I have no idea what this is about because its in Italian but it appears to be a Donald Duck and Tintin crossover.

The People Having Sex blog has a post up on Comic Characters Having Sex. It features some information on Tintin parodies that I wasn’t aware of plus Asterix and Smurf porn. WARNING: Not Safe For Work (NSFW) – Contains nudity and sex.

Herge’s style of drawing for Tintin became know as Ligne Claire and became quite popular amongst European comic artists in the 1950s. Few artist use it today, partly because it is a style heavily linked with Tintin, however Peter van Dongen does and this excellent illustration was done by him for a Tintin fanzine.

You can find more of his work on The Ephemerist along with more about the illustration above.

Why, despite being over 50 years old, hasn’t Tintin grown up and reached puberty? Because of traumatic pituitary injury according to Canadian neurologists.

The research team successfully identified 50 significant losses of consciousness in 16 of Tintin’s 23 books. Of these, 43 incidents involved head trauma with loss of consciousness representing grade 3 concussions. Tintin sustained 26 concussions resulting from a blow with a blunt object. The most frequently used object was a club (8 times). Other causes for the subject’s loss of consciousness included bullet injury (3), chloroform poisoning (3), explosions (4), car accidents (3) and falls (2).

… We hypothesize that Tintin has growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism from repeated trauma. This could explain his delayed statural growth, delayed onset of puberty and lack of libido.

The full study, Acquired growth hormone deficiency and hypogonadotropic hypogonadism in a subject with repeated head trauma, or Tintin goes to the neurologist, is available from Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Over on the Live Journal Tintin community Boy Reporter, user Smidgeroo has combined their love of Tintin and their love of dolls in this:

More photos and discussion here.

More about the Tintin and racism row

Belgium state prosecutors are investing the complaint of a Congolese that Tintin in the Congo contravenes the countries racism laws. Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu, a political science student at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, said:

“This book should be banned. Belgian school children should not be exposed to this kind of racist commentary. It is propaganda for colonialism.”

See the Daily Telegraph for more background.

Association of Editorial Cartoonists

So someone noticed that Tintin in the Congo is racist.

Not bad, only seventy years after its publication the Commission for Racial Equality has commented on Tintin in the Congo. I expect to see a statement attacking the anti-Semitic nature of Mein Kampf soon. This is what the CRE had to say:

A hundred years ago it was common to see negative stereotypes of black people. Books contained images of ’savages’, and some white people considered black people to be intellectually and socially inferior.

Most people would assume that those days are behind us, and that we now live in a more accepting society. Yet here we are in 2007 with high street book shops selling ‘Tintin In The Congo’. This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ’savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles.

Whichever way you look at it, the content of this book is blatantly racist. High street shops, and indeed any shops, ought to think very carefully about whether they ought to be selling and displaying it.

Yes, it was written a long time ago, but this certainly does not make it acceptable. This is potentially highly offensive to a great number of people.

It beggars belief that in this day and age that any shop would think it acceptable to sell and display ‘Tintin In The Congo.’

The only place that it might be acceptable for this to be displayed would be in a museum, with a big sign saying ‘old fashioned, racist claptrap’.

I’m a white middle class anglo-saxon so avoid commenting on race issues because I know nothing about them but here the CRE has gone for a mindless, knee-jerk reaction. A reaction that is as ill-conceived as Daily Mail readers harping on about ‘Political Correctness Gone Mad’ whenever the government clamps down on genuine racism. The CRE want to ban the book because ‘potentially highly offensive to a great number of people’. Of course we would not find anything else that might offend a great number of people in book stores, such as religious tracts or pornography.

The biggest mistake is that the Commission for Racial Equality are missing the uplifting, anti-racist story of Herge’s own life. Born and brought up in a society that saw all non-whites as being sub-human Herge at first reflected those beliefs in his early works like Tintin and the Congo. However Herge’s eyes were opened by his friendship with the artist Chang Chong-jen. Ever since Tintin and the Blue Lotus Herge worked hard to depict the non-white peoples in a positive light. Rather than making stupid remarks about Tintin and the Congo the CRE should celibrate the life of Herge as an example of how we can all change and become more accepting of others.

Capt. Haddock – The first drunk astronaut. – BoingBoing

Poppy, a west highland terrier, was on Tuesday named the winner of Bone Idol, a contest to find a local dog to appear in the stage production of Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin. – Terrier to play Tintin’s sidekick

Tintin fans turn up in the most unlikely places – When the stars refused to come out

Tintin & Herge history and trivia – Edmonton Journal

Tintin Flea Market

See Tintin for Christmas – Tintin comes to London for Christmas

Tintin book gets US publisher – TINTIN AND THE SECRET OF LITERATURE