By popular demand, the highly praised Travels of a Boy Reporter has returned. This map tracks the journey of Tintin in his 23 adventures across the world.

Download & Print

The map is available as a download for just £10. Once you’ve downloaded it you are free to use it how you wish (non-commercially only). Print it out, have t-shirts made, use it as your computer’s desktop. You are free to use it however you want.

It comes in a variety of sizes ranging from the small 480×320 pixels, suitable for an iPhone, to the huge 6679×4722 pixels, suitable for an A1 poster.

Find out more about the map or skip to chase and buy it now.

High resolution graphics with license to print and use the map for any non-commercial purpose.

I love screenshots. And posts on screenshots. So I was quite pleased when I found these.  Let’s check them out!

Like most of what these characters do in the game, it appears Tintin will only be able to do this in the game. Who cares HOW it works, Tintin being able to fly will be fun.

There’s a small chance that this COULD be Castafiore’s parrot…who knows? Please no long write ups on that idea though…

I love Marlinspike! Even after having been to the palace Marlinspike Hall was modeled off of, I still am looking forward to actually ”walking around in Marlinspike”. If you read my write up on the second trailer, I am now sure that what looked like the back of the mansion to me before is actually the front of it.

It seems whether you are in Marlinspik, Morocco or on the Karaboudjan, Tintin will always have a super tall ventilation shaft to slide down and pounce on somebody from. I can just see myself hanging there, waiting for the bad guy to be just within my reach…

You could debate about how some of the other shots were taken, but this one is clearly straight from gameplay. It´ll be cool if they use the platform style game to let Tintin shoot bullets in certain spots at just the right angle that then have to deflect off of something, destroy a pipe,etc. I for one will have lots of fun with that option.

One of the men working on the game recently told us we wouldn’t be killing people in this game, only knocking them out. So far that seems about right, at least for the most part. While many cartoons have little stars over their heads when a character is hurt, Hergé certainly used that idea and it´s great to see them in the game.

I love the graphics on the rocks and pillars. Sure, we cna admit they aren´t the graphics of Assassins Creed revelations or anything like that, but they still look great and will make for something fun to look at while we have fun playing the game.

The dust around Tintin´s feet is handled nicely as well. Will this be a clip, or one of those levels like the motorcycle level where we just keep moving forward?

It seems Tintin is about to become a bit of a MacGyver: anything around him can be used to knock someone out or get him out of danger, from bananas to bottles. On the other hand, the awesome level design looks like it will also have conveniently placed targets and things like that on the wall for Tintin to hit with whatever he finds…

The page says these pictures do not apply to the wii version of the game. Most of the time Wii games get a different treatment, but I haven’t heard anything about that and don’t know how much good it’d do on a platform game anyway.

Source: http://www.gamershell.com/all/the_adventures_of_tintin_the_game/

After my last post on the Tintin exhibit in Madrid, the owner himself left a comment here and was willing to send us scans of the missing page of Tintin in the Picaros. Hergé had finished the entire album when he discovered that he had one extra page. This was the most appropriate page to take out. It must have pained him to get rid of it because, as you are about to see, it took him a lot of work to complete. Thank you so much ”guardiadetroya” for sending us these scans. They are also available in the Spanish book ”El mundo imaginario de Tintin”, which is also on display in Madrid. The page, like any page from a Tintin album, went through multiple stages. If you read ”Tintin and the Alph-Art” you’ll recognize the first few stages. The first thing Hergé did was draw a basic sketch in ink of what happened in the page, along with a few key words in talk balloons.  Personally, I love Hergé’s style of sketching his characters. I especially love the expression the villain makes in the third line down when he raises his eyebrow, deep in thought.

