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Sexual Tintin comic deemed too lewd

by julianw | August 17, 2008 at 05:24 pm

2687 views | 10 Recommendations | 3 comments

In The Blue Lotus, one of the Adventures of Tintin written and illustrated by Belgian writer Georges Remi (aka Hergé), Tintin, a young, European reporter/dog-owner turned adventurer, fights a gang of drug lords, witnesses terrorists bombing a railway, boldly hides in a sketchy opium den, and gets shot by a camera-gun wielding crook masquerading as a photographer because he's not brave enough to face Tintin undisguised.

Tintin has no time for love, and Hergé never discusses Tintin's sexuality. Last year, however, Spanish author Antonio Altarriba tried to sexualize Tintin in an updated version of The Blue Lotus. But Altarriba's The Pink Lotus, in which Tintin is shown having affairs with various women (various women! Tintin!), has recently been pulled in response to opposition from Hergé's estate.

His sexuality was always a closely guarded secret that his creator Hergé sought to preserve. But a Spanish version of one of Tintin's most famous tales, The Blue Lotus, has dared to suggest the intrepid Belgian reporter was a voracious lover.

Entitled The Pink Lotus, there are graphic sex scenes that would raise the eyebrows of parents with young children.

But its Spanish author, Antonio Altarriba, has paid the price: the book has been withdrawn from bookshops after pressure from Hergé's estate, which controls the rights to the work of the Belgian writer Georges Remi. Hergé was the pen-name of Remi, who died in 1983.

The estate claimed the Altarriba version of this particular tale, which was published to cash in on last year's 100th anniversary of Remi's birth, "perverted the essence of the personality" of Tintin.

The estate put pressure on the publishers of The Pink Lotus, Edicions de Ponent, and its distributors to ensure it would never appear in bookshops again.

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tiha zaman

flagged this story as Good Stuff

at 19:20 on August 17th, 2008

I grew up with tin tin - with some of his paintings on my wall, who knew he's a "voracious" lover eh? With that sweet face, may need sometime to assimilate the little info... :)