October 7, 2025 • 34 mins
It’s the second episode of our two-part series about Tintin! Today Gabe and Mango look beyond the books to discuss Tintin adaptations, including Steven Spielberg’s hit movie (which was forever changed by a random encounter in a grocery store) and two long-lost stage plays co-authored by Hergé himself. We also unpack Hergé’s legacy: from questions about his actions during WWII to his depictions of other countries, and the importance of having conversations about flawed art.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Guess what I gave? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It is part two of our Tintin Extravaganza, So if
you miss part one, go check it out and come
back to this one when you're up to speed on
the story.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I stayed up way past my bedtime last night studying
all things Captain Haddeck, Professor Calculus, and Bianca Castifiore in
preparation for this one.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I am ready.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I love Professor Calculus. He is such a fun character.
Did you know he was modeled after a real person,
Professor Auguste Picard.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I did not know that. Who's Professor Picard?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
He was an interesting guy. He was the first person
to enter Earth's stratosphere and he was also the inventor
of the deep sea observation vessel. It's called the Bathoscaff,
but more importantly for Tinton purposes, he also had a
unique hairstyle. He was balding on top and he had
long and curly hair on the sides and air j
would see him walking around the streets of Brussels and
(01:16):
he kind of got inspired.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I love all these real world connections, and Airjay's were
like Thompson and Thompson, the hapless nearly identical detectives. They
were said to be inspired by air Jay's father, Alexi
and his twin brother Leon.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, of the unknown parentage we discussed, right, Yeah, that's
a Part one reference in case you're wondering, so seriously, though,
go listen to part one if you haven't, But back
to Thompson and Thompson.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
As you know, Mango, they wear matching black suits and
bowler hats, carry matching canes, and have matching bushy mustaches.
I read that when Airjay was growing up, his dad
and uncle would often go on walks together, wearing identical hats,
carrying identical canes, black umbrellas, and with the same facial hair.
I know he said his childhood was gray and boring,
(02:00):
but these people sound pretty interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, they sound like characters. And one of my favorite
things about Thompson and Thompson that's spelled with and without
a P, is that their names actually change in other languages.
So their original names in French are DuPont and DuPont
with a T and D, but pronounced identically in German,
it's Schultz and Schultz. In Spanish, it's Ernandez and Fernandez.
(02:24):
In Arabic it's tick and talk. But my personal favorite, however,
is Icelandic, where they are known as Scoffti and Scoffty.
And apologies to any Icelandic listeners out there and also
speakers of other languages. I'm sure I did not do
your languages justice.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I wonder how you say I'm sorry in Icelandic French.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's a good question. Yeah, well, Mengo.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
As fascinating as these secondary characters are, let's return them
to the background for now, because in today's final installment
of our Tintin Adventure, we're talking comic book controversies, Tintin's
arrival in the US, and some unbelievable true stories about
modern Tintin adaptations. So let's dive in.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time Genius. I'm Mongish,
hearticular as always, I'm here with my good friend Gabe
Lucier today because Will Pearson is off and traveling and
enjoying the world tinton style. Also our pal and producer
Dylan Fagan. He left as a note saying he'd gone
adventuring with his faithful dog I didn't even know Dylan
had a dog.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah, apparently he does. It's news to me, but good news. Actually,
a postcard just arrived. It says, dear Gabe and Mango,
having a great time on my adventures. Next stop, Sildavia.
Oh love Dylan.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Sildavi? Where is a come on?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
You remember? It's a fictional country and the Balkans that
appears in a couple of Tintin books. In one book,
Tinton goes there to stop a plot to overthrow the king,
and another he learns that the Sildavian government is planning
a mission to the Moon.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I vaguely remember that.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And Sildavia really feels like a vibe.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah yeah, maybe more of a state of mind. But
that's a great tourism slogan for a fictional country. It's
a vibe.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But are Mango?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I meant to ask you this last week and I
totally forgot. What would you say is your all time
favorite Tintin book? I think it's got to be The
Blue Lotus or the Tintin and Tibet. I actually really
fell in love with tint and Tibet when I was
studying a broad in Tibet, because I read it to
Tibetan's to hear how they saw the misconceptions about the
culture or and people were just so appreciative of it,
(04:55):
you know, they really loved it. There were modern Belgian
comics that were coming out that exoticized Tibet did such
little research and Airjay was so accurate for someone who
never visited, and so I have a fondness for that story.
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, So we talked about this in the last episode.
The character obviously has a massive global appeal, but in
the US it's a little different. The books were never
quite successful here as they were in the rest of
their world. The first tinton comics were published in Belgium
in nineteen twenty nine, and the first book, Tintin in
the Land of Soviets, came out in nineteen thirty, but
there were actually no English language editions of Tintin until
(05:31):
nineteen fifty two, and those were published in the UK,
So the books weren't published in America until late nineteen
fifty nine. And just as an interesting side note, at
the time, the US had this really negative image of
comic books. Conservatives thought that they kept kids from reading
proper books, and in nineteen fifty five, New York State
actually passed the law banning comics.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, that does sound like something conservatives in the nineteen
fifties would do.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Right, Yeah, I mean, the New York legislator believed that
so called crime comics were quote a contributing factor leading
to juvenile delinquency, and they banned comics that had words
like horror, terror, or crime in the title or anything
that talked about that kind of thing, which in practice
outlawed most comics, except you know, the really tame ones
like Archie or Tinton, both of actually which made their
(06:19):
ways to India. But back to Tinton's arrival state side,
it was actually Golden Press, the publisher of Little Golden Books,
who first brought Tintin to the US.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
I don't know if you remember those.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Oh yeah, of course, those kids books about being good
and working hard or whatever, all the you know, life
lessons and moral stuff like a little red hen, a
little engine that could a lot of little things, you know,
Given Tintin's roots in boy scout morality, that makes a
lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, But believe it or not, even Tinton had to
make changes for the Puritans in America. For example, Golden
Press asked AIRJ to replace a couple of drawings where
Captain Haddock was drinking straight from the bottle, because they said, quote,
the presentation of alcoholism, especially in humors form, is absolutely taboo.
They also didn't want any scenes where black characters and
white characters appeared together, which is, you know, hard to
(07:07):
hear now. But this was just a couple of years
after Brown versus Board of Education, and the country was
still very, very publicly segregated. So HAIRJ ended up redrawing
several panels in order to get the books published here.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So when Tintin finally came to America, was it a
big hit like it had been in Europe.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
No. Sales were pretty terrible initially, probably because parents still
didn't trust comic books, but over time he slowly gained readers,
and by the early seventies Tintin was relatively popular. And
that brings us back to the incredible story we told
last time about Jay's trip to New York in nineteen
seventy two, and that's when he ended up meeting Andy Warhol.
He'd been invited to attend a comic strip convention, but
(07:48):
by that point he was so famous he got to
do a bunch of other things too, like he hung
out at the factory. He presented the then mayor John
Lindsay with the poster sized drawing of Tintin visiting the city,
and it was titled Stars and Comic Strips.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, quite got some love here. And if there's one
thing we've discovered about Airj though, it's that he's every
bit as controversial as he is popular. We talked last
episode about the use of racial stereotypes in his work,
but there's also a troubling question looming over the artist himself.
