askchapo

According to Herge himself, the two first (and worst) Tintin stories were commissioned by le Petit Vingtieme as political propaganda. Herge claimed he did the stories with little enthusiasm as he would much rather make comics about native Americans who he was deeply fascinated by.

However, this claim is somewhat challenged by the fact that Herge actually did a colourised remake in his distinctive ligne-claire style of the original black and white Tintin in the Congo. Although he dialed the racism down from 11 to 10 (like how Tintin was now teaching Congolese school children basic calculus instead of teaching them about "your fatherland, Belgium") it is still vile and disgusting. It's only value today is as historical documentation of the sick perverted way white Europeans perceived Africans back then.

Tintin in the Congo is so racist that it could not be published in the UK until the 1990's.

Herge never redid Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Being an incoherent stream of 1920's anticommunist propaganda tropes set to crude drawings with nothing resembling a narrative structure, it was too bad to be salvaged and Herge would later express embarrassment over the poor quality of the drawings and plot and refused several offers to reprint the story. Herge was redrawing his previous work during and immediately after WWII and around that time the crude anti-communism of the story would not have been popular with readers and would have made him look even more like a nazi.

I saw this on my phone and said "fuck, this needs the computer" and walked to my computer.

Tintin is a real land of contrasts. Herge was a reactionary, started writing for racist publications and how much he collaborated with the Nazis is a subject of debate from begrudgingly to enthusiastically. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is anticommunist trash. Tintin in the Congo is racist trash. There's a reason they didn't translate it into English for decades because it was too fucked up even for Anglos. Those books are not worth reading.

So his works start off really racist but over time Herge shows a surprisingly level of nuance and respect for other cultures (for an early 20th century European). Like the Blue Lotus is very racist to Japanese (but they're also the villains because it's the 1930s) and it's stereotypes the Chinese badly, but it also sincerely suggests the Chinese are the same as Europeans, a proud culture with a long history worthy of respect and friendship. Chang, Tintin's Chinese sidekick is smart and heroic. Even returning much later in Tintin in Tibet.

Tintin in America straight up calls pretty much all Americans gangsters and irrational lynch mobs, who will swindle First Nations out of their lands to steal their oil at first opportunity. As the books progress non-European places (Peru, Tibet etc) get shown with at least more nuance and interest, even if there's still problems.

Also the quality just gets so much better. Like the early stories are just dogshit. Barely readable. Tintin in America is one Deus Ex Macchina after another as Tintin bumbles from one situation to situation. Tintin in the land of the soviets is a series of shitty newspaper cartoons strung together. But later works like the Calculus Affair is a tense political thriller about a spy battle over new sonic super-weapons in fictionalized Balkan states, Tintin on the Moon is a sincere and realistic story of the challenges of lunar travel a decade before the moon landing.

Tintin also over time assembles his cast, Captain Haddock, Professors Calculus Thompson/Dupont and Thomson/Dupond, as well as recurring characters Bianca Castafiore, Spruk, Chang etc. Tintin truly doesn't start until the Crab with the Golden Claw, when Captain Haddock storms on the scene "blistering blue barnacles" and all.

The first ever Tintin story is an anticommunist screed about him going to the Soviet Union. It was published in some nazi paper. And of course there's the infamous Tintin in the Congo.

Tintin author made nazi propaganda in Belgium so yea

enough about tintin, i want to know about Asterix and Obelix, i used to love those as a kid and i halfway remember that they switched authors at some point

It's fr*nch

But I liked reading the comics as a kid (asterix not Tintin)

Tintin has a problematic author and a couple (literally) of books which are definitely racist. But there are dozens of them which are mostly fine, with great adventure stories that make it a staple of european comics.

Racist as hell

Racist especially tintin whose author made pro nazi propaganda and was pro colonialism

Asterix consciously served a very clear purpose in post war France. After a humiliating surrender and widespread collaboration with the Nazi regime, liberal French ideology and identity was in crisis. Asterix is about a little Gaulish village keeping up the resistance in Roman occupied Gaul — conquered, but with unbroken spirit. It was exactly the story the patriotic French ego needed after the Vichy government had betrayed, arrested, deported and handed over to the Nazis over 75.000 of their Jewish friends and neighbors, who were murdered in the death camps.

De Gaulle pushed the narrative:

starting in 1944, that almost the entire French nation had been united in resisting the occupation with the exception of a few dishonorable traitors.

It wasn't until 2012, that a French president acknowledged, that the round up of French Jews

was a crime committed "in France, by France,"

On the other hand, Asterix helped to interest kids in ancient history, so there is that.

Don't know about Asterix, but Tintin is good for playing MUDs. Has a terminal multiplexing, an auto-mapper, and lots of commands to configure stuff just right. I played a game where I had an input bar, the main window, a chat window, and a map window all in one terminal.