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Of blue blistering barnacles
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As Tintin celebrates his 75th birthday, the fascination with the intrepid boy reporter shows no sign of palling
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AS TINTIN, Herge's intrepid boy reporter turns 75, we can sit back and try and work out the reason behind the continued fascination with the boy with a cowlick hair and plus fours haring it to different parts of the world (and space) and hunting down drug runners and assorted evil types.
From the publication of the first adventure on January 10, 1929 (Land of the Soviets), the adventures of Tintin with his faithful dog Snowy, the bumbling Thompson twins, the irascible Captain Haddock and the eccentric Cuthbert Calculus have enthralled generations of readers.
Most people remember their first meeting with the comic book. Sandeep, working in a publishing house read his first Tintin when he was "down with measles and my father bought me Tintin in Tibet. And I was hooked."
Ajay is in the Army now and the first Tintin he read was "The Cigars of Pharaoh. I have read them all and keep returning to the books. When I read them as a boy, I found the adventures thrilling and Tintin very inspirational. The best thing about Tintin comics is you can always relate to them irrespective of age, gender or country."
Chitamber Sana, a student, holds a similar opinion when he says; "the books can be read at different levels with great diversity." Monjuri Choudhuri, an HR consultant who started with The Cigars of Pharaoh and considers it her favourite book, initially "did not like the books. I preferred Indrajal and Tinkle comics. But now, I have read them all and in fact, still read them to unwind after a hard day's work."
Monjuri grew up on "a diet of Tintin and it is difficult to shake off their influence." Like Veena, a teacher, who says, "we went through a phase when we would swear like Captain Haddock. We would go `billions of blue blistering barnacles!' And later, we shortened it to B.B.B.B!"
Getting the books was a process with "parents needing to be cajoled to spend that much money on a comic book," in Monjuri's words.
t "Tintin comic books are all-time favourites. The three-volume sets are popular. There are people who are building up a collection and so buy the single-volume editions," says a bookkeeper.
While Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, which Herge considered one of the "sins of his youth," has not been in print for a long while now , the good news for Tintinphiles is the Belgian publishers, Casterman, is re-issuing the last unfinished adventure, Tintin and the Alpha Art. So, get ready to be plunged headlong into an adventure where Tintin gets mixed up with the la di dah world of abstract art, secret sects and ends tantalising with Tintin going to be cast as a living sculpture. Blistering barnacles!
MINI ANTHIKAD-CHHIBBER
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