Tintin and Corto Maltese

The European Adventurer Meets the Colonial Other

Dani Filc

Abstract
The Tintin and Corto Maltese series are among the most famous European
adventure comics. The adventure genre – both in novels and comics – is
deeply related to nineteenth-century colonialism. This article compares the
ways in which colonialism and the relationship to the colonial Other appear
in Hergé’s and Pratt’s creations, focusing on Tintin and Corto Maltese’s ad-
ventures in Africa and Latin America. The comparison between Tintin and
Corto shows that although Hergé developed an ambivalent view of European
colonialism, Eurocentrism is constant through all his work. Pratt’s Corto,
in contrast, shows a more critical, though ambiguous, view of colonialism,
and a more egalitarian, though also ambivalent, conceptualisation of the
colonial Other.
Keywords: colonialism, Corto Maltese, Eurocentrism, Hergé, Hugo Pratt,
Tintin

Tintin has a casual encounter, reads an unexpected article in the news-

paper, and embarks on a new adventure; Corto Maltese’s exploits begin
with a sailing ship and a walk among Venetian canals. Tintin and Corto
Maltese are two of the most famous twentieth-century adventurers in
European comics. This article addresses the links between European
adventure comics and colonialism by comparing their approaches
to Africa and Latin America. Tintin and Corto Maltese represent the
comics version of a long European tradition of adventure literature. At
the height of its popularity (from the mid-nineteenth to the early twenti-
eth century), the adventure genre expressed the ideals of the Enlighten-
ment and the way modernity was conceptualised. As Jürgen Habermas
claims, modernity was then understood, as opposed to tradition, as a

European Comic Art Volume 13 Number 1, Spring 2020, 95–121 © European Comic Art
doi:10.3167/eca.2020.130106 ISSN 1754-3797 (Print), ISSN 1754-3800 (Online)
96 D ani F ilc

process of continuous progress.1 Essential to this view were the cen-

trality of the subject, the understanding of human history as a tale
progressing from a problematic situation to its resolution, the ability
of the subject to change reality, and the prominence of the themes of
knowledge and technology. The adventure genre of this period is also
related to the emergence of the competitive phase of capitalism, since
its heroes – like capitalist entrepreneurs – had to be resourceful and
audacious.
White European men are the main subjects of the Enlightenment
and capitalism until the nineteenth century and are likewise at the
centre of the adventure genre. Adventure books have always been mas-
culinist and, like capitalism, the adventure genre of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries is closely related to European colonialism, as argued
by Martin Green.2 Several researchers have shown the connections of
English, French and Italian popular adventure literature to colonial-
ism and imperialism.3 As Jeffrey Richards argued, popular adventure
fiction was ‘not just […] a mirror of the age but […] an active agency
constructing and perpetuating a view of the world’.4
Adventures frequently take place within the colonial world and the
genre’s values are based on colonial values. Florian Krobb, for example,
shows the colonial values at work in Jules Verne’s work, through the
analysis of Cinq Semaines en Ballon [Five weeks in a balloon].5 Colonial

1 Jürgen Habermas, ‘Modernity, an Incomplete Project’, in Contemporary Social

Thought: Themes and Theories, ed. Sean P. Hier (Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press
2005), 163–174.
2 Martin Green, Seven Types of Adventure Tale: An Etiology of a Major Genre (University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 1–42.
3 Peter Aberge, ‘The Portrayal of Blacks in Jules Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires’, The
French Review 53, no. 2 (1979): 199–220; Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British
Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013);
Philippe Delisle, Bande dessinée franco-belge et imaginaire colonial: Des Années 1930
aux années 1980 [Franco-Belgian Comics and Colonial Imaginary: From the 1930s
to the 1980s] (Paris: Karthala, 2008); Philippe Dine, ‘The French Colonial Empire
in Juvenile Fiction: From Jules Verne to Tintin’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions
Historiques 23, no. 2 (1997): 177–203; Robert Dixon, Writing the Colonial Adventure:
Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875–1914 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995); Abdul Janmohamed, ‘The Economy of Manichean
Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature’, Critical Inquiry
12, no. 1 (1985): 59–87; Florian Krobb, ‘Imaginary Conquest and Epistemology in
Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature: Africa in Jules Verne, Burmann, May, and
Twain’, Children’s Literature 44, no. 1 (2016): 1–20; Jeffrey Richards, ‘Introduction’,
in Imperialism and Juvenile Literature, ed. Jeffrey Richards (Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 1989), 1–12.
4 Richards, ‘Introduction’, 3.
5 Krobb, ‘Imaginary Conquest’, 4–8.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 97

