Thursday Missive: Tintin Origins

What do you see when you look at the first photo below?  Probably nothing more than old news print...that happens to be in French.   Twelve years ago, I would have seen the same thing.  When my wife and I moved to France, I was actively collecting American comics.  In France, you can still collect American comics, but there is almost no reason to do so given the rich heritage of French and Belgian comics that is evidenced the moment you walk into any store specializing in "Bandes Dessinées".

In the pantheon of French and Belgian comics, there is no more well known character than Tintin.  And as an American collector, the first question I was bound to ask was, "When did Tintin first appear?" Well, Tintin was originally created in 1929 by Georges Remi (aka Hergé based on the pronunciation of his reversed initials RG, in French).  He worked at a newspaper in Belgium called "Le XX'eme Siècle", or "The 20th Century".  The paper publish a children's supplement every Thursday called "le petit XXe", or "The Little 20th", which was primarily meant for boys who were in the boy scouts.  The first story arc was written with Tintin acting as a reporter in the Soviet Union, and was a thinly veiled polemic against the absurdities of Soviet Russia.  Pictured here is the 3rd appearance of Tintin in print from January 31st, 1929 (the first appearance was January 10th, 1929).

I don't have a complete set of these...I suspect very few complete sets exist.  But I have several issues of the series...and they are a treat to look at.  I'll show some more of my French finds in future posts.


Until next time...or, perhaps I should say, à bientôt!