Jean-Marie Apostolidès, a professor of French and drama at Stanford University, last read the Tintin comic books – about a youthful globe-trotting journalist – when he was a boy. Decades later he picked the series up again. “I was amazed at the enormous artistic and literary quality of the series,” he said. “I realized I was confronting a great piece of art, and that was surprising.” Apostolidès, author of The Metamorphoses of Tintin: or Tintin for Adults, chatted with Zócalo about why Tintin never made it big in America, how he got over his initial controversial attitudes, and how he embodies the myth of eternal, powerful youth.

Q. How would you introduce Tintin to Americans, how would you explain his importance?

A. This series has been extremely influential in Francophone countries such as Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Probably 80 or 85 percent of the people of my generation and the next have read the Tintin comic strips. They are very well known, whereas they are relatively unknown in America. There are exceptions – people such as Steven Spielberg have been influenced by Tintin, and he is now working on a film adaptation along with Peter Jackson. That project will make Tintin much more known to an American audience, whereas today, it is more or less restricted to an intellectual milieu in America. It is not at all as popular as other comic strips, like the Marvel comics.

Q. What stopped Tintin from becoming popular in America?

A. That is a tough question. Probably, first, its presentation. The aesthetics of Tintin is very different from other comic strips in America, like the Marvel comics I mentioned, or the older Little Nemo. Second, Tintin is very associated with, and expressive of, European perceptions of the world. That said, I am not all that certain of my answer – I don’t know exactly why it isn’t popular here.

Q. Why are the comics so popular in Europe?

A. The characters themselves – Tintin, Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus – are very familiar now, they are favorites. The quality of the language of Tintin, too, is unique, and quite unlike the way people speak in ordinary life. It brings to the reader a lot of vocabulary and knowledge they would not have otherwise. It is in fact an encyclopedia of the world, particularly interesting to young people. Tintin is a traveler, he wanders all over the world and has particular perceptions of the places he goes.

Q. How did Tintin become so influential, and how has he changed over time?

A. Tintin himself and his universe have drastically changed over 50 years. The series itself was published over a span of 52 years. It started in 1929, and it ended with Hergé’s death in 1983. At the origin of the strip, Tintin is almost a caricature, expressing the worldview of a very young journalist sent to the Soviet Union, and later to the Congo, and finally to America, where he expresses or tries to express to Americans certain traditional European rightist political views. But over the years, Tintin becomes more intelligent, such as in The Blue Lotus album. Immediately following the Second World War, Hergé changes again drastically, and he has a much more reasonable, open-minded, international vision of the world. That has totally changed the ideology of the series.

Q. How would you describe that ideology?

A. After WWII, it represents the vision of liberal people aware of the complexity of the world. Tintin becomes to a certain extent “politically correct”, whereas he was the opposite before. He begins to lose his prejudices, and instead of trying to impose his vision on the world, he listens to people, and he is very tolerant. He develops, in a way, a real desire to understand other people, other culture.

Tintin’s success was largely due to the fact that after the World War, Herge discovered the complexity of his own universe, and transformed it into a literary world that is so complex that even adults do not grasp it all immediately. You can reread the same strip ten times, or more, and many people do so, and you always discover something really new. This explains why the series has been the subject of so many scholarly studies. It is accessible to everyone, even to children, but you can read it in a more complex way even than the Peanuts. It has the complexity of the universe of Balzac.

Q. Does he age?

A. He does not age, but he becomes more mature. The set is changing. In the 1930s he belongs, and in the 1960s he belongs. He is the same age and with the same face.

Q. What does his longevity, and his eternal youth, have to do with how popular he is?

A. It seems to me one reason for his attractiveness is his youth. You can imagine him as the incarnation of the 20th century myth of the superchild. He has nothing to do with the Nietzschean superman. But as a superchild, he is a child who tries to be totally independent, someone who doesn’t need adults.

Q. Why is this myth so powerful – where else do we see it expressed?

A. In many contemporary movies as well as in literature. Really this myth is at the root of the 1968 movements in America and across Europe. It is a mythology that says we should get rid of the previous generation, that only our Baby Boomer generation is great and capable of reinventing the world-or the wheel, as it may be-and bringing new values. In Europe this was especially powerful-our parents had a connection to the war and the Holocaust, they lost their ability to claim they could change the world. We are innocent of that, and we do not want to repeat their mistakes. We want to get rid of our parents, and we don’t want to get old. We want to stay young and beautiful always. We want to be superchildren. If you consider some avant garde movements, as well, many of them also took on the myth of the superchild-the Dadaists, the surrealists to some extent, the international situationists. They were under the illusion that they could create a new and much better world.

Q. Do you think it was indeed an illusion? That change could happen by that generation?

A. At my age, I think it is an illusion. We did not change many things. It may be a necessary illusion, but yes, it is an illusion, in my view.

Q. What’s the future for Tintin?

A. I don’t know if I should say this, but the future of Tintin in America and even in Europe will depend on the success of the films done by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. If the films are good, if they are capable of rejuvenating the characters, and yet to keep the same fundamental perspective on the world, then the “Tintin adventures” may survive another generation or two. If the films do not convince people, then maybe, let’s say, within 20 or 30 years Tintin will be of interest only to literary scholars. In America, something as brilliant as the Little Nemo series-nobody reads it today. It is only of interest to historians, and yet it was huge at the start of the 20th century. Tintin today, after 80 years of adventures, is almost at the same limit. If it survives, it will be in part due to the films. Otherwise, the generation of my grandchildren will likely forget him, and choose another character to love.

Q. Is the myth of the superchild over as well?

A. Possibly. In a society dominated by technology, you can’t really be a superchild-you are not the new world, the technology is. You have to adjust. The myth of the superchild does run the risk of decline as well. I’m not sure, but that is what I feel.

*Photo courtesy ergates.