Did he side with the Nazis during World War Two?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, it's obviously not a great look when people can't
rule that out about you. But if you were to
ask Airja supporters, they'd likely point you to this one
adventure it's called King Otakar's Scepter, for proof that the
artist was not sympathetic to the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Do you buy it? Like, is it convincing to you
as proof?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I mean, there's definitely an anti Nazi agenda in the books.
In the comic, Tinton travels to this made up country
that you mentioned, Psiladavia. The villain is a guy named
Mustlaire from a country called Borduria. And obviously Tintonologists, who
I have to note are not super critical of Airja,
says Borduria represents Nazi Germany. The plot is that Mussler,
(09:05):
who's a combination of Mussolini and Hitler, is trying to
get Bordouria to take over Sildavia, and Tinton, of course,
is the hero who thwarts that plan. Now, King Ottocarceptra
came out in nineteen thirty eight and thirty nine, right
after Germany annexed Austria, so the comparison does seem pretty clear.
And it's fair to say that Je didn't seem like
a fan of a country taking over other countries, and
(09:27):
the epitome of who was doing this at the time
was Nazi Germany.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well, that does make sense. But if we want to
get the clearest sense of where Erje you really stood
on all of this, we probably shouldn't look at just
what he wrote and drew in his books. We've got
to look at what he did in his own life. Right.
So in May nineteen forty, after Germany invaded Belgium, Airje,
his wife, and his Siamese cat all escaped to France
(09:51):
along with about a million other people. But later that
same month, the King of Belgium, Leopold the Third, surrendered
to Germany and the king asked his compatriots to return home.
So Airje was a big supporter of the king and
loyal to his country. And six weeks after he left
he came back.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And I'm guessing he returned to a very different country.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Absolutely. For one thing, his old newspaper, the Catholic newspaper
he'd been working at, Levonte Mciekla, it had been closed
by the Nazis. A lot of other papers opted to
shut down rather than run, and you know, have to
support Nazi propaganda, as you know, collaborationists. There were also
journalists who chose to quit so they didn't have to
work under Nazis. But one that stayed open was Le Soois,
(10:35):
one of the big daily papers. It was run by
Belgian Nazi collaborationists and censored by the Germans, so definitely
pro Nazi, right. And when Airje got back to Brussels,
the editor of Larsois asked him to come aboard.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So do we get the impression that this is a
difficult decision for Je.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Not at all, It seems like it was pretty straightforward.
He claimed he wasn't really thinking about politics. He just
needed them money, and he also needed a place for Tintin.
In his view, he'd worked hard to get tintinto where
it was and he didn't want to give that up. Plus,
Larsoise still had a really large readership, much larger than
the other paper he'd been working on, So he was
(11:14):
basically like, why let a war get in the way
of all the work I've done?
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, I mean, in my research I read that when
he was asked about this later in his life, his
rationalization was that it.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Was just a job.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
He says, quote, I was just working like how a
baker or a minor works. He also said that he
didn't expect the occupation to last very long, that he
viewed his time at Lesois as a temporary assignment basically,
but he actually wound up working there for four years.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, it sounds to me like he was being a little,
you know, willfully naive and kind of burying his head
in the sand, and he may be wondering what was
his time at Lasois really like? And did he ever
pay a price for all that fence sitting? And we
got the answers, and we're going to tell you all
about it after we take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It's part two of our conversation about Tintin and the brilliant,
controversial author Airja. When we left off, Airja had just
taken a job at the Nazi collaborationist paper Lessois. So Gabe,
tell me what happens next.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Well, as you might guess, j kept drawing comics, and
the Tintin stories that came out during these years weren't
suddenly repeating Nazi propaganda or anything like that, but they
weren't really pushing back against it either. They were almost
a political j claimed he was uninterested in politics, and
you know, he wanted to keep Tintin out of what
he thought was the mess of World War two. But
(12:47):
looking back, you can't help but wonder how could someone
stay apolitical when all of these atrocities were happening right
in front of them.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, and in fact, the Airja biographer Pierre Asline called
Airja's fence sitting around this quote willfully obtuse, which I
think is a fair assessment. Airj has definitely seemed happy
to ignore what was going on. In the world and
what it meant to work at a collaborationist newspaper. And
even if he professed that he was political, for many
(13:16):
people this choice was political, right, It's a political act.
Other Belgians chose not to work at collaborationist papers, so
for a lot of folks, the decision to work there
kind of left this real stain on his legacy.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, today and back then at the time too. That
was the case. After Belgium was liberated in nineteen forty four,
the entire staff at Larssois was fired and anyone who'd
worked there under the Nazi occupation was banned from working
all together, and a lot of people were arrested, including Airja.
But even that doesn't seem to change his view on
his decision to work at Lesois. His attitude seemed to
(13:50):
be more stunned than anything. You mean, stunned that he'd
be punished for his actions or yeah, I mean, he
never seemed to understand why anyone would think what he
did was wrong. He thought everyone was overreacting.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
He kind of has this approach earlier, right, like he
doesn't really apologize and says, you know, it's sort of
the feeling of the time.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Right, So what happened did he ever face any consequences?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
He was really lucky. He had friends in high places,
including some who'd fought in the resistance against the Nazis,
and one of them was a huge Tinton fan. He'd
actually been one of the kids. He showed up at
that stunt we talked about in the last episode where
you know that tinted actor had come in from the
Congo at the Brussels train station, so that certainly helped.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Talk about full circle too.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I mean, yeah, anyway, this is super lucky, and this
guy wanted to start a magazine and he wanted air
Day to be a part of it. So he uses
connections to recommend that the case be dropped, and it worked.
The charges were dismissed, so.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
In the end, Airja walked away pretty much unscathed.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Sounds like it was kind of helped by the fact
that he was a cartoonist and not a journalist. That's
kind of the distinction that was made and why the
case was dropped. But just to put in perspective, there
were journalists who worked for collaborationist papers who were found guilty.
Some were sent to Congo to perform hard labor, others
were killed, and because the punishment was so severe, others
(15:09):
in Airja's predicament left Belgium altogether to make a new
life in France, which Airja, being the proud Belgium he was,
he actually never really considered that, So, long story short,
his career continued to thrive. He kept publishing comics, and
as we've learned, he gradually developed a more open minded
view of the world and also greater appreciation of other cultures.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
So where does all this stand now, Like, what's the
contemporary read on the books in air Ja? Clearly, people
all over the world have loved and continue to love Tintin.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, he's still really popular, especially outside the US. That
being said, if you are offended by Tintin or Erja,
you know, I totally get it. The lens that I
think encompasses this well is that Airj was someone who
put his work before almost anything else, like both personally
and politically, and often that wasn't the right thing to do.
