TRAINS

Tintin was born at a train station-the Gare du Nord of Brussels, to be exact. His adventures also started there. However, this was only the first in a long line of connections between Tintin and the world of trains.

To Russia And Back

Tintin's first train ride in the series is when he boards the Moscow via Berlin in Brussels. However, he does not get to enjoy the ride for long-it is only a few minutes before a Soviet assassin blows up the entire train with the hope of killing our reporter and his dog. Ironically, Snowy and Tintin are the sole survivors among 220 passengers.

After he is arrested at Berlin's Bahnhof Train Station for the alleged bombing of the very same train, Tintin escapes the hands of the law. After dodging desperate tactics by the Deutsch Politzei, Tintin collides with a train and ends up sitting at the very front of it with Snowy. Conveniently, it transports him to Stolzby, the Soviet frontier. The passage almost echoes one in The Broken Ear when Tintin dashes across the railway in a Rosengart Spider just as a Latin American freight train passes by. Later in the Soviets adventure, Tintin chases after his train (which he has missed) and ends up walking the line when he forced to outrun another coach in the Urals.

Later, he returns to Belgium via a German passenger train. We are given a brief tour of Belgium, as Tintin excitedly watches the towns of Liege and Tirlemont fly by from his window. At the Gare du Nord, he is greeted by a realistic crowd of thousands of Belgians who celebrate his survival of the OGPU and the return to Belgium.

Minor Inferences

In his next two adventures, Tintin is transported to the harbor of Antwerp and the city of Chicago via trains. In America, he gets on the rails on more than one occasion, finding himself on (in one case literally) the Transcontinental Railroad, the first rail connection to cross the entire width of the United States of America. Phileas Fogg and Passepartout also travel on the railway in Jules Verne's Around The World In 80 Days.

In Cigars Of The Pharaoh, Tintin experiences the trains that moved along the lines set up by thousands of Indian workers under the orders of the British. In The Blue Lotus, he travels from Shanghai to Hukow and back in a strangely uncrowded train. In The Black Island, the legendary British Rail meets Tintin as he travels throughout Sussex, England on rails, first on a passenger train, then on a freighter. In The Calculus Affair, one can infer from Calculus's speech that he is travelling to Geneva in traditional European style, on a passenger train. Whether he did so or not, he most certainly took the train from Geneva to Nyon before being kidnapped at Topolino's house.

Memorable Scenes

• Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets (pgs 1, 24, 135)
• The Broken Ear (pgs 38, 39)
• The Black Island ()
• Prisoners of the Sun (13-15)

The exit of the train

As air travel and ultra-terrain vehicles became more accessible and widespread, the conventional train, which had been in use since the 1830s, was discarded as an object for long-range transport. The last time we see a train in the adventures of Tintin is at Cornavin Station in Geneva. We will never hear of one again in the entire series.

Locomotives Around The World

Belgian Congo

United States of America

China

Belgium

Peru

Herge did not have all his work time to devote to Tintin: he had other strips and stories he needed to take care of. However, none of them are as famous as Tintin, however more prolific they were.

Totor

Totor, little known but widely recognized as the ancestor of Tintin, was Herge's first syndicated commissioned strip. The 16-year old Georges Remi got his career off to a start in the official magazine of Belgian boy scouts, Le Boy-Scout Belge. In 1926, boy scouts throughout the nation began to read The Adventures Of Totor, Leader Of The Hannetons Patrol, written and illustrated by United Rovers (Georges Remi's pen name and an unsubtle play on United Artists). These stories were "super comic-films". The black and white illustration was accompanied by a text written at the bottom. Totor ran for 3 years, and was eventually retired because of declining popularity. The fall of Totor, Herge's first creation, came about thanks to the success of Totor's descendant, a quiffed reporter named Tintin. These stories were never translated or republished in any form whatsoever. The only evidence to their existence is copies in old issues of Le Petit Vingtieme and Le Boy-Scout Belge, as well as Herge's own workfile archives.

