Tintin Forums

My wife has just brought to my attention this cartoon in the 2 January 2012 issue of The New Yorker.

Excellent cartoon!

A lot of people like stuff when it's underground - it's *cool* because so few people know about it - but as soon as it becomes well known it rapidly loses its appeal. It's been amusing to watch how a big budget movie with a huge publicity machine behind it has brought Tintin further into the public consciousness. I was amazed by the number of posters for Tintin I saw today on the London tube (for the recently released movie DVD).

It must be so annoying for people who liked Tintin because it seemed obscure and therefore trendy!

The hipsters, haha, the every-anti-mainstream-things lovers. Oh dear, there's just so much of hipstery related to Tintin!

Ha ha - that's a pretty funny cartoon (something The New Yorker can usually be relied upon), and spot on as well.

I don't mind that more people know about Tintin now; I'm actually really happy about that. What bugs me is when people don't know about Hergè and think that Tintin is a new thing. (Or they get him mixed up with Rin Tin Tin. Arrgghh.)

That's clearly annoying.

And yeah, instead of underground, perhaps it's more suitable to say anti mainstream, just sayin'. Underground is usually used for "dark" things, and Tintin, of course, is not those kkind of "those" dark things.

That is hardly true. Fat Freddy's Cat for instance started out in the "underground" comics scene of the sixties, but I do not think you could call it "dark" (or the connotations and implications you seem to be suggesting surrounding your choice of such a word in this context).

I agree that Gilbert Sheldon's work tends to be too comedic to be generally called dark. Perhaps some better (or wider) definitions of "underground comics" would be those that are in some way unrespectable, anti-authority or anti-conservative, and celebrative of counterculture (eg: containing non-condemning portrayals of recreational drug use). Some of that at least would apply to Gilbert Sheldon's strips, wouldn't it? (I don't know them that well to be honest.)

Whereas Tintin, as I think tintinsgf is saying, is usually considered too respectable to be described as underground, even in countries where he's not been considered mainstream or commercial.

Of course, here in the UK, the New Yorker cartoon's caption doesn't exactly apply since "the masses" (or at least almost everyone over thirty maybe) already knew who Tintin was before the movie came out. And that's even more the case in much of the rest of Europe. But perhaps there's still a certain high-priced non-mass-market caché to Tintin even in countries where he's well known. And in any case, the New Yorker cartoon certainly puts its finger on a general truth about a certain kind of cultural snobbery that's applicable to many things in any country.

In the context of what I said above; by 'underground' I simply meant something that exists outside the mainstream of popular culture. Certainly in the US (until the film) Tintin must have felt to a lot of people as an underground movement (if you will), since it was not that well known.

If something is 'underground' (culturally) it doesn't mean that it is "dark" (by which I assume we're meaning sombre, sinister, non-cheerful, etc...). But it's probably true that "dark" things are more likely to be underground.

I hope this is making sense!

True it would apply to Gilbert Shelton's strips, although drug use in Fat Freddy's Cat is hardly celebrated: Fat Freddy and co. are lampooned mercilessly.

"tintinsgf" calling Tintin "anti mainstream" is perhaps the best definition of the comic's visibility in the U.S prior to the release of the film; i.e. too clean cut and too full of thoughts of it as a mere "children's comic" for the American critics to really analyse and appreciate like their European colleagues do (thus Tintin misses out on crucial media exposure in the States) and, paradoxically, it is too "mainstream" for comic fans to bestow genuine cultdom on it.