Georges Herge Creator of Tintin The Final Years
The Herge’s Studio’s was set up in April 1950 in order to lighten Herge’s workload after his second breakdown. He employed assistants such as the artist Bob de Moor to help produce The Adventures of Tintin. This was to be the case for the rest of the Tintin albums where assistants would fill in the details and backgrounds such as the lunar landscapes in Explorers on the Moon.
Many believe the new set up allowed Herge to craft some of his finest creations with The Calculus Affair produced in 1954 considered by many Herge’s most refined work. The drama in Herge life was to continue however with his 25 year marriage to Germaine at breaking point after Herge had fallen for a young artist who had recently joined his studio Fanny Vlaminck. Herge was suffering strong recurring nightmares. He was advised by a psychoanalyst to give up working on Tintin. Herge decided to the opposite and launched himself into Tintin in Tibet. This album was later to be described by Herge as his favorite and can be interpreted as a voyage of self discovery not only for Tintin but Herge too. Tintin in Tibet is certainly a powerful album in its creation.
Tintin in Tibet was published in the Tintin magazine from September 1958 to November 1959.The quest was a personnel voyage for Tintin that reflected the very same journey that Herge himself was experiencing. Tintin is in search of Chang Chong-Chen, the Chinese boy he befriended in the Blue Lotus. The adventure allowed Herge to confront his nightmares by filling the book with severe alpine scenery, giving the adventure a commanding open setting. The are only three main characters in the book which was a marked difference to previous albums with Tintin, Captain Haddock and the Sherpa Tharkey involved in the search for Chang. The completion of the story was also a time when Herge emotional demons ceased and the nightmares left him.
Herge was to write three more Tintin albums The Castafiore Emerald in 1961, Flight 714 in 1966 and Tintin and the Picaros in 1975. In this period as technology developed Herge allowed experimentation into other media for his beloved Walloon reporter. Tintin was to be used in advertising and merchandise. There was a stop motion animation film made that was not a success but the film Tintin and the Golden Fleece Fleece starring Jean-Pierre Talbot as Tintin did better. The biggest successes were the animated films beginning in 1961 with The Calculus Case. Herge was to divorce Germaine in 1975 and finally marry Fanny Vlamnick in 1977.
Herge in later years was to finally be able to visit some of the places that had inspired his Tintin adventures. The Financial success of the albums had allowed him to travel to America where he visited Native Indians whose culture had long held a fascination for him. . He also found time to visit Taiwan where he was held in high esteem after The Blue Lotus and whose Kuomintang government welcomed with open arms.
A happy tale towards the end of Herge life was that he was able to again meet Chang Chong-jen the man who had taught him about Chinese art and inspired Herge to change his style. Chang had been reduced to a sweeper during the Chinese Revolution but was re-instated as head of the Fine Art Academy in Shanghai in the 1970’s. Chang returned to a reunion with Herge in Europe in 1981 where Chang would settle in Paris until his death in 1988.
Herge too was to die on March 3rd 1983 when he finally succumbed to complications arising from anemia caused by bone cancer that he had suffered for several years. Herge was in the process of producing Tintin and the Alpha-Art. This adventure was never to be finished due to express wishes by Herge that no Tintin album be published by any other artist. Tintin and the Alpha-Art was published as a series of sketches and notes in 1986. Fanny closed Herge Studios in 1987 and The Herge Foundation was set set up in 1988 with the Tintin magazine discontinued.
Holly Franklin has been a fan of Tintin since she was a kid and she contributes to a website dedicated to bringing you the latest news of the upcoming Tintin movie at:-
http://www.letintinmovie.com
Horse Racing in Literature
Horse racing, the second most-popular spectator sport in America, remains as vital as ever, but its age, high drama, and historical appeal as the “sport of kings” ensure that it also has a place in the history of literature. Countless writers have been drawn, in their search for subject matter, to the romance of the racetrack – the triumph and tragedy of equestrian life. It’d take the endurance of a draft-horse to compile a complete list of such novels – ex-thoroughbred-horse-racer-turned-mystery writer Dick Francis alone has written a small library of them – but here are some of the more important.
National Velvet
A classic of childrens’ literature, this 1935 novel by Enid Bagnold tells the story of Velvet Brown, a working-class English teenager who unexpectedly realizes her dream of keeping and racing thoroughbred horses when a mysterious old man leaves her a racing horse in his will. A memorable film adaptation with Elizabeth Taylor, in 1944, helped ensure that young Velvet, along with her horse, became a symbol of female independence and strength long before GI Jane, Title IX or Sally Ride.
