Tintin: An intrepid explorer turns 80

TINTIN is enjoying a holiday in the beautiful and historic city of Edinburgh with his friend, the curmudgeonly Captain Haddock. While browsing through The Scotsman, he reads of a plane crash on Inchcolm Island in the Firth of Forth. Later that evening, left alone at the chess board after Captain Haddock accidentally imbibes a tad too much of his favourite Loch Lomond whisky and is forced to retire, Tintin drifts into fitful slumber and a vivid dream ensues. What flashes before his eyes is a vision of his Highland pal, Hector McTavish McBean, who has survived a plane crash on his way to the Kingdom of Fife. Believing his dream to be a telepathic vision, the intrepid Tintin sets off to Inchcolm, followed by loyal Snowy and a hungover Haddock. Little do they know what adventures lie in store…

OK, it's not quite the masterpiece that the great Herg might have created, and Inchcombe's not quite a dead ringer for Tibet (you spotted the Tintin in Tibet tribute, right?), but you get the drift. And the reason for this affectionate foray into the world of the bequiffed boy reporter is that despite the fact he still doesn't look a day over 16, thundering typhoons Tintin is 80 today!

It was in 1929 when Belgian artist Herg (the pen name of Georges Rmi, 1907-83) first introduced the intrepid investigative young journalist and his cute fox terrier, Snowy. Beginning as a comic strip in a children's supplement of the church newspaper, Le Vingtime Sicle, Tintin's adventures started in Russia (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets), where he discovered the horrors of Bolshevism. Herg went on to create 23 complete adventures – the 24th unfinished at the time of the artist's death – taking Tintin all over the globe from Egypt to China to our own Black Isle, to the bottom of the ocean and even to the moon. It might sound outlandish but it proved to be an amazing success, the books have since sold more than 200 million copies and been translated into 50 languages. And with a big screen version expected next year, directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Peter Lord of the Rings Jackson, things look likely to get even bigger for the Belgian creation.

So what explains the enduring appeal of Tintin?

Christian Owens, 42, is a graphic designer and 'Tintinologist'. He runs the online forums on tintinologist.com, a website dedicated to the boy detective which has been going since the 1990s and which Owens became involved with in 2003. He knows first-hand the worldwide appeal of Herg's creation. "People from the US, Scandinavia, Europe, India, Indonesia and lots from Iran take part in discussions in the forums. But we also get people from Australia, New Zealand. Everywhere really."

Owens, like many of us, read the books as a child then rediscovered them when the Eurostar opened and travel to Brussels (Herg's home) became much easier. "That's what rekindled my interest," he says. "I started investigating the online community and reading the books again. I realised that there was a lot more to them than just comic books. There's a lot of politics, it's good art. They are basic adventure stories but then there's also the anthropology of travelling the world and respecting – usually – other cultures."

Tintin has not been without controversy. There have been accusations of colonialism and racism (Tintin in the Congo) to say nothing of the sexual politics. Most people, though, are happy to accept that cartoons created more than half a century ago are documents of their time.

"Arguments have been made to say he's promoting colonialism, racism. He's not, that what we're reading into him from our modern stance," says Joe Gordon, online editor for the comic store Forbidden Planet. "When you actually read them, they're very simple stories, boy's own adventures really. There's a conspiracy, a crime, a chuckling villain and the hero who investigates and solves it. When you look at comics, books and movies today a lot of them are very convoluted, they're very self-referential, but sometimes you want a straightforward adventure story with clearly identifiable bad guys and a good guy who will do the good thing at the end and some fun. And some of us never grow out of that."

Owens acknowledges that there are "unfortunate bits" but reckons as long as the controversial books aren't sold in children's sections, they should be available. "Mind you, I went into a Waterstone's the other day and they were in the Tintin rocket (display shelves]," he says.

If you are yet to delve into the world of the graphic novel – take it from me, even grown ups are allowed to these days – then you have many pleasant surprises in store and Herg should be thanked as the inspiration for many of them. Tintin's adventures may read like simple adventures, and in some ways that's exactly what they are, but Herg based his stories on actual events in his world, reflecting the politics of the 1930s and post-war events. The Anschluss, revolutions in South America, the search for oil in the Middle East, the race to the Moon – these were all tackled by Herg and the intrepid Tintin, and there you were thinking they were about a daring young lad and his dog. The backdrop of politics and world events set a precedent which is echoed in many of today's most acclaimed graphic novels.

Herg's artistic style was no less influential. Andy Warhol was a fan and the current burgeoning world of graphic novels would be all but unimaginable without Herg's contribution, particularly his unmistakable ligne claire style of drawing, which has made the adventures design classics as well as treasured stories.

Herg himself had a difficult relationship with his famous creation. By late in his career, even contemplating Tintin would lead to break-outs of eczema and pain in his fingers.

"It became a bit of a bind for him," says Owens. "It manifested itself physically – he got to the stage that he couldn't write because if he did his skin would break out. He had psychosomatic problems dealing with it but, because it was a life's work it drove him. He couldn't divorce himself entirely from it.

"I think he felt that he was the only one who could draw Tintin. He wasn't keen on the idea of someone taking over from him. He put it to his wife before he died that he didn't want anyone to do it and asked her if she could make sure that the adventures ended with him."

And that's exactly what has happened. There have been musicals and plays but no new adventures. Even the upcoming film is to be based on existing stories although it will be shot in 3-D using performance-capture technology, with Andy Serkis (used to that style of filming from playing Gollum and King Kong in Peter Jackson's 2005 remake) as the soused and sarcastic Captain Haddock.

The cast of characters are easily as much part of the appeal as Tintin himself. Snowy and Captain Haddock, the hard-of-hearing Professor Cuthbert Calculus and the fiendish Rastapopoulos, the cigar-smoking criminal mastermind, as well as the bungling Thompson and Thomson often have the best lines. What you might have noticed is that in Tintin's world there aren't a lot of women. For some, that's led to a sneaking suspicion that Tintin might be gay. A recent newspaper column put forward just this notion and the furore that erupted (in Belgium, the outcry has reached the pages of the broadsheets) illustrates how cherished and precious Tintin still is. So is he or isn't he gay?

"There are a lot of gay fans of Tintin and their take on it offers something quite different," says Owens. "They have their own readings of it that others don't share, but perhaps they're picking up on a subtext that really exists that we don't see. When we held a discussion on our forum a lot of people were getting quite upset saying 'Tintin is not gay' but I don't think we really know.

"Someone asked Herg about it and he said there was no room for eroticism in the stories."

So that's that. And what really matters is that his adventures remain as thrilling as they ever were. Happy birthday Tintin.