values also ground the work of writers such as Daniel Defoe, Emilio
Salgari or Sir Henry Rider Haggard. Much of the adventure genre, in-
cluding comics such as Tintin, reproduced the racial hierarchy intrinsic
to colonialism and the superiority of Western Christian values over the
colonial world.6 In the second half of the nineteenth century and the
first half of the twentieth century, the adventure genre developed in a
way that contributed to the naturalisation of the differences between
colonizers and colonized, presenting them as perennial. As Philip Dine
shows, Tintin directly relates to the French adventure genre, reproduc-
ing the colonial hierarchy in several adventures, even though, as dis-
cussed below, Hergé’s approach to colonialism was not univocal.7
The structure of the nineteenth-century adventure genre, which
­Matthew Screech considers to be descended from the traditional folk
tale as analysed by Vladimir Propp, consists of several ‘functions’.8
These functions can be summarized as follows: the hero leaves to repair
a lack, misfortune or misdeed. He challenges an interdiction, which
confronts him with a villain, whom he eventually defeats. The initial
problem is solved, and the hero returns triumphant. Martin Green
counts seven types of adventure tales, five of which are relevant to the
present discussion. The first is exemplified by Robinson Crusoe in which
the hero is cast away on an island, risks death, and eventually becomes
the ruler of the area. The second type is the Three Musketeers story. This
category involves male fraternity in the face of enemies, and the weight
of history and politics. The third type is the frontiersman novel, such as
James Fenimore Cooper’s historical romances, characterized by a stoic
hero moving between civilization and savagery. The avenger story, such
as The Count of Monte Cristo, is the fourth type. Here the hero is be-
trayed and dispossessed, suffers severe ordeals, and ultimately returns
to punish his betrayers. The fifth type of adventure story is that of the

6 The colonial hierarchy means that an essential and insurmountable difference exists
between European and colonial subjects. This difference is not always expressed in
direct exploitation. On the contrary, it is affirmed frequently as a top-down relation in
which the enlightened European helps the needy colonial subjects. See Bill Ashcroft,
Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, Post-Colonial Studies: The Key Concepts (London:
Routledge 2000); Gabriele Proglio, ‘Italian Colonial Novels as Laboratories of Domi-
nance Hierarchy’, in Colonialism and National Identity, ed. Paolo Bertella Farnetti and
Cecilia Dau Novelli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 84–94.
7 Dine, ‘The French Colonial Empire’.
8 Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folk Tale (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1968), 25–71. See Matthew Screech , Masters of the Ninth Art: Bandes dessinées and
Franco-Belgian Identity (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005), 4–5.
98 D ani F ilc

wanderer, such as Jules Verne’s Michael Strogoff and Around the World
in Eighty Days, where the emphasis is on travel, its perils and rewards.9
Hergé adopted the adventure narrative structure in Tintin, which
he absorbed from writers such as Alexandre Dumas and Jules Verne
and used it in almost all of his work. Tintin includes elements of four
of Green’s types. In some of the adventures the hero is cast away and
confronts several mishaps before conquering his surroundings, as in
The Crab with the Golden Claws (1941, 1958).10 In most of them, he is
either the frontiersman, moving between civilization and savagery, or
the wanderer (travelling to Congo, China, Tibet and Latin America).
Finally, the appearance of Haddock and Calculus in Tintin gives rise
to elements of the Three Musketeers type, for example in Red Rackham’s
Treasure (1944, 1952) and The Secret of the Unicorn (1943, 1952).
Pratt’s Corto Maltese follows the model of Robert Louis Steven-
son and Joseph Conrad more than that of French authors, but with
an ironic twist. As Fabrice Leroy shows by analysing books such as
The Ballad of the Salt Sea (1967–1969, 2012) and Corto Maltese in Si­
beria (1974–1977, 2017), Corto combines the plot structure of the nine-
teenth-century novel with humour, satire and political criticism.11 The
hero’s approach to social realities and to himself is ironic. Among
the examples of this ironic understanding of social realities, we can
mention Corto’s approach to national conflicts in The Golden House of
Samar­kand (1980–1985, 2010) and in Concerto in O Minor for Harps and
Nitro­glycerine (1972, 2009); his approach to World War One in Under
the Flag of Gold (1971, 1980); or his view of colonialism in The Ethiopian
(1972–1973, 2009). His self-deprecating humour is present in almost
all his books, from his first appearance in Ballad of the Salt Sea, laugh-
ing at himself, floating in the sea, attached to a wooden raft. His re-
flections on himself are always tinged with irony, whether in Fable of

9 Green, ‘Seven Types’, 145–163.

10 In this article, references to Tintin and Corto Maltese albums relate to their English
translated versions, but, for Tintin dates are given for the first album publication in
French, which often differed from the original serialised versions, followed by the
date of English publication. The page references are the same for English and French
versions. The Corto Maltese stories have been republished many times singly or as part
of collections, under varying titles. We have used the titles of the English published
versions actually consulted, and indicated the date of their original creation, in French
or Italian and in any format, followed by the date of the English version. Page numbers
refer to the latter.
11 Fabrice Leroy, ‘European Literary and Genre Fiction: The (À Suivre) Magazine and
the “Adventure” and “Science Fiction” Traditions (Pratt, Tardi, Moebius)’, in The
Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel, ed. Jan Baetens, Hugo Frey and Stephen
­Tabachnick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 251–268.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 99

