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I do love this book because I too could read about Hergé and his inspirations all day long, I particularly like the story of the house that was the inspiration for Professor Tarragon's house being full of SS soldiers!

And I don't know if anyone else has noticed but in the section about The Black Island, Ivan's car is described as being a Jaguar XJ6, but it is in fact a Jaguar Mark X (or 420G as they are sometimes called).

This is because I am a car anorak and I know that the XJ6 was not released until 1968 whilst the 3rd edition of The Black Island was released in 1966!

Moderator Note: Good spot, thanks for the insight!

Just to make it clear: I think Michael Farr does superb work doing what he does. Kudos for his great archive research, and applause for his detailed analysis of Hergé's ideas and techniques.

But (the obvious "but" to come after that opening?) I'm not quite sure if his approach is the most fruitful way to to look into the world of Tintin. Quite often I feel that Farr is only finding evidence to support the genius of Hergé. Hergé is a genius I agree, but if that's both the starting point and predestined conclusion of analysis, then we're in trouble.

Catch 22 maybe, as Farr obviously has to respect the views of Moulinsart to gain entrance to the archives. And obviously Farr is a huge fan of Tintin, which might make it difficult to look at Tintin from a distance.

Farr is always the first to acknowledge Hergé's attention to detail and pursuit of realism (and rightly so), but is that really the main point of Tintin? And is it really worthwhile to try to prove how greatly Hergé anticipated the development of the world events, when there's plenty of evidence of Hergé having absolutely no clue at times?

If the mistakes by Hergé are explained to be unfortunate mishaps caused by editor's wish, general attitude prevailing in the society or some such cause coming from outside, then what reason I do have to believe that all the greatness is proof of Hergé being genius? Maybe the great moments are just another example of Hergé mirroring the attitudes of the society at large?

To give you an example of what I mean, let's look into Michael Farr's take on Destination Moon/Explorers on the Moon.

According to Farr, Hergé tried to do it as realistically as possible. And then Farr tracks down the sources Hergé used to achieve this realism. Great work again by Farr, but I have to disagree with the conclusions. If the water on the moon (=the moon Tintin & Cº explore) is the fault of Bernard Heuvelmans, then what is the achievement of Hergé? According to Farr, Hergé managed to create a realistic story of a Moon journey with an odd unrealistic detail.

I'd say that Hergé created a great story about how a Moon journey was imagined to be like in the fifties.
And in doing so, he managed to build a bridge between popular beliefs and (then) modern technological knowledge. Great achievement.

There's also another problem with Farr's account that I can't quite comprehend.

For some reason Farr decides to draw parallels between Tintin and the real Moon journey fifteen years later. Nice coincidence that such a trip happened later, but is one a consequence of another? What do they have in common? Does Apollo project tell us something about Tintin's moon trip or Hergé's work? Well, NASA managed to show that some of the ideas Hergé was using were already outdated (although Farr concentrates on the similarities between NASA and Syldavian moon project), but what difference does it make?

The parallels are certainly interesting, but at the same time fail to say anything relevant about Tintin's Moon adventure.

The parallels (and differences) I'd like to read about are Tintin's connections to previous and contemporary sci-fi literature (and films, radio plays etc etc). Tintin was not the first fictional character to explore the moon or space. How does the work of Hergé relate to works of Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs and numerous others? A well-argued opinion about Tintin's place in the popular culture would definitely be useful. What makes Hergé (and Tintin) an outstanding figure? Why do the fans appreciate Tintin? Fan culture is certainly more than numbers behind sales figures, and should be paid attention to.

Farr makes interesting openings into that direction, as he makes comparisons between the technique of Hergé and techniques used in film. Personally I'd like to see the analysis of Hergé's story-telling taken further, now the endless list of source material seems to steal the show.

To conclude, Complete Companion is a great reference book to have in hand to check facts and details about the series. Farr has done a remarkable job researching the archives of Hergé, and has come up with interesting results. But maybe sometimes at the cost of losing the wider picture? Farr's viewpoint is from the inside, when sometimes a look from outside would be more fruitful.

I think that's a good analysis, Mondrian.

