Tintin Forums

Some of you might know of Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Markstein is a comics historian who has written up detailed accounts of many comic series, from the most obscure to the most famous.

He has recently started to look at non-American comics including our old favourite.

There is just one problem. In his article, Don claims that:

"After Le Petit Vingtième succumbed to the social and business changes brought about by the looming war, Hergé relocated to Paris, for health reasons. Tintin continued, at first published in a juvenile supplement of the French paper, Le Soir, but avoiding "sensitive" topics during the German occupation of France."

Never heard of Herge being in Paris during the war. In fact, by all accounts he was still in Belgium and it was the Belgian version of "Le Soir" that published Tintin and was accused of collaboration.

I sent Don an email to this effect, asking him where he got his info, but he never so much as answered me. I was thinking that if anyone else got in touch with him at don@toonopedia.com that might help.

You're right, mct. Whilst Hergé fled briefly to France when Belgium was invaded, he returned to Belgium pretty quickly to work there throughout the war, and Le Soir (known as the "stolen Soir" during its wartime control by the Nazis) was of course a Belgian newspaper.

The error you spotted in Don Markstein's article is one of many. Almost every paragraph is inaccurate in some respect - for example, his ludicrous statement that the Tintin stories didn't concern themselves with politics during the 1930s, or his statement that Hergé founded Tintin magazine, when it was of course, Raymond le Blanc who founded it, or his assertion that "Soviets" was eventually formatted into a 62 page colour book like "Congo", and rewritten. There are more errors, I'm sure, which others will spot.

As has been discussed in other threads, getting some facts wrong seems to be almost obligatory for journalists writing about Tintin (or indeed about most aspects of popular culture). But Don Markstein's piece seems even worse than most, which seems particularly unfortunate considering he's setting himself up as a Comics Historian and calling his site an encyclopedia. I'd never heard of him or his website. Given his apparent laziness towards journalistic accuracy, I can't say I'm surprised he never bothered to answer your email!