Celebrating the Timeless Allure of Tintin's Aesthetics
The Adventures of Tintin officially entered the public domain in 2025. We now all own the alluring aesthetics of this timeless classic.
The Adventures of Tintin was a Belgian comic by the artist Hergé that ran from 1929 until 1976. As the first publication, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, is now over 95 years old, the character has entered the public domain in the US as of Jan. 1, 2025.
For those unfamiliar, Tintin is a journalist who travels the world solving various mysteries and cases. He’s joined by a cast of eccentric characters to help him along the way, like Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, Thomson and Thompson, and of course his little dog Snowy.
Given this auspicious addition to our collective ownership, I wanted to celebrate Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin as a valuable cultural heritage that remains an enduring timeless classic. The comic’s aesthetics, themes, and global reach make it alluring to readers young and old today.
Timeless Aesthetics of Hergé Urbanism
Tintin is timeless. I use timeless here not as a feeling of modernism. Nope, it feels very of a different time and place. Instead, timelessness in the case of Hergé means the beauty and allure of his aesthetics remains unanchored to the era.
The panels and pages within Tintin are filled with an ephemeral old world that doesn’t really exist anymore (if it ever did). Hergé creates a sense of scaled urbanism as well as the naturalistic world in fantastical yet real places.
The color palettes and details give it a mood and atmosphere that has universal appeal. Dark-drawn outlines allow the colors to pop off the page, called “European ‘ligne claire’ style,” according to cartoonist Barry Deutsch.
These stills are from comic panels, but they are also works of art with aesthetics immediately recognizable. They give a range of emotions: a new adventure begins in the bustle of a big city, the immensity of a mountain range, the calmness of home.
Tintin longingly gazing at the skyline of New York City offers a familiar whimsy. The sense of adventure in the Shanghai presented in The Blue Lotus is the same one we may feel simply wandering around a new city, especially in a foreign country. Even the natural settings in Hergé’s work offer recognizable immensity and awe.
There are countless other emotive experiences emanating from the pages of Tintin that relate to our humanistic instincts for beauty and appeal. It’s through this aesthetic that PaulSkallas aka LindyMan proclaimed, “Tintin is basically the only lindy comic you'll find.”
Inspiring Travel and Learning
As a kid, Tintin’s own globe-trotting adventures helped to plant the seed into me to see the world. The world seemed bigger in the age of Tintin. There was no internet (obviously) and travel was mostly done on large passenger ships. There is a romanticism still emitting from the mystery of the era.
Just look at some of the exotic locales in the titles of the series. Yes, ‘New York’ was probably still exotic for little Belgium children in the 1930s. The city still is for some people!
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets
Tintin in the Congo
Tintin in America
Cigars of the Pharaoh
Land of Black Gold
The Red Sea Sharks
Tintin in Tibet
Tintin in Tibet
Tintin and the Picaros
Overall, Tintin’s adventures span the globe. In a lot of ways, it might be the first depiction that some children see of these locales. True, there are instances that may grate the modern sensibilities—these are still part of the learning process. Even Hergé himself grew in his depictions and understanding of the various peoples and cultures he was sketching.
My favorite in the series, The Blue Lotus, was inspired by a young Chinese student who was studying art in Brussels in the 1930s. Chang Chong-chen and Hergé became close friends, giving the Tintin comics a more sympathetic insight into Chinese life and the reality on the ground in Shanghai during this tumultuous period.
Teaching History Through Tintin
The works are stylized versions of a jam-packed era in the 20th century, building intrigue to a geography, a people, and history. Tintin is a keyhole to explore and study more. That can mean actually going to these places for visits, or just learning more about them from textbooks.
Educators have also been using Tintin to teach history. Given the imagery and allure, the panels and material capture student attention when competition for that attention is at an all-time high. Despite being almost a century old, the kids still know Tintin, empathizing with the story themes and artwork.
Nathan Goldwag, who writes on history at Goldwag’s Journal on Civilization, published an intriguing essay exploring the theory on how Tintin helped prevent World War II from happening in the Hergé universe. You’ll have to read the full essay to find the answer.
While my old history professor John Delury used to tell me, “Historians don’t do conjecture,” knowing the detailed intricacies of history is a must when considering alt-history. Goldwag’s essay walks through the real historical incidents, comparing them to what happens in the fictionalized world of Tintin.