Venice (1977, 2009), where he introduces himself as ‘falling from the

clouds’ (8), and as a ‘smart-ass’ (15); or in The Golden House of Samar-
kand, where he jokes about his future death (10).
Corto is mainly the wanderer – a wanderer always changing the
object of his search, whether for an old treasure, a lost person or a lost
continent. However, in his first appearance in The Ballad of the Salt
Sea, we can also find elements of the avenger story. The Ballad begins
with Corto tied to a raft in the sea, betrayed by his crew, and ends with
Corto avenging the death of a friend. Moreover, some of his adventures
in Sous le Signe du Capricorne (1970, published in English as Caribbean
Suite 2009, and Under the Pirate Flag 2010) and The Ethiopian can be
read as an ironic version of the frontiersman.
Tintin is the first pan-European adventure comic, and Corto Maltese
marks the climax of this sub-genre. As Savkar Altinel claims, Tintin is
the first pan-European hero, not only because he is both Francophone
and Western European, but also because he is widely read in all of
­Europe.12 Corto Maltese is also a pan-European comic, created by an Ital-
ian artist, published in French, telling the story of a sailor born in Malta
to a Spanish mother and a British father. While the two characters
became classics of the genre, a comparison between them must take
into account the very different contexts in which Tintin and Corto came
about. Matthew Screech traces Hergé’s influences to the French ad-
venture novels (Alexandre Dumas, Jules Verne, Hector Malot), French
speaking comics such as Zig et Puce, and the conservative Catholicism
central to Belgian interwar culture.13 Tintin was developed within the
Franco-Belgian context of the supremacy of empire, subsequently lost,
wartime occupation, reduced global influence and the dominance of
Anglophone popular culture.14 Pratt published his first comic, Wheeling,
as sole author in Argentina, in 1962 (the year before Hergé published
The Castafiore Emerald). His influences were more eclectic: Scottish,
Polish, Italian, US and French adventure literature (Robert Louis
Steven­son, Joseph Conrad, Emilio Salgari, Jack London and Alexandre
Dumas); and Argentinian and US comics (Héctor Germán Oesterheld
influenced his writing, Milton Caniff his drawing). Politically, he was
influenced by the radical 1960s and early 1970s, the years when Corto
was created and developed.

12 Savkar Altinel, ‘A Pan-European Hero’, Times Literary Supplement 4435 (1988), 36.
13 Screech, Masters of the Ninth Art, 23.
14 Ibid., 17.
100 D ani F ilc

Hergé and Tintin

As is well known, Hergé created Tintin when he worked as the editor
of the Petit Vingtième, the children’s supplement of the extreme right-
wing Catholic newspaper, Le Vingtième Siècle. The journal’s editor –
Abbé Norbert Wallez – was a fascist sympathiser. Racism was part of
Le Vingtième Siècle’s combination of philo-fascism and conservative Ca-
tholicism; and Wallez played an important role in the creation of Tintin.
Wallez asked Hergé to create a character intended for children and
young teenagers – a young journalist who should travel to the USSR in
order to reveal the evils of communism.15 Wallez’s ideas resulted in the
first two Tintin stories, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1930, 1989), and
Tintin in the Congo (1931, 1991). During the Second World War, Hergé
published his comic in the collaborationist paper, Le Soir, whose youth
supplement he edited. After the war, he worked with editor Raymond
Leblanc to publish Le Journal de Tintin, which appeared until Hergé’s
death in 1983.
Tintin was a mixture of adventurer and detective, travelling around
the world (and even to outer space) in order to fight evil (communists,
gangsters, thieves, slave traders). Tintin represents an idealised self-­
image of the European man: honest, fair, good, intelligent, courageous
and resourceful; a member of a colonial world whose values he shared.
He visited the USSR, Congo, the United States, China, Egypt, Latin
America, India, Tibet, the Middle East, the Sahara Desert and imagi-
nary European countries such as Syldavia.
In analysing Hergé’s ideology as reflected in his books, most schol-
ars belong to one of two opposing approaches. Advocates of the first
approach – such as Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Benoît Peeters or Oliver
Dunnett – distinguish between an ‘early’ and a ‘late’ Hergé. The first
three books, created under the influence of Abbé Wallez, belong to the
early period, reflecting an ethnocentric and colonialist worldview.16
The second approach – represented by researchers such as Maxime

15 Michael Farr, Tintin the Complete Companion (London: John Murray, 2001), 12.
16 Jean-Marie Apostolidès, Les Métamorphoses de Tintin [Tintin’s Metamorphoses] (Paris:
Seghers, 1984); Harry Thompson, Tintin: Hergé and His Creation (London: John
Murray, 1991); Nancy Hunt, ‘Tintin and the Interruptions of Congolese Comics’, in
Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Post-colonial Africa, ed. Paul Landau
and Deborah Kaspin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 90–123; Benoît
Peeters, ‘A Never Ending Trial: Hergé and the Second World War’, Rethinking History 6,
no. 2 (2002): 261–271; Oliver Dunnett, ‘Identity and Geopolitics in Hergé´s Adventures
of Tintin’, Social and Cultural Geography 10, no. 5 (2009): 583–598; Mark ­McKinney, The
Colonial Heritage of French Comics (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011).
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 101

