Tintin Forums

Without Snowy, Tintin cannot be a success. Remember Tintin in America? Tintin was saved by Snowy several times!

I think Snowy's comments are meant as his thoughts not actual speech - if he could speak he would have told Tintin about the bomb on the plane in 'The Red Sea Sharks' instead of going to so much trouble trying to make him understand.

Regarding Tintin appearing to understand Snowy's words in some of the books, I can't remember the exact scenes but sometimes an animal can express itself so clearly you can almost imagine the words... I moved house recently, we did it over two days and, coming home after moving the non-essential furniture on the first day, my cat came running up the driveway to meet me. She was cying frantically, then she ran back to the house ahead of me and waited at the door.

I could almost see the little speech bubble saying "Come quick, see what's happened - all our stuff is gone!" :)

It true without Snowy Tintin would not have lived through so many books!! But it's some some of his comments or "thoughts" were something irritating... and not very Dog-like at all... I still find him very cute though...

Idefix, or Dogmatix in English is much cuter though =)

Oh yeah, in the cartoon Snowy's continuous unnecessary barking was irritating.

It's true Snowy has an overly high opinion of himself, which- if displayed by a person or said out loud- would be on the irritating side. (Perhaps why Castafiore aggravates so many readers?) But by making the source of these comments a dog, Herge tapped a rich vein of comedy that kept going strong throughout the series. His major preoccupations, in no particular order, are: Tintin, his appearance, where the next meal's coming from and (later on) booze. Speaking as a former terrier owner, all of these preoccupations seem pretty realistic to me! He has a habit of misbehaving or getting himself into dangerous scrapes but as any dog owner would agree, they're stubborn little blighters at the best of times. Certainly none of his mishaps are as serious as Archie's.

Perhaps some readers are irritated by him because the 'smart alec' character is far more of a staple in series nowadays (you always have one per animated film, e.g the samey gallery of Disney sidekicks). This was far less of a feature when the stories first appeared. Tintin is so saintly and the other characters so out there, it's good Snowy's always on the ball.