After he had the first draft completed, he completely redrew everything in pencil, this time with more detail. The page shows us how the villain walks in and threatens to destroy Tintin just like he would destroy his glass( sorry, last time I said it was an icecube…it’s just a glass. Ice might have made more sense actually, come to think of it…). But his glass bounces off the floor and smashes the  very whiskers of Kurvi-Tasch off the ruler’s bust (”Pleszky-Gladz” in the original French). The guard laughs uncontrollably and is scolded, but when the villain realizes that he could tell other people that he had broken the mustache off, he gives the guard the position he wants and tells him to punish ”the cleaning lady who broke the bust”. The message gets across.

The page is now cleaned and drawn in black ink. Back in Tintin’s earlier black and white adventures, the process finished here and only needed the words added. The beginning of this page is strikingly similar to when Rastapopoulos threatens to kill Tintin like he would kill a spider…that later gets away with no trouble. When will these villains ever learn?

But of course by now Tintin had to be in color. And so Hergé once again drew the page in fine blue ink (so fine it doesn’t show up in the scan below) and then painted over it. Finally he drew the black lines.  

Finally, after all that work, another one of Hergé’s famous ”ligne claire” style pages is completed. And it never even made it in the album! At least it made it here.

For those of you who don’t speak french, here is a fan made English translation of the page:

Very special thanks to the owner for sending us these scans. Something I found very interesting is that he himself made several of the items on display, for example, the box of cigarettes in my last post from ”The Calculus Affair”. He also made these awesome ”Syldavian” stamps, which are also on display. I collect stamps, and I think this is a very good idea.

I can relate to this because when I was little I made this hideous little Tintin out of paper mache, similar to crafts you might see on Art Attack. Even though his head is massive and one hand is huge next to his other, I still have him. Why? Because he’s part of my collection. Anybody with a little bit of creativity could do stuff like this. Sure, the Tintin shop online is awesome. But there are more options. You don’t need a lot of money to have a cool Tintin collection. If anybody out there feels inspired to create a cool Tintin craft based off of something from the albums, you might just get it posted online.

If any of  you readers live in Spain but can’t make it to the exhibit in Madrid, the owner is interested in moving his collection around. At least I assume just inside of Spain, but I guess that’s up to him. Anyway, if you are interested in seeing it, leave a comment, he’s sure to see it there.

Do any of you readers live anywhere near Madrid? I don’t know why you would, but in case you do, there’s a Tintin treat in store for you in the Gran Via de Hortaleza  Mall, right outside the Mar de Cristal metro stop on the Brown metro line. On display in the mall are a series of collectible Tintin items from the collection of a true Tintinologist. Among the objects on display were a copy of the world’s first edition of Tintin in Tibet, a copy of ”German Research in World War II” seen in the Calculus affair, and copies of Tintin books in every language from Vietnamese to Latin. Since many of you don’t live in Madrid, and I do, I was more than happy to go check out this display and see if anything there was worth a blog post. This post looks long but it really isn’t! It just has a lot of large photos. By the way I would appreciate it if you would look at them, because I was informed half way through taking them that photography was not allowed in the mall. Not to be left with an unfinished post, I evaded guards and risked imprisonment just so you could get a taste of the display.

It’s free, and consists of about 10 glass boxes with collector’s items in them running along a hallway on the ground floor. The first one I saw covered Tintin in the movies, and had a few copies of the movie books based off the two live action films. 

Above: a frame from the stop motion film ”The Crab with the Golden Claws”, the movie book for ”Tintin and the Golden Fleece” and the first Spanish hardcover ”Tintin and the Lake of Sharks” album version.

There was a bit m0re related to Tintin in the media.

From left to right: a copy of ”Destination adventure”, 2 DVD’s from the 90′s series,  a copy of ”Tintin and the blue oranges” on DVD, an advertisement for the film, and the movie book in french.

A large amount of the collection was related to Tintin trivia, which I love. Did you know that there was an extra page from ”Tintin in the Picaros” that was never published?  Hergé apparently didn’t like it and never included it in the album. The entire page is a conversation between two main villains from the book, and a comical sequence where the mustache of an important bust is broken off by a piece of ice. I guess Hergé decided, and rightly so, that leaving this in would stress credibility…The display had a copy of the missing page in every stage from draft to final product. I have zoomed in only on the final page.

