Rohini Lakshané10h ago

I picked up this copy of a Tintin comic in a waiting room. My first time reading Tintin as an adult. These comics are racist as f**k. The coloniser gaze is everywhere. As a child, I felt it but could never articulate it.

Edit: I found this Wikipedia page about it. This is indeed one of the most racist of the Tintin comic albums. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_in_the_Congo

Show threadSeiðr
@rohini My first comics were Astérix, Mafalda and Tintín. As I aged I found Mafalda the funniest WRT the real world, Astérix as the funniest and best plotted all around, and the clear line of Tintín as the most stylish, but the plots were… sincerely, except for 'the Secret of the Unicorn' and its continuation and 'Objective: the Moon' and its own, they were forgettable and I can only remember most of them because I read everything I had recurrently and had no library card.
2:23pmWeb
Show threadSeiðr8h ago
@rohini I sincerely believe Hergé got a reference position out of a scarcity of competition.
Show threadCurioso 🍉 🇺🇦 (jgg)3h ago

@Illuminatus @rohini

Hergé is the oldest of all the list you mention.

His merits are being a pioneer of comics in Europe, nice style, sense of adventure.

But some of his albums, not surprisingly the first ones, have aged horribly.

Asterix was always much better, but it is a much modern work. Imagine an Asterix in the Congo if published in 1940.

Not that being from the 30s is a excuse for blatant racism, since many comics from that age don't have that weakness. Usually, sadly, by not figuring non white characters at all.

Haggard books, being much older, have been criticized often, but at least he main hero befriended the entire zulu nation and portraits them positively.

That doesn't happen in Tintin at all.