I have three copies of Tintin in America. These are: The 2018 softcover color edition from Egmont (bought as a part of the massive Tintin Box Set, which contains all books bar Tintin in the Congo), henceforth America 1; the 2018 black and white facsimile edition (meant to represent the "original" version as drawn by Herge in 1932) from Last Gasp, henceforth America 2; and the 2020 version from Moulinsart, which features colors over the original black and white art, henceforth America 3. Each of these books is different, sometimes in a striking manner; but each is, in its own way, Tintin in America. Or maybe, like the Holy Trinity, each is just a facet of some greater whole that is beyond my ability to fully perceive.
Owning multiple versions of the same comics is, by itself, is not unusual. Comics, at least in the English-speaking sphere is still very much a collector’s market, which offers varying editions (with different pros and cons) to old stories. This is certainly true for Tintin, one of the most reprinted comics in the world (what I posses is but a sliver of the versions that exist in English, never mind the original language). If one believes Benoît Peeters’ biography of Herge Tintin was one of the first comics, if not the first, to get a deluxe reprint edition. Aside from Tintin in America yours truly owns five versions of the first story-arc of Nemesis the Warlock1, four copies of Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War2, three versions of “Master Race” 3, two versions of Watchmen4, and a partridge in a pear tree5.
Some might scoff at spending so much time, never mind money and shelf-space, on a work as minor as Tintin in America. This the third in a series that is generally held as only improving from one story to another. This album will probably be no one’s favorite Tintin adventure. In his Herge biography, Benoit Peeters refers to the album as "a collection of clichés and snapshots of well-known places," echoing an earlier critique by Harry Thompson that “[Tintin in America] still amounts to little more than a tourist ramble round the country.” I would not, cannot, argue with these critiques. One could not counter the stop-and-start nature of the plot, which follows little logical or emotional progression. The geographical and technical research that would come to define Tintin in his golden age is nowhere to be found (one of the big set pieces takes place in a seemingly-European castle, including a full set of armor for decoration); over and over again Tintin is saved from danger by fate alone. Finally, for all his attempts at tackling topical socio-political issues, especially the treatment of Native Americans, Herge himself uses regressive and dull stereotypes in his writing of the Black Feet people6.
And yet … and yet … I find myself returning to this album more than many of Herge’s latter masterworks. I certainly wouldn’t dream of owning three editions of Tintin In Tibet or Flight 714. The charm of Tintin in America arises exactly from the same faults that would forever render it near the bottom of the Tintin ladder. In its randomness and meanness it is ranks amongst the funniest of Herge’s creation, its hodgepodge approach to American geography and history makes it more interesting as a representation of the European point of a view of a then-upstart nation; not so much story but a fever dream, a nightmare, of a country spinning out of control. There is also the page, possibly the finest Herge ever conceived and drawn – Thompson also recognized that particular page as a highlight (though not to the same degree as myself).
It is page number twenty nine in my edition of America 1. It depicts the banishment of the Black Feet people from their land and the construction of a new town. It ends with a note-perfect gag in which Tintin, still dressed like a cowboy from his previous encounter with the natives, is now a subject of public spectacle amongst the modern city that sprung around him overnight. Not only is it a marvelous feat of storytelling, an entire tale in and of itself done in a single page, it also manages to be both humorous (the final panel featuring the now out-of-place Tintin) and dramatic (the eighth panel, with the scowling soldiers pushing away a family). It encapsulates, in such a small space the entire European experience of the United States at the time. A direct descendent of Tocqueville, a land so vast and so fast, one in which progress quickly erases everything that came before. A land in which capital had truly been unshackled in a manner the bamboozled tourist cannot quite grasp.
When Tintin is first swamped by businessmen he wonders aloud: “How did you know there was an oil well here?... it’s less than ten minutes since it blew…” That vital question, one that holds the key to Herge's conception of America. How does the nation function? what does it symbolize? and what does it all have to do with comics?
The Father, The Son and Holy Reprint
One of the reason I won’t be seeking out different editions of the latter albums is precisely because they already feel complete and sure of themselves. The Calculus Affair, my favorite of the lot, is a Swiss clock of a creation, every single element flowing flawlessly from one page to another; it is a heuristic whole. Tintin in America is a mishmash of ideas and gags, imperfect and unbuilt since its inception; which is why different editions are fascinating; there is not one that can be pointed as a ‘complete’ version because they are all, in their way, lacking.
