Tintin My Hero
There's a lovely little ode to everyone's favorite gun-wielding boy reporter in the article Tintin: One of the 20th Century's Great Heroes. Agree or disagree, the piece was inspired by Paris's Pompidou Centre and their current exhibit honoring Herge himself. Enthusiasts of Tintin will appreciate Nicholas Lezard's approach to this most popular character. Of course, you have to not mind the occasional heady sentence like,
Just as Haddock and Tintin combine to form a fully-rounded view of the world, so Asterix represents, in its burgeoning comedy, the Dionysian approach as against Hergé's more austere, Apollonian line.Me like Tintin and Asterix too.
I just had a conversation with a patron the other day as to why my library system does not yet carry both series. I urged patience. Similarly I also urge those Tintin fans amongst you to tell me which collected volumes you find of particular interest.
Thanks to Bookninja for the link.
posted by fusenumber8 @ 12:01 AM
7 Comments
7 Comments:
Well, I can only tell you my experience with our collected volumes of Tintin. We have the Three in One series published by Little, Brown (3 vols in one bound volume). We have excellent circulation statistics for our Tintin collection. We have 3 in 1s as old as 1979 and the last one we bought has a publication date of 1992.
For volumes that are almost 15 years old, they've held up pretty well. My main complaint is that the binding is the "stitching" kind in the middle, and the older ones are getting loose. We can patch it up, but I just really don't like that kind of binding.
The single volume ones published by Last Gasp have held up beautifully. It's more expensive, of course, to buy the single volumes, but they are holding up better, and they look nicer, too.
Just my $0.02.
Excellent! Just the kind of information I was looking for. Is there any volume you'd suggest a person start with?
I haven't read it, but you probably can't go wrong with Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.
Seriously...I haven't read every single volume, but they're all fun. I don't think you could go wrong with just choosing any at random and building your collection that way. It doesn't really matter in what order you read them.
I don't know if you are the one in charge of ordering, but if you need to convince someone to order the series, I remember that Jim Trelease has some good things to say about Tintin in his Read Aloud Handbook (in his section on comics and the benefit of reading comics).
AsteRIX! AsteRIX! AsteRIX! The single greatest reward for learning French (translating puns is tricky.)
Puis-je? Puis-je?
Fun Fact: in his recent review of "Apocalypto" in The New Yorker, Anthony Lane points out that the "human sacrifice" scene in the film was lifted directly out of the Tintin adventure "Prisoners of the Sun."
Hmmm. A great hero, indeed!
Asterix is a shelf-sitter at my library -- and the material selectors sent us two copies of every issue! I'm about ready to weed them. Tintin has a few fans. Disney comics aren't circulating very well, either. The younger kids want Manga and other Japanese-style books just like their older siblings. (and parents in our area can't get over their training that comics are BAD. But if it's Japanese, it's foreign liter-a-ture. and okay. go figure.)
Now, Babymouse, that's another story. (local author makes good.)
Good to know. Tintin does well in New York partly because The Strand carries multiple copies all over the place. Ditto Barnes & Ignoble. I guess the real question may be whether or not there's any really good manga for children out there. I haven't located any. This is a post-worthy question and one I should ask pronto.
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