Quick & Flupke

A strip that was more prolific than Tintin and was loved by Herge more than any other of his works, Quick & Flupke have continued their saga into the new millenium, unlike Tintin.

On January 14, 1930, the cover of Le Petit Vingtieme showcased a young boy, wearing a black cap introducing himself as Quick, the latest creation of Herge. This new but young protege announces his return on forthcoming Thursdays to inform readers of his exploits at school, home and play in his hometown, the old Marolles district of Brussels.

Quick's misadventures are humorous and buffoonish, with the young scamp creating mischief and showcasing boyish immaturity through pranks and games played in idle hours with his friends. The tongue-in-cheek humor is subtle, and the series appears to be stagnant for a while, with no new interesting developments. Then, on February 23, we are introduced to a short, tubby blond boy named Flupke (pronounced Fluke) who instantly becomes inseparable from Quick. The series shoots off into the distance from there.

Quick and Flupke's creative and growing young minds allow for various ideas to form shape, fantasies, games, and mischief to occur, often with serious consequences. The pair of juvenile delinquents, modeled on Herge's childhood in general, quickly become closely acquainted with the Brussels Police Force. Officers of the law fall victim to their pranks, which wind out of control, and end up creating disaster wherever they go. 

One in particular, simply referred to as "L'Agent" or Agent 15, is a fat bald man with a Thom(p)son-style moustache. His surname, only once used, is Vertommen, and the persnickety look on his face exemplifies his eternal quest to rid the world of Quick & Flupke. The love-hate relationship between these three, regardless of the situation always ends up with Quick & Flupke either off the hook or fleeing rapidly, and Agent 15 the worst off. One cannot help feeling sorry for him at the end of every story.

The emphasis is more on situation than on character, and is more like a conventional comic strip. Quick & Flupke ran in black and white weekly from 1930 to 1933, and less regularly from then on. Herge did a few strips for Le Soir during the war, and the series was resumed in color in Tintin Magazine from 1948 onwards.

In 1949, having already published two albums in black and white, Casterman began releasing small format color albums. 12, in order by number and bearing no title, were released up to 1969. A few reissues were made during the 1970s.

In 1986, the Fondation Herge, formerly the Studios Herge, began recoloring the stories and recompiling them under the direction of Johan De Moor. They were responsible for a dozen 32 or 48 page books. In 2002, a black and white double album box set containing previously unreleased sketches was produced in a volume by Casterman. This accompanies the second volume of Archives Herge, similar to the former. Two books, Double Trouble and Two Of A Kind, translated 1987.

Popol and Virginia

Possibly the strangest story Herge ever wrote, Popol et Virginie chez les Lapinos (Popol Out West) was serialized in 1934 in Le Petit Vingtieme. The story dealt with a horde of rabbits called Lapinos who dressed up and imitated Native Americans. They were extremely reclusive, and went to war with a squirrel named Popol who had moved into their area. Popol wore Cowboy clothes and lived on the road with his girlfriend Virginia and their blue talking donkey, Blue Flower. The story was remade in album format in 1969. Translated into English 1971.

The Adventures Of Jo, Zette, And Jocko

In January 1935, Herge was approached by Father Gosset, his French distributor, who asked him to create "a more conventional" series. He wanted a series about a boy who had a family, a home, a sibling, a pet, and a school, like a normal human being. Herge was forced to accept the project, but had his own doubts. The result came out with Le Rayon Du Mystere (The Secret Ray), a science fiction story about modern day pirates using a sophisticated technological system in order to achieve mass plunderage and cause the collapse of the Western World. The only people able to stop them are Jo and Zette, a 12-year old boy and his 11-year old sister, two Parisian children, prisoners of the pirate crew in their underwater base, and their pet chimpanzee Jocko. The story ran for two years and was a success in both France and Belgium. A sequel, Le Stratonef H.22 (The Stratoship H.22) was serialized before Herge embarked on an incomplete tale, Jo and Zette in the land of the Maharaja.

