Just finished re-reading TINTIN IN AMERICA by Herge. I remember first discovering the Tintin comics as a teenager and checking the volumes out of the library so often my mom eventually got me the entire collection.
I loved how wonderfully written and illustrated they were, and how Tintin was this young investigative reporter who traveled the world getting into these increasingly dangerous situations and still somehow came out at the end.
From the comics to the 90s animated series to that animated movie that ended on an unrealized cliffhanger (I’m still hurt by that, but I digress), I became a huge fan of Tintin.
Tintin in America has him and his dog, Snowy, arriving in Chicago to report on the organized crime scene. Almost instantly, he steps right into danger when he’s kidnapped by a gangster posing as a taxi driver. And it gets wilder from there.
From confronting Al Capone to being gassed out in a small room and left for dead at the bottom of the ocean to chasing down a gang leader to an Indigenous community that’s literally called Redskin City (keep in mind this originally came out in the early 30s)…and that’s not even half of the craziness Tintin finds himself ensnared in.
How many times does Tintin come close to death in this story? I started to lose count after a while, but that’s what made the Tintin stories such an addictive read.
He was a smart, resourceful young man. Always underestimated. No matter the danger, he’d always find a way somehow and it was fun to see him figure it out. Some aspects of the stories have aged better than others, but they remain wonderful stories and hold up incredibly well. Rereading Tintin in America took me back to the first time I experienced those stories, and made me realize why I thought they were so cool in the first place.
For those who read Tintin in America (or any of the Tintin stories), what did you think?