What, exactly, does "Tintin" mean to you? There’s a very good chance that for you, "Tintin" is simply the title to Steven Spielberg’s new, mo-cap animated film that opened in theatres this past week… and nothing more. But for me "Tintin" isn’t just a funny sounding name for a character or movie. Tintin is a passion that has been with me for most of my life. Tintin was my gateway drug to the world of comics, a medium that I grew to adore as much as any other, and that I still love today.

Tintin in America is the first comic book that I can recall reading. Well, there had always been the comic strips in the daily newspaper, but that’s not quite the same. I discovered a few Adventures of Tintin books in a dark, neglected section of a local book store back in 1983 or ‘4. Back then, graphic novels and other comic collections just weren’t stocked at traditional book stores so finding comics—especially comics that I’d never even heard of—felt like a wondrously odd and magical discovery. I was in second grade—eight years old, or about to be. In the years that followed, I picked up copies of all the Adventures of Tintin books; I’ve probably read each of them a dozen times. And now, 28 years since my first encounter with the character, we have a Tintin movie created by one of our greatest filmmakers. My expectations for the film are high. Unreasonably so. No current film project is dearer to my heart than this one.

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