Tintin Forums

Herge's cameos in Tintin albums and cartoons have been discussed at length on this site, and Varghese was found to mean Georges -Herge's first name- in an Indian tongue.
see https://www.tintinologist.org/forums/index.php?action=search&loc=1&foru m=1&topic=865&page=13915

Now a very easy question: which character is liable -taken as an 'invisible' pun or password- to render 'George' via a simple translation of his name?
The -most strange- answer is Googlable, but to help you the useful link is given above.

Just quote this character's name -and which album(s) show or mention him.

To be more precise, see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/George

I would say having looked at the wiktionary that the character in question is... Colonel Jorgen from Destinaton Moon and explorers on the Moon.

Aka Colonel Boris in King Ottokar's Sceptre (p.35-40). Congratulations MrCutts!
Jorgen is the Faroese rendering for 'George', whereas the Scandinavian ones need some bar or umlaut on their o's.

Jorgen, killed by his own gun while fighting with Wolff, is strangely the only character whose corpse is drawn in Tintin.
What can be said about Jorgen-George, in the light of Tintin's totally unique world?

Tintin prevents him from taking off with the rocket (Explorers of the Moon) thanks to a cle anglaise (i.e. a monkey wrench, p.44-A2), literally an English key that somehow reminds of Tintin's trip across the British Isles in The Black Island, a trip across Borders* and language barriers liable to turn the original 'Ile Noire*' into 'East Indies'*, a weird metamorphosis also mirrored by the B&W Blue Lotus's British soldiers, who turn into Indian in the colour version.

Earlier in King Ottokars's Sceptre, as a Bordurian* agent (from the Text* or Language-linked Force) involved in a 'missed Anschluss' with Syldavia* (the Image*-linked Force), Boris-Jorgen/'George' likely deserves the utmost attention, for he might incarnate some merging of Text & Image, namely kind of a potential 'rebus-like writing'.

George/Jorgen was abandoned in the outer space, but maybe some surviving military* ruler could help us in that weird affair?

yamilah
is strangely the only character whose corpse is drawn in Tintin

Apart from Rascar Capac, who is also a corpse, and all those dead Egyptologists in Cigars...

OK ..I got lost after 'Tintin prevents him from taking off with the rocket (Explorers of the Moon) thanks to a cle anglaise' but glad I got something right.

I would love to pose a question but I can't think of one and haven't got the books (or any other Tintin related book) to hand to go through them and find a suitable question so I shall leave the the asking of a question to somebody else.

jock123
Apart from Rascar Capac, who is also a corpse, and all those dead Egyptologists in Ciga...
Thanks for the remark.
I meant someone killed under the very eyes of the reader, which is more tragic than a mummy that 'lives' in Tintin's dream (The Seven Crystal Balls, p.32) or Egyptologists' standing (!) mummies with a rather healthy pink complexion (Cigars of the Pharaoh's cover)!

thanks to a cle anglaise (i.e. a monkey wrench, p.44-A2), literally an English key

Hold your horses. The tool you are referring to is a swedish invention. If one looks at wikipedias "monkey wrench" it shows a different tool than the one Tintin throws.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_wrench

But a look on the swedish wikipedia on skiftnyckel, which is the swedish name shows exactly the kind Tintin uses.
http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skiftnyckel

And there it is referred to as a "swedish wrench". On this page (about halfway down) it is referred to as monkey wrench or universal screw spanner.
http://www.sweden.se/templates/cs/BasicFactsheet____3127.aspx

If one looks at the french wikipedia at cle anglais it is the other tool.
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clef_(outils)
You need to add the last ) to see the page.

So if anything the tool used by Tintin is connected to Sweden and not England. But you could of course chose to ignore that fact as it probably don't support your strange theories. But if you ignore the fact that the tool is a swedish invention you sort of cheat, in my opinion, just so you can make your own theories stick.

And by the way, we have both the names Jörgen and Georg (George) in Sweden and I would say that they are regarded to be two completly different names. Looking at a swedish page the name Georg is connected to the names Örjan and Göran.
http://www.birthday.se/namn/georg.aspx

Though looking at the name Jörgen makes the connection to Georg in Denmark.
http://www.birthday.se/namn/j%C3%B6rgen.aspx

Sorry if some of the referred web pages is not in english.

Are the bad guys Alonzo Perez and Ramon Bada supposed to be dead when they are picked up by the devils, then they are corpses too. Animated corpses although but the readers see the scene where they die.

yamilah
I meant someone killed under the very eyes of the reader

Ah, suddenly the additional, subjective, conditions arise… ;-)

Okay then, you can still see Red Rackham’s feet as Haddoque stands over the dead body after the fight (as well as many bodies on deck during the battle).

labrador road 26
The tool you are referring to is a swedish invention.
Whilst I can see what you are getting at, the type of spanner depicted is often called a monkey-wrench in English; furthermore, clicking on a link on the Wikipedia page you link to above, you come upon a reference to the adjustable-spanner, where it seems that several devices can be monkey-wrenches, and that the origin of the class of devices is obviously a bit murky. So while I think you probably have quite a strong claim, it isn’t clear-cut.

Sadly I have never heard it called a Swedish wrench in English, but then again the English don’t call it an English wrench either…

labrador road 26
Maybe I'm mistaken when rendering original French (Herge's language) 'cle anglaise' (an adjustable spanner) by 'monkey wrench '.
Was does the English edition read, in Explorers p.45-A2+A3?

jock123
I admit that considering Jorgen's instant death as more tragic and actual than the demise of rather funny looking 1698' pirates can be seen as subjective!

I confused, because in Turkish we call that wrench as 'papagan anahtar' (parrot key), not monkey or Swedish nor English.... A link about a monkey and a parrot? Castafiore's Emerald!... Allright, I'm just kidding with myself.