In fact, Tintin himself stumbles upon a thinly-fictionalized version of the Mukden Incident false flag attack on the South Manchuria Railway. But that’s where things get interesting.
In our timeline, the Imperial Japanese Kwantung Army invaded and occupied Manchuria in 1931, creating the puppet state of Manchukuo. A League of Nations investigation, known as the Lytton Report, condemned the invasion, leading to the Japanese withdrawal from the League.
This is a fun way to learn about aspects of history. Attaching the comic with history lessons makes it more memorable for learners, especially topics as packed as the world was from the 1920s to 1960s when much of the Tintin series was published.
A Kid’s TV Show That Holds Up
Have you ever gone back to a TV show or movie you liked as a kid and realized it was terrible? This is not the case with The Adventures of Tintin. The TV show was released in 1992 and can now be found on Amazon Prime. The open credits still get me amped for a globe-trotting adventure.
The themes in the series remind me more of Indiana Jones than other comparable cartoons of the era. That makes sense as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg were inspired by pulp comics of the same era. The comparison between the two adventurers is even poked fun at on the r/Tintin subreddit.
I remember watching the show as a kid thinking it was unlike anything else I had been watching. While each episode is a brisk 21 minutes or less, the plots do not just conclude with each one. The arcs of Tintin’s adventures span across multiple episodes, more akin to modern serialized TV that was popularized in its Golden Era with Sopranos and The Wire.
The Adventures of Tintin, in that case, was ahead of its time in terms of TV generally, but also because it was targeted at kids. It did not dumb down the content for 8-year-olds. We were watching Tintin look for opium or uncovering international conspiracies in the 1990s just like comic readers in the 1940s.
Modern Meme-ability
Tintin has survived across generations. It likely was first geared at the Silent Gen or Greatest Gen during its early run, then later to Boomers during its core years, Gen X and Millennials with the cartoon, and now to Gen Z with the movie. New generations of fans are continually discovering the old works.
The character and series still get posted quite a bit on social media. Impressive for a 90-year-old piece of media. In one case, I see the following gag posted almost every week. It perfectly captures the mood that some incident-packed weeks have that seems all too common these days.
However, the panel is real, but the texts are not. In the original, Tintin meets Captain Haddock for the first time in The Crab with the Golden Claws, accusing him of opium smuggling. According to the Know Your Meme, the replaced text is a gag from the TV show 30 Rock.
The relatable meme is not the only thing that goes viral from Tintin. The artwork and offshoot inspirations, too, constantly capture new audiences simply through their aesthetics and mood.
Vintage.stuff posted this scene in September and got over a million views. The atmosphere of the fall season can perfectly be felt in this walkable European neighborhood. Tintin is putting on his jacket, the leaves are browning and falling to the ground, the air tinged orange, I can almost smell autumn in this drawing.
Honorable and Horrific Homage to Hergé
Real artists making original homages to Hergé have kept the character alive. I can appreciate people being inspired to create their own pictorials that capture the same sense of wonderment as the original Tintin. After all, the cartoon I love is technically a new adaptation, too.
I can even admit I enjoyed the CGI Tintin film that was released in 2011 (even if I think the traditional cartoon aesthetics are superior to computer-generated versions). The Spielberg film at least managed to keep the general spirit and sense of adventure expected from the classic.
While I am excited that we all suddenly own Tintin together, I do understand that the work can now be misused and abused. Artists in Europe have already been fighting to protect the copyright of Tintin to keep the artwork away from large language models (LLMs) training various AI algorithms. With the character entering the domain in the US, it is now open season on Tintin.
Tech companies like Microsoft and OpenAI have no doubt used the work by Hergé to train their AI content generation machines and tools. AI art sites are already promoting Tintin-style work and Google Images is awash with the same kind of AI imitations.
Tintin will live on. The inspiration fuels real human artists across the world to continue imagining and building on the legacy of Hergé. The flip side is that Tintin will also survive through supercharged copying of AI slop. This puts even more impetus to cherish and value the original works that we now all collectively own.
Note: The legal team representing the Tintin comic disputes that it is in the public domain.
I've always loved Tintin, and his advantures—and Herge's art—did a lot indeed to inspire me to become the traveler that I am. Thanks for this great piece!
I still have my Tintin's, 50 years on. Greatest children's book covers ever created.