Tintin and Carl Barks

            I grew up with Tintin, albeit on the television screen and not the pages of a comic strip.  One of the primary things that I found appealing in the character of Tintin was that he’s essentially an everyman: his personality is idealistic and toward the heroic bent, but it’s not overbearing or obnoxious (in fact, it’s almost bland – the main thing I remember about Tintin is that he never seemed to exhibit any extremes within the emotional spectrum); as far as I’m aware, outside of his history represented through his previous comic adventures, he has no history, nor any family; and his character is simplistic/iconic enough that readers can easily associate with him and practically be him, as Scott McCloud discussed in Understanding Comics.  I’m even unsure about his age.  Due to these aspects, Tintin is a character easy to relate to, but also simultaneously easy to forget – while his adventures, and the characters he encounters are memorable, the features that make the character Tintin, well, Tintin, are not, sacrificing the potential for distinctive personality traits in favor of becoming an avatar for the reader to inhabit.

Tintin shows its age a bit through some of the racial stereotypes (although from what I read, this was not done so out of malice) as well as its dialogue, predominantly through Captain Haddock and his, ahem, unique method of expressing his frustration with a situation at length (a combination of “Billions of blazing blundering blue blistering barnacles!“ and “Ten thousand thundering typhoons!” among his more popular exclamations); however, this does little to take away from Tintin’s adventures (if at all, honestly), and younger readers may even find such verbal tics highly entertaining.

Stylistically speaking, I really enjoy Hergé’s work: the characters are iconic in their design and simplicity, and the more detailed and obviously researched locations enhance the idea of Tintin’s worldliness and the care that went into the comic’s creation.

Similar things can be said of Carl Barks’ work on his Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck titles, or as a whole, the Duckberg comics.  The simplicity of the characters are emphasized and complimented through slightly more detailed backgrounds, and I absolutely love his ink work. The world building that also went into the different series taking place throughout this particular universe is also particularly incredible for its time, and was taken advantage of later on in the 90s by spinning the ideas in the comic into a cartoon version of DuckTales.