The display also showed a copy of a ”fake” page completed by two of Hergé’s coworkers, Bob de Moor and Jacques Martin. Four years after ”The Castafiore Emerald” Hergé hadn’t even started a new album. The public wanted something new, and so did the newspapers. So while Hergé was on holiday in Sicily, the two created a fake page with Haddock and Tintin in an airplane, telling the papers ”a new album is on it’s way!”. It was only supposed to be a gag, but it gave Hergé some grief when he had to apologize to the world and reveal that the page wasn’t real. How could Hergé just smash the world’s hopes and leave them with nothing? He was suddenly forced into making a new album, Flight 714.  Fans have since added color to the page:

Hergé used a real book as a model for ”German Research in World War II” from The Calculus Affair. To settle further doubts to the lazy question ”Was Tintin a Nazi?”, Hergé wouldn’t even include the swastika from the cover in his album.

On the bottom right are the cigarettes from ”The Calculus Affair”. Bottom left is the book seen in The Calculus Affair. This book directly inspired the sound weapon, and almost definitely inspired the paint job for the moon rocket. In the back is a very collectible copy of the first edition of ”Tintin in Tibet”

I could hardly believe my eyes at the end of the display when I saw this board game, which I just posted about recently but with my ”Mille Bornes” post but had never seen in my life. Such a coincidence is almost characteristic of  one of Hergé’s albums!

But what really blew me away was the fact that behind a nice statue of Tintin and Snowy running was the very ”Travels of a Boy Reporter” Tintin map Chris Tregenza has worked so hard on, hanging up on the glass! The last thing I had expected to find at the display was anything related to this site. Apparently the owner of this great collection is a fan of this site. Well, if you are reading this, Tintinology hopes you will continue to follow this blog for years to come. And Chris, you can rest happy that your map has become popular among Spanish tintinologists and is deemed as a valuable part of one’s Tintin collection. Do check it out if you haven’t seen it already.

Source: http://www.naufrageur.com/a-bob-planche_bidon.htm

According to ”The Wall Street Journal” Calculus will be a playable character in the next Tintin game:

The game has three modes, including the co-operative, story and challenge mode, and they divide play into exploration, combat and solving puzzle phases. In the co-operative mode, live players can drop in an out of the game dynamically and play any of six characters, including Tintin, Captain Haddock, Thompson and Thompson (who act as one character), Professor Cuthbert Calculus, Bianca Castafiore and even Snowy. Each character has unique skills like Tintin who can shoot a grappling hook or opera diva Castafiore who can dispatch enemies with her windy contralto.

This is either fake or true. It could easily be fake if they simply took the list of popular Tintin characters and assumed that they would be in the game. But that seems unlikely because they give details about Castafiore’s and the Thompson’s that they would only know if they either saw it or were told. So it seems there is confirmation Calculus will at least show up in the video game this year.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Calculus will be in the movie. I’m being forced to be patient with people online who still make comments such as ”I was hoping Tintin would be in live action when I watched the trailer” and ”Where is Calculus?” years and months after us fans have answered and given good theories on these questions. For those of you who don’t know, Calculus has not been cast as far as we know. His main role in the story was to invent a shark submarine to let Tintin explore the sunken Unicorn. But it looks like the story may not focus on the finding of the Unicorn itself but of the treasure that was actually at Marlinspike or wherever they chose to put it in the movie the whole time. Almost all of ”Red Rackham’s treasure” is fun to read but would make for a kind of boring movie. After all there are no villains and they never find anything but an idol, the ship and some rum. It makes total sense to cut to the chase and leave that part out of the movie, bringing Calculus in to the sequel as possibly one of the explorers from Peru.