And he was really loyal to his country, even when
(16:01):
his country's government made horrible decisions. And while I don't
think there's an excuse, and of course I obviously wish
er Jay apologized for all these mistakes.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
He was also limited by the time he lived in
you know.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, well, which is you know, it's extra compleated. Yeah, yeah, right,
because there's a lot of clearly good things about Tintin
and er Ja too. They were both flawed characters, but
they did have an openness to other ideas and other
people and other cultures, which is really laudable, especially for
the time Tintin fought for the underdog. He stood up
for friendship and loyalty. And I do think there's something
(16:36):
really enduring and you know about that and kind of
redeeming too.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah. I mean, I've obviously been thinking about this a
lot lately, not just because of these episodes, because I
think about my own kids. I wanted them to read
Tintin because it was just like so full of adventure
and joyous like exploration of the world and friendship. I
actually read an op ed from the author of viet
Tan When about this, and it was about the danger
of banning books in general. But when actually grew up
(17:02):
reading tinton like I did, and he wanted to share
these books with his son, and the essence of what
he says is the Tinton books can be problematic, but
they're also really engaging and really memorable. He writes about
how he and his son loved reading these adventures together
and when they came across racism against non white characters,
he points out that they talk about it just the
(17:22):
same way you talk about like Huck Finn or other
things like that, and the ability to have that conversation
and a way into that conversation is really important.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
No.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm a big fan of classic animation,
and you run into a lot of the same problems. Right,
There were really problematic depictions, and you know, does that
mean that just no one should ever watch these again,
or that they're artistically bankrupt there's nothing of merit anymore. No,
of course not. You just have to be a little
more thoughtful about it, think, right.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So, yeah, it's obviously messy. Humans are messy. But I
also think like for me Tinton, but also other texts
of that style, other books like they all contributed to
the feeling of mental class, of part time genius, of
welcoming people in of exploring It's so threaded through so
much of the DNA of this show and other shows
(18:12):
I've done, and worked on. Yeah, So like, it's very
hard for me to divorce myself from that because it's inspired.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
So much, you know, of my own work.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
You know, there's the artist's intent, and then there's what
we do with it, right, there's the art itself, and
then there's what it inspires us to do.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So well, what is best for this show right now
is that we take another quick break. But when we
come back, let's talk about a few of our favorite
tint In adaptations.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
That sounds great, Welcome back to part time genius.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, Gabe, it is time to go beyond the books
and talk about adaptations.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
So why don't you kick this off.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I'd be happy to so. Between nineteen twenty nine and
nineteen seventy six, Airja wrote a total of twenty three
Tintin books or albums in twenty four if you include
Tintin and alf Art, which was only partially finished when
Airja died in nineteen eighty three. But you know, and
in the years since then, lots of other artists have
adapted those stories to different mediums. For instance, Steven Spielberg
(19:24):
drew from three books written between nineteen forty one and
nineteen forty four when Air Jay was at Lesoise to
create his twenty eleven animated blockbuster The Adventures of Tintin,
starring Jamie Bell as the voice of Tintin and Daniel
Craig as the villain. But there's another actor I want
to mention from the film, Carrie Elvis from Robin Hood
(19:45):
the same and of course the Princess Bride. He's also
in the movie. It's a small role, but he really
wanted it and he got it in a pretty unconventional way.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
First of all, I love that Steven Spielberg loved Tintin
enough to make this movie. To me, is really joyous
and in the spair of the comment, but so tell
me about carry Elle was like, how did he sneak
his way in?
Speaker 3 (20:05):
So apparently Carrie is a huge Tintin fan. One day
he was at the grocery store and I have to
imagine this is La, right, because it seems very la
And who does he see over there in the cereal aisle?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But Steven Spielberg, Wait, Steven Spielberg eats cereal. Yeah, and
you're telling me it himself too, apparently amazing And they'd
met a couple of weeks earlier and Spielberg had mentioned
he was doing a Tintin movie, and Carrie's like, I
love Tintin.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
I have to be in this. Did I mention I
really love Tintin? And Spielberg was like, yeah, all right,
we'll see. So anyway, now Carrie sees him, you know,
rifling through the cheerios or whatever kind of cereal you
think Spielberg eats, and he's like, this is it. This
is my chance to seal the deal. So he goes
up to him and asks him about being in Tintin,
and apparently Spielberg tells him, I have one part left.
(20:53):
It's yours.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I mean, I honestly don't know what the lesson is here,
like be bold, persevere, shopping in Steven Spielberg's neighborhood. I
feel like all of these apply here.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yeah, right, it's all of these.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
But I like to think that the serial Isle conversation
was just the first of many conversations these guys would
have about Tintin. Of course, because Spielberg is also a
huge fan. The funny thing is, though he'd never heard
of Tintin until right after Raiders at a Lost Art
came out in the eighties and a French critic wrote
a review in which he compared that film to Tintin's Adventures. So,
(21:26):
you know, being a curious guy, Spielberg decided to check
out the books, discovered he really liked them and immediately
was like, hey, this could be a movie.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Do you know if he talked to J about it?
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
He did, Yeah, he said. They spoke on the telephone
once in nineteen eighty three and they had a plan
to meet, but unfortunately J died before that could happen.
Spielberg still negotiated the rights for a movie with his
estate though. He even started on a screenplay with the
same writer who worked on Et, but the script didn't
feel right. Then Spielberg got busy with you know, other stuff,
(21:57):
and the option dropped. So it took deck aid for
the project to finally come together.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I know AIRJ was also a big fan of Spielberg,
so even though he died way before the movie came out,
I'm sure it was exciting to know that it might
even happen. Definitely, But speaking of adaptations, do you know
that Ja also wrote or co wrote two Tintin stage plays.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I did not know this are these things we can
go see somewhere, if not on or off Broadway, maybe
off off, but like off off off.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, in my backyard. That would be my
greatest wish.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
But unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the script
are lost to history. At least those are the rumors
in the Tintin fan community. But there was like a
thread that maybe they existed still somewhere, And actually we've
got this friend Rag. He wrote this book. He is
for Pterodactyl. He's also a rapper and producer. He produces
under the name Lush Life. And he, like me, grew
(22:51):
up in going to Indian in the summers. He became
a huge Tintin fan and he realized that airj had
written both scripts in nineteen forty one with help from
the painter, journalist and writer Jacques von Melquebec, and the
first one was called Tinton in India The Mystery of
the Blue Diamond, so based on contemporarieous accounts of its production,
it basically was like a rehashed plot of Cigars of
(23:13):
the Pharaoh. It opened in nineteen forty one, ran for
a little over a week in Brussels and start a
young woman as Tinton. Because World War two had just
created this shortage of male actors. But maybe the biggest
surprise is that it was actually a musical.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
What please tell me? Do we know anything about the song?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
No, at least I don't, but I know Roger actually
located the script and is trying to rewrite it. But
airj was apparently really happy with how it came out.
It got decent reviews despite the short run. And I
think this rings true for anyone who's ever had anything
to do with the play, especially like a musical with children.
This whole thing was a ton of effort to produce,
and so even though he had seen it as a success,
(23:53):
he wasn't eager to do another.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Well you must have made an exception then, right, because
you said there were two plays.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
So later in nineteen forty one there was mister Bullock's
disappearance or the disappearance of mister Bullock depending on the translator.
We know even less about this play, except that you
know they did find a young male to play Tintin,
and plot wise, it's a whole new story. It's not
just a rehash of an older book. Tintin travels all
over the world, from China to Tibet, to Morocco, to
(24:20):
Argentina and then back home to Brussels, and from what
I can tell, the reviews were a little less stellar.
That seems to be the end of Tintin and the
theater experience, at least as far as air Ja's direct
involvement with it.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Right, Yes, I figure you're referring to the adaptation of
Tintin and Tibet that was performed in the UK in
two thousand and five. Right, It got mostly MIDI it
did have another run a couple of years later, so
I don't know. There must be something to it, or
maybe it's just all that pent up demand for Tintin
on stage.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Right, Yeah, I mean I know Raj and the Tintin
is stayed are talking and then figuring out how to
possibly get this play back on in.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
A new form. And as someone who loves Tintin, I would.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Really really love to see revised for today's times.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
I'll tell you what, Mango, if it ever happens, I'll
buy you a ticket.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I mean, I think we can get in for free,
but I'll make sure you get in.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Its sounds good to me. But on that note, I
think it's time for a fact off all right, this
is a fun one. So did you know that Ja
would hide himself in the Tintin books like an early
iteration of Where's Waldo? It was apparently inspired by Hitchcock's
(25:35):
idea of breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience,
and famously he hid himself in all of his movies too.
