Tintin: is he cooler then James Bond?

A friend has tried comparing Tintin to James Bond in the most useless way, and came out with Bond is cooler because of all the gadgets... What the heck?

I don't think James Bond is cooler than Tintin. Gadgets-wise, Bond has plenty of them, but mostly unrealistic, only products of vivid imagination. The more gadgets possessed, the lesser challenge to make an adventure. Tintin's gadgets are possibly come in handy. And the storyline of the Tintin series is basing on the practical side of life which are not too exaggerating, unlike Bond's which are usually fantasy. Tintin is less violent, too, in fact, the best educational show if children would like to discover how the world really goes 'round. Its plots can serve as guidelines as well as precautions in facing their next stages of life.

To be honest if you read the early James Bonds there's not much emphasis on the gadgets, it's more about his own phsical endurance.

You know, I don't think that many people know anymore that James Bond was originally a book character, and not a movie character. Oh, the injustice! Poor Ian Fleming!

Combined with Tintin, 007 & Sherlock Holmes: the iconic sleuths and their influences

Hi all you out there,

I am a great fan of the 3, i.m.o. most iconic sleuths, Sherlock Holmes, Tintin and James Bond. Now, Sherlock Holmes of course is mentioned several times (by Snowy) in reference to the sleuthing by Tintin. But it strikes me more and more that there are a lot of cross reverences between these stories (books / movies).

For example, I was re-watching License To Kill the other day and noticed a scene somewhere halfway the movie, that came right from Tintin!
James Bond is found unconscious underneath a lot of debris. When he awakes, the first thing he sees is a scary, monstruous face... of a statue. And he finds himself in this large white and remote, almost serene, villa. Now, doesn't that sound familiair to you?

Do you know any more?

Flight 714 has quite a few parallels with Bond, unintentionally or otherwise. The plot detail of the hijacking of a plane, and the villains hiding it from detection somewhere in the Tropics, can be seen in Thunderball (there's even a treacherous Italian "inside man" in both - Columbani even resembles the ill-fated Angelo from Thunderball, apart from the broken nose!)

There are even more bits in common with You Only Live Twice, which was released in 1967, so was roughly contemporary with Flight 714's original run. We've got Rastapopoulos being very Bond villanesque on his island hideout, complete with a plentiful supply of gun-toting henchmen. We've got an underground complex hidden in a volcano, which inevitably erupts at the climax. We've got our heroes rescued in a rubber liferaft at the end (though Tintin doesn't get a snog like Bond does with Kissy Suzuki.) We've even got a spaceship in both, but Tintin's aliens are a little more fantastical than Blofeld's Bird One rocket!

I'm not suggesting for one minute that Hergé was unduly influenced by Roald Dahl's screenplay for YOLT, but I find it fascinating that the most "Bondian" of Tintin's adventures and the film which a lot of commentators see as the pinnacle of the Bond movies as pop-art spectacle should both come out at around the same time.
Anyway, Rastapopoulos was carrying on like a Bond villain (rich, unscrupulous criminal mastermind with a big organisation backing up his evil schemes) nearly 20 years before Fleming even thought of Bond.
Have to say that the big-nosed one's means of escape in The Red Sea Sharks is also more than a little like Blofeld's in Diamonds Are Forever some 13 years later... except that Rastapopoulos actually managed to escape!

OMG!.. I am also a great fan of those particular characters. First it was Jamesbond, then Tintin, ( and it still is!) and now I'm getting older I am appreciating more and more the superb literature that is Sherlock homes. I recently won a beautiful book which contains every short sherlock holmes story and all four novels. The lost world by Arrhur Conan Doyle is also a book any Holmes fan should check out.

The similaritys between the three are evident, all involved in taking down criminals and sorting out problems. There are many reasons that people tend to love the three characters. Perhaps it is that each one represents the person we'd all love to be, and while there are differences between the three, ( can you imagine Holmes bedding his clients and in the world of Herge there's hardly any women anyway!) they are all truly amazing creations of literarure which will be undoubtedly remembered for centuries to come.

Nice to meet you here, Mr. Blumenstein and John!


Yes! That one was one of my observations too. Thanks for pointing out the Flight and Thunderball similarities.

I agree that they are iconic, but I wouldn't say that Tintin, Bond and Holmes are three figures which I personally would place together, and I'm not certain that the first two would be what I would class as "sleuths", per se.
Bond is a government operative, and acts on instruction, not really as a detective.
Tintin's tales span detective fiction, but also include exploration, journalism, science-fiction and spy stories, making him a general adventurer more than anything else.

Rasatapopolous does, I suppose, figure as a cross between Bloefeld and Moriarty, especially in Lake of Sharks, but he is more a send-up of the type in whatever he does (his turn as a film-director shows he is most aware of the clichés needed to play the part of a director).

If you want the archetypal Belgian sleuth, look no further than Hercule Poirot, not Tintin – and look a lot further than the Thom(p)sons...!