Tintin

The essential guide to Tintin

Tintin has just reached his 80th birthday, a fact hard to believe! Somehow, ever since January 10 in 1929, the day when together they took the train to the Soviet Union, the renowned reporter and his inseparable side-kick Snowy have surrendered nothing of their timeless appeal. As it is, the Soviets have passed into history but Tintin's adventures retain their same old magnetic power unabated. Reprinted and published in ever greater numbers, the books are a source of inspiration for artists, writers, producers, and directors.

Tintin personifies all of the universal values that are a mirror to everyone's own aspirations. Eternally youthful, the indefatigable reporter continues to conquer the world with unflagging, never-failing vitality.

Key dates

Tintin and Snowy characters appear for the first time on January 10, 1929
The first comic book Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is published in 1930
As of 1946, The Tintin adventures appear in a weekly journal titled Tintin
In 1976, Tintin and the Picaros is the final completed adventure published.

Did you know ?

Since 1929, more than 230 million copies have been sold. In France, one in every two families owns at least one Tintin adventure.
The Tintin adventures have been translated in more than eighty languages.
Tintin explores the moon in 1954, i.e. 15 years before Neil Armstrong and his colleagues.

Now at the age of almost 80, Tintin has indisputably earned his place amongst the great figures in world literature. In 1999, following a survey by Le Monde, readers of this newspaper ranked The Blue Lotus eighteenth amongst books that left their mark on the twentieth century. Tintin found himself in distinguished company indeed, side by side with Aldous Huxley, Solzhenitsyn, and Anne Frank.

Readers between 8 and 12 years old remain the prime audience for the Adventures of Tintin. The young can identify with this hero without fear or reproach, but also without a past and without a future, without parents. And many are those who confess today that it was Tintin who taught them the art of reading at an age when one learns to figure out signs.