To what degree is it OK to expect the Bird Brothers to be in the movie because they are in the game and not believe Calculus will be? Now I’m not sure what to think. Maybe both are in the film, maybe they were just added to the ”expanded” Tintin video game for the fans sake’s. I’ll wait for the movie to come out before i make too many conclusions.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/06/09/tintin-breaks-out-into-3-d-at-e3/?mod=google_news_blog

I’m alive!!! I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it sooner! How is it the one day I know the trailer is coming out I HAD to be away from my computer for diverse reasons nearly all day? It was torture guys, torture! I see from the comments that you have all seen it already. I love the one comment that wonders if I died of shock. I laughed so hard!

Actually nearly every Tintin Movie fan on the planet must have seen this by now, but for those of you who haven’t, here are the biggest news since they announced the making of the Tintin movie all those years back: the Tintin Teaser Trailer is out!!!

Two slightly different versions were created. I prefer the one below because of a few extra seconds of footage included and the way the dramatic music starts. Believe me, I tried everything to get the YouTube link to show the video on this blog (except, apparently, whatever I need to do to get it to work). I’ve been trying for an hour! Anyway, if you hit the link below it will take you to the HD video, which is worth a full-screen watch anyhow.

Official International Tintin Trailer

Since I hope you’ll want to watch it again, check out Empire’s version here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWRA6v7UAS8&feature=player_embedded

Time to over analyze

Sorry guys, but I just had to. I know we’ve been dying to see it all in motion, but just for analysis sake let’s go back over the whole trailer’s most notable frames:

Could Snowy possibly look any better in this image? Great way to introduce Tintin and Snowy.

At the end of the video we get our clearest ever shot of Tintin’s face. It took me a bit by surprise at first, but the more I watch the trailer the more it grows on me. It looks wonderful. While in physical appearance he looks more human than Hergé’s Tintin (but come on, if they had tried to pull off his nose for this movie he would have looked totally ridiculous…) he has the same feel. He’s somewhere between being a man and a boy, but nobody knows just how old he looks. He looks heroic but at the same time not quite an adult yet. But unlike so many children’s stories that just make the villains look like complete idiots so that children can be the stars of the show, all of the formidable villains in the series respect and in a sense almost fear Tintin. Whether because of his reporter status or because of his fame in stopping crime, the villains talking at the end know who Tintin is.

The model unicorn looks so good it almost looks like a real image. Weta Digital never ceases to amaze me. Don’t miss snowy and Tintin in the reflection. Apparently Tintin isn’t finding the model ship quite the same way he does in the book. But I don’t think this is the same Unicorn you see later in the dark scene with the flashlight. My money is on this being the one Tintin gets, and the other is somebody else’s Unicorn

Tintin’s street!  It looks just like his street in the books. The car really reminds me of  something Hergé would (or did) draw.

If I had to pick, this just might be my favorite part of the whole trailer. I couldn’t stop laughing!  I love this idea. This says something for how funny the Thompson ”Twins” will be in the film.

Silk looks just as great as ever. This should make for a great chase scene.

Here we find two characters that were never even in the same album originally: Sakharine (the guy who wanted to buy the Unicorn from Tintin) and Allan. But it seems Allan will be substituting the weaker Bird Brothers as the main villain in this story, and Sakharine made it on the Karaboudjan somehow with him as well. Another prisoner?

I am certain they put Haddock in this so little just because I said I was looking forward to seeing him in this yesterday.  This is the only time he appears, and you can barely see him. But what we can see of him looks EXACTLY like he should, so I’m happy.

The seaplane flies off to take down Tintin and Haddock!  Insert dramatic John Williams music here! (Of course, we all know the trailer music was not John William’s music, but I can’t wait to hear what he does with this scene).

The Karaboudjan in all it’s glory. (By the way the spell check loves that word. Anybody have any idea why it thinks it’s similar in any way to the word Paraboloidal? Ha ha ha…).