But for example, in King Ottokar's Scepter is dressed as
a cavalry officer in the royal court. In The Broken Ear,
he's a museum goer. In The Calculus Affair, he's standing
with a sketch pad and pen. He goes on and on.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
That is so fun.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I actually did not know that. Now I've got to
go back and look for him.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah. Yeah. And in a nod to this, Spielberg has
a little animated Airja cameo in his Tintin movie too,
So I look out for that. I love that.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Okay, So I've got another one for you.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
In twenty twenty one, a rare Tintin cover illustration was
sold at auction for nearly three point two million euros
around three point eight four million dollars, making it the
world's most expensive comic book art. The art itself is
actually the original idea for the Blue Lotus, the adventure
that took place in China, where Airj did a bunch
of research ahead of time thanks to his friend John.
(26:30):
Now I've seen pictures of this long lost artwork and
it is really beautiful. It would have actually made an
amazing cover, but when Airja showed it to his publisher,
they said it had too many colors and would be
too expensive to produce using the technology they had.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
At the time.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
So instead Airja gave the original art, the actual one
he had painted, to his publisher's seven year old son,
and it just stuck around in their family for a
long time.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, you know what's extra crazy about that is that
Tintin had already set the previous record for the world's
most expensive comic book art. And I was back in
twenty fourteen when some original drawings sold for two point
six five million euros, and there has been other Tintin
art that's sold for well over a million dollars over
the years. One reason why these pieces go for such
(27:17):
high dollar marks is besides you know Tintin's popularity, of course,
is that Tintin's estate is notoriously strict. It's run by
Rgey's widow, Fanny and her second husband, a guy named
Nick Rodwell. He's hard fisted in his approach to dealing
with Tintin copyright, let's just say that. And in the
Tintin world he's almost universally hated. He's been described, or
(27:40):
maybe describes himself as quote the least popular man in Belgium.
And that's because of you know how often he's litigated
copyright cases. For example, in twenty twenty one he sued
a French sculptor for the ninety busts of Tintin he
had made, and that same year he also sued a
French painter who had paid to Tintin in the World
(28:01):
of Edward Hopper, but in a manner Rodwell deemed quote
mildly erotic. Oh no, yeah. And in two thousand and
nine a French novelist had his home seized because he
had reproduced a Tintin drawing in a book for students,
which had a print run of two hundred copies. So
I mean he didn't even make a profit off it.
Rodwell says he's just protecting Airs and Tintin's legacy from
(28:24):
bad quality spinoffs. That kind of stuff. Can water down
an artist's legacy after they die, and j himself was
adamant that he didn't want any Tintin books to come
out after his death. But repossessing somebody's house because of
a book for students, Yeah, that's a little over the top.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, okay, Gabe.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
So have you ever thought about the fact that even
though the Tintin book spanned forty years, Tintin himself was ageless,
like his appearance never changes.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
I hadn't thought about that, but now that you mention it,
I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, that's true, because I brought it off. Well, Lucky
for you, there are some scientists who also thought about it, or,
more precisely, a scientist and his two young sons. In
two thousand and four, a Canadian professor of medicine named
Claude Syr published a satirical paper about his efforts to
figure out why Tintin hadn't aged over the decades, and
(29:16):
he and his kids went through the books and counted
the number of times Tintin lost consciousness, which you know
is a lot. Fifty times. Forty three of those times
were considered severe. Professor Sear decided that these repeated blows
to the head had led to growth hormone deficiency and
because of that also a condition called hyponatotropic hypogonadism, which
(29:39):
you know is a mouthful but it's.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
A real thing.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It can lead to delayed or totally missing puberty for
the people who are affected by it.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
All right, but well here's what I really want to know.
Did he ever explain snowy? I mean that dog is
still going strong, he still has puppy energy. Yeas one hundred.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Years later, that is a fair point. Maybe his kids
have done to study on this. I'll have to report back, please.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Do Yeah, keep us posted. All right, So I'm going
to pivot here, but I was really excited to learn that.
In twenty twenty two, a new Belgian passport was introduced
that features illustrations from famous Belgian cartoons and comics in
general are really beloved over there and considered high art.
So the passport pages included drawings of famous Belgium cartoon
(30:23):
characters like Tintin and the Smurfs, and apparently, when UV
light is shown on the drawings, additional details like facial
expressions are revealed. And not only is that absolutely delightful,
but these details also make it a lot harder to counterfeit.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Oh, I love that Belgians just really love comics, so
staying in the vein of Belgium pride. In twenty fifteen,
Brussels Airlines unveiled in airbus A three twenty named Rackham,
which refers to the Tintin book read Rackham's Treasure.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
The outside of the.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Planet is painted to look like the submarine from that book,
and the cabin inside has pictures of Captain Haddock and Tintin,
and a of course red Rackham's Treasure is available on
board for reading well.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Our final fact is yet another example of how Tintin
keeps appearing in Belgium today. For the twenty twenty four
euro Cup, the Belgian soccer team's away kit was inspired
by you Guessed It our man himself. The players wore
a uniform based on Tintin's iconic outfit, a light blue
jersey with a white collar, brown shorts and white sox.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I know, I was so excited when I saw that.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
I'm obviously a soccer fan and loved but they did that.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
But you know, there's actually one book where Tintin breaks
from the standard outfit and dresses just a little differently. Really. Yeah.
In nineteen seventy six, air J published what would be
the last fully completed Tintin adventure. It was called Tintin
and the Pickereas and strikingly, while Tintin has the same
blue shirt, his brown pants are long in this one,
(31:49):
not short, and on the cover drawing the pants are
noticeably flared.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Well, I mean it was the seventies, right, so even
Tintin wore bell bottoms. But a way, Mangel, I'm really
glad that you convinced us to explore the life and
times of a cartoon adventurer. So I think you get
today's trophy. You earned it. And there's actually two trophies,
one for last time as well.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Well I'll take them, and I guess I'll share these
with my fellow tinton fans and Dylan wherever he is.
That concludes our two part Tintin series. I hope you
enjoyed it. If you did, please share these episodes with
a friend or follow us on Instagram Blue Sky if
you have any questions, comments, or just want to tell
us what your favorite Tinton book is or how you
feel about this complicated legacy emails at high Geniuses at
(32:34):
gmail dot com. That's Hi Geniuses at gmail dot com,
or give us a call at three oh two four
oh five five nine two five. That's three oh two
four oh five five nine two five. We are always
looking to hear from you. This episode, as well as
Part one, was written by the wonderful of Marissa Brown.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Thank you so much, Marissa.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
We will be back next week with another new episode,
but in the meantime from Gabe, Mary, Dylan, Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(33:16):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongais Chatikler and researched by
our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered
and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from
Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by
Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social media support from
(33:39):
Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shoring. For more
podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Guess what I gave? What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:25):
It is part two of our Tintin Extravaganza, So if
you miss part one, go check it out and come
back to this one when you're up to speed on
the story.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
I stayed up way past my bedtime last night studying
all things Captain Haddeck, Professor Calculus, and Bianca Castifiore in
preparation for this one.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I am ready.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
I love Professor Calculus. He is such a fun character.
