reading this thread was dire until i saw SOME tintin support...
i read em both as a child, but, yeah Asterix seemed like the same thing over and over again... same Fat Oblisk jokes, the same shot of Romans being punched 200 feet into the air, the big feast at the end of EVERY book... i mean, i liked them, but they didn't really speak to me... i couldn't really imagine them as real... (maybe b/c as an american i didn't really know where Gaul was...)
tintin seemed alot more interesting, the mysteries, the sort of Indiana Jones feel to his various treks to various corners of the globe... somehow it made one feel sophisticated as a 7 year old... i liked seeing various charectors reappear in books...
certain books really stand out... Flight 714 with the weird UFO abduction stuff, the amazing trip to the moon, tintin in america (first one i read...)
also, you simply cannot deny Capt Haddock... nothing like Whiskey jokes in children's books...
and yes, i prefer the simple line style of tin tin to the busyness of Asterix... all the design work is so great on tintin...