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Which would mean that almost half of the Belgian comic characters were gay! And personally, I don't think that Hergé intended any homosexual interpretation.

The depiction of confirmed male bachelors living together under the same roof was not unusual in comics at the time. Other examples include "Blake & Mortimer" by Jacobs, "Spirou & Fantasio" by Franquin and "Tif & Tondu" by Will.
I've even seen strips of Mickey Mouse and Goofy sleeping in the very same bed! Poor Minnie!

One of the reasons for this was that having the characters living together made it easier for them to hold conversations without wasting space in showing them travelling or talking on the phone in separate panels: take the scenes of Tintin journeying to Marlinspike in "Crystal Balls" or the chat he has with Haddock on the phone in "Black Gold".

Same applies to the scenes when characters are shown sharing the same bedrooms, such as when the Thom(p)sons argue about answering the phone in "Prisoners of the Sun": much easier to have them in the same room and panels rather than separate rooms and panels which would take up space, have them shouting down a hallway and affect pace of the humour.

Perhaps not, I am frankly not sure.

Note that in my comment I stated specifically that what Hergé intended was besides the point in reading interpretations of the text.
Figuring what he intended is very difficult, one has to ask at what level also, as we humans are very complex with our intentions.
I think the text can always be analyzed as its own entity, and any consistent reading is a valid one, this is an usual approach in literary criticism.
But again not the only approach, just a possible one.

I did not say that the gay interpretation is exclusive, that is, it is certainly possible to have a consistent reading of the Tintin albums where none of the characters is gay.
I am just stating that it is a valid and consistent one.

You make very good points.
I do think however that there is a bit of a difference between the Tintin series and some of other Belgian comics you cited. Especially given the nature of the evolution of the interaction between the characters. In the Tintin dialogue a stronger bond between some of the characters seems to be inferred, and there is a lot of circumstantial evidence that would support (though not completely prove of course) a platonic gay relationship.

The beauty of some of the best works of art is that they leave things unsaid, and encourage the reader to make their own version of the story.

There is a very famous short story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges called "Pierre Mennard, Author of The Quixote". In this story the main character, Pierre Mennard is stated to have re-writen an exact copy, word for word, of the Cervantes masterpiece, and in the act of doing it, to have written his own novel.
In a brilliant piece of story-telling, Borges allows Mennard to create crazy and completely different interpretations of "The Quixote" in his exact re-writing, putting forth the absolute importance of the act of reading in the "creation" of a literary work.

I personally don't think that the Thom(p)sons are gay. They are either twins or, as I always thought, good friends. As for when Thomson says something about kissing Thompson in Picaros, I just thought it was a funny joke, like in a soap opera when the leading lady says "Kiss me, Henry!" or that it was a quote of some sort...

I assume that you've read my note on this issue, if not then take a look here.

I might point out that in "Explorers on the Moon", in the original French, when they get into pyjamas, one of them refers to himself and the other as "my colleague and I". That does not sound like people who are blood related.

I'm thinking that maybe they were two boys who grew up together and adopted the same habits, clothes and appearance of each other.

I think, as almost everyone has said, that it's unlikely that Hergé intended them to be anything other than heterosexual or asexual, since that seems to be the default settings of most children's book characters of the time.
But if Hergé was living and working as a young strip cartoonist today, it doesn't seem impossible that he'd have decided to make them openly gay, and it doesn't seem unlikely that he'd be including gay characters generally alongside his straight ones.
And there's nothing to prove that even in his own time, Hergé didn't privately regard some of his characters as gay, if and when he thought about their sexuality at all.

And whatever Hergé's views, if, as guarani suggests, we accept the concept of the validity of reader interpretation beyond what an author probably intended, it's quite possible to see the Thom[p]sons as a long-established gay couple without that interpretation contradicting anything else in the stories.

In other words, for many modern readers that interpretation works just as well as the equally unprovable interpretations that they're twins with differently spelled surnames, or platonic work colleagues.

Personally, I think that a gay interpretation of Tintin and Haddock would require a more drastic distortion of what's there on the pages of the books than a gay interpretation of the Thom(p)sons, since to me Tintin seems to be more of a boy than a man - too young for a consensual sexual relationship with Haddock - and because Tintin and Haddock just don't seem "couply" in the way the Thom(p)sons sort of do.

Really good arguments on both sides, I always assumed they were brothers (for the reasons I mentioned earlier) but what's great about Hergé's work is that so much is left unsaid that the reader can interpret the stories however they want. And since there's no way to prove these things either way, everybody's opinions are valid :)

But not too young to go around the world chasing gangsters and spies, getting appointed to a senior military position ("Broken Ear") and going to the moon.

Hahaha, again it all relies on your interpretation. If you view Tintin as 16 or 17, like I do, then you'd likely agree that the age difference between him and Haddock would be a bit much (in the U.S. the age of consent is 18 I believe). But some see him as older and could then argue that the age difference wouldn't create a problem. Anyway, I've gotten off topic here so sorry about that!

I think Balthazar in post 45 has given a very good and thoughtful response on this subject. I am enjoying reading this thread indeed.

Moving from the Tom(p)son's to Tintin, regarding Balthazar's very good point:


Well, yes, if we assume Tintin to be underage I agree that a Tintin gay interpretation would require a construction of a different morality philosophy to support the story. This would, perhaps, complicate unnecessarily the reading of the albums. Even though I have put forth the idea of reader interpretation here, such interpretation should probably not go to such extremes that it requires constructions that are too convoluted or unnaturally complicated.

However, It remains possible that the relationship is merely platonic, or, that Tintin is indeed not underage as mct16 possibly alluded. Tintin's age seems to be borderline between a teenager and an adult, and I am not exactly sure where it precisely fits.

More in the spirit of adding to the discussion, rather than providing any conclusive evidence either way, I will point out the vignette at the bottom of page 28 in "The Crab with the Golden Claws". This is relatively shortly after Tintin meets Haddock for the first time, they are facing a potentially deadly situation, contemplating their likely death in the desert. As they are walking it would appear they are holding hands. The nature of the expanding vista and the angle of the "viewer lens" could be interpreted as suggestive. - Just throwing another instance to this puzzle

(at Tintin 90's series "Secret of the Unicorn")

Broadcaster: Tell me, detectives, how close are you to actually catching the pickpocket?
Thomson and Thompson:(hesitated)Aaah... uuh.. hmmn... well...
Thomson: To be precise, we're very close.
Thompson: Precisely, very close indeed.