On New Year's Day 1947, Tintin Magazine began a color serialization of The Adventures Of Jo, Zette, And Jocko. Herge recirculated his old work. In 1951 and 1952, four albums, containing half of each story, were released. Serialization of Jo and Zette In The Land Of The Maharaja continued in 1953 under the title of The Valley of the Cobras. It was eventually released in album format in 1957. The five books in this series are: Le Manitoba Ne Repond Plus (The 'Manitoba' No Reply), L'Eruption Du Karamako (The Eruption Of Karamako), Le Testament De M. Pump (Mr. Pump's Legacy), Destination New-York (Destination New York), and La Vallee Des Cobras (The Valley Of The Cobras).

Herge abandoned this series early on because he felt that he had been coerced into doing it and that it was not his style. Nevertheless, he achieved his objective, and Jo, Zette, and Jocko constitute some very interesting reading, in certain cases outdoing Tintin.

Herge himself being a major artist in his day, and Tintin himself being just as much an art form as a literary character, it is only understandable that art should play a significant role in the works of Herge, as it was not only his career, but his hobby and fascination.

Interpreting Styles

Appreciation for art is first expressed in the very first adventure. The fables of Jean de la Fontaine and Russian folktales are tributed artistically through the style in which Herge draws farm animals in the OGPU torture house scene. Herge also mimicks the oil painting style of Russian artist Kasimir Malevich in a few of his panels.

The world famous painting, arguably the most famous ever produced in Japan, The Wave, indirectly inspired the early scene in Cigars Of The Pharaoh. Other depictions of life and nature in foreign parts interested Herge and allowed him to use them as models for exotic scenery.

The museum in The Broken Ear is full of artwork, presumably brought back from foreign lands by explorers and colonialists.

Personal Furnishings

In The Blue Lotus, Chinese and Japanese artwork is highly revered. The houses of Wang Chen-Yee, Professor Fang Hsi-Ying, and the Blue Lotus itself are all intricately decorated with Chinese watercolors painted on scrolls and portraits framed in bamboo. The Japanese Secret Service offices in Yokohama have Japanese artwork on their otherwise drab walls.

Tintin's apartment includes a Chinese painted vase and a wall hanging, both presumably from Shanghai. Impressionistic works, which were quite recent at that time, can be found, and a winter scene is also part of his decor.

The most "artsy" place in The Broken Ear is Balthazar's flat, a mess that lacks the tidiness of Tintin's home but bears a Bohemian touch with its various paintings and sculptures.

However, Tintin does not have the financial capabilities of a rich country squire, so Captain Haddock redoubles his own art collection when he acquires Marlinspike Hall. Already in The Seven Crystal Balls, and The Secret Of The Unicorn, we can spot various paintings and sculptures left behind by criminals Max and Barnaby Bird, as well as valuable Venetian clocks. By The Secret Of The Unicorn, in addition to the standard artwork of such a chateau, the hall has acquired a Florentine mirror, several Venetian chandeliers, numerous Rennaisance paintings, etc...

The villains also appear to have quite some artistic taste. The yacht of the villainous Marquis di Gorgonzola (aka Rastapopoulos) is decorated with Picassos and Renoirs, as one can see from Herge's background sketches. The Hotel Excelsior, meeting place for arms smugglers, also has abstract, landscape, portrait and expressionist paintings.

In Tintin And Alph-Art, the entire story revolves around the world of art, galleries, expression, and forgery. In the Fourcart Gallery, Haddock discovers many avant-garde works, including the infamous Alph-Art. Tintin later finds forgeries of works by Picasso, Renoir, Modigliani, Manet, Gauguin, and Leger, as well as "expansionist" sculptor Cesar, whose work forms the basis for Tintin's gruesome prospect for eternity...

Herge spent much of the money he earned through Tintin not on fancy cars, yachts, private jets, or villas, but on artwork. He had only one house, in Brabant-Wallon, Belgium, and the only vehicle he owned was a Peugeot. He spent huge sums on art, building up collections of all sorts of artists and paying frequent visits to art galleries. He embraced the avant-garde as well as traditional styles and set up friendships with many artists, notably Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein.