Going back for a bit: Why did I refer to the Egmont edition as America 1? Simply because I bought it and read it first, one could assume. Certainly not because it was first in any meaningful term. The story that would become Tintin in America began publication in 1931. Serialized, like previous Tintin adventures in Le Petit Vingtième, a children’s supplement of a Belgian newspaper. It appeared in black and white and drawn in a rather cartoony style that was characteristic of a still-young Herge. America 1 is based on a redrawn version, made by Herge in 1946 in order to bring older stories more in-line with his latter, more popular, works. To use a famous example: America 1 is like the 1990s editions of Star Wars. The same skeleton of a story, but redone and retouched7.
But unlike these new editions of old Star Wars movies, which remain a topic of debate to this day, America 1 isn’t just the primary version for me. It is the primary version for millions of readers, widely accepted as a "true" text. This version, translated by Leslie Londsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, seems to be accepted as the de-facto version to all subsequent releases in English – such as the smaller hardcovers by Little, Brown Books, in publication since the mid 1990s.
By all rights America 2, the black and white version released by Last Gasp, should be the primary version for English-speakers, certainly for self-professed comics fans with aspirations of historical literacy. It is based on the original version, preserved in all its exaggerated glory (or lack thereof). Here Tintin is less of lank youth and more of squat shape, his whole being (alongside the rest of the album) drawn in a shorthand. His nose a single sharp line (liable to poke someone’s eye out), the eyes - black spots. Shortcuts arising from a combination of an artist still grasping for style as well a deadline pressure. Tintin is first introduced in America 2 in a four panel sequence, not once the character’s mouth is drawn (even as he speaks). Compare the same scene in America 1, in a which a mouth can be seen clearly, even when Tintin is further away from the eye of the reader.
In the same manner, early Herge’s rendering of Snowy is a beast composed of as few lines as possible. In America 2 there is hardly a hint of fur, which is suggested ably with a few tiny strokes in America 1. When Tintin finally removes his hat in America 2 we can see his hair is part of the same line as the rest of outline, part of the general shape of his head like on the Simpsons children. America 1 has the luxuries of skill, fame and time. On sheer craftsmanship it is obviously superior.
If this sounds like I’m being simply antagonistic towards America 2 I wish to assure you that I am not. "Simple" is not always the same as "Bad." There is a charm to these early black and white versions that is almost erased from the redrawn versions8. The original version of Tintin was closer in spirit to a Loony Tunes figure, a blithe spirit that constantly fools his antagonists with a helping dose of luck and reality-bending powers.
Consider Tintin’s first escape in the narrative, locked in a taxi with steel shutters. The taxi is forced to stop and when it continues its travels we see Tintin left on the side of the road – holding the door as well as a saw. America 1 attempts to justify this absurd moment (why would Tintin have a saw on him?) with a line of a dialogue. America 2 simply lets the moment be. The cartoonish style prepares the reader for such absurdities, we wouldn’t wonder about the saw anymore than we would wonder about the mallet Bugs Bunny pulled out of thin air, or the ever-present Acme equipment.
In page 17 of America 1 Tintin tries to mount a hose called Beatrice (in America 2 there’s an added gag with Tintin calling the animal Bucephalus.9) and gets a kicked away for his troubles. The scene in America 1 is better drawn, the choice to position Snowy above Tintin makes more physical sense (considering their relative weight and size) and the fence in the background feels more concrete than a collection of lines10.
Reading all three versions in a row helps to push the absurdities of Tintin in America to the forefront; writing about these early adventures Peeters noted: “As for his 'character,' it is quite incoherent during his early adventures [...] This early Tintin is just a narrative vehicle, a machine to carry us from page to page and from development to development.” Nothing in Tintin in America quite reaches the level of sublime idiocy of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, in which the Belgian reporter plays Road Runner to the Soviet Union’s Coyote (Tintin carves a functioning airplane propeller out of wood).Still, Tintin In America is more of a collection of gags and ideas than a proper story, in any version that you read.
Most people remember Bobby Smiles as the main antagonist of the story, but he’s actually arrested about two thirds of the way through. The rest of the album, is spent fighting a completely different gangster who remains nameless. Just another worm body for Tintin to pummel. There is no arc to Tintin in America; and while Tintin as a character isn’t often submitted to character development (too nice, too perfect) Herge finds a way around it in latter albums, by focusing these stories either around Captain Haddock (a man of actual flaws) or some newly introduced figure. Tintin in America can end right after Bobby Smiles is captured. Heck, it can end after Tintin runs him out of Chicago (page 16 in America 1) and the "story" wouldn’t be impacted in any way – cut to the final page with the cheering masses and nothing would be amiss.
