Tintin

An adolescent with no known family, Tintin is a reporter by trade. In fact he is an adventurer as much as a detective. Although he is available, he is not looking for adventures, they come to him, just by chance.Courageous, he never hesitates to confront with the forces of evil, protecting the weak, the minorities and the oppressed. Ingenious, reasonable and reasoning, with all his modesty and practical sense, he is the antithesis of the super-hero.

“Tintin is probably the strangest character in the history of the strip cartoon. Unlike the majority of cartoon heroes, he has no particularly remarkable characteristic. True, he is intelligent, astute, quick-witted and almost invincible.. But when one examines him more closely, it is his unreality which is most startling.Take the name for a start. In neither French nor English does it mean anything. Is it a first name or a surname?Next look at his round face with only little dots for eyes and mouth and a small button of a nose. The only distinctive feature is the celebrated quiff.

Then there is his profession, one which except in the very first book we never see him exercise. Tintin is not a typical reporter.He has no real age; sometimes he seems to be a child, at other times an adolescent, but generally he behaves like an adult.. His sexlessness is also noteworthy. At no time does he have a girlfriend, or do marriage plans interfere with his adventures.Strictly speaking, he is characterless. This could be seen as a weakness, but that would be a basic misunderstanding of the great coherence of Hergé’s world. In fact this is the neutrality of the hero which is the key element of the books’ success.

It is this lack of personality which enables him to change from having been a colonialist in 1930 to taking sides with guerillas in 1975 without any feeling of contradiction.As a neutral character he fulfills marvelously the essential role of a hero of a cartoon series, allowing readers scope for identification. This enable anyone, whether boy or girl, young or old, French or Japanese, the chance to live the extraordinary adventures of Hergé’s books.And around his neutral hero, Hergé could over the years add a whole collection of richly coloured, often type cast characters. In this way the series of adventures could be enriched, gaining variety and intensity while, thanks to Tintin, retaining that immediacy which makes them so very readable. ”


From TINTIN and the World of Hergé, Benoît Peeters, Pub. Little, Brown and Company

http://www.tintin.com/uk/perso_fr/tinti_fr.html