Fictitious countries play a huge role in the Adventures Of Tintin. They provide a base for neutrality on a very controversial issue and can be used in satire many times. Thus, they crop up in Herge's work a number of times, from the 1930s to the 1970s.

Gaipajama

This is not a country, it is a kingdom. Within India until the 1960s were several kingdoms of large size. They were ruled by Maharajas, who possessed great wealth and palaces, but their power was limited to administrative rulings within their provinces. The largest such kingdom was in what is today the province of Rajasthan. Through examining the black and white version of The Blue Lotus, one can guess that Gaipajama, called Rawhajpoutalah in the original, is located in what is today either Uttar Pradesh or Himachal Pradesh. Both provinces and northeast of New Delhi and have the Himalayas to their northern border.

Early References

In The Blue Lotus, Tintin can be seen in a Chinese cinema watching a film. As was typical of that time, a newsreel is shown before the film. Among the many events thought up by Herge, one is the opening of the National Dog Show by the president of the Pilchardanian Republic. In the original French, this non-existent nation is Poldomarque. Regardless of language barriers, in both versions, the dogs get Snowy excited. However, Poldomarque is never mentioned again. Later on, Mitsuhirato's men nab a short bearded fellow whom they mistake for Tintin. The enraged victim announces himself to be "the consul for Poldavia", or Poldevie in French. Like Poldomarque, this too will remain an anomaly.

San Theodoros

In the very next adventure, The Broken Ear, Tintin sets sail for South America. He arrives in Las Dopicos, harbor and capital of San Theodoros, literally St. Theodore, which sounds more like a city or a Caribbean island than a South American country. Echoing the Latin American tradition of revolutions in the 20th century, San Theodoros witnesses 6 in the Tintin books. Tintin's friend General Alcazar is forever at war with his lifelong rival General Tapioca. Although it has been landlocked since 1884, Bolivia was the model Herge used for the creation of San Theodoros. For the most part, its landscape is similar, and serious political satire used at one point in the book points definitely towards Bolivia. But Brazil, among many other Third World nations, is the model for the new San Theodoros in Tintin And The Picaros, wherein Tapioca's administration, like so many others, relies on massive military aid from one of two superpowers. In this case, it is the East Bloc that has moved so quickly to make San Theodoros yet another pawn in the Third World. Tapioca's soldiers are armed and aided by Communists, and they remain so until the Picaros, led by Alcazar, take over the country, and the standard uniform changes to Tupamaro-style clothes.

Nuevo-Rico

The second country in Latin America visited by Tintin, this nation, modelled after Paraguay, is less durable than its enemy San Theodoros. In yet another moment of satire, Herge stages a war over the Gran Chapo oil fields (a parody of the Gran Chaco war, a 3-year conflict that lasted from 1932 to 1935 between Paraguay and Bolivia in which foreign economic interests were involved) between these two countries. However, Herge's war ends much quicker than the other one. The capital of Nuevo-Rico, Sanfacion, is undoubtedly poking fun at Asuncion. Although Nuevo-Rico is a vital part of a marvellous satire, Herge failed to make further use of it, and it disappears afterwards.

Syldavia

Arguably the greatest fictional country in the series, Syldavia first appears in King Ottokar's Sceptre. The book focuses on the country so much that Herge devotes three pages of it to a travel brochure advertising for the country he himself concocted. Syldavia is in the Balkan region, we are informed, and their language sounds remarkably like Bruxellois although it uses Cyrillic letters. Syldavia was initially to be used in just King Ottokar's Sceptre, as the would-be victim in "a failed Anschluss". It was written around the time of Hitler's annexation of Austria and Sudetenland, and proves as a timeless story based on events that reshaped history. Syldavia was used again in the Moon adventure as a neutral base for the project, and in The Calculus Affair, where it adopts a political stance similar to that of the US during the height of the Cold War.