Did you know he was modeled after a real person,
Professor Auguste Picard.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I did not know that. Who's Professor Picard?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
He was an interesting guy. He was the first person
to enter Earth's stratosphere and he was also the inventor
of the deep sea observation vessel. It's called the Bathoscaff,
but more importantly for Tinton purposes, he also had a
unique hairstyle. He was balding on top and he had
long and curly hair on the sides and air j
would see him walking around the streets of Brussels and
(01:16):
he kind of got inspired.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
I love all these real world connections, and Airjay's were
like Thompson and Thompson, the hapless nearly identical detectives. They
were said to be inspired by air Jay's father, Alexi
and his twin brother Leon.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yeah, of the unknown parentage we discussed, right, Yeah, that's
a Part one reference in case you're wondering, so seriously, though,
go listen to part one if you haven't, But back
to Thompson and Thompson.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
As you know, Mango, they wear matching black suits and
bowler hats, carry matching canes, and have matching bushy mustaches.
I read that when Airjay was growing up, his dad
and uncle would often go on walks together, wearing identical hats,
carrying identical canes, black umbrellas, and with the same facial hair.
I know he said his childhood was gray and boring,
(02:00):
but these people sound pretty interesting to me.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, they sound like characters. And one of my favorite
things about Thompson and Thompson that's spelled with and without
a P, is that their names actually change in other languages.
So their original names in French are DuPont and DuPont
with a T and D, but pronounced identically in German,
it's Schultz and Schultz. In Spanish, it's Ernandez and Fernandez.
(02:24):
In Arabic it's tick and talk. But my personal favorite, however,
is Icelandic, where they are known as Scoffti and Scoffty.
And apologies to any Icelandic listeners out there and also
speakers of other languages. I'm sure I did not do
your languages justice.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I wonder how you say I'm sorry in Icelandic French.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
That's a good question. Yeah, well, Mengo.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
As fascinating as these secondary characters are, let's return them
to the background for now, because in today's final installment
of our Tintin Adventure, we're talking comic book controversies, Tintin's
arrival in the US, and some unbelievable true stories about
modern Tintin adaptations. So let's dive in.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time Genius. I'm Mongish,
hearticular as always, I'm here with my good friend Gabe
Lucier today because Will Pearson is off and traveling and
enjoying the world tinton style. Also our pal and producer
Dylan Fagan. He left as a note saying he'd gone
adventuring with his faithful dog I didn't even know Dylan
had a dog.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Yeah, apparently he does. It's news to me, but good news. Actually,
a postcard just arrived. It says, dear Gabe and Mango,
having a great time on my adventures. Next stop, Sildavia.
Oh love Dylan.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Sildavi? Where is a come on?
Speaker 3 (04:05):
You remember? It's a fictional country and the Balkans that
appears in a couple of Tintin books. In one book,
Tinton goes there to stop a plot to overthrow the king,
and another he learns that the Sildavian government is planning
a mission to the Moon.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I vaguely remember that.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And Sildavia really feels like a vibe.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
Yeah yeah, maybe more of a state of mind. But
that's a great tourism slogan for a fictional country. It's
a vibe.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But are Mango?
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I meant to ask you this last week and I
totally forgot. What would you say is your all time
favorite Tintin book? I think it's got to be The
Blue Lotus or the Tintin and Tibet. I actually really
fell in love with tint and Tibet when I was
studying a broad in Tibet, because I read it to
Tibetan's to hear how they saw the misconceptions about the
culture or and people were just so appreciative of it,
(04:55):
you know, they really loved it. There were modern Belgian
comics that were coming out that exoticized Tibet did such
little research and Airjay was so accurate for someone who
never visited, and so I have a fondness for that story.
That makes sense.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, So we talked about this in the last episode.
The character obviously has a massive global appeal, but in
the US it's a little different. The books were never
quite successful here as they were in the rest of
their world. The first tinton comics were published in Belgium
in nineteen twenty nine, and the first book, Tintin in
the Land of Soviets, came out in nineteen thirty, but
there were actually no English language editions of Tintin until
(05:31):
nineteen fifty two, and those were published in the UK,
So the books weren't published in America until late nineteen
fifty nine. And just as an interesting side note, at
the time, the US had this really negative image of
comic books. Conservatives thought that they kept kids from reading
proper books, and in nineteen fifty five, New York State
actually passed the law banning comics.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, that does sound like something conservatives in the nineteen
fifties would do.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Right, Yeah, I mean, the New York legislator believed that
so called crime comics were quote a contributing factor leading
to juvenile delinquency, and they banned comics that had words
like horror, terror, or crime in the title or anything
that talked about that kind of thing, which in practice
outlawed most comics, except you know, the really tame ones
like Archie or Tinton, both of actually which made their
(06:19):
ways to India. But back to Tinton's arrival state side,
it was actually Golden Press, the publisher of Little Golden Books,
who first brought Tintin to the US.
Speaker 4 (06:29):
I don't know if you remember those.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Oh yeah, of course, those kids books about being good
and working hard or whatever, all the you know, life
lessons and moral stuff like a little red hen, a
little engine that could a lot of little things, you know,
Given Tintin's roots in boy scout morality, that makes a
lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Yeah, But believe it or not, even Tinton had to
make changes for the Puritans in America. For example, Golden
Press asked AIRJ to replace a couple of drawings where
Captain Haddock was drinking straight from the bottle, because they said, quote,
the presentation of alcoholism, especially in humors form, is absolutely taboo.
They also didn't want any scenes where black characters and
white characters appeared together, which is, you know, hard to
(07:07):
hear now. But this was just a couple of years
after Brown versus Board of Education, and the country was
still very, very publicly segregated. So HAIRJ ended up redrawing
several panels in order to get the books published here.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So when Tintin finally came to America, was it a
big hit like it had been in Europe.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
No. Sales were pretty terrible initially, probably because parents still
didn't trust comic books, but over time he slowly gained readers,
and by the early seventies Tintin was relatively popular. And
that brings us back to the incredible story we told
last time about Jay's trip to New York in nineteen
seventy two, and that's when he ended up meeting Andy Warhol.
He'd been invited to attend a comic strip convention, but
(07:48):
by that point he was so famous he got to
do a bunch of other things too, like he hung
out at the factory. He presented the then mayor John
Lindsay with the poster sized drawing of Tintin visiting the city,
and it was titled Stars and Comic Strips.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, quite got some love here. And if there's one
thing we've discovered about Airj though, it's that he's every
bit as controversial as he is popular. We talked last
episode about the use of racial stereotypes in his work,
but there's also a troubling question looming over the artist himself.
Did he side with the Nazis during World War Two?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Yeah, it's obviously not a great look when people can't
rule that out about you. But if you were to
ask Airja supporters, they'd likely point you to this one
adventure it's called King Otakar's Scepter, for proof that the
artist was not sympathetic to the Nazis.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Do you buy it? Like, is it convincing to you
as proof?
Speaker 1 (08:41):
I mean, there's definitely an anti Nazi agenda in the books.
