A must read for everybody. Review on The Adventures Of TinTin - Herge

Dear reader,

For Tintinologists, Tintin is a cult. It is a religion. The fact that it is a series of comics is easily forgotten. For them Tintin is joy in its purest form.

Things like joy cannot be expressed using words. After all words would be a really ineffective medium for that.

And Tintin comics are very unlike the normal picture we form in our minds when we hear the word ''comics''. There are no caricatures, no cheap quality paper, bad drawings, lousy coloring, silly dialogues and so on.

The illustrations are very neat and clean. If you notice the expressions on the faces of the characters, you can easily make out who are the good men and who the bad. You will really enjoy the beauty of the colors used in the drawings.

There are several things that make Tintin memorable for everyone. Even though the stories were written by the Belgian Georges Remi several decades ago, you will be stunned by the air crafts, ships, cars, wireless communications and all other technological advances of that day. Even today they seem mind boggling.

And what engaging plots? The wikipedia article expresses it best. There is mythology, politics, international diplomacy, humor, histories of countries, science, technology and what not.

And there are 22 of Tintin stories. Most of them are of exactly 62 pages. Each page ends with a curious and suspenseful picture egging you on to find out what happens in the next page.

By repeating the character cast Herge effectively relates to the reader. Because each character has certain specific characteristics that are consistent. Most of the characters are used for humorous purposes.

Though the original version is in French( Belgium has French as one of its official languages), the English translations are also marvellously done. The language is pithy and hard hitting. With with help of carefully crafted drawings, the dialogues make wonderful reading.

The pace is evenly distributed and humour is often very witty and intelligent. So you never feel that the author is digressing. I think the consistency of the plot, the nature of the characters, the impeccable drawings and excruciating attention to factual accuracy and detail, these things make Tintin stand out. Most of the stories begin with Europe and take you round the world. There is a good deal of the middle east, little bit of India and America. And most stories have a part that involves sea travel which make very interesting reading.

Even the pictures of trains, ships , air crafts, sea planes, tanks and cars are all very meticulously done based as much on contemporary design and technology. Herge has been so attentive to detail that right from number plates on cars to Arabic , Hindi, Chinese , German and other languages very rarely used for the effect even they are supposed to be correct. Why? Even such side characters as the train's driver who is assaulted by the villain in the Black Island was drawn after referring to the photograph of a train driver in real life.

Now let us take a look at the galaxy of Tintin characters. There is of course Tintin who is the hero, a smart young guy who knows how to drive trains, air crafts, helicopters and tanks. He is of very short height and young age and is of modest physique, he most often uses his brain rather than brawn for fighting his adversaries. Other characters include captain Haddock, the inveterate drunkard and sailor who talks only about whiskey , the absent minded professor Calculus, Tintin's dog Snowy(originally named Milou (after Herge's well endowed girlfriend) in the French version, the two bungling detectives Thomson and Thompson and various other antagonists and interesting characters like Rastapopoulous, Castafiore , Joylon Wagg and so on.

It is really hard to do hair splitting and say which story I like the most. I read most stories again and again and again sometimes without a break. The one I have read the most is 'The black island.'

Many people feel that 'The prisoners of the Sun' is the best. I love ''King Ottokar's skeptre'' also.

I don't so much like science fiction and hence haven't read the ''Destination Moon'' and ''Explorers on the Moon'' recently. ''Tintin in America'' deals with the Chicago underworld of that time, when Al Capone was alive. ''Cigars of the pharoah'' has a good deal of India. Even ''Tintin in Tibet'' has a section in which captain Haddock bumps into someone in Delhi and he scolds him in Hindi.

I sometimes wonder how Herge with his limited traveling around the world knows so much about each country and its culture and landscape with just newspaper cuttings and hearsay.

His picturisation of India and Indians have been very accurate in my opinion.

Due to Herge's honest portrayal of the characteristics of various races and nationalities, many people think that Herge is racist or at least that he changed his racial views in his later stories. Somehow I never understood what people mean. I have never felt even once that way.

Many people wrongly think that Tintin is children's comics. It is true that many people get intitiated into it as children but I read them even today. As I said before it is a very different comics indeed.

I bought the entire set through https://fabmart.com for Rs.3800 three years ago. Each story costs around Rs.200.

You can get it from various other bookstores. I have seen hardbound books with three stories. But I prefer the original dimension with 62 pages.

Another noteworthy aspect being that there is not a single superfluous word, nay there is not a single syllable or punctuation out of place in the dialogues. And the quality of the language, the appropriateness of the word or phrase or idiom used for a particular expression all these reveal Herge's genius.

I can go on but I have to stop somewhere.