The unlucky guard appears to later be asked by Allan ”How could you let them escape?”. Not sure how he’ll answer to Allan, but we in the audience know it happened after Snowy bit the poor thug’s arm and then Tintin punched him half way across the ship. Go Tintin!

A friend watching the trailer with me for the first time said ”Wow! That’s not how I remember that in the book, but…I like this more!” I completely agree with him.  Although we’re really stressing credibility when it comes to Tintin SURVIVING that crash, the crash itself is totally awesome. Hey, the plane did crash in the desert. Let’s let Hollywood have fun with that!

The Unicorn sailing into…the desert…?

Actually, the sea itself is COVERING the desert,and the Unicorn is sailing on that. I still think that it’s just a dramatic transition between the two settings, not really a shot of the Unicorn crashing into the desert. Maybe Haddock tells the story of his ancestor while the two are walking in the desert, hence the transition. Or maybe it’s a hallucination?

Look familiar anybody? This is the exact same scene that we got one of our early images from of Barnaby standing in the door. Sorry to spoil it for you guys, but it looks like Barnaby comes to leave a warning, and then gets shot from behind. He falls down right there in the doorway and Tintin races after the culprits in their awesome blue gangster car…I guess the lesson here is that Tintin should have invited Barnaby inside to have a seat instead of pointing a gun at him to let him get shot in the back…but hey, he didn’t know.

This could explain the warning sentence from the beginning. It could be Barnaby, or it could be Haddock. I think the voice could fit for both characters, but especially Haddock. I really like Tintin’s voice. I was a little worried that it would have a strong accent I didn’t like or wouldn’t match the character, but the voice matches perfectly.

The characters look great throughout the entire video. I don’t care what anybody on YouTube says, they do not look creepy or ugly like some people who love to hate anything they see. For starters the effect isn’t as bad as haters say it is in the movies that do have the Uncanny Valley effect, but the real thing here is that the images simply don’t have that. I would much rather look at these characters than, say, Andy from Toy Story 3.

It’s interesting that both in the posters as in the trailer, the subtitle was not included, but it was in Cannes.

Finally, the trailer is almost everything we could have dreamed and hoped for, and the little bit left out is simply what makes it a teaser trailer.  Anything that used to look unnatural looks fine in motion, just as we expected. I said I would give it a chance, and having seen the trailer I will definitely be going to see this in full Imax 3D when it comes out.  For being 1:o3 minutes long, it had plenty of stuff for us Tintin fans to watch and enjoy while we wait for the next piece of big news.

I think the trailer was well worth the wait.

Empire just released not one but two incredibly awesome movie posters! They are so epic I hardly have to say anything about them. I will of course, but regardless they speak for themselves:

What’s worth mentioning?

• Despite the lack of a subtitle, it is crystal clear that ”The Unicorn” is a ship, not a fantastical creature. The uninformed viewer will know the movie will be more like Pirates of The Caribbean in some scenes than ”My Little Pony”.
• Snowy is not fat.
• Tintin is not holding a gun. Spielberg made an epic movie poster without one.
• The combination of dark shadows and blazing flames both on 16th century ships and 20th century seaplanes add the feel of mystery, action and adventure without any words needing to be said. In the first, the lighting is simply dark and mysterious, adding to the ”film noir”.
• Tintin is obviously not really next to The Unicorn (unless the plot has been changed a lot…) in the first poster, so it may be too soon to assume that The Unicorn crashes in the desert. I think they just combined the sand and the water for dramatic effect and to add symmetry to the camels in the dessert on the left
• Tintin himself looks incredible. If you look closely at his face I think you may actually recognize his expression and even his pose from a panel in the comics. I definitely think they made his face dark here only for dramatic effect, nothing more.
• Hergé name is clearly mentioned before even the actor’s names. I’m sure he would appreciate that. I wonder if Moulinsart had anything to do with that…
• The 3D format will be well worth a watch.
• Finally, Spielberg and Jackson have done a magnificent job beginning their adverting campaign. I totally believe that even if I had never heard of Tintin I would gape in awe at these two posters. I just realized that Tintin is going to be that much more incredible and full scale than even I had imagined.