In the comic, Tinton travels to this made up country
that you mentioned, Psiladavia. The villain is a guy named
Mustlaire from a country called Borduria. And obviously Tintonologists, who
I have to note are not super critical of Airja,
says Borduria represents Nazi Germany. The plot is that Mussler,
(09:05):
who's a combination of Mussolini and Hitler, is trying to
get Bordouria to take over Sildavia, and Tinton, of course,
is the hero who thwarts that plan. Now, King Ottocarceptra
came out in nineteen thirty eight and thirty nine, right
after Germany annexed Austria, so the comparison does seem pretty clear.
And it's fair to say that Je didn't seem like
a fan of a country taking over other countries, and
(09:27):
the epitome of who was doing this at the time
was Nazi Germany.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Well, that does make sense. But if we want to
get the clearest sense of where Erje you really stood
on all of this, we probably shouldn't look at just
what he wrote and drew in his books. We've got
to look at what he did in his own life. Right.
So in May nineteen forty, after Germany invaded Belgium, Airje,
his wife, and his Siamese cat all escaped to France
(09:51):
along with about a million other people. But later that
same month, the King of Belgium, Leopold the Third, surrendered
to Germany and the king asked his compatriots to return home.
So Airje was a big supporter of the king and
loyal to his country. And six weeks after he left
he came back.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And I'm guessing he returned to a very different country.
Speaker 4 (10:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Absolutely. For one thing, his old newspaper, the Catholic newspaper
he'd been working at, Levonte Mciekla, it had been closed
by the Nazis. A lot of other papers opted to
shut down rather than run, and you know, have to
support Nazi propaganda, as you know, collaborationists. There were also
journalists who chose to quit so they didn't have to
work under Nazis. But one that stayed open was Le Soois,
(10:35):
one of the big daily papers. It was run by
Belgian Nazi collaborationists and censored by the Germans, so definitely
pro Nazi, right. And when Airje got back to Brussels,
the editor of Larsois asked him to come aboard.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
So do we get the impression that this is a
difficult decision for Je.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Not at all, It seems like it was pretty straightforward.
He claimed he wasn't really thinking about politics. He just
needed them money, and he also needed a place for Tintin.
In his view, he'd worked hard to get tintinto where
it was and he didn't want to give that up. Plus,
Larsoise still had a really large readership, much larger than
the other paper he'd been working on, So he was
(11:14):
basically like, why let a war get in the way
of all the work I've done?
Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, I mean, in my research I read that when
he was asked about this later in his life, his
rationalization was that it.
Speaker 4 (11:25):
Was just a job.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
He says, quote, I was just working like how a
baker or a minor works. He also said that he
didn't expect the occupation to last very long, that he
viewed his time at Lesois as a temporary assignment basically,
but he actually wound up working there for four years.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, it sounds to me like he was being a little,
you know, willfully naive and kind of burying his head
in the sand, and he may be wondering what was
his time at Lasois really like? And did he ever
pay a price for all that fence sitting? And we
got the answers, and we're going to tell you all
about it after we take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
It's part two of our conversation about Tintin and the brilliant,
controversial author Airja. When we left off, Airja had just
taken a job at the Nazi collaborationist paper Lessois. So Gabe,
tell me what happens next.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Well, as you might guess, j kept drawing comics, and
the Tintin stories that came out during these years weren't
suddenly repeating Nazi propaganda or anything like that, but they
weren't really pushing back against it either. They were almost
a political j claimed he was uninterested in politics, and
you know, he wanted to keep Tintin out of what
he thought was the mess of World War two. But
(12:47):
looking back, you can't help but wonder how could someone
stay apolitical when all of these atrocities were happening right
in front of them.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Yeah, and in fact, the Airja biographer Pierre Asline called
Airja's fence sitting around this quote willfully obtuse, which I
think is a fair assessment. Airj has definitely seemed happy
to ignore what was going on. In the world and
what it meant to work at a collaborationist newspaper. And
even if he professed that he was political, for many
(13:16):
people this choice was political, right, It's a political act.
Other Belgians chose not to work at collaborationist papers, so
for a lot of folks, the decision to work there
kind of left this real stain on his legacy.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Yeah, today and back then at the time too. That
was the case. After Belgium was liberated in nineteen forty four,
the entire staff at Larssois was fired and anyone who'd
worked there under the Nazi occupation was banned from working
all together, and a lot of people were arrested, including Airja.
But even that doesn't seem to change his view on
his decision to work at Lesois. His attitude seemed to
(13:50):
be more stunned than anything. You mean, stunned that he'd
be punished for his actions or yeah, I mean, he
never seemed to understand why anyone would think what he
did was wrong. He thought everyone was overreacting.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
He kind of has this approach earlier, right, like he
doesn't really apologize and says, you know, it's sort of
the feeling of the time.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Right, So what happened did he ever face any consequences?
Speaker 1 (14:11):
He was really lucky. He had friends in high places,
including some who'd fought in the resistance against the Nazis,
and one of them was a huge Tinton fan. He'd
actually been one of the kids. He showed up at
that stunt we talked about in the last episode where
you know that tinted actor had come in from the
Congo at the Brussels train station, so that certainly helped.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Talk about full circle too.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
I mean, yeah, anyway, this is super lucky, and this
guy wanted to start a magazine and he wanted air
Day to be a part of it. So he uses
connections to recommend that the case be dropped, and it worked.
The charges were dismissed, so.
Speaker 3 (14:45):
In the end, Airja walked away pretty much unscathed.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Sounds like it was kind of helped by the fact
that he was a cartoonist and not a journalist. That's
kind of the distinction that was made and why the
case was dropped. But just to put in perspective, there
were journalists who worked for collaborationist papers who were found guilty.
Some were sent to Congo to perform hard labor, others
were killed, and because the punishment was so severe, others
(15:09):
in Airja's predicament left Belgium altogether to make a new
life in France, which Airja, being the proud Belgium he was,
he actually never really considered that, So, long story short,
his career continued to thrive. He kept publishing comics, and
as we've learned, he gradually developed a more open minded
view of the world and also greater appreciation of other cultures.
Speaker 3 (15:30):
So where does all this stand now, Like, what's the
contemporary read on the books in air Ja? Clearly, people
all over the world have loved and continue to love Tintin.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yeah, he's still really popular, especially outside the US. That
being said, if you are offended by Tintin or Erja,
you know, I totally get it. The lens that I
think encompasses this well is that Airj was someone who
put his work before almost anything else, like both personally
and politically, and often that wasn't the right thing to do.
And he was really loyal to his country, even when
(16:01):
his country's government made horrible decisions. And while I don't
think there's an excuse, and of course I obviously wish
er Jay apologized for all these mistakes.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
He was also limited by the time he lived in
you know.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, well, which is you know, it's extra compleated. Yeah, yeah, right,
because there's a lot of clearly good things about Tintin
and er Ja too. They were both flawed characters, but
they did have an openness to other ideas and other
people and other cultures, which is really laudable, especially for
the time Tintin fought for the underdog. He stood up
for friendship and loyalty. And I do think there's something
(16:36):
really enduring and you know about that and kind of
redeeming too.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah. I mean, I've obviously been thinking about this a
lot lately, not just because of these episodes, because I
think about my own kids. I wanted them to read
Tintin because it was just like so full of adventure
and joyous like exploration of the world and friendship. I
actually read an op ed from the author of viet
Tan When about this, and it was about the danger
of banning books in general. But when actually grew up
(17:02):
reading tinton like I did, and he wanted to share
these books with his son, and the essence of what
he says is the Tinton books can be problematic, but
they're also really engaging and really memorable. He writes about
how he and his son loved reading these adventures together
and when they came across racism against non white characters,
he points out that they talk about it just the
(17:22):
same way you talk about like Huck Finn or other
things like that, and the ability to have that conversation
and a way into that conversation is really important.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
No.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm a big fan of classic animation,
and you run into a lot of the same problems. Right,
There were really problematic depictions, and you know, does that
mean that just no one should ever watch these again,
or that they're artistically bankrupt there's nothing of merit anymore. No,
of course not. You just have to be a little
more thoughtful about it, think, right.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
So, yeah, it's obviously messy. Humans are messy. But I
also think like for me Tinton, but also other texts
of that style, other books like they all contributed to
the feeling of mental class, of part time genius, of
welcoming people in of exploring It's so threaded through so
much of the DNA of this show and other shows
(18:12):
I've done, and worked on. Yeah, So like, it's very
hard for me to divorce myself from that because it's inspired.
