Tintin Forums

I've sometimes wondered about that. I used to think he was blonde, then I read some of the books and noticed that it changes all the time. Sometimes, even within a book.

You know how kids often start out with light hair which turns darker as they grow older? My father for instance, was born with blonde hair. In high school it was chestnut, and now it is near-black. I've also noticed that Tintin's hair becomes darker as the series progresses. Perhaps it's just a natural process.

I for one don't think Tintin's hair is ginger - the word normally denotes a reddish tint. I think it starts off as blonde, then darkens slightly to strawberry blonde (for the want of a more masculine-sounding colour... -_-')

Isn't ginger a type of brownish colour? That's what the root ginger looks like.

Hmm...I'm not sure, but I think 'ginger' is reddish (judging from a quick Google search)

Yes, "ginger" (when used of hair), is a coppery reddish colour - think Lucille Ball, Sarah Ferguson the Duchess of York, Gerry "Ginger Spice" Haliwell; however as the "red" of red hair isn't like the red of a pillar box, it shows that there is room for interpretation.

Tintin's hair is always changing color.

This a very sweeping statement. I was looking through "Flight 714" today and Tintin's hair is always the same colour.

I think Cigars means that Tintin's hair colour changed over the decades, not just a single episode.

Take a look at the two colour panels which are part of the publication history of Tintin's "The Black Island" at wikipedia. You'll notice that Tintin's hair is much darker in the 1960s version than that of the 1940s.

In the 1940s Black Island the skin tone is very similar to the hair colour. It makes me think the hair darkening could have been to distinguish better between Tintin's head and his hair. I also have some black and white newspaper strips where another artist (presumably the newspaper's) has drawn little scratchy lines to represent the hair. In black and white it's less obvious where the hair is on Tintin. Perhaps there was a feeling that people might think that Tintin was completely bald, but with a strange tuft-like growth coming out of his head?

Harrock n roll

Wasn't this how his hair was depicted in those 'grey wash' pages that Hergé prepared for the original version of Land of Black Gold? I don't have the books on hand to check (they're in the 60 Years... and recent Pompidou catalogues, I think), but I seem to remember just his quiff being shaded, or perhaps a little bit of his hair.