My intellectual life was altered irrevocably the day I
entered the fourth grade. (Well, perhaps not that exact day—although some
strange things did happen that day, but that’s a story for another time…) What
happened was this: Fourth-graders were allowed to access the “big kids” part of
the Burlington Elementary School library. This was a big deal for a voracious
little reader such as myself. (Case in point: One summer, I spent my mornings
reading the World Book encyclopedia from cover to cover.) On my first forays
into the new library section, I found a set of volumes, curiously untouched by
any of the other kids. They were thin and tall, standing out on the shelf. On
their covers were clear, realistic oversized cartoons featuring a boy and his
white dog caught up in moments of pure action and adventure—rocketships,
shark-shaped submarines, castles, deserts, jungle river treks, mummified
Egyptologists, Aztec pyramids. These, the covers proclaimed, were The Adventures of Tintin by a mysterious
author who went by a single name, Hergé.
I don’t remember which one I opened first (knowing me, it
was probably Destination Moon) but
inside I found something entirely new. I was no stranger to comics, at least of
the more kid-friendly variety (Richie Rich, Archie, Sad Sack, Casper the
Friendly Ghost), but these were not just glorified comic strips; these were
full novels, told with wonderful drawings, with as much nuance and drama as
action and slapstick. I remember that I felt like I’d found a treasure.
I had.
Each cover was only a glimpse into the adventure that lay
within. They were clearly from another time. The copyright dates said that
they’d been published in the 1950s (although many of them were written much earlier
and were subsequently reworked for new publishers). They were clearly from
another place. At the time, I believed them to be British, but they were distinctly
European, with a unique (and strangely exciting for a kid growing up in
Reagan’s America), worldly sensibility.
Tintin himself was not the draw. He was a hero, but a blank
one, and it was a simple thing to imagine myself in his shoes. He was often
called a boy, an older teenager perhaps, and a prodigy of sorts. He lived in
his own flat; no parents or family were ever mentioned. He had no attachments
to girls; indeed, there were few women in Tintin’s world. He worked as an
investigative reporter. He was often shown with a book in his hand, but he was
no mere bookworm. He had a keen eye for detail, a trait that sparked many of
his best adventures. Tintin was no superhero and yet at the same time he was.
He had an unquenchable curiosity and clear sense of justice; two superpowers
that made him an unstoppable force. And not just in Gotham or some Disney-esque
fantasy world, but in the real world, one with very real and relevant problems.
And through every voyage, through every danger, Tintin’s faithful
white dog, a terrier named Snowy, trotted at his side.
For those who have read Legitimacy,
the parallels to my characters of Teague Werres and Monkey might be clear, as
if I designed them to be an homage. But believe it or not, I did not set out to
do that. And there were more parallels: a young, curious man alone in the
world, readily crossing borders to balance the scales of justice, and rubbing
shoulders (or butting heads) with some of the most powerful people in the
world. Once I realized what I had done, I couldn’t deny that The Adventures of Tintin were powerfully
influential—a fact I’ve decided to embrace.
If you’ll indulge me, over the next few months, I’ll be posting
reviews of each of Tintin’s adventures. I want to read them again, not just
with a fourth-grader’s need for adventure, but with a writer’s thirst for
story.
Want to join me?