The Reivers
William Faulkner’s last novel – and his second Pulitzer Prize winner (after 1954’s A Fable)- a comic picaresque about an ill-fated road trip. Published in 1962, the novel concerns three young “er-do-wells from Yoknpatawpha County” the setting of so many Faulkner classics – who run away from home in a stolen car. They end up in 1900s-era Memphis, where they experience big-city life for the first time – and where one of them, without permission, trades away their car for a racehorse. Can he and Coppermine’s fast horse who doggedly prefers the middle of the pack – win enough money to get the three boys back home? Generations of readers have enjoyed Faulkner’s unusually straightforward handling of this suspenseful coming-of-age story, finding it a light but fitting conclusion to one of the greatest careers in American literary history.
Bertie Wooster
The great comic novelist P.G. Wodehouse created many memorable characters, but none more so than Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, the preternaturally shallow minor aristocrat who features in over 50 of Wodehouse’s works. Like so many English gentry, Bertie (as his friends call him) has racing in the blood, having been middle-named in honor of a horse on whom his father once won a few pounds. The lovable, foppish Bertie falls into all sorts of mishaps, from which he is constantly extracted by his seemingly-omnipotent manservant Jeeves. Wooster can often be found at, near, or on the way to and from the racetrack, uttering phrases like “He once lost his shirt on Silly Billy” and “They had a dead cert for under 10 minutes.”
The Iliad
Chariot-racing, one of the oldest forms of horse racing, appears in book XXIII of Homer’s Iliad, the great epic of the Trojan War. At this crucial point in the story, just after the death of Hector, Homer’s relentless narrative drive relaxes to allow Achilles, the poem’s hero, a moment in which to properly observe the death of his bosom friend Patroclus. The funeral games (a series of athletic contests which were part of the funerary rites of the period) take up most of the penultimate book of the Iliad, and encompass boxing, footracing, archery and the javelin, as well as a chariot race, won by Diomedes.
Horse Heaven
Hailed as “a big, ambitious book” by the New York Times, Jane Smiley’s sprawling ninth novel brings a number of plot lines together while maintaining a tight focus on the world of contemporary horse-racing. The best-selling author of A Thousand Acres (1991) told an interviewer that the idea for Horse Heaven (2000) occurred to her when “I was driving down the road listening to NPR, and I heard a commentator use the phrase “spit the bit” and I realized that there was a whole wonderful language to horse racing that was a novelist’s treasure.”
Ben-Hur
Lew Wallace’s 1880 novel quickly displaced Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the greatest American best-seller of the 19th century, and its blend of suspenseful storytelling, painstaking historical research and religious piety not only made it the first work of fiction ever to win a Pope’s blessing, but paved the way for American evangelicals – embrace of novel-reading as a valid, morally acceptable pastime. Set in the first century AD, the novel interweaves the story of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew living under Roman oppression, with that of another, more famous first-century Palestinian Jew – Jesus. A major plot point in the novel’s enormous narrative turns on an exciting chariot race that pits Ben-Hur against his Roman archrival, Massala. This scene became the centerpiece of the novel’s classic 1959 film adaptation – and that sequence, in turn, was cannibalized for the pod-race scene of the somewhat-less-classic Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999).
These literary representations are part of a tradition that continues today in thoroughbred horse racing. Whether you’re a fan of horse racing gambling or just like the thrill of live horse racing, the sport is as full of drama and passion as any other. Tip services can help you maximize your enjoyment of thoroughbred horse racing by clarifying the details and letting you know who the favorites are.
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Herge Creator of Tintin Presents Professor Calculus – The Deaf Inventor
Professor Calculus otherwise known as Cuthbert Calculus was one of the more humorous characters in the Tintin world. Known as Profesor Tryphon Tournesol (meaning: Sunflower) in French his character was hard of hearing which led to much hilarity as he misunderstood conversations. For example: “attachez votre ceinture” (fasten your belt) is repeated as “une tache de peinture?” (a paint stain). Calculus never admits to being deaf and insists he is only hard of hearing in one ear in Destination Moon. In the Moon book series Cuthbert acquires an hearing aid that brings about a change in chararcter as he becomes a more serious person.
In later adventures however Professor Calculus loses his hearing aid and once again is back to his old dear deaf self. Where he is often distracted but who invents many object s in the series. The more famous of these inventions are the one-man shark-shaped submarine, the moon rocket (looks very similar to a V-2 rocket!) and an ultra sound weapon (now being used in today’s modern warfare). Professor Calculus has a humanic side and tries to benefit the world with inventions such as a cure for alcohlism that makes alcohol taste horrible to the patient. In recognition of the contributions made by Caculus’ anti-drinking tablets made, General Alcazar appointed Cuthbert Knight Grand Cross of the Order of San Fernando with Oak leaves in Tintin and the Picaros.
Captain Haddock often hates these inventions (he being a bit of a drinker himself!) although Calculus often interprets this the other way around due to his deafenss. The Professor does have one weakenss it is if anyone (especially Haddock) calls him a goat. Or as Captain Haddock famously said in Destination Moon “acting like a goat”, the mild mannered Professor Calculus flew into a rage which borught about the very famous reply “Goat, am I?”, which to Tintin fans is legendry.