New trailer to come out tomorrow

At the end of empire’s post, they just threw in the info that the new Tintin trailer will not be released with Kung Fu Panda 2 but will actually in fact be on their site tomorrow morning! I am so excited! And after seeing these images, I am even more excited! These are definitely my favorite still images of Tintin released so far. I love every bit of them! I’m really hoping for another image of Haddock. I don’t know if I’m going to sleep tonight…

The world-famous author and screen-writer will be writing the script for Tintin 2! This is absolutely wonderful news for those who are fans of his popular ”Alex Rider” series (me included). Anthony Horowitz is a wonderful storyteller and a master at keeping the reader interested. His own stories are full of adventure, and in the case of Alex Rider, also center around the action packed life of a teenager. He is also very experienced and is known for putting tons of research into his work. He focuses on the details,and that’s good news for a Tintin fan. Here we have the info straight from the horse’s mouth, while speaking on Richard Bacon’s radio 5 talk show:

I’m working in Hollywood at the moment, I’m writing a feature film even as we speak. I’ve been hired to write Tintin…

The Secret of the Unicorn is being directed by Steven Spielberg and was written originally bySteven Moffat, of course the writer of Doctor Who in this country. He did a couple of drafts then it was taken over by Edgar Wright… they’ve got [that] coming out at Christmas and if that film is a success and works and gets an audience I’m writing the sequel to it, Prisoners of the Sun, which Peter Jackson is going to direct.

So the story of Tintin 2 has officially been chosen. We had heard rumors, especially from Peter, but this had not been confirmed until now.

Although I’ll admit that I was really hoping for ”The Calculus affair”, ”Prisoners of the Sun” is a great choice. Just like ”Secret of the Unicorn” it is a two-part series, and even among Hergé’ s other books it is considered to be a masterpiece. The story revolves around a mysterious ”curse” that puts 7 explorers into the hospital after their return from investigating some ruins in Peru and bringing artifacts back, among them an inca mummy.  One by one the explorers fall into a strange coma, and then Professor Calculus is kidnapped. Tintin and Haddock try to solve the mystery of the curse from the start, and then set off to save Calculus as well.

The book shows us just how far Tintin and Haddock will go to save a friend. They risk everything as they go through one adventure after another on their quest. In one part their train car is disconnected from the rest of the train and they slide down the mountains with no way of stopping their car. In another,they have to sneak onto a ship that says it is under quarantine with armed men on board. In the jungle they face vicious condors and crocodiles. Then they have to cross over a raging waterfall. And to top it all off, they stumble onto a secret hiding place where it turns out the ancient Incan people are still alive, where the whole gang is condemned to die at the stake, lit by the very power of the sun. It is not hard to see why this adventure was chosen to be adapted to the big screen. And I can’t think of a better person for the job to be writing the script than Anthony Horowitz.

For those of you wondering how this will tie in with ”Red Rackham’s Treasure” being the second movie (or at least the beginning of it), I’m not sure how it will play out.  It looks like they will introduce Calculus at the beginning of the movie and then kidnap him almost right afterwards. Just how much of Red Rackham’s Treasure, if any, will be in the movie? We will see. All we know is that Calculus HAS to be in Tintin 2,and we do not believe he is in Tintin 1 because he has not been cast. I think they will either tie in Red Rackham’s treasure at the very beginning of the film like they are doing with The Crab with the Golden Claws for the first movie, or take Calculus out of the ending of The Secret of The Unicorn-Red Rackham’s Treasure for Tintin 1 and have them find the treasure in the basement, then introduce him for Tintin 2 at the start of the film.  However they do it,  I’m sure they know how much the fans love Calculus and will make sure we have plenty of time to see him in the movie.