Benoît-Jeannin or Émile Brami – perceives a consistent ethnocentric

view in all of Hergé’s work.17
Scholars associated with the first approach consider the early Hergé
to be a son of his age, reflecting the perspectives and ideas that charac-
terised his conservative, Catholic and monarchist social milieu.18 It is
in this sense that Pierre Assouline claims that Tintin in the Congo ‘was
not racist but paternalistic’.19 Hergé himself adopted this view after the
war. Interviewed by Numa Sadoul in 1975, he said ‘(J)e les ai dessinés,
ces Africains […] dans le plus pur esprit paternaliste qui était celui de
l’époque, en Belgique. […] (J)’étais nourri des préjugés du milieu bour-
geois dans lequel je vivais’ [I drew these Africans with the paternalism
that characterised Belgium then. (…) I shared the prejudice of my bour-
geois environment].20
The later period, beginning perhaps with The Blue Lotus (1936,
1983), but more distinguishable after the Second World War, presents
more universal and liberal messages. Benoît Peeters and Tom Mc-
Carthy maintain that salient in the second period is the dislike and

17 Maxime Benoît-Jeannin, Le Mythe Hergé [The Myth Hergé] (Villeurbanne: Golias,

2001); Maxime Benoît-Jeannin, Les Guerres d’Hergé [Hergé’s Wars] (Aden: Grande Bib-
liothèque d’Aden, 2006); Émile Brami, Céline, Hergé et l’Affaire Haddock [Céline, Hergé
and the Haddock Affair] (Paris: Écriture, 2004); Hugo Frey, ‘Tintin: The Extreme
Right-Wing and the 70th Anniversary Debates’, Modern and Contemporary France
7, no. 3 (1999): 361–363; Hugo Frey, ‘History and Memory in Franco-Belgian Bande
Dessinée’, Rethinking History 6, no. 3 (2002): 293–304; Hugo Frey, ‘Contagious Colonial
Diseases in Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin’, Modern and Contemporary France 12, no.
2 (2004): 177–188; Hugo Frey, ‘Trapped in the Past: Anti-Semitism in Hergé’s Flight
714’, in History and Politics in French-Language Comics and Graphic Novels, ed. Mark
McKinney (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2008), 27–43; Robert Jouanny,
‘Tintin et l’Amérique latine’ [Tintin and Latin America], in Tintin, Hergé et la Belgité,
[Tintin, Hergé and Belgity] ed. Anna Soncini Fratta (Bologna: Beloeil, 1994), 89–102.
18 Marc Angenot, ‘Basil Zaharoff et la guerre du Chaco: La Tintinisation de la géopoli-
tique des années 1930’ [Basil Zaharoff and the Chaco war: The Tintinisation of glo-
balisation in the 1930s], in Hergé reporter: Tintin en contexte [Hergé Reporter : Tintin in
Context], ed. Rainier Grutman and Maxime Prévost (Montreal: Presses de l’Université
de Montréal, 2010), 47–63 ; Oscar Boronat, ‘El Comic como fuente historica: El Falso
Testimonio de Tintin en el Congo Belga’, [Comics as Historical Source : Tintin’s False
Testimony in Tintin in Congo] Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie V, Historia Contem-
poránea 23, no. 1 (2011): 141–158; Cécile Vanderpelen-Diagre, ‘Compte rendu d’Hergé
reporter: Tintin en contexte’ [Accounting for Hergé Reporter : Tintin in Context], Etudes
Francaises 46, no. 2 (2010): 1–3.
19 Pierre Assouline, Hergé: The Man who Created Tintin, trans. Charles Ruas (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009), 28; Jan Baetens, ‘Hergé, auteur à contraintes? Une
relecture de L’Affaire Tournesol’ [Hergé, an Author with Constraints? Rereading The
Calculus Affair] French Forum 31, no. 1 (2006): 99–111.
20 Numa Sadoul, Entretiens avec Hergé: Édition definitive [Interview with Hergé: Definitive
Edition] (Tournai: Casterman, 1989), 74.
102 D ani F ilc

e­ strangement from politics in general, considered the opposite of

friendship – the true and significant form of relating to others.21
Even the most enthusiastic Tintinophiles agree that the early books
contain extremely conservative, colonialist and xenophobic messages.
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets presents a Manichean and simplis-
tic portrait of the USSR in the 1920s, and communism appears as a
combination of evil, stupidity and ridiculousness. Tintin in the Congo,
analysed below in greater detail, presents Tintin as the possessor of
knowledge and the African natives as childish creatures. The criticism
of the United States in Tintin in America (1932, 1978) is characterised
by a combination of xenophobia and right-wing anti-capitalism, origi-
nating in the specific way in which, as shown among others by Darrell
Jodock, conservative Catholicism rejected the values and views of the
Enlightenment, and attacked rationalism, Americanism, individualist
liberalism, historical criticism and anti-hierarchical thinking.22
Scholars such as Jean-Marie Apostolidès and Benoît Peeters, who
argue that Hergé abandoned his early racist and philo-fascist world-
view, see the beginning of this change in The Blue Lotus.23 These crit-
ics maintain that this book brings an undeniable change of tone, even
when there is still a paternalist approach to the non-European world.24
In The Blue Lotus, Hergé makes a sincere attempt to depict the non-­
European Other from a more egalitarian and respectful perspective,
denounces Japanese imperialism, and criticizes European prejudices
vis-à-vis Chinese people.25 Apostolidès argues that the discovery of the

