Tintin is 75

[elektro80]

Tintin is 75!

HE HASN’T filed a story for 25 years and at the age of 75, he’s getting on a bit - but it didn’t stop one of the world’s most famous journalists from making it on to the front pages yesterday. "From zero to 75," headlined Belgian newspaper La Libre on top of a cartoon of Tintin grabbing his coat to chase after another adventure with his trusted dog Snowy in tow.

Two of the nation’s other newspapers even banned photographs from their pages altogether and instead illustrated their stories with cartoons of some of the more intrepid escapades of Brussels-born cartoonist Hergé’s creation.

On the front page of Het Belang van Limburg, the news of a woman jumping out a window was accompanied by Tintin crawling from one window to another in a Chicago skyscraper in Tintin in America.

But the birthday celebrations of the quiffed one, which officially start today, were not confined to his birthplace. In France Le Figaro is to publish a special 114-page pull-out with 250 illustrations. All over Europe the exploits of the dashing reporter and Snowy will be revisited in exhibitions, plays and tours. A silver 10 coin featuring the pair was minted this week, two days ahead of the anniversary, by the Belgian Royal Mint.

In London, an exhibition showing The Adventures of Tintin at Sea will be held at the Greenwich National Maritime Museum. It will feature a painting of Hergé made by Andy Warhol, underlining how his appeal crossed national and cultural barriers.

"Hergé has influenced my work the same way as Walt Disney," the pop artist Andy Warhol once said.

Tintin's first adventure saw him tackle the Communist regime in the USSR in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

Subsequent stories saw him battle drug dealers, travel to the moon and discover a lost Inca tribe.

But the brave reporter also had to battle criticism - his portrayal of Africans was deemed racist by some, and the fact Herge continued printing during the Nazi occupation of Belgium raised accusations of collaboration.

Hollywood director Steven Spielberg said in 2002 he planned to make a trilogy of films based on the cub reporter's adventures.