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French film site Films Actu has what look to be more Empire mag scans of the Steven Spielberg-directed Tintin movie. They show the Thompson/Dupin twins, villain Barnaby and the endless desert. Also, based on these stills, Tintin will spend the entire movie with his face obscured or in shadow.

Spielberg and Jackson have revealed the look of Tintin, Snowy and Captain Haddock to Empire magazine. The movie adaptation of Herge's The Secret of the Unicorn is due out October 2011. Link

While there may be some perception that comic book movie fever is cooling off, at least one super-epic-mega film that will change the world is in the works — the Steven Spielberg/Peter Jackson Tintin 3D-mocap-CGI epic. Spielberg is directing while Jackson produces The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, which comes out 12/23/11. The cast includes Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig, Andy Serkis, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones, Mackenzie Crook, Carey Elwes, and Daniel Mays, most of whom did mocap or supplied vocal talents. This far, details of the movie have been closely guarded — Tintin being one of the world’s most popular characters — although not so much in America. From a business standpoint, a successful film could relaunch the Tintin books in the English speaking world, WATCHMEN style. With so much talent involved, expectations are high.

But what will it look like? Empire magazine has the first images from the movie, and every website including this has them up. Click for larger versions.

From where we sit? It’s not quite as disturbing as The Polar Express, but it’s not exactly cuddly, either.

What do you think?

Minimalistic graphic design for an imaginary Tintin poster or album cover.

More at Sevensheaven.nl

Pierre Assouline is a journalist and writer whose columns appear regularly in Le Monde and L’Histoire. His book, Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin, translated by Charles Ruas, offers a candid portrait of a man who revolutionized comics.  In the excerpt below we learn about the origins of Tintin.

Tintin and Snowy were born on January 10, 1929, in Le Petite Vingtième. On that day the supplement for young readers in Le Vingième Siècle first published a comic strip under the title “The Adventures of Tintin, the ‘Petit Vingtième’ Reporter, in the Land of the Soviets,” the first two places of a weekly comic strip that would eventually number 121 in all.

These are the bare facts, but we are left with the question of why and how Tintin and Snowy came into being. According to Hergé, it was very simple: “The idea for the character of Tintin and the sort of adventures that would befall him came to me, I believe, in five minutes, the moment I first made a sketch of the figure of this hero: that is to say, he had not haunted my youth nor even my dreams.  Although it’s possible that as a child I imagined myself in the role of a sort of Tintin.”

Tintin has a prehistory.  Hergé made a sketch of a character resembling Tintin in the Totor series, which was a sort of trial run.  This period of trial and error in the creation of a character is far from exceptional.  To cite only two examples, Mickey Mouse was first called Mortimer, and Inspector Maigret in a previous life was Agent No. 49.

Hergé never denied it.  When pressed to explain the origins of Tintin, he admitted that he was conceived of as the younger brother of Totor, the troop leader of the June Bugs.  Tintin wore plus fours because Georges Remi sometimes wore them, and they might distinguish Tintin as easily as Chaplin’s vagabond’s baggy trousers did him.  Hergé also gave him a tuft of hair that stood straight up on his forehead (first seen during a car chase in Land of the Soviets), drawing it as seen full face.  If Tintin is shown in profile or three-quarters to the left or to the right, the facial features are only barely sketched in.  The figure is in harmony with the face, the result being neutral, without dissonance.  Everyone can identify with him because he is everyman.

Tintin was born at fifteen and therefore never had a childhood.  What did Georges Remi look like at that age?  Probably like Tintin – like him had the appearance of an intrepid Boy Scout – except that Remi combed his hair flat, he was thinner and taller, and his face was not as round.  It has been said that Hergé had unconsciously taken the traits, attitudes, and gestures of his younger brother, Paul.

In terms of graphics, there is nothing simpler than Tintin. He is as uncomplicated as the story line.  Tintin is a journalist or, rather, a reporter, which means the contrary of sedentary.  He is less often shown writing at the typewriter than out in the field.  In his eyes, the investigation of something, not the resolution, is the basis of his profession.  Tintin seems to suggest that he is in fact a great reporter, a member of a select group of legendary journalists such as Albert Londres, Joseph Kessel, Édouard Helsey, Henri Béraud, and others.  Of course Remi himself had wanted to become one of them – and he would, by proxy.  Tintin would accomplish his dream.  For one of the youngest people on a newspaper’s staff, belonging to this select group represented the ultimate promotion.  For Remi it also symbolized a quest for adventure.