These are all faults that are made clearer in America 1 simply because it has the look of a complete Tintin story, but it is still closer in feel to Tintin in the Land of the Soviets; it’s fragmented, it is narratively broken. America 2 and America 3 turns these faults into virtues. In their fractured treatment they better reflect Herge’s thoughts of America at the time. On the one hand he is impressed: the above-mentioned city-building scene can almost be seen through the lenses of religious awe. The Americans are so swift in their business-savvy and construction-abilities that they leave Tintin shocked to his core. The page is best understood as subjective experience rather than as objective depiction, Tintin cannot comprehend his experience, to him it appears as if the city sprung right around him.
On the other hand the America depicted in Tintin in America is a wretched society crying for a helping hand, always by the good European colonialist. In the cities crime is rampant, the very first panel sequence shows a uniformed officer saluting a masked criminal. Business are corrupt – not only is the manager of the Grynde meatpacking planet in cahoots with the mob but the missing animal signs right outside his factory let the readers now that the beef isn’t particularly kosher11. Finally there is the treatment of the Native Americans, huddled into reservations and made into a tourist attraction (at best). This is the thorniest of subjects and one in which Herge's prejudices and limitations show themselves most of all. He tries to create what is, to him, a positive depiction of the Natives as victims of an oppressive system. Yet for all his sympathy Herge cannot let go of his paternalism – the Natives are overgrown children, easily swayed by Bobby Smiles’ simple rhetoric and even more easily overcome by Tintin’s buffoonery.
In that Herge is no different is no different from other European creators who see the Native through the lenses of "the noble savage," mostly facilitated by popular media such as the Karl May novels. The thrust of Tintin In America is that Natives are victims of American greed and capitalism – which is mostly bad because of gauche it is. You can see something similar in his latter works, such as The Blue Lotus, in which the notion of a superior Western civilization is espoused by a brute and a fool; Herge could easily fire at such targets, as long as his people were not included. This type of writing is repeated by European observers of the USA during that period and before. People who could easily spot the hypocrisy of that society espousing the values of liberty while being pro-slavery and borne out of oppression of Native population12, yet held firm to to their own country's prejudices.
Building and Dwelling
One can read back from Tintin in America all the way back to Tocqueville. It’s probably better to familiarize oneself with the present influences. Herge was obviously familiar with Georges Duhamel’s book Scènes de la vie future (Scenes from the Life of the Future), which came out in 1930. The book is a description of Duhamel’s travels in America, a country he obviously hated. A whole chapter is dedicated to Chicago and you see, in your mind’s eyes, how these words become the basis of Herge’s visuals: “Chicago stretches along the shores of Lake Michigan for approximately twenty-eight miles – stretches, or rather did stretch that distance, for, while I am writing my sentence it has lengthened another mile. Chicago! – The tumor, the cancer, among cities, about which all statistics are out of date when they reach you.” You can see this sentiment when Tintin climbs out of his hotel window (page 10 in America 1). The Belgian reporter never felt smaller within his own adventures, not even on the moon; the slight angle of the drawing, the choice not to show the bottom the building, the endlessly repeating design of the windows below … if you told me the hotel was taller than mount Everest I would believe you. The way Herge draws it might as well be infinity itself.13.
Like Herge, Duhamel reacted strongly to the industrialization of this country, to the speed of construction. Unlike Herge, there was seemingly nothing about it he liked. The title might give the impression of certain fondness, if one thinks of the future in terms of hope for a better world. Duhamel, almost comically the European intellectual, was proud of the stability allowed his country by its long history. Europe was the past, the Golden age; America was the future, a dystopia. Imagine a cowboy boot stomping on a human face forever.
Benoît Peeters also noted the obvious influence on Herge, he referred to Duhmel’s book as: “an interminable jeremiad against the wrongdoings of America and the immense threat bearing down on Europe if it failed to react against America’s harmful influence.” Yet despite his vehemence the book seemed to have influenced Peeters as well, in a roundabout way. In Samaris, the first of The Obscure Cities graphic novels by Peeters and Schuiten, the titular city reads like a continuation of Duhamel’s nightmare of Chicago – a self perpetuating engine with no beginning or end, a cancer cell that spreads itself far and wide in the world. At the same time, a cardboard world, slight and depthless, it can spread so far because it has no anchor (physical or spiritual). The very fear of American soft-power molding the continent in its own image.
