Childhood Hero

Hello Universe 135

There are times when life ends up gifting you something valuable. It may be the gift of a dream come true or the gift of a wonderful surprise. I felt like I received such a gift when I got to live out a childhood dream back in June 2022 - visiting the Hergé Museum in Belgium.

Me and my backpacks outside the iconic Musée Hergé in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

For those of you who don’t know about Hergé - he was the creator of The Adventures of Tintin, a series of comic strips and albums that ran from 1929 to 1976. I started reading Tintin thanks to my local library, and was instantly captivated by the young boy reporter and his ensemble’s globe-trotting adventures. As a young boy, these stories and their beautiful art captivated me, thrilled me, and made me dream big.

The first Tintin drawing I made in September 2020

In September 2020, as the pandemic raged on, I found myself working from home and in dire need of more entertainment to pass those slow moments.

It was then that Tintin and his adventures made a comeback in my life in form of a podcast. This podcast, hosted by comic artists Ian Boothby and David Dedrick is called Totally Tintin. In it, they go through each Tintin album, and share some of their insights into the art and history of the comics.

While the albums captivated me as a child and held my fancy all my life, this resurgence brought back my love for Tintin in a whole new way. Around that time, I’d bought a nifty tablet, the Samsung Tab S7, and it became my entertainment companion. I started re-reading the comics on my tablet, and soon, started using the included pen to try and draw panels of the comics to appreciate and adopt the art style of these comics that had inspired me all my life.

My recreation of a panel from The Shooting Star (1942)

What speaks to me the most about Hergé’s art style (known as Ligne Claire or Clear Line), is its simplicity and use of colors.

Each shape is distilled down to its bare essence, each expression conveyed with utmost clarity using just a few lines.

My recreation of the last panel of Tintin in America (first published 1932, color album published in 1945)

Because of David and Ian’s conversations in Totally Tintin, I also found out more about Hergé’s iconic collaborators like E.P. Jacobs, Bob de Moor, and more, who went on to become celebrated artists in their own right. These artists, along with Hergé, shaped the Franco-Belgian comics industry which went on to have the largest impact on the comics that came out of Europe in the second half of the twentieth century.

My recreation of a panel from The Black Island, first published 1938, republished 1944. It was further updated in 1966 as Hergé’s British publisher Methuen asked him to update his depiction of Britain. Hergé sent his assistant Bob de Moor to research the British sites and landscapes, and much of the landscape art in The Black Island’s modern album can be attributed to de Moor.

Slowly, as I became more and more comfortable recreating pictures from these albums and learned to adopt Hergé’s art style, I became more ambitious, and started using this style to create art of my own.

This resulted in a series of drawings I made and framed and gifted to many of my friends over the past few years.

Hergé style Ligne Claire art I’ve made and gifted to friends and family over the years.

All this to say - I absolutely love the Tintin stories.

I love Tintin and all the characters in his stories like Snowy, Captain Haddock, and Professor Calculus. And thanks to David and Ian from Totally Tintin, I have a deep respect for Hergé and his life’s story.

But why talk about it now? Well, turns out, after concluding Totally Tintin back in 2015, David and Ian brought it back for one more episode in December 2022 after visiting the Hergé museum themselves. In this new episode, they recount their experience at the museum. I opened my podcast player to replay an episode from Totally Tintin this weekend, and found this new episode, listened to it, and that made me go down the memory lane of my visit just 5 months before theirs.

Musée Hergé is more than just a museum dedicated to a great artist. It is a piece of art in itself, with its contemporary European architecture, its friendly staff, and the narrative of Hergé’s life that it brings to the audience. It is a place that delights the young and the old alike, and is one of those few places in the world that does more than live up to the expectations of even the most demanding fan.

Going to Musée Hergé was my pilgrimage.

I spent 2 fewer days with my family to indulge in this experience, and I can say for certain that it was worth every second and worth every cent. Walking down those passages looking at the art of Hergé before Tintin, the pages of Tintin albums covered with ink and white-out, the real life replicas of the Arumbaya statue and the moon rocket, oh my goodness, there was never a moment my heart wasn’t pounding.

Pictured here: A man in heaven.

Thus, no points for guessing, today’s poem is dedicated to my childhood hero - Tintin.

Poem starts in 3… 2… 1!

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Through air and through water
and through heavy fog.
This young boy reporter,
explored with his dog.

He went on adventures
through hail, and through snow.
Through forests and rivers,
and mountains, and more.

He went to the moon,
and came back to the earth.
He fought every goon
whose foul crimes he'd unearth.

He'd fight crime and win,
and no, he'd never rest.
For his name was Tintin,
and he was the best!

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That’s it! Thanks for reading edition no. 135 of Hello Universe.

I’m curious - have you read Tintin? Many of my regular readers are from Europe and India, and Tintin is a big deal in these two places, so I would be delighted to hear about your Tintin memories. I would even love to hear from my readers from other parts of the world about their memories of reading Tintin.

AND if you’ve ever been to Musée Herge, then you MUST share your experience.

Leave a comment and share your love for Tintin with the Hello Universe community!

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Some Fun Stuff

This is a place where I recommend read-worthy, hum-worthy, and watch-worthy content from across the internet. The underlined words are links that you can click to access my suggestions:

1. Read The Adventures of Tintin: Available as a box set from your local bookseller, from Amazon, or as an app to read on your Android or iOS device, this classic adventure series chockfull of beautiful art, nail-biting suspense, and hilarious shenanigans. If you’ve read them already, maybe it’s time to dig in again. Vive le Tintin!

2. Listen to Totally Tintin by David Dedrick and Ian Boothby: This podcast is joy, delight, and every happy feeling rolled into one. Like Ian and David say, whether you’ve read the comics or not, listen to this podcast and read along! [ Google Podcasts | Apple Podcasts ]

3. Watch The Adventures of Tintin cartoon from the 90s : To round up this Tintin flavored edition, here’s a Youtube playlist of the Tintin cartoon. The art style of this cartoon is the most faithful to the original comics. It is so good!

That’s it for this week, see you next Tuesday!