Very special thanks to Britto and Pro-man who found this information!!! I really appreciate it! Keep up the excellent work!

Sources: http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/04/08/anthony-horowitz-confirms-his-involvement-in-tintin/

Photo: http://www.kjoek.nl/schrijvers.php?schrijversid=dfef2f3cc4480f5c43a

Poor Tintin.  His misinformed author made him racist during his visit to the Congo and the world still never forgave him 80 years later. Well,at least Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo hasn’t. Many of you knew this already,but for those of you new to the story, this Congolese citizen has been pushing that something be done about ”Tintin in the Congo” . What many of you may not have known is that his case against the book,which for months know has seemed to have been forgotten,  has been reopened. Belgium’s government has accepted the case,and if Bienvenu get’s his way, the book will only be published with a warning to the reader on the front about it’s racial context and an article about the historical context of colonial Congo. Moulinsart,of course,will be fighting hard to be able to continue selling the book as they are. Ironic isn’t it? Moulinsart has been a nightmare to so many people over copyright laws, and now they have their own nightmare to deal with.

This isn’t the first time Tintin in the Congo has gone through something like this. The book has already been banned from libraries in the UK and in America.  The book has been accused of all sorts of things, and people want it banned not only because of it’s allegedly racist content,but also for it’s diverse sections containing cruelty to animals. However, I think anybody who has read the book will have to agree that the accusations are true. They have simply gone a bit overboard. The book does show the black people as way way inferior people than Tintin,and I personally dislike the part where Tintin indirectly makes a train fall of the tracks and then forces the Congolese people to put it back up.  As far as violence goes, Tintin kills all kinds of animals from snakes to lions, and in the original version even blew up a rhinoceros with a stick of dynamite!  Yes, he really did. Hergé later redrew that part so that Tintin just makes the rhino run away from a camera flash.

But the racist side of the book simply represents Hergé’s stereotype about Congolese people. He couldn’t go to the Congo so he based his info off of what he saw and read. And so he had some very wrong ideas. It wasn’t just him though!  All of Europe had a completely different view of black people in the 1930′s!  The book was not a conscious effort to make the people of the Congo look bad. Nor is it filled with inappropriate jokes towards the black people by Tintin or anybody else. The book just portrays the world of the Congo as Hergé honestly thought Tintin would see it. Sure he was wrong…but should the book be against the law? Nobody is reading the book and honestly thinking it’s like that today,and I doubt many believe it was ever like that at all.

And to those who fight against the cruelty to animals part of the book, I ask them why on Earth it is such a big deal in the first place. I have yet to find people so devoted to ban or put a warning label on some of our culture’s latest video games that have got to have much more influence and certainly more people influenced by them than those who read Tintin in the Congo concerning violence…toward humans. Why aren’t we letting our kid’s read Tintin in the Congo because they kill animals but we tell them it’s OK to let them slit the throats of all kinds of  people in Assassin’s Creed and other video games filled with blood and gore? Hunting big game was normal when the book was written,and the killing’s in the book actually remind me more of the Looney tunes. Again,I don’t believe anybody is going to want to go out and shoot a lion after reading the book. But hey,if it offend’s you, it IS pretty cruel.  But is it bad enough to ban the book? Worse stuff is practically shown on Cartoon Network…

So if you do buy the book before the trial is over,or have a copy already, enjoy the ”original” publication and make sure you understand what it is you are reading. Tintin in the Congo is one of Hergé’s primitive works based on erroneous information. He was sorry he wrote it later on, and didn’t mean to hurt anybody’s feelings. He tried to make up for it later. Nobody remembers the gypsy protecting Tintin with the peace sign on his motorcycle helmet, or the one that risked his life in Tibet to save a Japanese boy. These books, and many others, are the one’s Hergé would have liked us to remember most.