Borduria

When Borduria is first mentioned in King Ottokar's Sceptre, they play the part of the Nazis in Herge's classic satire of the Anschluss. They are the dictatorship hoping to conquer the fragile kingdom of Syldavia, their neighbor.  In true Nazi fashion, after the war, they have adopted a Communist stance, and Szohod, their capital, serves as a perfect, though unnamed, example of an East Bloc city during the cold war. It could be Communist Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, East Berlin, Sofia, Bucharest, or even Leningrad or Moscow. Szohod is so wonderfully detailed that it seems impossible that it is only fictional. Just like its Warsaw Pact allies, Borduria makes good use of its position by exporting weapons and military expertise to Third-World dictators, in this case General Tapioca. They are the ones who arm the San Theodorian autocrat, allowing him to usurp power in the first place. Borduria is used three times altogether, each time for the purpose of irony.

Khemed

This country, the last fictional nation crafted by Herge, appeared in 1948, in Land Of Black Gold. After encountering Irgun and the Arab Legion in then Palestine, Tintin moves on to the emirate of....Khemed! He soon makes friends with the Emir at his palace Hasch Abaibabi, near the capital of Wadesdah. It appears again in 1958, when Tintin returns to a different Khemed in The Red Sea Sharks and discovers a lost city very similar to Petra. In 1971, succumbing to the demands of his British publishers, Herge redrew and rewrote Land Of Black Gold so that the Palestine sequences are changed to the city of Khemikhal, completely fictional. Khemed is mentioned again, however briefly, in Tintin And Alph-Art.

Marlinspike Hall

Physically modelled after the Chateau Cheverny in France, Marlinspike Hall is located in Brabant-Wallon, Belgium. Or so says Herge. Its name in French, Moulinsart, is derived from the reserving of Sart-Moulin, a rural country village in Belgium. The suffix "sart" would lead one to think that this house was located in Brabant-Wallon. Herge himself had a country house in the area.

26 Labrador Road

Tintin's first home, 26 Labrador Road really does exist, although, unlike 221B Baker Street, you cannot see Tintin's flat.

Gare du Nord

Here begins the adventures of Tintin. The Gare du Nord is where Tintin sets off for Russia and returns. However, the Gare du Nord is still a busy, functioning train station where many people use in transit every day. Therefore, it is of little importance to them if one of the most famous characters in all fiction began there.

Women are given a very limited scope in the adventures of Tintin. The reporter's universe revolves around the male world in which he exists. Female sleuths, villains, and aides had not come to light in literature in the 1920s, and even in the later books, women are of little consequence.

Tintin's asexuality has ensured that romance never becomes an issue in the series. Therefore, the question of Tintin having a girlfriend or a wife is irrelevant. The female characters created by Herge are few and fleeting, although the ones of any importance are so rare that they are well remembered by the reader for a long time.

The first woman to ever appear in Tintin is an unnamed German who witnesses the reporter and his dog, dressed in politzei uniform, navigate the streets of Berlin in a motobike and sidecar at the beginning of Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets.

Initially most of the women who appeared in the series were dowdy old dears, who, dressed in 1930s-fashion, walked about the streets with handbag, hat, fur coat, umbrella, and poodle, causing irritation to one and all. In Tintin In America, we witness a featherbrained specimen stop the Flyer on account of a puma attacking a deer and in The Secret Of The Unicorn, one of her later contemporaries gets an unsuspecting Tintin soaked due to her selfishness. These type of women, highly present in television comedies today, are characterless and provide comic turns as they upset the progress of events in the story.

Another feature of Herge's early work was the landlady, who were not a source of irritation although not important. Tintin's own landlady is Mrs. Finch, who appears in three stories but whose name is only revealed at her moment of departure from the adventures, in The Secret Of The Unicorn. Captain Haddock and Mr. Sakharine also have landladies, for both of them live in flats in Brussels. However, landladies vanish from the books as Tintin and Haddock relocate to their own Marlinspike Hall in the countryside.