The transformation of Totor to Tintin would continue.  Though a reporter, Tintin never loses the spirit of a Scout.  On the contrary, he expresses it in his face, his attitudes, and his actions.  It could be said of Tintin, as Voltaire said of Candide, that his face revealed his soul.  Hergé’s constant dilemma was how to make Tintin lose his naïveté while remaining pure.

Here are Tintin’s vital statistics: he is Caucasian, lacks a first name, an orphan, without a past, a native of Brussels (as opposed to Belgian), about fifteen years old, obviously celibate, excessively virtuous, chivalrous, brave, a defender of the weak and oppressed, never looks for trouble but always finds it; he is resourceful, takes chances, is discreet, and is a nonsmoker.

…

Tintin Au Congo Book Restricted By Brooklyn Library

Not trying to start a flamewar here, just thinking that this NY Times blog piece about an old racist Tintin book may be a little off. According to the article…

[I]f you go to the Brooklyn Public Library seeking a copy of “Tintin au Congo,” Hergé’s second book in a series, prepare to make an appointment and wait days to see the book.

“It’s not for the public,” a librarian in the children’s room said this month when a patron asked to see it.

The book, published 79 years ago, was moved in 2007 from the public area of the library to a back room where it is held under lock and key

The article also has, even more interestingly, some of the actual challenges filed by BPL patrons in which the patrons’ addresses are removed but their names and City/State information are published. If your name is, for example, Ifeachor Okeke, redacting your address doesn’t really protect your anonymity. I’m curious what the balance is between patron privacy and making municipal records available.

The Architects Journal blog has a neat Top Ten list of cities in comics (posted by Rory Olcayto). Because it is obviously written for people who know nothing about comics, it probably doesn’t go in-depth enough for comics experts on Drawn, but it does provide some interesting extras like this pairing of Marlinspike Hall with its inspiration, from Herge’s classic Tintin series. There are also some amusing picky comments from architects in the comments: “Just to be pedantic – you are mixing up Aztec and Inca influences and how Herge used them,” writes Tintin buff Chris Tregenza, who made this map of Tintin’s voyages.

Cool

The Addictive Weirdness of Mattias Adolfsson – Swedish illustrator and  Europe’s Bizarrio No. 1

Jennifer: I hesitate to ask, your right brain is so hyperactively active who knows what it will let loose, but from where does all this creativity come! Inherited, evolved or from somewhere, dare I ask where, else?

Mattias: Evolved perhaps, but It might have been inherited from my father. My Father was a very funny man, he never got to get an education but I think he had great potential as a Illustrator as well. He came from poor conditions though and had to leave school early.

The Melon Mine Ball House

Bird of Paradise

Sketched Whilst Wandering

The Frontline Sky Ark

Jennifer: As a kid, did you get the bedtime story treatment? What were you favourite stories? What were the illustrations/illustrators you remember most vividly?

Mattias: I really can’t remember getting the bedtime story treatment, but my mother started sticking books in my hands at an early stage (she continued until late in my teens suggesting books, she still does it). I’m rather Euroscentric in my upbringing, my favourite Illustrators as a child where: Oscar Andersson,  Tove Janson , Kjell Aukrust ,  and with Richard Scarry as an exception to the rule.

Osckar Andersson

Tove Janson

Kjell Aukrust

Richard Scarry / Scary

As for stories, I early got hooked on European (gallic) comics, Tintin and Asterix, I used to read them and still do.

Herge's Tintin

Jennifer’s Comment: I think readers will agree there are some  curious elements of these influences seeping through.

[Mad's master of detailed mayhem can't help himself, even his website in seminal form features, Groo, an example of his madcap  characterisations.]

All three artists have an anarchic humour both lauding and subverting utopian ideals and just about everything else in between, Herge, of course, being the subtle one of the three. Where do readers see Mattias flitting in and out of here?

Jennifer: You refer to your love of Mad Magazine’s Sergio Aragones what drives you to detail so transfixing, so almost maddeningly effusive? It is an art in itself to take in all of some of your creations at once! [Can we accuse you of having anything to do with behind the scenes of Where’s Wally?]!

Mattias:

I think the main influence in this is the books of Richard Scary, (where’s Wally is not something I have seen, but I’ve heard it mentioned often). Sometimes I get a craving for leaving the very detailed work as it is hard to take it in, it is lousy as traditional art.

[Note from Jennifer: No, Mattias please don't. We LOVE the detail!]

