The Adventures of Tintin

The Adventures of Tintin

Amongst my favourite childhood reading were two cartoon franchises (although I didn't really understand that word back then…) that have endured over the decades. The first was Asterix and Obelix, adventures of two Gauls who fought against the Romans with the aid of a magic potion. The second was Hergé's Tintin character. Both were available in a long series of giant hardback books in a comic book format.

Tintin was a young bloke of unknown nationality with a hairstyle that can only be described as a slight quiff. His official occupation was a reporter but didn't really seem to do much reporting, instead he used to get into scrapes and adventures with his friends, and he had a few. There was Captin Haddock, an irascible old seadog with a penchant for alcohol but but would never be described as an alcoholic. There was Professor Calculus, a veritable academic genius who knew everything about anything, but completely absent minded. Then there were the Thompson Twins (We are detective…), the Savile Row suited and bowler hatted bumbling detectives. And finally his constant companion Snowy, a white terrier dog.

Tintin and Snowy travel the Globe, go underwater and even into Outer Space to solve mysteries and thwart the bad guys. They even get involved in revolutions and meet the Incas, almost being sacrificed to the Gods with the latter. As a creation from 1929, Tintin is very much an invention of the time and no attempt has been made to update the franchise, which explains why the rocket shown in Explorers on the Moon from 1954 looks suspiciously like a V2 rocket.

Tintin is about to make his big screen debut in 3D animation courtesy of Steven Speilberg and Peter Jackson, but Tintin has been seen on the tiny screen earlier. In 1991 a joint production involving Ellipse and Nelvana, from France and Canada respectively. This series, using traditional animation techniques, ran for a couple of years and covered all of the known books in the series. This series has now been gathered together onto both DVD and blu-ray to introduce the wider world to this enduring cartoon character, who first first created in 1929.

Despite the boast that this series has been remastered, it isn't without fault. Some of the prints are a little dirty and some of the animation flaws show up, such as some pen lines not being as solid as the rest. This is possibly the result of putting the cartoon onto a high defintion format, and the episodes are all shown in broadcast order either but none of this should be enough to distract you from the sheer fun that is The Adventures of Tintin. This series is extremely faithful to the original books and is an ideal introduction for those who want to know more after exposure to the film…