Cuthbert Calculus is a fervant beliver in dowsing, and carries a pendulum for that purpose. It is hard to believe but Calculus occasionly comments that he was a great sportsman in his youth, with a very athletic lifestyle. In flight 714 he demonstrates quite badly his former love of the french martial art savate which leaves the reader highly amused.
Calculus first appears in Red Rackham’s Treasure and borught an end to a long search for a mad professor type which had led to the creation of previos character such as Dr. Sarcophagus in Cigars of the Pharoh and Professor Alembick in King Ottokar’s Sceptre. The character was inspired by the famous inventor of the bathyscaphe, Professor Auguste Piccard.
Holly Franklin has been a fan of Tintin since she was a kid and she contributes to a website dedicated to bringing you the latest news of the upcoming Tintin movie at:-
http://www.letintinmovie.com
FAQ – Who Created Tintin? Herge – The Middle Period
Herge reached a watershed in his work around his 30th birthday and the release of Tintin and the Blue Lotus. The Blue Lotus was released in 1936 and was the fifth Tintin adventure. The end of the fourth album Cigar of the Pharaoh had led to a mention that Tintin would be off to China in his next adventure.
A University of Leuven professor one father Gosset got in touch with Herge and asked for the illustrator to be perceptive about how he approached China in his next album. Gosset was the chaplain of the university’s Chinese students and introduced Herge to a young Chinese sculptor called Chang Chon-jen who resided at the Brussels Academie des Beaux-Arts.
Herge and Chang instantly made a connection. Chang introduced Herge to Chinese history, culture and techniques of Chinese art that left a lasting impression on Herge. In the Blue Lotus Herge endeavored to become more correct in detailing the places that Tintin visited. The bond formed between these two artists is now cemented in history as Herge called one of his characters “Chang Chong-Chen” in the young sculptor’s honor. Chang Chong-Chen is a young Chinese boy who befriends Tintin, with the character discarding some of the more outrageous fabrications about Chinese culture.
The bond formed with Chang resulted in Herge heightened comprehension of the problem with colonialism and particularly Japan’s horrific assaults into China. A theme of anti-imperialism can clearly be read in the Blue Lotus which was contrary to common western beliefs that were compassionate to Japan and its colonial enterprise. Herge took a lot of flack for the views from Japanese dignitaries in Belgium but history has shown that the Blue Lotus was vindicated.
In a sad tale after finishing his studies Chang went back to China and the two friends lost contact after the Japanese invasion and subsequent civil war at it was forty years before they met again.
Herge was going to see a modification in Tintin’s style again. This was through necessity rather than choice. In September 1st 1939 the Nazi’s invaded Poland and Herge as a reserve lieutenant had to stop his work on the Tintin adventure The Land of Black Gold. Belgium soon fell under German occupation along with most of Western Europe.
Le Petit Vingtieme was closed down and Herge found himself writing for Le Soir the mouthpiece of the Nazi occupational forces. Herge began to write The Crab with the Golden Claw which was to be the first of six albums written during the war.
Herge was unable t finish The Land of Black Gold due to its anti-fascist undertones. The war was to continue in earnest and led to Herge changing his style. A paper shortage led to him having to publish Tintin daily in a three or four frame strip, rather than the two full pages every week as when he had worked for Le Petit Vingtieme. The meant Herge had to create drama at the end of each strip rather than the end of each page. Herge by necessity introduced more frequent quips and a more rapid hustle of action.
Herge had been quite political at times in his earlier albums but now under Nazi occupation this was no longer possible. The Tintin adventures turned to escapism with escapades to meteorites (The Shooting Star), a treasure hunt ((The Secret of the Unicorn) and a expedition to unravel an ancient Inca curse in (The seven Crystal Balls and Prisoner of the Sun).
Herge now placed more emphasize on characters and plots and led to some of Tintin’s greatest characters being introduced to the globe. Captain Haddock and Cuthbert Calculus make their debuts during this era. This change of style was noticed by readers and these yarns have proved the most popular over the years.
In 1943 Herge met Edgar Jacobs an American comic artist who he hired to help revise early Tintin albums. Jacobs was instrumental in redrawing many of the outfits and settings to make the albums for accurate and appropriate. Jacob’s was also to help on Tintin and the Seven Crystal Balls. By the end of the war Tintin had gone about a change of style and was more fashionable then ever and was on its way to be adopted by the French population.
The increasing demands the Tintin magazine placed on Herge led to him having a breakdown in 1949 while he was working to complete Land of Black Gold. He then went on to suffer another breakdown in 1950 working on Destination Moon. It was at this point Herge Studios were set up in April 6th 1960. This was another turning point in the Tintin world.
Holly Franklin has been a fan of Tintin since she was a kid and she contributes to a website dedicated to bringing you the latest news of the upcoming Tintin movie at:-
http://www.letintinmovie.com