21 Tom McCarthy, Tintin and the Secret of Literature (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint Edi-
tions, 2008), 41; Peeters, ‘A Never Ending Trial’, 264–265.
22 Darrell Jodock, ‘The Modernists and the Anti-Modernists’, in Catholicism Contending
with Modernity: Roman Catholic Modernism and Anti-Modernism in Historical Context,
ed. Darrell Jodock (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 20–28; Michael
Kerlin, ‘Anti-Modernism and the Elective Affinity between Politics and Philosophy’,
in Jodock, Catholicism, 308–336; Matthew Screech, ‘Introduction’, European Comic Art
3, no. 2 (2010): 1–10.
23 Even Hugo Frey, who illuminates the colonialist and right-wing characteristics in
Tintin, claimed that we can see a transition in Hergé from a philo-fascist approach to
liberal internationalism. See Frey, ‘History and Memory’, 301. See also Apostolidès,
Les Métamorphoses; Delisle, Bande dessinée; Benoît Peeters, Tintin and the World of
Hergé: An Illustrated History, trans. Michael Farr (New York: Little Brown and Co.
1992); Peeters, ‘A Never Ending Trial’; Eudes Girard, ‘Une Relecture de Tintin au
Congo’[Rereading Tintin in Congo], Études 417, no. 7–8 (2012): 75–86.
24 Delisle, Bande dessinée, 14–38.
25 Apostolidès, Les Métamorphoses; Arnaud Gonzague, ‘Hergé a-t-il, ou non, été
facho?’[Hergé, has he Been a Fascist ?] , Bibliobs (16 October, 2016), https://bibliobs.
nouvelobs.com/bd/20161005.OBS9419/herge-a-t-il-ou-non-ete-facho.html (accessed 16
February 2020); Girard, ‘Une Relecture’.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 103

Other that takes place in The Blue Lotus made Hergé gradually abandon
his previously right-wing ideology. Tintin went from representing the
Christian West, to becoming a ‘superchild’ who manages to accomplish
impossible tasks. He becomes involved with the suffering of the weak,
sides with the victims and the oppressed and is respectful of cultural
difference.26 The Blue Lotus is critical of Europeans who behave brutally
towards the Chinese; in The Red Sea Sharks (1958, 1960), the villains
are slave traders and Rastapopoulos is closer to the Nazis than to the
Jews; and in The Castafiore Emerald (1963, 1963), Hergé criticizes the
way many French and Belgians treat the Roma people.27 This line of
argument even claims that in the late 1930s, Hergé adopted an anti-Nazi
ideology and supported King Leopold III’s neutral stand. The argument
of the album King Ottokar’s Sceptre (1939, 1958) is presented as support-
ing this view (by Peeters, for example), since the dictator of the story,
Müsstler, is a parody of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.28
According to this analytical stance, in Hergé’s last finished album,
Tintin and the Picaros (1976, 1976; an album analysed in more detail
below), there is a universal, humanist message. Assouline notes that
when Professor Calculus meets Colonel Alvarez in this album, he says
to him: ‘I am sorry officer, but I cannot shake a hand which grinds
underfoot the imprescriptible rights of the human individual’ (12).29
Both Assouline and Peeters mention a letter that Hergé wrote to Leo-
poldo Galtieri – an Argentinian general and one of the presidents of
the last dictatorship in Argentina. In the letter, Hergé asks for a thor-
ough investigation of the disappearance of comics writer Héctor G.
Oesterheld, who was assassinated by the dictatorship.30 Even Brami,
who wrote on the similarities between Hergé and the right-wing and
anti-Semitic writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, argues that ‘les albums
dessinés par [Hergé] après la guerre […] sont un hymne à la fraternité et
à la tolérance’ [the albums (Hergé) drew after the war (…) are an anthem
to fraternity and tolerance].31
The second approach, represented by, among others, Benoît-Jeannin,
argues that throughout his oeuvre, Hergé maintained an ideological

26 Jean-Marie Apostolidès, ‘Hergé and the Myth of the Superchild’, Yale French Studies
111, no. 1 (2007): 45–57.
27 Apostolidès, Les Métamorphoses; Peeters, ‘A Never Ending Trial’.
28 Peeters, ‘A Never Ending Trial’, 262.
29 Assouline, Hergé, 223.
30 Ibid., 225; Benoît Peeters, Hergé, Son of Tintin, trans. Tina A. Kover (Baltimore, MD:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), 315.
31 Brami, Celine, Hergé, 109–110.
104 D ani F ilc