"Soupilification" Tree

Big Red Animal Bus

Sargasso

Death-Star

The detail is mindblowing and maniacal and insidiously addictive. You could study it for hours and still pick out new facets.

Jennifer: I think I mentioned to you once how your incredible machines reminded me of the crazy inventions depicted by Heath Robinson last century. You feature many maniacal machines in your work, what is the fascination?

Mattias: I’m not sure, to be frank I’m not that into machines, sometimes I use the drawing as some kind of meditation, they start to live by themselves.

[Jennifer: The Machine has a life. Mattias' machines have a humour and character like no other I have seen comparable.]

Horse Powers

City Dweller

Jogger

Migration2

Jenny Wagner once said that no children’s book should have a mchine at its heart. In the case of Mattias’ robottic house machines, I would have to disagree. They verge into the realm of the Iron Man, I Robot and even Bicentennial Man. There is a drama and pathos about them that mitigates against the sometimes bleak black humour of civilisation gone  in search of itself.

Jennifer: The architectural elements of your work have also been compared to Hayao Miyazaki. What inspires you particularly about brick, stone and wood construction?  You tell how you started out to be an architect but diverged. How did that come about?

Mattias:

I love buildings and especially of the older kind. Though, when I started studying Architecture, I soon found out that I wasn’t too good designing modern houses. So now I can design what building I want, not having to think about the dwellers.

Captains

Floaters

Church

Ship of the Desert

Oltec-Space

Jennifer:  Your recent scholarship sojourn in Greece produced a wealth of work which we all saw evolve over the months on your blog site. Tell us about winning the scholarship and where you see the outworkings of that experience taking you?

Mattias: Well winning was not that hard, it goes to professional Swedish Illustrators ( and I guess not too many can leave home for one month). I’d love to do more traveling and drawing but, in order to do that, I’d have to finance it in some way, maybe via some magazine.

Jennifer’s note: Mattias sketched the most ordinary and extraordinary and made them all ‘art’. He interspersed his online blog diary with the mind expanding mischief his followeres have come to love. These, not necessarily from that period, exemplify.

Grumpy disher - dishwasher/toiletcleaner

House Flower1

Left Dragon

Learning to Fly

Over Ambitious

Here is a rather curious article from the BBC. It talks about how Tintin is nearly an unknown character in Britain, and even less well-known in the States. I find this to be an amazing assertion: as a child I clearly remember reading Tintin serialized in Children's Digest; I read his books as a child; his popularity continues today, with his books flying off the shelves at work (long before I

Turns 80

I grew up in a remote corner of Alaska, without electricity or a telephone, at a time when the Internet would have been considered a maniac’s wild fantasy. Anyone entering our house at night would have found everyone in our family clustered around a couple of gas-fueled lanterns in dead silence, each of us deeply immersed in a book–except for my little brother.

He loved books, as long as they were read to him, and I loved reading aloud, except when it cut into my own reading time. Often when my parents, my sisters, and I were all silently reading, my brother would be off in a corner alone, taking his tricycle apart and putting it back together or interrupting us with requests that one of us read to him for a while.

Scarred by an unsuccessful introduction to reading in the first grade, my brother had soon became embarrassed by his lack of skill in a family of bibliovores and was a resolute functional illiterate. The rest of us found this appalling as well as inexplicable and discovering a book that would make my brother a passionate reader became an overriding obsession for us all.

Not too far away there was a tiny library that was our family’s idea of paradise. Even my brother loved it, since it contained picture books and illustrated encyclopedias–and as it turned out, a sizable collection of Tintin books.

We were not a family of comic book readers, but when my brother came home with his first volume of Tintin, poring over the pictures and painfully puzzling out the words, it was a big day for us all. It was the moment that my brother became a reader and Tintin became a household saint. Now we all–even my little brother– were to be found clustered around the lanterns, blissfully engrossed in our books without being disturbed by “Won’t you read to me now,” or “Help me find the big crescent wrench, somebody” coming from a distant corner of the room.

As a bookseller, I love to find books for the uneasy reader and Tintin is always high on my list of suggestions. A colleague of mine specializes in turning reluctant readers into bookworms and in an upcoming interview she will tell us how she does it. What about you? What titles do you suggest for the uneasy readers of your acquaintance? Let us know!

