The Adventures of Tintin: Tintin in the Congo - Hergé

The one that has big problems with political correctness

Tintin's second adventure after Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (which having never been revised and coloured, seems to remain outside the official canon) has only been published in English relatively recently, and with its political and racial innocence (some might put it a little more strongly than that), there's good reason why it remains one of the lesser Tintin adventures. 

Written before Tintin had fully developed into an investigative journalist chasing master criminals across the globe, under the seas and into space, it's the travelogue aspect that is the primary purpose behind the early Tintin adventures, the story revelling in the exoticism of foreign lands and alien cultures. Drawn also before there was a wider selection of reference material for Hergé, and being very much of its racially insensitive time, the depiction of the Belgian colony of the Congo and the natives is consequently potentially offensive to some readers. In reality, it's no more cartoonish than any other aspect of Tintin in the Congo including the depiction of Tintin himself. 

Written primarily as an entertainment for very young children in a running serial in 1930, with there never being any intention of it having any kind of longevity, the exploits of Tintin and Snowy here are rather unsophisticated fun and slapstick, Tintin visiting the African nation as a reporter, but only in the capacity of a travel writer, taking time to indulge in big-game hunting and seemingly single-handedly massacring half the animal population of the continent. There is some familiarity in the crime-fighting aspect of later Tintin stories in several incidents he has with a criminal who has stowed away on Tintin's ship to Africa, but it's far from the global conspiracies of the greater Tintin adventures. 

Reworked into its new format for colour album publication in 1946, the artwork is much improved and the offensive colonial elements are toned down, but even so Tintin in the Congo is still a good notch or two below the standard we expect from the best Tintin adventures. This is far from essential Tintin, and may still even be offensive to some readers, but it's an intriguing look at the origins of one of the greatest creations in the comic world that still has some innocent entertainment value and, as such, it's not entirely without interest.

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