Jun 10, 2003 02:50 PM
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(Updated Jun 10, 2003 02:52 PM)
When I wrote a review on My Favourite Childhood Books, I could not resist putting up something on another one of my all-time favourite characters. I first read a Tintin adventure exactly 17 years and 8 months ago. I remember this clearly because it was the time my Amma was in hospital to deliver my brat sister. The adventure was the The Secret of the Unicorn and it was at my cousin’s place and I wouldn’t part with the book when I had to go back home!! It was that fast – love at first sight.
Author’s background: Belgian author Georges Remi signed his cartoons as Hergé, a derivative of his initials ‘RG’. He had contributed some cartoons to a boy scout’s magazine and the character was called Totor. Years later, when he was later appointed as the editor of a weekly supplement for children, he was dissatisfied with the comic strips that were being published for the kids and he decided to bring out Totor again. Totor was reworked into an American cartoon style with speech bubbles and also got a fox terrier as a companion. Thus, in 1929 were born Tintin and Snowy and also the Adventures of Tintin. Hergé’s personal favourite among all the adventures he devised for the boy-reporter was Tintin in Tibet because that’s the one in which he put the most of himself. The character Chang in this particular title was based on a real friend Chang Chong-Chen who introduced him to the Eastern way of life, symbolism, telepathy and the world inside a human being. While the fictional character disappears, the real-life Chang and Hergé were reunited in 1981. Chang’s influence on Hergé is reflected in some of the books.
Hergé died in 1983 of pulmonary failure.
Let’s meet Hergé’s most loved creation – Tintin and his oddball friends, four-legged and otherwise. I’ve arranged them in their frequency of appearance in the series/collection of Tintin books.
Name: Tintin
Age: anywhere from 14-16 yrs. (actually quite ageless!)
Occupation: Supposedly a reporter (however, he does everything but report to a paper), he prefers solving mysteries wherever he can find them (which is almost anywhere).
What I like: He is adorable. Quite street-smart, can find his way out of most scrapes except when not falling into trouble due to his own curiosity. Opposes wrong-doers on principle. Often has this befuddled expression when he is thinking hard. And he has the funkiest hair-do, even before Beckham thought to popularise it. Ole’ carrot-top is definitely hero material.
Name: Snowy
Age: Unknown
Occupation: Following Tintin around, chasing rabbits the moment he lays eyes on them, same goes for birds and copping free spilt liquor and being the goofiest terrier in fiction.
What I like: He is so dumb you can’t help but love him. He reminds me of the cross-eyed poodle at my aunt’s place in Kerala and is as klutzy as they come. He is especially funny when he is drunk; then he has an imagination that makes the reader laugh out loud. Loyal as his kind is famed to be, he sticks by Tintin and has also brought his pal out of trouble a time or two.
Name: Captain Haddock
Age: Somewhere on the wrong side of 40
Occupation: Drinking, yelling colourful inventive invectives, threatening violence at every available instance (reminds me of me; methinks Haddock is a Leo)
What I like: For all his bombastic histrionics, the man is a marshmallow at heart. He cries when he is drunk! And he runs when songstress Bianca Castafiore is anywhere around! It’s comical to watch him try to escape the singing sensation [vaise, it is pretty hard to dodge a determined woman, fiction or real-life; what say, Fatcat? ;)] I love his epithets: ‘Thousands of Thundering Typhoons”, “Billions of Blistering Blue Barnacles” – the captain loves alliteration! And he is funny, rib-ticklingly funny when he is drunk (which is actually his preferred state of existence).
Name: Professor Cuthbert Calculus
Age: Definitely over the hill, but still spry for his 60 plus years
Occupation: Scientist (mad or not is for you to conclude)
What I like: He is rather absent-minded and this state of affairs causes such howlarious situations. And he is a little hard of hearing and sometimes tends to give in to bouts of paranoia. But he is pure GENIUS when he is not being silly. Catch him in his element in The Seven Crystal Balls.
Name: Detectives Thompson and Thomson – Twins
Age: 40-ish
Occupation: Detectives (but you wouldn’t know it judging by their bumbling, fumbling in most cases)
What I like: They have a penchant to appear in the most outrageous, howl-inducing costumes that are presumably disguises. They just end up drawing more attention to themselves. And they are klutzes of the first order – always falling down stairs and stepping in things they shouldn’t be stepping in. They always lose their luggage if they are flying anywhere.
Name: Signora Bianca Castafiore
Age: Somewhat around Captain Haddock’s
Occupation: Singing (favourite line of hers – ‘AAAAH! My beauty past compare…’), chasing after Captain Haddock
What I like: She believes Haddock (and the rest of the world, while we are at it) is in love with her for either her beauty or her voice. She is portrayed as the stereotypical shrewish diva who takes all her privileges for granted, especially her poor assistant Irma. And of course, she creates new names for Haddock – BedSock, PickPock, Tintack (when she is confusing him with Tintin), HatPin, Hadcock, Paddock, etc. The lady never seems to be able to remember the name of the poor, beleaguered captain.
Contd. in Comments.....sorry about that :)
