IN AND OUT OF THE EAGLE 15

Herge's famous 'boy reporter' Tintin first appeared in English in EAGLE in a translation of his adventure King Ottokar's Sceptre, printed on the lower half of the middle page spread below the Cutaway Drawings, beginning in the issue dated 3rd August 1951 and ending in the issue dated 2nd May 1952 - a total of forty episodes. This story tells of Tintin's efforts to save the throne of the fictional Balkan kingdom of Syldavia for its rightful King and was inspired by Anthony Hope's novel The Prisoner of Zenda. The unknown translator, who was engaged by Tintin's Belgian and French publisher Casterman, retained the original names of all the characters except for the incompetent detectives Dupond and Dupont, who they renamed Thompson and Thomson. Hence Tintin's dog is called Milou in the EAGLE version, not Snowy. When Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner translated Tintin's adventures for book publication by Methuen commencing from 1958, they kept the Thompson names and anglicised many others.

EAGLE's version describes Tintin as a French boy, despite his Belgian origins and was an edited version of the revised colour album of the story produced by Herge, assisted by Edgar P. Jacobs in 1947. The story had originally been produced as a serial for the children's supplement of the newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle between 1937 and 1938 and then released in album form in 1939. Its plot contains a strong topical element from that period, because Syldavia is threatened by its Faschist neighbour Borduria, echoing the threat posed to smaller countries by Nazi Germany and Mussolini's Italy. The 1947 album ran to sixty two pages of strip, compared to EAGLE's forty spreads, but EAGLE fitted more frames in each episode, often as many as four or five, so there was little removed from the original. Three of the album's pages were presented as a brochure describing the Geography and History of Syldavia. In EAGLE these were omitted and the key elements summarised in two text boxes, each containing an illustration taken from the brochure. Several humorous incidents involving the Thompsons or Milou (Snowy) were edited out of the EAGLE version, notably a vignette where Milou steals a large dinosaur bone from a museum and some single frames, including the four large half page pictures from the album were also left out.

In EAGLE the strip was titled The Adventures of Tintin and not King Ottokar's Sceptre and although Tintin's name was written as one word in the title, he is referred to as Tin Tin in the text boxes and speech bubbles. The speech bubbles themselves were written in a neat style using upper and lower case letters quite similar to that used in the French and later English albums, whereas the other strips in EAGLE  were all written in upper case letters.

The strip was not a great success in EAGLE and no further adventures were serialised. In my opinion there were several reasons for this. The 'ligne claire' style of artwork used by Herge more closely resembled styles used in overtly humorous cartoon strips in Britain than the more realistic style of British adventure strips. The style seemed to call for broad comedy whereas Tintin's adventures combine their humour with strong storylines. While EAGLE's adventure strips often contained a little humour and their comedy strips sometimes contained perilous situations, as in Harris Tweed, there was a clear distinction between adventure and comedy stories. EAGLE readers struggled to relate to this unfamiliar territory and this was not helped by Tintin's anachronistic image. A familiar icon in Belgium and France for more than two decades, Tintin's trademark plus fours and raised quiff only added to the unusual nature of the character and the strip for EAGLE readers in 1951. Also, the pace of the story was slightly slower than other strips in EAGLE at the time, with longer scenes in some locations. The Adventures of Tintin did not suit EAGLE's style. Finally the rather cold translation lacked the fun provided by the later ones where Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner replaced wit that could not be translated with wit of their own.

Thankfully Tintin did break into the British market when Methuen began to publish the books and they were able to find their own market. Every Tintin book has been translated into English and we have seen Tintin films, TV series, a B.B.C. radio series and three English language plays, most  notably a musical version of Tintin in Tibet by the National Youth Theatre in 2005. The bookshop chain Ottakar's, founded in 1987 but absorbed by Waterstone's Bookshops in 2006, took its name from King Ottokar, despite the different spelling and many branches displayed Tintin murals on their walls. Tintin's adventures have been translated into almost every language on Earth, including Cornish, Welsh, Gaelic and Catalan. In his native Belgium, Herge is celebrated in a purpose built museum dedicated to his work. Scenes and characters from the Tintin adventures are displayed on several murals in Brussels and Tintin is even featured on a Brussels Airlines plane which has been painted to look like the 'Shark' submarine from his Red Rackham's Treasure story.

(This article is derived from several of my 'In and Out of the Eagle' posts in 'Eagle Times'  with some additional factual information taken from Eric Fernie's article about 'King Ottokar's Sceptre' in Eagle from the 2016 Spring Issue of 'Eagle Times'. The opinions expressed in this article are mine - Jim Duckett.)