Compared to Samaris, Herge’s Tintin In America is almost a fawning depiction. America is amusing rather outright harmful; and, most important, there was still a hope at the time that a young and daring European might still master this vast land. The album ends in triumph, Tintin has defeated organized crime and the whole city cheers for him. The celebratory parade is almost an inverse of the hotel wall climbing mentioned before – now we are at ground level, instead of vast empty space the windows are crowded with happy people. But even that triumph is not complete, there’s melancholy in Titin’s last spoken line: “Pity! ... I was almost beginning to get used to it.” Tintin must leave before he gets used it, understanding that if he sticks out a bit longer he would loose his roots, would become American. He leaves because he must, because there is still a gulf between cultures that is bigger than even the language barrier14. Compare that to the end of Samaris, in which the protagonist (dejected and lost) heads back to the city-that-is-America: "I headed off towards Samaris - my home - the one I should have never left."
Third Time’s Charm
But what of America 3? I had hardly written about this latest, in terms of translation to English, volume. To a the degree one could wonder is it even necessary when America 2 already exists as a "purer" representation of Herge’s older style. In fact, like several recent artifacts of American comics, such as Batman #428 – Robin Lives it’s a reproduction of something that never was, of something that could have been (a "What if?" in the Marvel parlance). As the back cover of America 3 explains: “[the first color versions of Tintin] were all reduced to a standard length of 62 pages […] Coloured with regard to the black and white flats, that disappeared with the future colour edition, [this version] runs to 120 pages, so almost double the length of the version that appeared following the accord with Casterman.” In short, this isn’t a version that Herge would recognize as one of his own. Whether he would approve of it or not is hard to say, though his dissatisfaction with his earlier work was great enough to try and erase them from the record.
Does this review approve of it? I do! It is not "necessary," through one could argue that few comics are, but it certainly adds something to the text. It is not merely a bridge between America 1 and America 3 but it’s own unique creation. Unlike other recent coloring efforts (like Rebellion had been doing with Rogue Trooper or The Ballad of Halo Jones) the colors add a new dimension to the text without drowning out Herge’s line: page 24 in America 3 shows Tintin been thrown to the river, the blue shades of the water and the sky adds to the moodiness of the scenes in a manner absent from the starkness of the black and white.
On the other hand, it also reveals the limitations of early Herge, it doesn’t take long, staring at the straight blotches of color filling out the background, to notice how sparse Herge world-building was Early on. Only rarely did he bother to give his world semblance of existence beyond what is necessary for the scene to work; with the development of the Clear Line the pendulum would swing hard, certainly when assistants became part of the working method, and Tintin became known for its backgrounds. This sparseness goes down more smoothly in black and white, but the colors call attention to it. At the same time, they add charm to the animal escape scene (pages 71-72 of America 3), giving it a sense of an early Disney movie, adding energy to the threat of the fire.
All of which to say: there are trade offs to each edition; it would be hard to me to pick one that is "superior" to others; the heart calls for America 1, but that simply might be because I’ve read it first 15. It’s easy to look at America 3 cynically, another product designed to milk a little more money from the collector’s market, another attempt to keep the past alive while drowning out the present works. Which it is ... while also being an (unintentional) cry against the dominance of America 1. A cry against the very notion that there is only one "true" version. The whole of Tintin exists on a delicate balance between the self-expression of Herge and the demands of money-hungry publishers. It was never just one man, and the market had its say in the manner of publication from the get-go.
I thought of doing this article after reviewing Foul Play and Other Stories which got me into thinking about this unsolvable problem of finding the "real" or "true" edition of any comic book. Something like Tintin in America adds to the problem because any version I could read would have to be a translation, another barrier to the notion of me ever experiencing the "real" Tintin in America. Yet, like many other elements of the book, that is another case of a weakness being turned into a strength. More than any other book in the series, possibly save the never-completed Tintin and the Aleph Art, Tintin in America is a story full of falsehoods. There is the fake-Tintin doll, shot from a window by a sniper; there are the fake weights, meant to drag Tintin to the bottom but keeping him afloat; there is the fake weightlifter, just another cheap hood conning the rest of his fellow Americas; and a bank robber frames Tintin in a robbery, making him a fake criminal.
