Tintin in America

Georges Remi—best known under the pen name Hergé—was the editor and illustrator of Le Petit Vingtième ("The Little Twentieth"),[4] a children's supplement to Le Vingtième Siècle ("The Twentieth Century"), a conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels. Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez, the paper described itself as a "Catholic Newspaper for Doctrine and Information" and disseminated a far-right, fascist viewpoint.[5] According to Harry Thompson, such political ideas were common in 1930s Belgium, and Hergé's milieu was permeated with conservative ideas revolving around "patriotism, Catholicism, strict morality, discipline, and naivety".[6]

Tipis in a Blackfoot settlement in 1933

In 1929, Hergé began The Adventures of Tintin comic strip for Le Petit Vingtième, about the exploits of fictional young Belgian reporter Tintin. Having been fascinated with the outdoor world of Scouting and the way of life he called "Red Indians" since boyhood, Hergé wanted to set Tintin's first adventure among the Native Americans in the United States.[7] However, Wallez ordered him to set his first adventure in the Soviet Union as a piece of anti-socialist propaganda for children (Tintin in the Land of the Soviets)[8] and the second had been set in the Belgian Congo to encourage colonial sentiment (Tintin in the Congo).[9]

Tintin in America was the third story in the series. At the time, the Belgian far-right was deeply critical of the United States, as it was of the Soviet Union.[10] Wallez—and to a lesser degree Hergé—shared these opinions, viewing the country's capitalism, consumerism, and mechanization as a threat to traditional Belgian society.[11] Wallez wanted Hergé to use the story to denounce American capitalism and had little interest in depicting Native Americans, which was Hergé's primary desire.[12] As a result, Tintin's encounter with the natives took up only a sixth of the narrative.[13] Hergé sought to demystify the "cruel savage" stereotype of the Natives that had been widely perpetuated in western films.[10] His depiction of the Natives was broadly sympathetic, yet he also depicted them as gullible and naïve, much as he had depicted the Congolese in the previous Adventure.[13]

Hergé attempted greater research into the United States than he had done for the Belgian Congo or Soviet Union.[14] To learn more about Native Americans, Hergé read Paul Coze and René Thévenin's 1928 book Mœurs et histoire des Indiens Peaux-Rouges ("Customs and History of the Redskin Indians")[15] and visited Brussels' ethnographic museum.[16] As a result, his depiction of the Blackfoot Native Americans was "essentially accurate", with artefacts such as tipis and traditional costume copied from photographs.[16] Although Hergé's depiction of the Native Americans wearing war bonnets could be considered stereotypical, the Blackfeet were one of the few tribes who actually did wear these.[17]

To learn about Chicago and its gangsters, he read Georges Duhamel's 1930 book Scènes de la vie future ("Scenes from Future Life"). Written in the context of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Duhamel's work contained strong anti-consumerist and anti-modernist sentiment, criticising the U.S.'s increased mechanisation and standardisation from a background of European conservatism; this would have resonated with both Wallez and Hergé's viewpoints. Many elements of Tintin in America, such as the abattoir scene, were adopted from Duhamel's descriptions.[18]

Chicago gangster Al Capone was included as an antagonist in Tintin in America

Hergé was also influenced by a special edition of radical anti-conformist magazine Le Crapouillot (The Mortar Shell) that was published in October 1930. Devoted to the United States, it contained a variety of photographs that influenced his depiction of the country.[19] Hergé used its images of skyscrapers as a basis for his depiction of Chicago and adopted its account of Native Americans being evicted from their land when oil was discovered there.[20] He was particularly interested in the articles in the magazine written by a reporter Claude Blanchard, who had recently traveled the U.S. He reported on the situation in Chicago and New York City and met with Native Americans in New Mexico.[21] Blanchard's article discussed the gangster George Moran, whom literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès believed provided the basis for the character Bobby Smiles.[22]

Hergé's depiction of the country was also influenced by American cinema,[23] and many of his illustrations were based on cinematic imagery.[24] Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier thought that Tintin's arrest of Smiles had been influenced by the Buffalo Bill stories, and that the idea of the gangsters taking Tintin away in their car came from Little Caesar.[25] Despite his extensive research into American life, Hergé accidentally drew steering wheels on the right side of cars in some panels of the comic.[26] It has been suggested that strongman Arthur Saxon, who died a decade prior to serialization of Tintin in America, may have influenced the character Billy Bolivar.[27]

One of the individuals that Hergé could have learned about through Blanchard's article was the Chicago-based American gangster Al Capone.[23] In the preceding story, Tintin in the Congo, Capone had been introduced as a character within the series. There, he was responsible for running a diamond smuggling racket that Tintin exposed, setting up for further confrontation in Tintin in America.[13] Capone was one of only two real-life individuals to be named in The Adventures of Tintin,[23] and was the only real-life figure to appear as a character in the series.[25] In the original version, Hergé avoided depicting him directly, either illustrating the back of his head or hiding his face behind a scarf; this was altered in the second version, in which Capone's face was depicted.[28] It is not known if Capone ever learned about his inclusion in the story,[29] although during initial serialisation he would have been preoccupied with his trial and ensuing imprisonment.[30]

