Another academic study of Tintin has been translated from French to English. The Metamorphoses of Tintin: Or Tintin for Adults by Jean-Marie Apostolidès is being released on the 15th December 2009 (the original French edition seems to date from about 1984).

There is an article about it and the Assouline biography in The Washington Post here. I can’t really say it is a review, as the author of the piece is busy enough telling us his experience and opinion of Hergé, and barely mentions the two books the column purports to be about, which seems remarkably self-indulgent. He also takes a curiously negative attitude to all that Hergé ever did in real life, and is suspicious of his motives for doing anything, it would seem. He introduces Hergé as a genius and then spends the rest of the time adding so many qualifications to that statement that at the end you’d believe that Hergé really wasn’t that much after all.

I don’t know how much of this stems from the books themselves - we already know that there are issues in the translation of the Assouline; the other book, being quite so old, may not reflect the current state of Tintinology, developed over the last 25 years. Whatever it is, I’m not sure that the columnist leaves the reader feeling that there is a lot of positive in Hergé and Tintin, rather than just one negative after another.

Hello all,
Here is my review of THE MERTAMORPHOSES OF TINTIN by Jean- Marie Apostolides. The review will be soon feratured in Rebecca’s Reads E-zine.


Tintin: The Boy Reporter is a character who needs no introduction. The intrepid young journalist has endeared himself to masses and later this year we can see first of trilogy of films based on Tintin to hit the screens directed by Steven Spielberg. Tintin has a fan following of children between the age 8 and 88; and his popularity has transcended boundaries. Being an aficionado and proud owner of all Tintin comic albums- or as we call ourselves, Tintinologists; Tintin has been a steady diet of my childhood. I read the same, enjoyed the art and was captivated by the plot and stories. But for me these were comics simpliciter.
But after reading this book “The Metamorphoses of Tintin: or Tintin for Adults” by Tintin scholar Jean- Marie Apostolides, I now realize that there was another realm to Tintin and the stories. It’s a reflection of the social milieu that existed in Europe in post World War days. It is a reflection of the tenacity and never say die attitude of the common man. In short, Tintin is a reflection of the inner hero within every man. Was Herge the creator of Tintin even aware or realize the magnitude his character would create globally? I am not sure.
There have been Tintin studies prior to “The Metamorphoses of Tintin: or Tintin for Adults”- the prominent being “The World of Tintin” by Benoit Peeters and “The Tintin Companion” by Michael Farr. However both these books just examined Tintin from the comic album standpoint of view. Jean – Marie Apostolides goes one step further and examines the subtle intricacies of the character created by Herge and the impact made by it. After reading this book I find new respect for Herge and Tintin. A book to have with you while reading Tintin- not as a companion; but as a source of subtle critical analysis. Highly and heavily recommended.

Just for the record, the age range that is usually used regarding Tintin is 7 to 77. That was the tagline for "Tintin Le Journal Des Jeunes De 7 A 77 Ans" ("Tintin The Magazine for Youngsters of 7 to 77"). But I suppose that people do live older these days. How about "9 to 99"? Knowing me, I'll still be reading comics if or when I reach 99, even beyond.

Extracts from "The Metamorphoses of Tintin: Or Tintin for Adults" can be found here at Google books. Makes very interesting reading. I know what I'll be ordering for my birthday.

Moved and edited to combine separate threads:

Another piece, in The New Review

The book itself, on Amazon: looking at the other books for sale, wow, I had no idea there were so many books about Tintin!

I'm reading this right now....it's very good, albeit a little heavy.

There are supposedly over 150 books (in French) written on Tintin and Herge. The truth of the matter is that a good deal of these would better be considered as "pamphlets" or extended essays on a very specific theme. Only around 20 of the volumes constitute proper studies of Tintin...

Still, any Tintin enthusiast should, as a matter of duty, gather up as many of these items as possible. Even readers who do not have French can at least access the pictures in many of the publications in question. Indeed, many of the books are really exhibition catalogues.

I saw this yesterday, and can’t say I found it any more enlightening than the review in The Washington Post. It seems to me fruitless to make such a strong distinction between Hergé the man being bland, and Tintin being active, as if they are completely separate entities. To say that Hergé did nothing in his life, while Tintin did lots is ridiculous when all of the latter derives from the former. Perhaps it is the fault of the reviewer, but I fail to see how there can be “a moral divide” between the author and his creation, as the article says, when surely Tintin is the means by which Hergé expresses the sentiments that he wished to articulate. Why should it matter that Hergé travelled little, but Tintin travelled a lot? For a lot of the time it was the constant production of Tintin’s adventures which chained Hergé to his desk, so when was he supposed to travel? Secondly, he managed to be so persuasive in his depiction of foreign parts that perhaps he didn’t need to travel to appreciate them.
I also wonder at the assertion: “This sense of being outside of time, which Hergé worked so hard to create”. It seems to me to be a completely bogus claim, especially when woven into the notion that the redrawing of the early books was to “revise the Tintin adventures into a single, seamless tale.” He didn’t do any such thing.
The albums are quite firmly fixed in the present day of the time at which they came out - America is clearly set in the Thirties, while Picaros is in the Seventies. The very revisions about which the writer talks appears to be referring actually increased anachronisms, it didn’t smooth things out: Black Island may have been updated, but into a Sixties world, not a timeless one, and it still sits before “later” stories like Unicorn and Rackham.


I’m interested in this as a point - why? I can see the point if they do contain images of material unavailable elsewhere, but if it is just to read pop-psychological treatise on the motivations of the characters, or to deconstruct the narrative, I can usually leave it. I’ve always thought of these as being largely like those lumpen pixi figures, or “collectable” lithographs of panels from the albums - just another merchandising stream which has little of Hergé in them, so not essential purchases, and certainly not a duty (why encourage them?).