The Adventures of Tintin: a journey

When I was growing up you were either an Asterix the Gaul person or a The Adventures of Tintin reader.

They were the only comic books on the shelves in the school library (in several schools that I attended I might add) and thanks to their size and occasional hard cover status they were acceptable as literature for some reason.

So I was an Asterix the Gaul kind of guy and despite trying several times to read Tintin books, especially the one with rockets on the front, I just never finished reading one (not one single book!).

Now because I’ve found that I’m expanding my comic book reading circles, not so much moving away from ’superhero’ books but reading a lot more diversity I thought it might be neat to check out the Tintin books. So I have sourced what I believe, and I have no reason to believe that wikipedia would lie to me, the entire collection of The Adventures of Tintin and will share my thoughts here over the coming weeks as I go through them.

Now I’m going to read them in order as suggested on the Tintinologist website which I believe is the English translation order of publication. This means the first issue I’ll be reading is The Shooting Star.

So did you read Tintin when you were younger… or recently of course? I’d love to hear which one is your favourite and what gems I’ve got to look forward to.

arkonbey

TinTin and Asterix are both great for different reasons. TinTin should have been crippled by degenerative brain damage brought on by numerous concussions; that guy got knocked out every book!

One funny note, I work with a guy from Montreal and he we put our copies of Asterix the Legionary side-by-side and he went through them. He told me how the word-play of the jokes worked in French and how the English translator did a good job at changing the jokes without losing the spirit.

Dan

No, I was an asterix guy too.

but I just want to say that if you're branching out one of the very best indi slice of life comics is Box Office Poison by alex robinson. buy the collected works, I assure you you'll not regret it.

Lee

You've suggested that before, I can't seem to find a copy here though, I will of course continue trying :)

Daniel

Hmm, but reading them in that order will mess up the continuity quite badly. For instance the story in The Blue Lotus follows directly on from Cigars of the Pharaoh. The events in Crab With The Golden Claws are clearly before The Shooting Star, Secret of the Unicorn, and Red Rackham's Treasure.

Lee

Wow, being a complete and utter Tintin n00b I am open to an alternative reading order if you've got a suggestion that would be awesome!

Daniel

For a first-time reader, I'd stick to the order shown on the back covers (aka the "official" order shown towards the bottom of the page you linked to).

I can appreciate what that page is talking about regarding going in the order the books were published, which could be quite interesting for established Tintin-o-philes, but most of the stories originally appeared in magazines. The books were published out of sequence, so following that is potentially quite confusing... perhaps more so than reading Asterix out of sequence.

Jayne

There's something, a la Borg-like mass thought process of Tintin, happening today with you and another blogger posting about the character.
Go read it, you'll enjoy it ;)

OT - Heartily enjoyed Stargate Universe, my 86 yr old Dad stayed up way past his bedtime to watch it and loved it, too.

Lee

That is weird! I've been meaning to read Tintin for a while now - I'm possibly going to seek Daniel's advice regarding the reading order (see his comment below).

The first episode of SGU was awesome, I'm sorry to say the second (or third depending how you look at it) has very quickly fallen into the same old patterns with a little BSG coating.

Arjan Beens

I read Asterix (áll of them and watched the cartoons). With Tintin (we call him 'Kuifje' which translates a bit as 'small tuft' because of his hair) I think I mainly watched the cartoons on tv, but I've read the occasional comic too. I especially liked the captain with a great Dutch equivalent of 'thousand bombs and grenades!' which was his standard curse line.