Number 245 of the ‘Tintin Magazine’, dated July 2, 1953. The young man reporter say hello smiling on a bike. He wears black culottes and the yellow jersey leader of Tour de France. He is closely followed by two motorcycles of the organization, one with the captain haddock at the controls and Snowy and the Professor Calculus of package and, a little further back, another with Hernández and Fernández. Her flawless blonde toupee brings her closer to Hugo Koblet (always with a comb at hand with which to repeat your ritual Danny Zuko in ‘Grease’) that to Louison bobet, dominator of the gala round in the first half of the decade of the 50. “Tintin is the only cyclist who has a picture framed on the walls of my bedroom.” The australian Cadel evans, winner of the Tour in 2011, does not hide his passion for the Belgian journalist. The same one that as a child made him turn the page to his coma after kick of an animal or become aware of the situation of the Tibet.
The character of Hergé also gives the pedals in ‘The Blue Lotus’ and ‘The jewels of the Castafiore’. Exchange of blows with thugs on the sidelines, hints at their athletic skills whenever possible. ‘In the land of the Soviets’, the special envoy of the ‘Petit Vingtième’ he has a short run and scuba diving. At Congo does not wrinkle with big game. In ‘The broken ear’ shows your love for morning exercises to activate the body. Ride a motorcycle, horse, drive or pilot whatever it takes, browse, nothing and even experiment with it yoga in ‘Tintin and the rogues’ or with speleology in the Moon. More than 15 years before Neil Armstrong the goal will be scored; not all the credit will go to Verne and Méliès. And almost bare-chested, without going through the rigors of training faced by the members of the Apollo 11 mission.
His pioneering spirit not surprising at this point. After brand new ‘In search of the lost ark’ (1981) a Steven spielberg they sewed it to questions about the inspiration when building the owner of the whip and the fedora hat. “I didn’t even know who Tintin was, but I read his albums and, indeed, there were similarities between him and Indiana Jones“From there to the continuous winks. ‘The last crusade’ (1989), the plans of the arrival of Henry Jones, his son and Sallah to the Treasury of Petra remind too much of the vignettes of ‘Coke stock’ (1958) who discover the refuge of the Emir of El Khemed. Without forgetting the subsequent consolidation of the link with the cinematic gazpacho of ‘The Secret of the Unicorn’, ‘The Crab with the Golden Claws’ and ‘The Treasure of Rackham the Red’, which for years has been expected to be continued by the work of Peter jackson.
Spielberg He is already in the group of illustrious fans of the reporter. Together with De Gaulle, Sting, Polanski, Savater or Pérez-Reverte, who always insists that in the event of a fire, he would save his dog and his collection Complete of the Adventures of Tintin. Those old cloth spine editions of the decade from the 60s.
The admiration for the character comes from afar. In the temporal and the spatial. In 2006, the Dalai Lama awarded the reporter with the Light of Truth award for opening the eyes of the world to the culture, landscapes and problems of that corner of the Himalayas. “Thanks to Tintin, many people who at that time had no idea that the Tibet got to know him. “Thanks to an album in which he practices a new sport to add to the list, the mountaineering (with previous dabbling in America and other locations). And in which he even runs into him yeti, the one who chased Reinhold messner and of what Eric Shipton He claimed to capture the tracks. Such a honor for Tintin, to receive the traditional Tibetan lamp, which he shares with characters like Václav Havel, Richard Gere or Heinrich Harrer. Equalize that, Rastapopoulos!