Tintin in America began serialization in Le Petit Vingtième on 3 September 1931, under the title of Les Aventures de Tintin, reporter, à Chicago (The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter, in Chicago). The use of "Chicago" over "America" reflected Wallez's desire for the story to focus on a critique of American capitalism and crime, for which the city was internationally renowned.[31] Partway through serialisation, as Tintin left Chicago and headed west, Hergé changed the title of the serial to Les Aventures de Tintin, reporter, en Amérique (The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter, in America).[32] The dog Snowy was given a diminished role in Tintin in America, which contained the last instance in the Adventures in which Tintin and Snowy have a conversation where they can understand each other.[33] In the banquet scene, a reference is made to a famous actress named Mary Pikefort, an allusion to the real-life actress Mary Pickford.[34] That same scene also featured a prototype for the character of Rastapopoulos, who was properly introduced in the following Cigars of the Pharaoh story.[35]

The social commentary was toned down in the second edition, as evidenced by this scene[13]

The strip's serialization coincided with the publication of another of Hergé's comics set in the United States: Les Aventures de "Tim" l'écureuil au Far-West (The Adventures of Tim the Squirrel Out West), published in sixteen installments by the Brussels department store L'Innovation. Produced every Thursday, the series was reminiscent of Hergé's earlier Totor series.[36] Alongside these stories, Hergé was involved in producing his weekly Quick and Flupke comic strip and drawing front covers for Le Petit Vingtième, as well as providing illustrations for another of Le Vingtième Siècle's supplements, Votre "Vingtième" Madame, and undertaking freelance work designing advertisements.[30] In September 1931, partway through the story's serialization, Hergé took a brief holiday in Spain with two friends, and in May 1932 was recalled to military service for two weeks.[37] On 20 July '32, Hergé married Germaine Kieckens, who was Wallez's secretary. Although neither of them was entirely happy with the union, they had been encouraged to do so by Wallez, who demanded that all his staff marry and who personally carried out the wedding ceremony.[38] After a honeymoon in Vianden, Luxembourg, the couple moved into an apartment in the rue Knapen, Schaerbeek.[39]

As he had done with the prior two Adventures, Wallez organized a publicity stunt to mark the culmination of Tintin in America, in which an actor portraying Tintin arrived in Brussels; it proved the most popular yet.[29] In 1932, the series was collected and published in a single volume by Les Éditions de Petit Vingtième,[40] coinciding with their publication of the first collected volume of Quick and Flupke.[41] A second edition was produced in France by Éditions Ogéo-Cœurs-Vaillants in 1934, while that same year Casterman published an edition, the first of The Adventures of Tintin that they released.[42] In 1936, Casterman asked Hergé to add several new color plates to a reprint of Tintin in America, which he agreed to. They also asked him to replace the cover with one depicting a car chase, but he refused.[32]

In the 1940s, when Hergé's popularity had increased, he redrew many of the original black-and-white Tintin adventures in color using the ligne claire ("clear line") drawing style he had developed, so that they visually fitted in with the newer Tintin stories. Tintin in America was reformatted and colored in 1945[42] and saw publication in 1946.[13]

Various changes were made in the second edition. Some of the social commentaries regarding the poor treatment of Native Americans by the government were toned down.[13] The name of the Native tribe was changed from the Orteils Ficelés("Tied Toes") to the Pieds Noirs ("Black Feet").[25] Perhaps because Al Capone's power had diminished in the intervening years, Hergé depicted Capone's scarred face in the 1945 version.[25] He removed the reference to Mary Pickford from the ceremonial dinner scene and deleted two Chinese hoodlums who tried to eat Snowy.[43] References to Belgium was also removed, allowing the story to have a greater international appeal.[20]

When the second version of the story was translated into English by Michael Turner and Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, they made several alterations to the text. For instance, Monsieur Tom Hawke, whose name was a pun on tomahawk, was renamed Mr. Maurice Oyle, and the Swift factory was renamed Grynd Corp.[44] Other changes were made to render the story more culturally understandable to an Anglophone readership; whereas the factory originally sold its mix of dogs, cats, and rats as hare pâté—a food uncommon in Britain—the English translation rendered the mix as salami.[44] In another instance, garlic, pepper, and salt were added to the mixture in the French version, but this was changed to mustard, pepper, and salt for the English version, again reflecting British culinary tastes.[44]

In 1957, Hergé considered sending Tintin back to North America for another adventure featuring the indigenous people. He decided against it, instead of producing Tintin in Tibet.[45] Although Tintin in America and much of Hergé's earlier work displayed anti-American sentiment, he later grew more favourable to American culture, befriending one of the country's most prominent artists, Andy Warhol.[46] Hergé himself would first visit the United States in 1971, accompanied by his second wife Fanny Rodwell, and meet Edgar Red Cloud, the great-grandson of the warrior chief Red Cloud. With a letter of recommendation from his friend Father Gall, he was invited to indulge his childhood desire to meet with real "Red Indians"—members of the Oglala Lakota on their Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota—and take part in a pow wow.[16]

American publishers of Tintin in America were uneasy regarding the scene in which the Blackfoot Natives are forcibly removed from their land. Hergé nevertheless refused to remove it.[47] For the 1973 edition published in the U.S., the publishers made Hergé remove African-American characters from the book, and redraw them as Whites or Hispanics because they did not want to encourage racial integration among children.[48] That same year, the original black-and-white version was republished in a French-language collected volume with Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and Tintin in the Congo, the first part of the Archives Hergé collection.[42] In 1983, a facsimile of the original was published by Casterman.[42]

In 2020, Editions Moulsinart published a newly colorized version of the original 1932 B&W version of Tintin in America, with all-new English translation by Michael Farr.[49]