Common Types

Most women who appear in the adventures during the middle and late periods of Herge are unimportant, however attractive. Herge himself told Christian Goux in 1979, when asked why he did not resort to the technique used by other authors (such as Ian Fleming) of allowing pretty women to play larger roles in his stories, he said "All of my characters are caricatures. Yes, all! My illustrations do not feature fine young men either, so why would there be pretty girls?" Most of Herge's characters that are "of general aesthetic interest" are either air hostesses or nurses, who are of no importance and make only a brief appearance. The only exception to this rule comes in The Seven Crystal Balls, during the lengthy opera scene, wherein Mrs. Clarkson, the blonde wife of one of the seven explorers, becomes the centre of the audience's attention when the illness of her husband is announced after being predicted by the clairvoyante Madame Yamilah.

At the beginning of The Castafiore Emerald, Tintin briefly attempts to establish communication with a lost and frightened Gypsy girl, whose name is revealed as Miarka once Tintin returns her to her family. It is the only time in the entire sereies that we see him conversing with a young female.

The penultimate tale, Tintin And Alph-Art, was drawn in a more modern time, when feminism had emerged full circle. Tintin comes into contact with many females in this story. The most important is Miss Martine, the gullible, bespectacled redheaded assistant to the unfortunate Henri Fourcart. Another is the shrewish Mrs. Laijot, who makes it quite clear she disapproves of Tintin's existence. And finally, he ends up interviewing an amicable young mother as a pretext to find the killers of Mr. Fourcart. Haddock is later embarrassed when at Akass' villa, he accidentally ends up kissing the hand of a young and haughty debutante, Angelina Sodi.

 The Milanese Nightingale melting the Captain's heart with her beautiful voice, which philistines like Tintin, Snowy, and the rest of them, cannot seem to appreciate...

Miss Martine, the other prominent female in the series. Although she makes only one appearance, and her shallow character is suspiciously superficious, she is pivotal to the plot of the final adventure, Tintin And Alph-Art.

APPEARANCES

Although not so much as in other bande dessinees, there are a number of caricatures and drawings of people in real life, sketched by Herge in the adventures of Tintin. It has become a hobby for Tintinologists to identify these "guest appearances" throughout the series.

A major spot for guest appearances. The opening scene from Tintin Au Congo, one can easily notice the Thompsons standing quietly in the background. However, this was not their first appearance, having debuted in Cigars of the Pharaoh (1932). They replace two railway guards from the black and white version and were inserted in 1946.

Also, one spots Herge, with notepad, behind speaker. Behind him is E.P. Jacobs, and next to them is Jacques van Melkebeke, Editor of Tintin Magazine and close friend of Herge.

To the left, one notices a boy scout (perhaps Totor?) and standing next to him Quick. On the other side is his ally Flupke.

The only actual named person who really existed appears in Tintin In America. He is the nemesis of the book, Al Capone, Scarface, King of Chicago, the first personalized villain Tintin fights. Although he is also responsible for the faction that tries to kill Tintin in Tintin In The Congo, he only makes a three-page appearance in Tintin In America, and is never mentioned again.

The Thompsons are widely believed to be physically modelled on Herge's father and brother, moustached men who in his childhood, went out for walks together in bowler hats and walking sticks.

E.P. Jacobs, Herge's long-time colleague and friend, makes several appearances in the series. One of the more dubious is here, wherein he makes a cameo appearance in this scene and also on the cover as the mummified Egyptologist E.P. Jacobini in Cigars of the Pharaoh.

  Chang Chong-Chen, the friend of Tintin in The Blue Lotus and Tintin In Tibet, was actually modelled on Herge's synonomous Chinese art student friend, who was born and raised in China, educated in Belgium, and settled in France.

The capture scene in the Royal Palace in King Ottokar's Sceptre is witnessed by a pair of aristocrats (far left), who bear a remarkable significance to E.P. Jacobs and Herge.

 The knighthood of Tintin image in the same book is also watched by Jacobs, Jacques van Melkebeke, Herge's brother Paul, and Tintin's "parents":  Georges and Germaine Remi (aka Herge and Hergee).