Speaker 4 (18:18):
So much, you know, of my own work.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
You know, there's the artist's intent, and then there's what
we do with it, right, there's the art itself, and
then there's what it inspires us to do.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So well, what is best for this show right now
is that we take another quick break. But when we
come back, let's talk about a few of our favorite
tint In adaptations.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
That sounds great, Welcome back to part time genius.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Okay, Gabe, it is time to go beyond the books
and talk about adaptations.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
So why don't you kick this off.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
I'd be happy to so. Between nineteen twenty nine and
nineteen seventy six, Airja wrote a total of twenty three
Tintin books or albums in twenty four if you include
Tintin and alf Art, which was only partially finished when
Airja died in nineteen eighty three. But you know, and
in the years since then, lots of other artists have
adapted those stories to different mediums. For instance, Steven Spielberg
(19:24):
drew from three books written between nineteen forty one and
nineteen forty four when Air Jay was at Lesoise to
create his twenty eleven animated blockbuster The Adventures of Tintin,
starring Jamie Bell as the voice of Tintin and Daniel
Craig as the villain. But there's another actor I want
to mention from the film, Carrie Elvis from Robin Hood
(19:45):
the same and of course the Princess Bride. He's also
in the movie. It's a small role, but he really
wanted it and he got it in a pretty unconventional way.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
First of all, I love that Steven Spielberg loved Tintin
enough to make this movie. To me, is really joyous
and in the spair of the comment, but so tell
me about carry Elle was like, how did he sneak
his way in?
Speaker 3 (20:05):
So apparently Carrie is a huge Tintin fan. One day
he was at the grocery store and I have to
imagine this is La, right, because it seems very la
And who does he see over there in the cereal aisle?
Speaker 1 (20:17):
But Steven Spielberg, Wait, Steven Spielberg eats cereal. Yeah, and
you're telling me it himself too, apparently amazing And they'd
met a couple of weeks earlier and Spielberg had mentioned
he was doing a Tintin movie, and Carrie's like, I
love Tintin.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
I have to be in this. Did I mention I
really love Tintin? And Spielberg was like, yeah, all right,
we'll see. So anyway, now Carrie sees him, you know,
rifling through the cheerios or whatever kind of cereal you
think Spielberg eats, and he's like, this is it. This
is my chance to seal the deal. So he goes
up to him and asks him about being in Tintin,
and apparently Spielberg tells him, I have one part left.
(20:53):
It's yours.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I mean, I honestly don't know what the lesson is here,
like be bold, persevere, shopping in Steven Spielberg's neighborhood. I
feel like all of these apply here.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
Yeah, right, it's all of these.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
But I like to think that the serial Isle conversation
was just the first of many conversations these guys would
have about Tintin. Of course, because Spielberg is also a
huge fan. The funny thing is, though he'd never heard
of Tintin until right after Raiders at a Lost Art
came out in the eighties and a French critic wrote
a review in which he compared that film to Tintin's Adventures. So,
(21:26):
you know, being a curious guy, Spielberg decided to check
out the books, discovered he really liked them and immediately
was like, hey, this could be a movie.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
Do you know if he talked to J about it?
Speaker 4 (21:37):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (21:37):
He did, Yeah, he said. They spoke on the telephone
once in nineteen eighty three and they had a plan
to meet, but unfortunately J died before that could happen.
Spielberg still negotiated the rights for a movie with his
estate though. He even started on a screenplay with the
same writer who worked on Et, but the script didn't
feel right. Then Spielberg got busy with you know, other stuff,
(21:57):
and the option dropped. So it took deck aid for
the project to finally come together.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
I know AIRJ was also a big fan of Spielberg,
so even though he died way before the movie came out,
I'm sure it was exciting to know that it might
even happen. Definitely, But speaking of adaptations, do you know
that Ja also wrote or co wrote two Tintin stage plays.
Speaker 3 (22:18):
I did not know this are these things we can
go see somewhere, if not on or off Broadway, maybe
off off, but like off off off.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, in my backyard. That would be my
greatest wish.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
But unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the script
are lost to history. At least those are the rumors
in the Tintin fan community. But there was like a
thread that maybe they existed still somewhere, And actually we've
got this friend Rag. He wrote this book. He is
for Pterodactyl. He's also a rapper and producer. He produces
under the name Lush Life. And he, like me, grew
(22:51):
up in going to Indian in the summers. He became
a huge Tintin fan and he realized that airj had
written both scripts in nineteen forty one with help from
the painter, journalist and writer Jacques von Melquebec, and the
first one was called Tinton in India The Mystery of
the Blue Diamond, so based on contemporarieous accounts of its production,
it basically was like a rehashed plot of Cigars of
(23:13):
the Pharaoh. It opened in nineteen forty one, ran for
a little over a week in Brussels and start a
young woman as Tinton. Because World War two had just
created this shortage of male actors. But maybe the biggest
surprise is that it was actually a musical.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
What please tell me? Do we know anything about the song?
Speaker 1 (23:30):
No, at least I don't, but I know Roger actually
located the script and is trying to rewrite it. But
airj was apparently really happy with how it came out.
It got decent reviews despite the short run. And I
think this rings true for anyone who's ever had anything
to do with the play, especially like a musical with children.
This whole thing was a ton of effort to produce,
and so even though he had seen it as a success,
(23:53):
he wasn't eager to do another.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Well you must have made an exception then, right, because
you said there were two plays.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
So later in nineteen forty one there was mister Bullock's
disappearance or the disappearance of mister Bullock depending on the translator.
We know even less about this play, except that you
know they did find a young male to play Tintin,
and plot wise, it's a whole new story. It's not
just a rehash of an older book. Tintin travels all
over the world, from China to Tibet, to Morocco, to
(24:20):
Argentina and then back home to Brussels, and from what
I can tell, the reviews were a little less stellar.
That seems to be the end of Tintin and the
theater experience, at least as far as air Ja's direct
involvement with it.
Speaker 3 (24:32):
Right, Yes, I figure you're referring to the adaptation of
Tintin and Tibet that was performed in the UK in
two thousand and five. Right, It got mostly MIDI it
did have another run a couple of years later, so
I don't know. There must be something to it, or
maybe it's just all that pent up demand for Tintin
on stage.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Right, Yeah, I mean I know Raj and the Tintin
is stayed are talking and then figuring out how to
possibly get this play back on in.
Speaker 4 (24:59):
A new form. And as someone who loves Tintin, I would.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Really really love to see revised for today's times.
