Peru, Nepal and China, as well as the Sahara Desert, the Atlantic Ocean and the Moon.

Where it came from

The comics first appeared in strip form in 1929 in a children's supplement of the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. They were then serialised in Belgian's leading newspaper Le Soir, before being published in their own Tintin magazine. They were written and drawn by cartoon artist George Remi who published them under the pen name Hergé.

Where it went next

In 1950 Remi founded Studios Hergé to help with the production of the Tintin stories. This allowed him to focus on writing the stories whilst some aspects of production such as colouring the artwork was handled by his assistants. After Hergé's death in 1983, he requested that the Adventures of Tintin should be discontinued.

Tintin first appeared in English in the weekly British children's comic Eagle in 1951 with the story King Ottokar's Sceptre. The books were also adapted for TV in 1957 and again in 1991

A number of feature films have been made including most recently in 2011 when Steven Spielberg produced and directed a 3D computer-animated adaptation called The Adventures of Tintin.

There is also a wide range of Tintin merchandise.

Associated stories

There are 24 books in the Tintin series. Hergé also wrote another comic strip Quick and Flupke about a pair of naughty Belgian boys and their run-ins with the local policeman.