coherence.32 As has been amply discussed, the adventure The Shooting

Star (1942, 1961), published in the collaborationist newspaper Le Soir, six
years after The Blue Lotus, provides evidence to counter the claim that
the latter represented a clear-cut shift in Hergé’s view. Even scholars
such as Peeters recognise that the book is blatantly anti-Semitic, with
an American Jew named Blumenstein as the villain. Blumenstein, like
Rastapopoulos, the villain of later books, was drawn in accord with the
anti-Semitic stereotypes of the Jew – a big nose and thick lips.33 One of
the book’s panels presents two Jews – Yitzhak and Shlomo – happy that
the world is apparently coming to its end since that means they will not
have to repay their debts.34 Moreover, throughout many of his adven-
tures, Tintin’s enemies are those of the anti-modern conservative right,
the agents of ‘world conspiracies’, such as masons, communists and
financiers. Hergé, who defined himself as ‘a man of order’,35 adopted a
third position, both anti-communist and anti-American, which essen-
tialised the differences between cultures.36
In Le Mythe Tintin and Les Guerres d’Hergé, Benoît-Jeannin stresses
the ideological continuity of Hergé’s oeuvre, a continuity characterised
by his expression of the ideas of the dominant classes: colonialism, an-
ti-Semitism, anti-communism – an apologia for Western culture and
the white man.37 Benoît-Jeannin considers Hergé’s work the equivalent
of George Simenon for young, nationalist, conservative and anti-Semitic
audiences.38 Scholars who emphasise the consistency of Hergé’s world-
view note his continued support of the inciviques, friends who collab-
orated with the Nazis; his hatred for the Resistance and the liberation
period; the fact that even in the early 1970s, he considered Leon Degrelle
‘heroic’, and the similarities between some of the Tintin adventures and
Céline’s pamphlets.39

32 Benoît-Jeannin, Le Mythe; Benoît-Jeannin, Les Guerres; Brami, Céline, Hergé.

33 Peeters, ‘A Never Ending Trial’; Assouline, Hergé; Apostolidès, Les Métamorphoses;
Benoît-Jeannin, Le Mythe; Benoît-Jeannin, Les Guerres.
34 Peeters, ‘A Never Ending Trial’. It should be noted that those panels appeared in the
version published in Le Soir, but not in the book version. In the 1954 version of the
album, Hergé changed ‘Blumenstein’ to ‘Bohlwinkel’, in order to make it sound less
Jewish, in a way an acknowledgment of the offence caused by the name.
35 Brami, Céline, Hergé, 51.
36 Assouline, Hergé; Brami, Céline, Hergé; Frey ‘Contagious Colonial Diseases’; McCar-
thy, Tintin and the Secret of Literature; Screech, Masters of the Ninth Art.
37 Benoît-Jeannin, Le Mythe; Benoît-Jeannin, Les Guerres.
38 Benoît-Jeannin, Les Guerres, 22.
39 Brami, Céline, Hergé; Benoit-Jeannin, Les Guerres, 162; Benoît Denis, ‘Aller voir ailleurs si j’y
suis: Hergé, Simenon, Michaux’ [Looking if I am Elsewhere : Hergé, Simenon, Michaux],
Textyles 12, no. 1 (1995): 121–138 (123); Gonzague, ‘Hergé a-t-il, ou non, été facho?’
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 105

A further element that links Hergé’s worldview with conservatism

is his rejection of politics, presented as an activity ranging between the
cruel and the absurd, as argued by McCarthy.40 Tintin is not a cham-
pion of justice or universal peace like the American superheroes;41
Apostolidès elaborates his term ‘superchild’, which he applies to The
Secret of the Unicorn among other works, as the myth of a character who
adopts Catholic values and does not oppose, but rather reconciles with,
his parents’ generation.42
According to the second approach, the different way in which Tintin
expresses the relationships between white males and their relation-
ships towards the European Others also shows the persistence of the
colonial hierarchy in Hergé’s worldview. Tintin, Haddock and Calculus
form a fratria: a relationship between a group of men characterized by
intra-group solidarity and readiness to endanger oneself for the other,
in a way that is reminiscent of the three musketeers’ motto: ‘all for one
and one for all’.43 The relationship between European white male equals
is one of solidarity and mutual care.44 The relationship to the Other –
especially the colonial Other – remains paternalistic.
However, this argument underplays the extent to which Hergé’s
approach to colonialism is contradictory. The ways in which Tintin
represents and embraces colonialism change throughout the different
albums, from the blatant racism of Tintin in the Congo to the more nu-
anced approach in The Blue Lotus or Prisoners of the Sun (1949, 1962).
In albums such as The Blue Lotus or The Broken Ear (1937, 1975),
Tintin denounces the brutal imperialism of the Americans and Japa-
nese. Robert Jouanny argues that in The Broken Ear, Tintin is an ‘eth-
nologue non-impérialiste’ [non-imperialist ethnologist], in contrast to
Ridgewell who is a prototype of traditional colonialism.45 Tintin, still
embedded in the colonialist worldview, believes in the possibility of an

