Tintin

From the diary: “June 17, 1981

“[Yesterday] was mainly uneventful. I sat around the house and read Tintins all day.”

I remember seeing a Tintin book for the first time at the house of a friend of my mother. The book was hardcover, which surprised me – a hardcover comic? And the art was so much more precise and delicate than I was used to seeing in superhero or funny animal comics. I was fascinated by the cover of The Black Island, the black island in the distance, the somber colors of sea and sky, the youth and his white dog in the small boat – but the bright red skirt of the youth struck me. This may have been the first time I saw a kilt. The book may have been in the original French because I vaguely remember not being able to read it – not that we had the time on that visit. I do remember leafing through the pages wishing I could read it.

I don’t know how much time passed before we found Tintin in the bookstore. The Tintin website has the first American edition of The Black Island published in 1975. I think we bought our first Tintin not long after.