It’s fakes all the way down
Speaking of European travelers in America: half a century after Duhamel another foreign philosopher tried to make sense of the USA. Umberto Eco, writing in “Travels in Hyperreality,” became preoccupied with the country’s many faux-real landmarks. The Oval Office reconstructed fully in the LBJ presidential library, a miniaturized New Orleans in Disneyland, a half-size Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas. “The “completely real” becomes identified with the “completely fake.” "Absolute unreality is offered as real presence.” Eco, a noted comics fans, opens this essay with a rumination about Superman’s Fortress of Solitude, in which the Man of Steel keeps souvenirs from his many adventures as well as robots in his own likeness – “the robots are incredible, because their resemblance to reality is absolute; they are not mechanical men, all cogs and beeps, but perfect 'copies' of human beings, with skin, voice, movements, and the ability to make decisions.”
You can see how enamored Eco with his observation. Here is the American comic book, whose existence is dependent on replication, presenting within itself exactly that kind of fakery. Which version of Tintin in America is the real Superman and which is a robot duplicate? All of them and none of them. All versions are equally fake, which is to say equally real. To Eco, comics is a medium that, to build on Walter Benjamin’s “The work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” strips the halo of the authentic from the work of art. How utterly, beautifully American. Tintin looking around at the city being built around him and wondering which is the "real" America, the metropolis or the prairie, and thus misses the point entirely. There is no real America.
Eco is a better fit for that type of commentary because he accepts this version of America on its own terms, instead of rejecting it thoroughly as some vision of hell like Duhamel did. Eco is also closer in spirit to what Herge was trying to express throughout Tintin in America. There is distant mocking there, the raised nose, the smirk of the blue blood at the nouveau riche … but also genuine enthusiasm. Herge can’t help but admire this brave new world that has such strange people in it.
Academic Jan Baetens also noted the admiration at the heart of Tintin in America: ”[T]raveling to America in 1931-1932 does not come as a surprise. It is paying a tribute to the birthplace of modern comics, which is also the homeland of modern mass culture.” Baetens use of "mass culture" is important. It is the kind of culture defined in opposition to the type of art you could find in a museum. Of course, nowadays you can find comics art, including Herge’s, in museums. Call it America 4, or maybe America 0. I’d argue it is even less real than any of the other versions, much like watching production stills isn’t like watching a movie. What can one make from the piece of art above – an Herge original, sold at public auction as an authentic representation of that artist's work, a black and white drawing that became the cover for the new color edition (a.k.a. America 1). It's the original version of a reworked comic, a black and white drawing meant for a color edition. It's so many contractionary things at once.
Comics, I argue, is defined by being replicable. As a medium, as a market (the two are not unrelated) it arose during the era of mass communication, shaping up on the pages of newspapers read by millions. It's a public art, displayed in public, meant to be read by the public. Which also means it is defined by not having any "real" version. You can have editions of Tintin in America that are better or worse, according to personal taste, but you can never have a definitive version. The temporary triumph of America 1, the notion that is a "correct" edition, especially an edition that is a re-working of the original art, is the exception; not the rule.
Back to Benjamin: “the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence.” Comics is American culture because it is mass culture, because it ignores tradition, because it rejects the notion of a solid past. From the moment of its conception Tintin in America came into being without the aura of authenticity, designed to be reprinted, recollected, translated, interpreted. Instead of oil one might as well imagine Tintin being swarmed by investors asking to have the publishing rights to his adventures (“Can we reprint in a monthly issue?” “Can there be a movie?” "What about digital colors?”).
Tintin never came back to America (well … to the USA, at least). According to The Tintin Companion Herge thought about having another go but nothing came of it. Instead as the series progressed it tended more and more to be set in fictional locations (Syldavia, San Theodoros, Khemed) or somewhere fantastic (the moon, the bottom of the sea). The work remained political, but with a degree of distance from the real world. These albums also tended to show Tintin more and more as master of anything he encountered – as skilled a jungle explorer as he is an astronaut, a recovery diver, a pilot and an insurgent leader. Only the USA left him truly befuddled.
Herge, in his own way a greater scholar of America than any that came before or after, made work that is a real reflection of the country: ugly and beautiful, disorganized, oft-unclear, sometimes racist, sometimes funny, sometimes ahead and sometimes behind. Like Duahmel’s Chicago, like the city of Samaris, it is also not a work that could be confined into any one thing. There will be more versions to come, each another fact of some grand whole that we can never fully grasp, that even Herge couldn’t grasp. This is as pure as comics ever were. This is America.
The post Thrice upon a time in Tintin’s America appeared first on The Comics Journal.
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