The Adventures of Tintin (
French:
Les Aventures de Tintin) is a series of comic albums created by
Belgian cartoonist
Georges Remi (1907–1983), who wrote under the pen name
Hergé. The series was one of the most popular
European comics of the 20th century. By the time of the centenary of Hergé's birth in 2007,
Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies.
The series first appeared in French on 10 January 1929 in
Le Petit Vingtième, a youth supplement to the Belgian newspaper
Le Vingtième Siècle. The success of the series saw the
serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper
Le Soir and spun into a successful
Tintin magazine. In 1950, Hergé created
Studios Hergé, which produced the canonical series of twenty-four
Tintin albums.
The Adventures of Tintin have been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film.
The series is set during a largely realistic. 20th century. Its hero is
Tintin, a young Belgian reporter. He is aided by his faithful
fox terrier dog
Snowy (
Milou in the original French edition). Later, popular additions to the cast included the brash and cynical
Captain Haddock, the highly intelligent but hearing-impaired
Professor Calculus (French:
Professeur Tournesol), and other supporting characters such as the incompetent detectives
Thomson and Thompson (French:
Dupont et Dupond) and the opera diva
Bianca Castafiore.
The series has been admired for its clean, expressive drawings in Hergé's signature
ligne claire ("clear line") style. Its well-researched
plots straddle a variety of genres: swashbuckling adventures with
elements of fantasy, mysteries, political thrillers, and science
fiction. The stories feature slapstick humour, offset by dashes of
sophisticated satire and political or cultural commentary.
- Source wikipedia