If y’all haven’t read Tintin, please do. I know he’s fairly well known in the EU, but there aren’t a lot of US folks who know about him.
Tintin is an investigative journalist who goes on global adventures similar to those of Indiana Jones. There’s long-lost underwater treasure retrieved by submarine, yetis, strange meteors with rapidly growing fungi, atomic rockets destined for the moon (seriously, the rocket in Destination: Moon/Explorers on the Moon is atomic, not chemical based), global opium conspiracies, aliens, and many other adventures.
The main characters are, of course, Tintin and his dog Snowy
Captain Haddock (a Scottish alcoholic sailor),
Professor Calculus (a very intelligent, well-learned individual who has all the answers, however they often have to pried out of him because he’s just slightly hard-of-hearing),
Thompson & Tomson (twin bumbling detectives who somehow manage to show up in the strangest places without a clue about where they are).
Bianca Castafiore (an Italian opera singer who’s own adventures tend to overlap with Tintin’s with suspicious frequency; the fact that she’s also infatuated with Captain Haddock is pure coincidence I’m sure)
Rastapopoulos (the main reoccurring villain in the series, he tends to show up whenever Tintin & co think they’re finally rid of him)
Nestor (Captain haddock’s butler)
My biggest disappointment was simply that Tintin and Alph-Art never got finished, because the Tintin books were starting to get weird and surreal before Hergé’s death.
Edit: a couple notes for those who get into it and wonder about those books. There are a few books that are inconsistently included in the series lineup: Tintin in the land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin and Alph-Art.
Soviets was the first Tintin adventure, was in black-and-white, and had a different format than the other adventures.
Tintin in the Congo was disowned by the creator after it’s released because he came to realize that it was very racist, something he wasn’t happy about. After that series, he spent more time trying to ensure that his portrayal of various ethnic groups was more respectful and realistic, sometimes going out of his way to try and dispell common myths (especially ones concerning the Chinese in The Blue Lotus). That’s not to say he was perfect, it was still a series which started in the early 1900s and ended in the late 70s; so there were instances where he still let prejudice show (for an example how the Japanese occupying China are portrayed in The Blue Lotus, though that could be hand-waved as being more anti-imperialist/colonialism and less anti-japanese).
Tintin and Alph-Art was being worked on up until Hergé’s death. As such, it was left incomplete, though iirc there are a couple versions that have been completed by fans, and an official version that starts fully illustrated but slowly breaks down into sketches and storyboards as a result of being incomplete.
If y’all haven’t read Tintin, please do. I know he’s fairly well known in the EU, but there aren’t a lot of US folks who know about him.
Tintin is an investigative journalist who goes on global adventures similar to those of Indiana Jones. There’s long-lost underwater treasure retrieved by submarine, yetis, strange meteors with rapidly growing fungi, atomic rockets destined for the moon (seriously, the rocket in Destination: Moon/Explorers on the Moon is atomic, not chemical based), global opium conspiracies, aliens, and many other adventures.
The main characters are, of course, Tintin and his dog Snowy
Captain Haddock (a Scottish alcoholic sailor),
Professor Calculus (a very intelligent, well-learned individual who has all the answers, however they often have to pried out of him because he’s just slightly hard-of-hearing),
Thompson & Tomson (twin bumbling detectives who somehow manage to show up in the strangest places without a clue about where they are).
Bianca Castafiore (an Italian opera singer who’s own adventures tend to overlap with Tintin’s with suspicious frequency; the fact that she’s also infatuated with Captain Haddock is pure coincidence I’m sure)
Rastapopoulos (the main reoccurring villain in the series, he tends to show up whenever Tintin & co think they’re finally rid of him)
Nestor (Captain haddock’s butler)
My biggest disappointment was simply that Tintin and Alph-Art never got finished, because the Tintin books were starting to get weird and surreal before Hergé’s death.
Edit: a couple notes for those who get into it and wonder about those books. There are a few books that are inconsistently included in the series lineup: Tintin in the land of the Soviets, Tintin in the Congo, and Tintin and Alph-Art.
Soviets was the first Tintin adventure, was in black-and-white, and had a different format than the other adventures.
Tintin in the Congo was disowned by the creator after it’s released because he came to realize that it was very racist, something he wasn’t happy about. After that series, he spent more time trying to ensure that his portrayal of various ethnic groups was more respectful and realistic, sometimes going out of his way to try and dispell common myths (especially ones concerning the Chinese in The Blue Lotus). That’s not to say he was perfect, it was still a series which started in the early 1900s and ended in the late 70s; so there were instances where he still let prejudice show (for an example how the Japanese occupying China are portrayed in The Blue Lotus, though that could be hand-waved as being more anti-imperialist/colonialism and less anti-japanese).
Tintin and Alph-Art was being worked on up until Hergé’s death. As such, it was left incomplete, though iirc there are a couple versions that have been completed by fans, and an official version that starts fully illustrated but slowly breaks down into sketches and storyboards as a result of being incomplete.