40 McCarthy, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, 54.

41 Sophie Cheron, ‘Le Trio hergéen: Un tournant dans Les Aventures de Tintin’ [The
Hergéan Trio : A Turning in Tintin’s Adventures], Studia Romanica Posnaeniensia 39,
no. 1 (2012): 89–98.
42 Apostolidès, ‘Hergé and the Myth’, 46.
43 Jean-Marie Apostolidès, ‘Dans le ventre de La Licorne: L’Organisation du monde de
Tintin’, [The Secret of the Unicorn : The Organization of Tintin’s World] in L’Archipel
Tintin [Tintin’s Archipelago], ed. Albert Algoud and Jean-Marie Apostolidès (Brussels:
Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2012), 51–94.
44 Peeters, Hergé, Son of Tintin.
45 Jouanny, ‘Tintin et L’Amérique latine’, 94.
106 D ani F ilc

ethical colonization represented by European Catholicism, as explained

by Philippe Delisle in his analysis of Tintin in the Congo.46
In several of his adventures, Tintin sides with the natives against
the Westerners. In The Blue Lotus, he defends a Chinese man from the
American Gibbons’ attack. In Prisoners of the Sun, he saves Zorrino, the
native boy. Moreover, in The Blue Lotus, The Broken Ear, The Seven Crys-
tal Balls (1948, 1962) and Prisoners of the Sun, Hergé explicitly condemns
the Europeans’ treatment of indigenous peoples. However, in all his
adventures there is a clear hierarchy between Tintin and his European
friends, and the colonial subjects. In Prisoners of the Sun, Zorrino sides
with Tintin and becomes his friend, but Tintin is the powerful saviour,
repeatedly risking himself in order to save the boy. European superior-
ity and the natives’ naiveté are present in all the books dealing with the
colonial world. The virtue of Tintin and his friends is grounded in their
intellectual and moral superiority over the indigenous people. In Land
of Black Gold (1950, 1972), Tintin’s demand that the sheikh guarantee
the villain Müller a fair trial and not a summary execution suggests
that the European judiciary system is based on due process, while jus-
tice among the colonized is based on vengeance. In The Broken Ear, the
people applaud those who gain power, opportunistically switching alle-
giances from Tapioca to Alcazar and back. In Prisoners of the Sun, Euro-
pean knowledge is opposed to native ignorance. As Haddock exclaims
in his inimitable way: ‘No sé. No sé. They’re the only words they know,
the stubborn South American centipedes!’ (18). Tintin saves his friends
and himself by fooling the Incas through his superior knowledge of
astronomy. The Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934, 1971) includes an Arab who
has eaten soap, since he does not know the difference, as pointed out
by Tintin, between a cake and a cake of soap. Ziad Bentahar and Paul
Montfort show Hergé’s Orientalism, for example in The Land of Black
Gold, where the Arab ruler is depicted as irresponsible, basing impor-
tant decisions on futilities.47 In The Red Sea Sharks, the envoys of the
Emir Ben Kalish Ezab prove the ‘primitiveness’ of the latter by building
a tent and cooking in one of the rooms in Marlinspike; and while the

46 Phillipe Delisle, ‘Le Reporter, le missionnaire et “l’homme-léopard”: Réflexions sur

les stéréotypes coloniaux dans l'œuvre d’Hergé’ [The Reporter, the Missionary and the
Leopard-man : Reflections on Colonial Stereotypes in Hergé’s Work] , Outre-mers 96,
no. 362–363 (2009): 267–281 (270–274).
47 Ziad Bentahar, ‘Tintin in the Arab World and Arabic in the World of Tintin’, Alterna-
tive Francophone 1, no. 5 (2012): 41–54; Paul Mountfort, ‘Yellow Skin, Black Hair …
Careful, Tintin: Hergé and Orientalism’, Australasian Journal of Popular Culture 1, no.
1 (2012): 33–49.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 107

album has a clear anti-slavery message, this message is based on a hi-

erarchy in which the ‘good white men’ save the ‘poor black men’. Even
in The Blue Lotus and Tintin in Tibet (1960, 1962), where Hergé’s sensi-
tivity to the Other is at his best, Tintin is unable to leave the Orientalist
gaze behind; and in parallel to the friendship that develops between
Tintin and Chang, the colonial hierarchy is maintained in Tintin and
Haddock’s relationship with Tharkey, their guide.
Hergé did acknowledge colonial looting and exploitation. For exam-
ple, Screech points out that Tintin in America showed sensitivity towards
the suffering that white America inflicted upon Native Americans.48 In
The Seven Crystal Balls, a passenger on a train asks Tintin: ‘What’d
we say if the Egyptians or the Peruvians came over here and started
digging up our Kings?’ (1). However, in The Broken Ear, he does not
retrieve the fetish for its owners, the Arubayas, but brings it back to the
museum in Brussels. Furthermore, the fratria was founded upon the
wealth resulting from colonial plundering. The albums The Secret of the
Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure tell the tale of a colonial adventure,
as McKinney points out.49 This is the story of how Captain Haddock dis-
covers that one of his ancestors, Captain Hadocque, commanded a ship
that navigated from Santo Domingo to Europe, with a cargo mainly
of rum. Hadocque’s ship sank close to an island where the treasure of
the pirate Rackham the Red was buried. The story ends with the three
friends finding the treasure in Marlinspike palace (the palace that for-
merly belonged to Hadocque), which Calculus – as noted above – gave
to Haddock as a gift. In fact, both the treasure and the palace originate
in the exploitation of Latin American wealth by European colonisers.
As noted, Hadocque navigated between Europe and Santo Domingo, a
French colony that was central to the slave trade. Whether Hadocque’s
cargo only contained rum produced by slave labour in the colonies or
also carried slaves, his wealth was a product of a slave-based colonial
economy.50 Rackham’s treasure was stolen by the pirates who attacked
Spanish ships, which carried gold and silver extracted by indige­nous
slaves in the mines. Though aware of the colonial theft of works of art
from the colonies, Hergé remains ignorant of the fact that the whole
modern European economy – unconsciously symbolised by the estab-
lishment of the fratria – is based on colonial plundering. In Tintin,
Marlinspike palace appears to be the product of Calculus’s technological

