I was just going down to get a few cookies and take a break from drawing, I swear. But then, there I was, watching an incredible story about Hergé, the Belgian cartoonist and creator of Tintin. The documentary centers on a fantastic (both meanings of the word) interview from 1971 by a young reporter who wasn’t hoping for much, yet he got an amazingly intimate picture of Hergé’s childhood, his sometimes stifling Catholicism, his experiences under Nazi rule, his divorce, and his waning need to express himself through his comics. If you are at all interested in comics or history or politics or adventurous stories or Tintin himself, I strongly advise you to check your PBS listings to see when this will be on again.
Just as I stumbled onto Tintin this evening, my introduction to him was similarly accidental. One of the people who happened to live in my dorm my first year in college was from rural Indiana, and he often wandered toward a bit of a fantasy world that was inspired by the things he read and the movies he watched. He had even given himself a new name when he got to college, perhaps inspired by Hergé who was born Georges Remi. He was the first person I had met who was really into comics and manga and Miyazaki, and his passion for those things was fundamentally influential to me and the career path I am now pursuing.
Anyway, much like I am stunned when a bookstore employee hasn’t heard of the Caldecott Medal, this guy couldn’t believe that I– an art major interested in children’s books– didn’t know about Tintin. Of course, the reason I was an art major and interested in children’s books had a lot to do with his passion for both subjects, but instead of recognizing his influence, I dismissed him as a bit of a zealot.
It wasn’t until several years after we had graduated that I first read any Tintin books, and then it was because I was waiting in a bookstore to meet up with someone. At the time I was still heavliy into children’s books, but not yet looking at comics very seriously. As I was waiting, I was done looking at the new children’s books, so I wandered the store and ended up by the graphic novel section. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but the encounter with my college friend had implanted the name “Tintin” in my head, and there on the shelf was a whole row of these stories. When I pulled one down and flipped through it, I was immediately astounded by the detailed artwork.
Hergé is known for his skilled combining of detailed, hyper-realistic backgrounds with these wonderfully caricatured characters. But my criteria when looking at children’s books (and now comics) is that is okay to be seduced by the art, but I won’t buy it if the story isn’t compelling. To shorten this lengthening story, I walked out of that store with three volumes of Tintin stories.
It’s funny to me when I think about the sequences of events that lead me from one point in my life to another. Even more interesting to me are the triggers that get me to think about those paths. As much as I have grumbled this past year (not here, I guess) about my graduate school experience, I am getting a lot of mileage out of the introspection it has imposed. Don’t be surprised to see more coming out of both the experiences I am recalling, and also the meta-experiences of how I came to recall these events. It’s all fodder for the paintbrushes.
Last year during an art history course I was taking I discovered that In the Night Kitchen is a kind of tribute to the amazing illustration and comics of Winsor McKay, most specifically his Little Nemo in Slumberland comics that ran full-page in the Sunday New York Herald from 1905-1911. (McKay was an animator in his own right, pioneering in the medium with his performances on-stage with his animated Gertie the Dinosaur.) As talent borrows and genius steals, Sendak lifted the bed right out of Little Nemo’s bedroom and put it under Mickey at the beginning and end of his story. It’s fun to see the story come to life.
