What, exactly, does "Tintin" mean to you? It's no accident that I surrounded the word in quotes just now. That's because for you, "Tintin" is most likely the title to Steven Spielberg's mo-cap animated film opening this week, and nothing more. But for me "Tintin" isn't just a funny sounding name for a person, or movie. Tintin was my gateway drug to the world of comics, a medium that I have had a passionate, on-and-ff love affair with since I first cracked open a copy of Tintin in America when I was about nine years old. With one of our greatest storytellers at the helm, and my own nostalgic love for the characters and stories, my expectations for the film are high. Unreasonably so. No current film project is dearer to my heart than this one.

Tintin is the first comic book that I can recall reading. Well, there had always been the comic strips of the daily newspaper, but that's not quite the same. I discovered a block of nearly all the Tintin stories at a local book store in 1983 or '4. Back then, graphic novels and other collections just weren't stocked at traditional book stores. wedged between copies of Asterix (which I never latched onto) and Elfquest (which I eventually did). I was in second grade—eight years old, or about to be—and it was winter in my Alaskan hometown. That meant few outdoor activities, but a months-long binge of reading for a household of book lovers.

Tintin in America was my first foray into the series. For my young mind, it was the most obvious choice. The Native American iconography on the front cover was familiar, and Herge's drawings of their visual culture were absolutely gorgeous. Even better was flipping the book over to find a gallery of covers to all 211 Tintin books. Each postage-stamp sized image promised an adventure equal to the asy et unread one I held in my hand. Personal favorites among those covers are Red Rackham's Treasure with its awesome killer whale sub, The Calculus Affair with its image of the professor of the book's title appearing to be mortally wounded; the shattered glass framing of the image, and positioning of our heroes hiding behind a pair of large boulders only added to the sense of danger, and immediately raised the stakes to imply the seriousness of the story within (it is a Cold War story, with the threat being weapons of mass destruction), and The Red Sea sharks where Tintin and crew wave to the reader (who is looking through a telescope) directly in an attempt to be saved after being stranded at sea. These covers promised adventure, danger, and a portal into both history, and the future. They also induced me to run to my mom, begging her to buy me a copy right then and there. Let's take a look at Hergé's Tintin comics, and understand what made him so great, and why his comics are still so highly regarded. Tintin in America was my first experience with Tintin, and it's a book a place as any to delve into. The edition that exists in popular form today was published in 1945, itself a re-drawn and refined version from the original version published in 1932. For most American readers, it is the first Tintin story. The pace of a Tintin tale is frenetic, rarely slowing down for breath. Scenes of characters standing around and talking in order to further the plot are typically interrupted by action--a fight, a sudden chase, or even a murder. In comics, pacing is done through the arrangement and sizing of individual panels. This is not unlike the sensation of editing in a movie. A long, uninterrupted take is designed to make to viewer sense narrative time as similar to time in real life while a quick succession of cuts will quickens the pace, eliminating the time that exists between key images. But in a movie, the viewer is forced into following the action at the pace that it unfolds, to see the images for only as long as they appear. A reader is not beholded to [panel sizes -- Tintin scaling the building] Hergé's panels are typically composed in long shot, meaning they show his characters' entire bodies from head to toe. When he chooses to draw in medium shot—about waist up—he does so to not only draw your attention to an action, but to slow its pace. As with the larger panels we just looked at, the sudden change to a medium shot panel will make reader pause, and give it a moment's more attention. Take a look at this wonderful page—my favorite in the entire book— In this sequence that takes place just moments later, the action []. Notice how Bobby Smiles' and Tintin's positions are now reversed from the horse chase; it is now Bobby with his back to us, looking into the distance at an escaping Tintin. This is also the bottom half of the page with Tintin's accidental leap off the cliff being the last panel. It's a cliffhanger—just like Tintin's crash from the horse—that ends the page, and makes the reader jump to the next page eagerly to discover what happens next. And note how the framing is changed in each of the last three panels to emphasize the danger of the cliff, and his fall. Hergé's command over the techniques of storytelling through drawing is as good as anything you're likely to see. Herge avoids splash pages for the most part (explain what they are). The comics use small panels, and are therefore conducted at a frantic pace. In this action sequence, Hergé cuts away from Tintin to show the encrouching [approaching?] gang of thugs, therefore setting up the reader's expectation of their arrival before Tintin engages them two panels later. And when Tintin takes them out, it's down by way of slapstick—the thugs comically scatter into the air while Tintin's speach bubble revealing not a one-liver, but a rendering of a bowling ball striking pins. When I read this panel, I hear the sound effect implied by the bowling image. When I first discovered Tintin, I had no idea that all of his adventures had been created before my life even began. Nor did I realize just how far Herge was ahead of the field in cartooning. Among the best cartooning of the era, rivaled only by the work of Will Eisner, Carl Barks. Some of the best storytelling in the history of early comics. When I see Tintin this weekend, I know that I'll have a hard time judging it objectively. Nostalgia will most certainly get in the way. Chances are that your experience will be quite different. I hope that it's a good one. If Spielberg did his job to the level that we've all come to expect, then I expect that "Tintin" will be more—much more—than just a funny name.

Notes:

The first two stories, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo, were not widely distributed in America at the time.