Speaker 3 (25:05):
I'll tell you what, Mango, if it ever happens, I'll
buy you a ticket.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
I mean, I think we can get in for free,
but I'll make sure you get in.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Its sounds good to me. But on that note, I
think it's time for a fact off all right, this
is a fun one. So did you know that Ja
would hide himself in the Tintin books like an early
iteration of Where's Waldo? It was apparently inspired by Hitchcock's
(25:35):
idea of breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience,
and famously he hid himself in all of his movies too.
But for example, in King Ottokar's Scepter is dressed as
a cavalry officer in the royal court. In The Broken Ear,
he's a museum goer. In The Calculus Affair, he's standing
with a sketch pad and pen. He goes on and on.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
That is so fun.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
I actually did not know that. Now I've got to
go back and look for him.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Yeah. Yeah. And in a nod to this, Spielberg has
a little animated Airja cameo in his Tintin movie too,
So I look out for that. I love that.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Okay, So I've got another one for you.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
In twenty twenty one, a rare Tintin cover illustration was
sold at auction for nearly three point two million euros
around three point eight four million dollars, making it the
world's most expensive comic book art. The art itself is
actually the original idea for the Blue Lotus, the adventure
that took place in China, where Airj did a bunch
of research ahead of time thanks to his friend John.
(26:30):
Now I've seen pictures of this long lost artwork and
it is really beautiful. It would have actually made an
amazing cover, but when Airja showed it to his publisher,
they said it had too many colors and would be
too expensive to produce using the technology they had.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
At the time.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
So instead Airja gave the original art, the actual one
he had painted, to his publisher's seven year old son,
and it just stuck around in their family for a
long time.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Well, you know what's extra crazy about that is that
Tintin had already set the previous record for the world's
most expensive comic book art. And I was back in
twenty fourteen when some original drawings sold for two point
six five million euros, and there has been other Tintin
art that's sold for well over a million dollars over
the years. One reason why these pieces go for such
(27:17):
high dollar marks is besides you know Tintin's popularity, of course,
is that Tintin's estate is notoriously strict. It's run by
Rgey's widow, Fanny and her second husband, a guy named
Nick Rodwell. He's hard fisted in his approach to dealing
with Tintin copyright, let's just say that. And in the
Tintin world he's almost universally hated. He's been described, or
(27:40):
maybe describes himself as quote the least popular man in Belgium.
And that's because of you know how often he's litigated
copyright cases. For example, in twenty twenty one he sued
a French sculptor for the ninety busts of Tintin he
had made, and that same year he also sued a
French painter who had paid to Tintin in the World
(28:01):
of Edward Hopper, but in a manner Rodwell deemed quote
mildly erotic. Oh no, yeah. And in two thousand and
nine a French novelist had his home seized because he
had reproduced a Tintin drawing in a book for students,
which had a print run of two hundred copies. So
I mean he didn't even make a profit off it.
Rodwell says he's just protecting Airs and Tintin's legacy from
(28:24):
bad quality spinoffs. That kind of stuff. Can water down
an artist's legacy after they die, and j himself was
adamant that he didn't want any Tintin books to come
out after his death. But repossessing somebody's house because of
a book for students, Yeah, that's a little over the top.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
Yeah, okay, Gabe.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
So have you ever thought about the fact that even
though the Tintin book spanned forty years, Tintin himself was ageless,
like his appearance never changes.
Speaker 4 (28:52):
You know.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
I hadn't thought about that, but now that you mention it,
I'm thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Yeah, that's true, because I brought it off. Well, Lucky
for you, there are some scientists who also thought about it, or,
more precisely, a scientist and his two young sons. In
two thousand and four, a Canadian professor of medicine named
Claude Syr published a satirical paper about his efforts to
figure out why Tintin hadn't aged over the decades, and
(29:16):
he and his kids went through the books and counted
the number of times Tintin lost consciousness, which you know
is a lot. Fifty times. Forty three of those times
were considered severe. Professor Sear decided that these repeated blows
to the head had led to growth hormone deficiency and
because of that also a condition called hyponatotropic hypogonadism, which
(29:39):
you know is a mouthful but it's.
Speaker 4 (29:41):
A real thing.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It can lead to delayed or totally missing puberty for
the people who are affected by it.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
All right, but well here's what I really want to know.
Did he ever explain snowy? I mean that dog is
still going strong, he still has puppy energy. Yeas one hundred.
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Years later, that is a fair point. Maybe his kids
have done to study on this. I'll have to report back, please.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Do Yeah, keep us posted. All right, So I'm going
to pivot here, but I was really excited to learn that.
In twenty twenty two, a new Belgian passport was introduced
that features illustrations from famous Belgian cartoons and comics in
general are really beloved over there and considered high art.
So the passport pages included drawings of famous Belgium cartoon
(30:23):
characters like Tintin and the Smurfs, and apparently, when UV
light is shown on the drawings, additional details like facial
expressions are revealed. And not only is that absolutely delightful,
but these details also make it a lot harder to counterfeit.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Oh, I love that Belgians just really love comics, so
staying in the vein of Belgium pride. In twenty fifteen,
Brussels Airlines unveiled in airbus A three twenty named Rackham,
which refers to the Tintin book read Rackham's Treasure.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
The outside of the.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Planet is painted to look like the submarine from that book,
and the cabin inside has pictures of Captain Haddock and Tintin,
and a of course red Rackham's Treasure is available on
board for reading well.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
Our final fact is yet another example of how Tintin
keeps appearing in Belgium today. For the twenty twenty four
euro Cup, the Belgian soccer team's away kit was inspired
by you Guessed It our man himself. The players wore
a uniform based on Tintin's iconic outfit, a light blue
jersey with a white collar, brown shorts and white sox.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
I know, I was so excited when I saw that.
Speaker 4 (31:26):
I'm obviously a soccer fan and loved but they did that.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
But you know, there's actually one book where Tintin breaks
from the standard outfit and dresses just a little differently. Really. Yeah.
In nineteen seventy six, air J published what would be
the last fully completed Tintin adventure. It was called Tintin
and the Pickereas and strikingly, while Tintin has the same
blue shirt, his brown pants are long in this one,
(31:49):
not short, and on the cover drawing the pants are
noticeably flared.
Speaker 3 (31:54):
Well, I mean it was the seventies, right, so even
Tintin wore bell bottoms. But a way, Mangel, I'm really
glad that you convinced us to explore the life and
times of a cartoon adventurer. So I think you get
today's trophy. You earned it. And there's actually two trophies,
one for last time as well.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
Well I'll take them, and I guess I'll share these
with my fellow tinton fans and Dylan wherever he is.
That concludes our two part Tintin series. I hope you
enjoyed it. If you did, please share these episodes with
a friend or follow us on Instagram Blue Sky if
you have any questions, comments, or just want to tell
us what your favorite Tinton book is or how you
feel about this complicated legacy emails at high Geniuses at
(32:34):
gmail dot com. That's Hi Geniuses at gmail dot com,
or give us a call at three oh two four
oh five five nine two five. That's three oh two
four oh five five nine two five. We are always
looking to hear from you. This episode, as well as
Part one, was written by the wonderful of Marissa Brown.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Thank you so much, Marissa.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
We will be back next week with another new episode,
but in the meantime from Gabe, Mary, Dylan, Will and myself,
thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is
(33:16):
a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted
by Will Pearson and me Mongais Chatikler and researched by
our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered
and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from
Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by
Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social media support from
(33:39):
Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shoring. For more
podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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