We’re delighted to hear from two British boys who responded to our plea for information about books that children love. Alistair, who is nine and a half, says that books he has recently read for fun are books in the Young Bond series by Charlie Higson, Horrid Henry by Francesca Simon, and The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo. His favorite authors are Michael Morpurgo, Charlie Higson, and Francesca Simon, with Hurricane Gold (in the Young Bond series) and Tiger of the Snows by Robert Burleigh among the books that he has discussed with his friends. Morpurgo’s The Wreck of the Zanzibar is one of the books he has read for school that he enjoys and among his favorite books in a series are The Chronicles of Narnia, the many adventures of Harry Potter, and Young Bond. Books he has read more than once are volumes of Tintin, Asterix, Harry Potter, and The Making of Monkey King and Monkey King Wreaks Havoc in Heaven, both by Debby Chen. A book that he found in the library that he longed to keep is one about BMW motorcycles–and, he assures us, although he’s a boy, he does enjoy reading books in which girls are central characters!

Ben, who is seven and a half, loves to read pop-up books, encyclopedias, stories with pictures, and Adam Frost’s Ralph the Magic Rabbit. Books that he has read more than once are Tintin books, Steve Parker’s Larger than Life, which he says is amazing and has recommended to his friends, Surprising Sharks by Nicola Davies, and If I Didn’t Have Elbows by Sandi Toksvig. His favorite writers are J.K. Rowling, Julia Donaldson, Herge, Francesca Simon, and Dick King-Smith. When it comes to books that he has borrowed from the library and wishes he could keep, he simply admits there are “loads.” He too enjoys books about girls, but not ones about sports!

Thanks to Alistair, Ben, and Evan for responding to our questions, which can be found at The Tiger’s Bookshelf: Asking the Kids

We would love to hear from more readers–perhaps a girl or two?

This is kind of an old story by now but the BBC reports about the upcoming Tintin films, one of which is to be directed by Peter Jackson (him of Lord of the Rings fame)and another by Steven Spielberg. According to the article a trilogy of films is to be made (Jackson clearly working on the premise that 3 is a magic number) and will feature the same technology that worked so well for Beowulf. So I guess that means it won't be live action? The article does not mention who will play the boy reporter, but there is already an official Tintin movie site, so you can watch that space for more news. Clearly, some people are very excited about this project. And who can blame them? I for one adore Tintin. When I visited Brussels, all I wanted to do was find a Tintin t-shirt. Forget the chocolate! But as I get older I find that I enjoy book to film adaptations less and less. But I'm looking forward to Snowy becoming the most famous film Yorkie since Toto.

The Real Adventures of Tintin

The news that Little Brown will not be publishing Tintin in the Congo is not really news. This story made the rounds of the blogosphere earlier in the year when the book was released in Europe. My gut instinct is to disagree with this decision, because to me it seems like historical revisionism. I can understand not marketing it as a children's book. I can even understand not including it in the box set. But to decide against publishing it altogether seems spineless and naive; spineless because the publisher's preferred to avoid a controversy, and naive because ignoring the book doesn't make what is objectionable less so. English children's novelist Anne Fine commented on the controversy in an article for The Times, citing incidents in her own writing where she has revised older texts for modern readers. If she chooses to do that to her own writing, that's her decision. And I guess choosing not to publish a book is a publisher's prerogative, but I would have had more respect for their decision to cancel publication if Little Brown said they wouldn't make any profit from the book. Everyone knows that money talks. And maybe that is what's motivating this decision, and they're not simply taking the high road.

I always come back to the opinion that if something is objectionable, don't buy it/read it/promote it. English journalist Kathryn Hughes agrees, although she is of the opinion that modern readers can learn from their unenlightened ancestors. Which takes us back to that historical revisionism thing. Tintin in the Congo is what it is: a book written when colonialism and colonialist attitudes were rampant. Eradicating racism from modern society is commendable, but eradicating all reference to it is not the way it's done.

the centenary of the birth of the man who created Tintin
Georges Prosper Remi, 1907 - 1983

Fanfic never got such good press ("good" being a relative term here) until the dawn of the Harry Potter age. And once you get over the initial shock that goes with the extent of such "tributes", you begin to see it everywhere. Star Wars Fanfic. Lord of the Rings Fanfic. And now, at long last, Tintin Fanfic. It also happens to be viewable in its entirety here.

Via Bookninja.

For Valentine's Day my husband and I went out to a lovely little restaurant called Petite Abielle on the lower West side. It sported a delicious menu, and happened to have Tintin drawings all over the walls. Tintin plates. Tintin life-sized statues. Tintin galore.

Apropos then that some dude somewhere (note my meticulous research skills) has compiled a fabulous index of every single car to ever appear in a Tintin cartoon. Of course, the fellow is French, so bear that in mind.

Thanks to Drawn for the link.