Tintin in America is the third book in The Adventures of Tintin series, comprisingof 24 comics created by the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. Tintin is the titular protagonist of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. He is a reporter and adventurer who travels around the world with his dog Snowy. By 2007, a century after Hergé’s birth in 1907, Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of more than 200 million copies, and had been adapted for radio, television, theatre, and film.
In Tintin in America (1932), Tintin confirms his reputation as a righter of wrongs. He faces Al Capone and his gang as well as all sorts of other villains. Hergé shows his generous vision of the world as he offers a very well documented depiction of the sad plight of the Native Americans. Tintin’s fame extends beyond the Atlantic Ocean, so, when he arrives in Chicago in the middle of Prohibition, all the gangsters in the city have gathered to make sure that he gets the most uncomfortable reception. Tintin will need to use all his determination and intelligence to survive! Tintin in America is the highest-selling Tintin title of all time. It is the clear winner ahead of Tintin in the Congo and Explorers on the Moon.
Some Interesting Trivia
Tintin in America is one of the nine stories that were first published in black and white. From the ten years between 1932 and 1942, eleven editions of the book were produced. It is also the last story which was published under the Le Petit “Vingtième” label. During this period, more than 150,000 black and white Tintin books were printed, bound, distributed and sold. The book was also reworked in 1945, when Hergé began reformatting his black and white stories to create colour versions. In the new version, which appeared in 1946, many improvements were made to the illustrations.
For the background to Tintin in America, Hergé was influenced by lectures he attended and also particularly by Georges Duhamel’s book Scènes de la vie future (1930), which was openly and vehemently critical against the American lifestyle, sweeping modernisation, Taylorism, assembly line manufacturing and mass-marketing.
To accurately portray life in the USA at the time the story is set, Hergé also turned to Le Crapouillot magazine, which had published a special edition devoted to the United States.
Al Capone is the only real-life character in Tintin’s adventures to have been drawn into the story under his real name. In fact, Al Capone’s name had already been mentioned in Tintin in the Congo, as the head of an international diamond smuggling ring.
“Nowhere does Hergé’s art give such a strong impression of being directly influenced by the cinema than in the pages of Tintin in America”
Hergé made use of diverse techniques to mimic camera effects, as a way of developing the “final edit” frame by frame.
Next book in the series : Cigars of the Pharaoh.
POSITIVE LIVING 