Tintin : The Complete Companion

This text explains the sources in reality of all the Tintin stories, which still sell four million copies a year worldwide. Politics, people, events and objects are all covered,;Tintin, the extraordinary reporter with his immediately recognizable coif and his dog Snowy, has been a publishing phenomenon since he first appeared in 1928. Herge, Tintin's creator, based the stories on actual events in his world, reflecting the political tensions of the 1930s and postwar events. The Anschluss and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the race to the moon, our Western fascination with the Abominable Snowman, the spying activities of Buster Crabbe, the revolutionary activities of Regis Bebray in South America, are just a few of the people, events and phenomena to crop up, inimitably satirized, in Herge's stories. He also drew on real objects: the aircraft, ships, guns, cars, clothes, buildings and so forth, that appear in his stories are scrupulously correct, and were often updated in subsequent editions.;This book explains the sources, of whatever kind, of all the stories.It also shows how Herge subtly adjusted the stories in new editions, adapting them to changing times and ideas, and downplaying their originally local, Belgian origins.