ALTHOUGH....:

Why Tintin fans had to leap straight to his defence (Charles Bremner, 1/16/09, Times of London)

An article by Matthew Parris, The Times columnist, on Tintin’s “obvious” homosexuality has triggered an outcry in the media and on the internet. [...]

France has long adored Tintin as one of its own although his creator, Georges Remy, known as Hergé, was a French-speaking Belgian. That explains the patriotic reflex over Parris’s recital of the long-standing belief among gays that Tintin is one of their own.

“What debate can there be when the evidence is so overwhelmingly one-way?” Parris asked. “A callow, androgynous, blonde-quiffed youth in funny trousers and a scarf moving into the country mansion of his best friend, a middle-aged sailor? A sweet-faced lad devoted to a fluffy white toy terrier, whose other closest pals are an inseparable couple of detectives in bowler hats.”

The theory may have been around since it became the subject of books in the 1970s, but it was too much for some French critics coming from un anglais on the anniversary of Tintin’s appearance in a Brussels children’s newspaper.

...take away the sailor and Johnny Quest and Race Bannon make these guys seem as straight as Bogie and Bacall.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 16, 2009 8:16 AM