Writers about Hergé seem to view his work through their own preoccupations and from their own area of knowledge. Thus Harry Thompson, as a comedy producer, ends up concluding in his book that if Hergé was a genius, his genius lay in the area of comedy.

Whereas Farr, as a journalist by profession, seems to suggest at times in The Complete Companion that Hergé's genius lay in simply being able to accurately copy a photograph of a car or ship! In doing so, he's missing the point. It's not what Hergé copied from photos of real vehicles, etc., that make his pictures great; it's what he knew to leave out or to simplify or stylize, pairing it down to what was clear and right for the frame's composition and the narrative; and the way he could breathe such movement and life into drawings based on static source material.

Both biographers seem to miss the point that the main focus of Hergé's genius was surely that of comic strip construction. Thompson reaches his conclusion that Hergé was primarily a comedy genius after first deciding that neither Hergé's natural writing ability nor drawing ability could quite be classified as genius. But surely Hergé's genius lay in combining the fields of writing, drawing, research and humour, and synthesising them within the unique artform of the comic strip.

A biography written by someone who understands the art and craft of putting together a comic strip from first-hand experience would perhaps give us the sort of in-depth, properly analytical look at Hergé's life and work that some of us want. I'm guessing that Benoît Peeters might fit this bill, but sadly he seems to have been cast out by Moulinsart and there doesn't seem to be much sign of an English translation of his recent Hergé biography, or much chance of Peeters being given future access to the archive to produce the sort of behind-the-scenes books that Farr's been attempting. (I've got Peeters' earlier World of Tintin book, and though it's good, it's way too brief .)

And I agree that the tendency of some to portray Hergé as a genius in all areas of his life and work and even some sort of all-wise visionary is annoying.
Unlike in Thompson's unauthorised book, which highly praised the work of Hergé's collaborators like Bob de Moor and Hergé's English translators, Farr takes several opportunities in The Complete Companion to critisize these people for spoiling the master's work with their unworthy contributions, very much going for the Hergé-was-the-lone-genius-behind-Tintin angle.

But I guess Farr's reliability in toeing this particular line is why has been taken on by the estate as the currently favoured official biographer, and why all books about Hergé (in English at least) seem to be by him these days.

I'm not blaming Farr - I'm sure his opinions are genuinely his own, and he's clearly a nice guy with a real passion for Tintin who's doing a good job of writing stuff introducing the work of Hergé to the public at large. It's just that the estate's tendency to limit access to the archive and their co-operation/approval with book projects to such a limited range of biographers is maybe preventing the sort of wider, multi-angled range of books about Hergé and Tintin that we'd like.

I haven't read Harry Thompson's book, so can't comment on that. But I agree with everything else you write, Balthazar. The stance taken by Moulinsart seems appalling to me, and I really can't see how it benefits Hergé, Tintin or the fans.

One of the main problems all biographers seem to have is the vast amount of knowledge needed.
To put Tintin in context, you'd have to be an expert in various fields ranging from international politics to scifi and dozens of other different fields of knowledge.
So maybe the very idea of writing a "complete companion" is doomed from the start - at least if you try to compile it alone?

Maybe it would be better to analyse isolated parts of Tintin in your own expert area of knowledge instead of trying desperately to grasp the whole universe of Tintin at once? (I noticed that someone has uploaded a new article: An Analysis of Hergé's Portrayal of Various Racial Groups in "The Adventures of Tintin: The Blue Lotus". I'm yet to read it, but just the formulation of the question makes me eager to see what's been found out.)

At times Farr seems to be on his own area, and then we can expect good analysis. For example his comparison between the different versions of Black Island is excellent, and I agree with his assertion of the third version going wrong (Benoît Peeters arrives at a similar conclusion). This time Farr's knowledge of British Islands is good enough. And he also seems to arrive at the conclusion that the strength of Tintin is not that they're timeless, but just the contrary. Tintin is amusing because it so well grasps the moment when they are made.

Unfortunately quite often Farr seems to forget his own idea. I wouldn't go as far as saying that his view of history is anachronistic, but he certainly has a tendency to look at history from today's viewpoint. Too many times he tries to explain that Hergé was a superb visionary with ability to look into the future. Certainly Hergé had the ability to find boiling points of international politics and he was able to say relevant things about them. But he was not a clairvoyant as Farr seems to suggest.

