Alph-Art: Tintin and Martine

I think there's too much speculation on the board that Tintin and Martine (from Alph-Art) were going to end up together. If Hergé had not introduced a girlfriend to Tintin in the last 23 albums, I don't know why he would start now.

It's true that at the time it would have been unthinkable to pair Tintin off with a female companion (hence Snowy being a dog), yet in the 70's times had changed. Hergé would easily have been able to pair Tintin off with a female companion in Tintin and The Picaros but he didn't. Why?

Possibly because he'd decided it worked having the characters as he had them. There was no reason to introduce a female one.

Tintin could never be seen as a sexist character as he never once hit on a woman or treated them any differently as a man.

Reading Alph-Art, I saw absolutely no indication that she could be more than an aquantince.

As seen in the novel Tintin in the New World, a girlfriend would get in the way of the other characters with Tintin trying to shield her every time a villan comes.

Also it would push Haddock and Snowy further away as he would no longer have a strong as bond as he previously had with them.

I think in The Castafiore Emerald when the press thinks Bianca is engaged to Haddock is the one time he wanted a short experimintation of what it could be like if one of them was married. (Does anyone else find it strange that although it's clear Calculus has a crush on her, he doesn't seem the least bit jealous when he thinks they're engaged?)

Don't get me wrong, I thought that last scene with her in the unofficial version was very cute. It's open-ended and doesn't show if Tintin is going to accept or not. I had no objection to it whatsoever.

I’d question that there’s “too much” speculation about Martine on the forum, as there hasn’t even been a specific thread on the subject in the last couple of years - so thanks for starting one!

Anyway, to look at your first point - why would Hergé give Tintin a girlfriend when he hadn’t had one in 23 adventures? Well, for exactly that reason - he’d not done it before! He might have wanted to try his hand at a romance, inject new life into the series, and have a new line to explore.

Just because he didn’t do it in Picaros doesn’t mean he wouldn’t or couldn’t; he might not have thought of it at the time, or perhaps he was inspired by some outside event or person (e.g. Mme. Hergée bis might have said to him “Why don’t you give Tintin a girlfriend?”, and that might have been enough to get him started… Who knows?)

Stirring things up, changing the character line up, stopping it get stagnant - any of these might have been reason enough to give Tintin a love-interest. Personally I think that anything which broke new ground would have been great for the series, but sadly I suspect that we would not have been so lucky.

I agree that it is pure speculation that Martine was ever seen as a potential girlfriend - which tends from the fact that Rodier seems to have made her younger, more stylish and better-looking than Hergé’s original sketches might suggest.

Had Hergé ever got around to completing the story, there is nothing to say that she would even have made the final draft.

But then it’s also specualtion to say that she wasn’t to be a girlfriend…

As for Calculus and how well he took the “engagement”, well I think that it just goes to show what a good sport he was, and that his love for the Milanese Nightingale was a chaste, courtly love…

I can't believe Herge would have given Tintin a girlfriend. What would come next? Marriage? Kids? A suburban home and a whopping great mortgage?

Surely not.

Welcome Blaise!

What would come next? Marriage? Kids? A suburban home and a whopping great mortgage?

Ahh, how romantic!

Anyway, I'm sure Marlinspike would have been big enough to accomodate Martine and a couple of kids (subject to Haddock's approval, of course!)

Thanks Harrock,

Yes, I'm sure Marlinspike would be big enough to accommodate as many children as Tintin desired.

I've always liked Tintin's asexuality. And Haddock's too for that matter. I suppose because the books were originally written for children Herge felt that romantic liaisons were inappropriate. Maybe he was reconsidering his stance for the final book given the series' universal appeal.

Hello
I think that if Herge had written more stories, he would have had to introduce a female as a lead character, but I don't think he would have Tintin romantically involved.

Yes, I like to think so.
I couldn't have said it better myself.
I think the reason Hergé didn't include Calculus as much in the last adventures was because he had seen that the gang had grown a bit too much.
There were too many heroes.
I don't think there was any more room for a new one, hence the decision not to take Calculus in Alph-Art.

sliat_1981
hence the desision not to take Calculus in Alph-Art.

This is going slightly off the topic, but actually Calculus was being considered for a role in Alph-Art; the additional pages included in the gold covered version released in the last couple of years, has Hergé making notes for a potentially funny Haddock sub-plot, in which the Captain suffers a number of physical indignities while Cuthbert experiments on him.

Well maybe he could have been, but although he appeared in Flight 714, he did not acompany them for most of the story.
And although he had a much larger part in Picaros, it is still notable that he did not feature in the final battle.

I can not see how Martine living in Marlinspike could work. I would have liked her coming back as a friend in further adventures, but as a romantic interest it simply would not work.

Tintin did not look on her in Alph-Art as anything more as a friend, and to put them in a romantic situation, I would have though we would have seen more of her in the story later on so they could develop something, not just suddenly fall in love in the last few frames.

All you have to do is look at Tintin in the New World to see how a romantic interested would have ruined the comics and quite possibly have put a strain on his friendship with Snowy and Haddock, being that he now had to devote more of his time to his partner than them.

It would have just side-lined Haddock and Snowy and that would not be a good thing.

Just accept it, sometimes a boy and a woman can just be platonic friends.

Who, except hardcore fans, would read about Tintin getting married! The target audiance (kiddies), no way.