  Signora Bianca Castafiore, at the time of her debut in King Ottokar's Sceptre, looks older and more like her original model, Herge's ebullient Aunt Ninie...

  ...but by the later adventures, she is more like her other model, Greek singer Maria Callas.

  Professor Cuthbert Calculus, known by others as Professeur Tryphon Tournesol, is modelled physically on...

  ...none other than Auguste Piccard, inventor of the bathyscaph, renowned Swiss scientist, acquaintance of Herge, and professor in Brussels for thirty years.

 Tintin first appeared in English in 1952, when his French publishers, Casterman, released two dubious volumes of The Secret Of The Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure. The use of English was inferior, and Marlinspike Hall was called Puckeridge Castle. But in 1958, after this failure, the task of translating the already world-famous Tintin into English was taken up again; this time by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner of Methuen's Childrens Books, Reed International Books. They started with The Crab With The Golden Claws and King Ottokar's Sceptre, and on July 1, 1958, the first Tintin books in English hit the shops. Translation continued in no particular order and Tintin's success in the UK grew so much that by 1963, he had merited a simultaneous release in both French and English.

Herge's English publishers could be hard at times. He was forced to redraw The Black Island completely in the 1960s to "update" it. They also demanded that he rewrite and redraw part of Land Of Black Gold in order to edit out references to conflict in the Middle East. This move was meant to make the book more timeless, but it is less interesting and less convincing than the original. Methuen refused to publish Soviets, Congo, and Alph-Art. Nevertheless, Sundancer published them, and later, the former two were re-released by Last Gasp of San Francisco.

Attempts to "Anglicize" the characters were made to make the books more appealing to UK readers. English expressions such as "I say", "chap", "jolly good", "old boy", among others are often seen in the translations. Pence and pounds are used instead of centimes and francs, and names of places are Anglicized, often making them less interesting. Marlinspike Hall is located in the unconvincing and fictitious Marlinshire rather than Brabant-Wallon, and Patois-speaking characters adopt Cockney accents in exchange. Yet one may notice that people drive on the right side of the road in the books (as in Belgium and not Britain) and that the "British" police wear Belgian uniforms. And Chang's letter to Tintin is addressed in Mandarin to be sent to Brussels, Belgium!!!

Here are a list of the books, as they were translated:

1958-The Crab With The Golden Claws, King Ottokar's Sceptre

1959-The Secret Of The Unicorn, Red Rackham's Treasure, Destination Moon, Explorers On The Moon

1960-The Calculus Affair, The Red Sea Sharks

1961-The Shooting Star

1962-Tintin In Tibet, The Seven Crystal Balls, Prisoners Of The Sun

1963-The Castafiore Emerald

1966-The Black Island

1968-Flight 714

1971-Cigars Of The Pharaoh

1972-Land Of Black Gold

1975-The Broken Ear

1976-Tintin And The Picaros

1978-Tintin In America

1983-The Blue Lotus

1989-Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets

1990-Tintin And Alph-Art

1991-Tintin In The Congo

Plus the film books:

1965-Tintin And The Golden Fleece

1967-Tintin And The Blue Oranges

1972-Tintin And The Lake Of Sharks

This is a list of the 59 languages Tintin has been translated into:

Afrikaans

 Algueres

 Alsatian

 Asturian

 Arabic

 Basque

 Bengali

Bernerdutsch

Brazilian

Breton

Bulgarian

Catalan

Chinese

Corsican

Czech

Danish

Dutch

English

Esperanto

Faroese

Finnish

French

Frisian

Galician

Gallo

Gaumais

Greek

Hebrew

Hungarian

Icelandic

Indonesian

Iranian

Italian

Japanese

Korean

Khmer

Latin

Luxemberger

Malay

Norwegian

Occitan

Picardy

Polish

Polynesian

Portuguese

Retoroman

Russian

Serbo-Croat

Sinhalese

Slovakian

 Spanish

Swedish

Tahitian

Taiwanese

Thai

Tibetan

Turkish

Vietnamese

Welsh