Farr's way of putting Hergé on a pedestal as an "all-wise visionary" would probably not be so annoying if Farr only managed to acknowledge other visionaries as well. Hergé certainly was not the only artist in the thirties who had an opinion about the aggression Japan or Nazi Germany were showing. And neither was Hergé the first artist to show interest in the cultures of Orient (in both meanings of the word). But by conveniently forgetting to mention anybody else who had such interests in their art, Farr only manages to harm his own credibility.

mondrian
At times Farr seems to be on his own area, and then we can expect good analysis. For example his comparison between the different versions of Black Island is excellent, and I agree with his assertion of the third version going wrong

Actually, that was one of the sections of The Complete Companion that bugged me most! To me this seemed like a prime example of Farr taking one of his opportunities to have a pop at Methuen and the English translators, and promote his ongoing idea that Hergé was the lone, always-right genius whose work was only weakened by the input of his translators and his assistants like Bob de Moor. (He does the same thing in his analysis of Flight 714.)

Farr suggests that Methuen's list of suggested improvements in accuracy (in the book's depiction of Britain) was ridiculously fussy, petty and somehow a hassle for Hergé. And he takes the view that the artwork and colouring (mostly by Bob de Moor and the studio team) lack the artistry and subtlety of Hergé's solo-drawn original.

Yet everything else I've ever read on the matter suggests that Hergé, having become a real Anglophile in later life, was very enthusiastic about the 60s redraw of this book, worked closely in full co-operation with Methuen, the translators, and with de Moor and the team, and was very happy with the completed new version.

It probably comes down to the personal preferences of the reader, though. I suppose I'm inclined to believe that Farr's account and analysis is wrong because I like the 60s version so much. I do own a copy of the old version facsimile that Casterman published a few years ago (it's really interesting to be able to look at both together) and I like that too. But I find the drawing and colouring of the 60s version every bit as good and subtle as the original (different in style of course, but equal in quality), evoking the England and Scotland I know and love better than the original version; it's one of my favourite Tintin books.

However, I can see that if you happen to prefer the original version, Farr's views on the history of the revised book's creation would seem more reasonable.

Not quite sure if Farr was having a pop at Methuen or anything like that, I think he's just criticizing the fact that as the album wasn't completely replanned, the album really is not any decade. Instead of being a coherent picture of certain year in Britain, it's a mix of older and more modern material. Benoît Peeters has an excellent example there: the modern (= professional looking) fire brigade losing the keys is an amateurish mistake and the joke is out of the place in the third version. Michael Farr makes the same conclusions.

Black Island is one of my favourites as well, and number one of all pre-Haddock adventures in my list. And part of the fascination is certainly this mixture of older- and newer-material, as all the parts don't seem to fit together naturally. But personal preferences aside, I do think Farr is right in his assertion.

Fair point, mondrian, and the fire brigade example is a good instance of a clash between the era the story was written in and the era the redrawn version represents. But that said, I'm not sure Britain was as modern in the 1960s as Peeters and Farr assume. I don't think it's completely inconcievable that a Sussex fire station in the 1960s, in spite of being kitted out with modern engines and equipment, would nonetheless be staffed by a slightly amateur volunteer fire crew who might lose the key to the station.

Believe me, bits of Britain still feel like the 1930s in 2008! And I think this was even more true in the mid 1960s. Generally, I think the mixture of pre-war tone and post-war detail in the 1960s Black Island paint a pretty convincing picture of Britain to me.

The thing which does clash with the 60s style and setting of the redrawn Black Island are elements of the story, which are very much part of Tintin's more primitive and slapstick 1930s era (ie: the use of impossible coincidences and impossibly conjured-up instant disguises). But these aren't major factors in the overall plot, so don't jar much with me.

Anyway, Farr's certainly entitled to his personal preferences! As I said, if he was merely one of many people writing books about Tintin in English, instead of being set up as the top (possibly sole) authority on Tintin these days, I wouldn't mind the fact that I often don't agree with him.