Tintin -vs- Asterix

Tintin or Asterix?


  • Total voters
    34

luka

Well-known member
they're totally different things, why compare? i get equal amounts of pleasure from each. tintin is wonderful. very atmospheric. great characters. tintin, calculus, haddock, thompson twins.... amazing plots, wonderfully drawn... asterix has better puns but so what? actually fuck it...tintin is better... more depth...the one in peru (children of the sun? is it a two parter?) with the mummy gave me nightmares... red rackhams treasure is incredible story telling...the artwork is incomparably better...
 
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petergunn

plywood violin
they're totally different things, why compare? i get equal amounts of pleasure from each. tintin is wonderful. very atmospheric. great characters. tintin, calculus, haddock, thompson twins.... amazing plots, wonderfully drawn... asterix has better puns but so what? actually fuck it...tintin is better... more depth...the one in peru (children of the sun? is it a two parter?) with the mummy gave me nightmares... red rackhams treasure is incredible story telling...the artwork is incomparably better...

prisoners of the sun (the one in peru) is a 2 parter, sequel to the 7 crystal balls... there was a great exhibition at a museum in Quebec City, "Tintin in Peru", that had lots of Herge original art as well as lots of mayan artifacts, showing the actual works of art that Herge had sourced to make the comics... amazing the amount of work he put it, his notebooks were amazing... so much research and library work... they had that picture of the mummy blown up to life size... the whole exhibit was by panal by panal of that comic... with the artifacts and info layed out as they occured... when tintin went thru the waterfall, they had a beaded glass curatin set up... silly, but effective...

yes, red rackham's treasure is another two parter... i actually just DLed the complete tintin on PDF and have been getting enjoyment from it all weekend...
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
I think it's pretty difficult to argue that asterix has better art- the strengths are elsewhere.

Herge had a beautiful draftman like technical simplicity- every line had a purpose:

Compare this:

tintin-le-lotus-bleu12143861221-700x472.jpg


With this:

asterix_01.jpg
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I disagree - yes Herge was a skilled draftsman, but static, one-dimensional, and often unattractive. Uderzo had lovely fluid lines, beautiful painting skills, massive verve and imagination, amazing caricatures and portraits, and could vividly evoke places, and add fantastic little details in every frame.

And Herge could never have pulled off something like this from Asterix in Belgium:

uderzo_bruegel.jpg


a masterful pastiche of Bruegel:

pieter_bruegel_wedding.jpg


Also, the Thompson Twins show up in Asterix in Beglium, and for a couple of frames Uderzo copies Herge's style perfectly; doubt Herge could've reversed this, too restricted.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
I mean, that's not a great example of Uderzo you chose there, Matt b.

Have a look at Asterix in Switzerland, Asterix in Corsica, Obelix & Co., Asterix and the Great Crossing, examples of Uderzo's high style.
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
I mean, that's not a great example of Uderzo you chose there, Matt b.

Have a look at Asterix in Switzerland, Asterix in Corsica, Obelix & Co., Asterix and the Great Crossing, examples of Uderzo's high style.

Oliver, I like Asterix a lot- I'm not a hater, but you can't deny that Asterix is a much busier series graphically. I prefer the stripped back elegance of Herge.

One reason why I might prefer Tintin, is that I discovered (my mum came to visit and is clearing her loft of some junk which included the following) all my Asterix books were the A5 version, which are pretty terrible to look at.
 

PeteUM

It's all grist
I showed my 9-year old son this thread and the poll in particular and he regarded it as some kind of asymmetric warfare/shock and awe thing on Tintin, even though he reflected that Asteix might have the edge on balance.
 

benjybars

village elder.
Asterix ALL DAY. tintin can suck out. although the tintin vids done in sunderland voiceover are pretty good..
 

don_quixote

Trent End
cor. missed this one. never read asterix. used to buy tintin in french and attribute that to my awesome french reading skills. ooooh so tempted to crack it out.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Oliver, I like Asterix a lot- I'm not a hater, but you can't deny that Asterix is a much busier series graphically. I prefer the stripped back elegance of Herge.
Philip Pullman: "I like Tintin's blandness, his blankness, his lack of depth; he is an empty page on which adventures can be drawn."
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
I reckon both are great but instantly voted for Tintin. Now pretty surprised by the poll results and the comments!

Tintin the character is pretty shit, but that's like slagging Star Wars because of Luke Skywalker. Haha. Might be shooting myself in the foot here, cos that's probably a fair call...

Yeah, amazing stuff. How do they make the names all have the same endings and yet have a meaning that still (presumably) corresponds to the original meaning?

How many educated English speakers still say "asterisk" so it rhymes with Asterix? Funny. :D

Nah, almost none of them correspond in meaning, the one I always remember is one of the Gaulish wives is Iélosubmarine, as in Yellow Submarine. I think the blacksmith's name translates as "alphabetical order". Can't remember any others, but am sure the web can provide...

I remember in the original version of 'Asterix in Britain' the English all talk with the adjectives before the nouns and stuff (obviously it's written in French). The equivalent of having people French in a comic English talking like this. Pretty cool. It's obviously assuming kids French have learnt enough at school to get what's going on.
 

Sick Boy

All about pride and egos
As a kid I used to read both heavily, but having read neither since then I'm going to have to say Tintin on the grounds that of the two I still vividly remember Tintin plots almost in their entirety after all these years, and I remember next to nothing about Asterix.
 

subvert47

I don't fight, I run away
Asterix for definite
and it's much better for your kids
lots of incidental historical facts I still know because I read it in Asterix when I was 10

:)
 
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