The Metamorphoses of Tintin: Or Tintin for Adults

Those who lament the dearth of books about Tintin in English will welcome this translation of a landmark French study, first published in 1984. Apostolidès surveys Hergé's cartoon character's evolution-political, cultural, psychological-from the earliest adventures, in which he's a kind of superhero single-handedly meting out justice, to the last albums, in which he has become more fully human, if still largely an emotional cipher. As the author warns in the preface, he takes a largely Freudian approach whose vocabulary some may regard as ""heavy or outdated."" Of Tintin's move from Labrador Road to Marlinspike Hall, he says: ""He becomes a full-fledged member of the family, without having to worry about the threat of castration that the Father had always held over the son for wanting to take his place."" On occasion, the translator missteps (e.g., Tintin teaches ""calculus"" instead of arithmetic to the young school children in Tintin in the Congo; Captain Haddock ""disguises himself as a policeman on horseback"" in Destination Moon when in fact he dresses up in the bearskin hat and red tunic of a soldier in a British Foot Guard regiment). On the other hand, Apostolidès provides insights into the word play of the original French texts that you won't find in, say, Benoit Peeters's Tintin and the World of Hergé (1988). Tintin fans who don't mind some academic jargon will be rewarded.