48 Screech, Masters of the Ninth Art, 21.

49 McKinney, The Colonial Heritage, 197.
50 Ibid., 196–198.
108 D ani F ilc

and scientific skills (he buys the palace with the money he earned from
the sale of a submarine he designed), while obscuring its past origins
in the colonial economy.

Pratt and Corto Maltese

Hugo Pratt’s life was connected to the history of European colonialism
almost from its very beginning. His personal biography is in many
ways the opposite of Hergé’s. Hergé was a product of the Belgian Catho-
lic petite bourgeoisie and received a conservative monocultural educa-
tion. Since he considered Belgium the only place he could live, Hergé
returned from France to Belgium during the Second World War and
decided not to immigrate to Argentina after the war, even though he
risked a trial for collaboration. Pratt’s personal life, on the other hand,
was multicultural and multinational. Born in Ravenna, Pratt was of
mixed French, Italian and Jewish descent. At the age of nine he moved
to Ethiopia, then an Italian colony, since his father worked for the colo-
nial government. When the British occupied Ethiopia in 1942, Pratt and
his mother were jailed and sent back to Italy. He began to draw comics
after the war, and in 1949, moved to Buenos Aires. There he collabo-
rated with the writer Héctor Oesterheld, creating the comics Sergeant
Kirk, Ernie Pike and Ticonderoga. Back in Italy in 1967, he created what
is arguably the first European graphic novel, The Ballad of the Salt Sea,
where Corto made his first appearance. Corto Maltese sympathises with
anti-colonialist and revolutionary movements, and his adventures ap-
peared in Pif Gadget, a magazine for children and teenagers published
by the French Communist Party, and in Italy in Linus, aligned with the
Italian Communist Party.51
Corto Maltese was in many ways Pratt’s alter ego. While Tintin lacks
any personal biography, Corto has a detailed one. Born in 1887 in La
Valetta, Corto was the son of a Roma woman from Seville and a Welsh
sailor. He grew up in Gibraltar and Córdoba in Spain and went to a
Jewish school. When he was seventeen, Corto joined a ship as an ap-
prentice. Like Tintin, Corto is a citizen of the world; he travels the globe,
but, unlike Tintin, he has no homeland to which to return. Also, unlike

51 Richard Médioni, Pif Gadget: La Veritable Histoire des origines à 1973 [Pif Gadget :
The True History of its Origins in 11973] (Pargny-la-Dhuys: Vaillant Collector, 2003);
Simone Castaldi, Drawn and Dangerous: Italian Comics of the 1970s and 1980s (Jackson:
University Press of Mississippi, 2011); Simone Castaldi, ‘A Brief History of Comics in
Italy and Spain’, in The Routledge Companion to Comics, ed. Frank Bramlet, Roy Cook
and Aaron Meskin (London: Routledge, 2016), 79–87.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 109

Tintin, he travels the real world and visits real countries and cities, not
imaginary ones like San Teodoro or Syldavia. In 1905, he participates in
the war between Russia and Japan. In the years that follow, he travels
to Argentina and sails between Latin America, Europe and Polynesia,
where, in 1913, the adventures recounted in The Ballad take place. He
returns to Europe in 1917–1918, where he gets caught up in the war.
When the war ends, Corto travels to Africa, Siberia, China and Turkey.
In 1923, he goes back to Argentina and in 1924 – in the last book – he
travels to Switzerland. Though never written, there are two different
versions of Corto’s later years. According to the first one, he went back
to Polynesia where he spent his last years with a dear friend.52 Accord-
ing to the second version, told in The Scorpions of the Desert (1969–1973,
2015; 108) by Kosh – Corto’s African friend – Corto was killed as a
member of the International Brigades in the Spanish civil war.
Corto, the ultimate adventurer, symbolises the beginning of the
decline of the adventure genre. For Pratt, in Europe after the Second
World War, there is no more room for adventurers, and he explained
that Corto’s disappearance was a consequence of the changes the world
faced. As he said in an interview: ‘Corto Maltese s’en ira parce que dans
un monde où tout est électronique; où tout est calculé et électronique,
il n’y a pas de place pour un type comme Corto’ [Corto will leave, since
in a world where everything is electronic, in a world where everything
is calculated and everything industrialized, there is no more place for
the likes of Corto Maltese].53

Tintin and Corto

There are a few similarities between Hergé and Pratt. Both of them
thoroughly studied the scenarios of their stories and were attentive to
small details.54 Both were influenced by Milton Caniff.55 In terms of
the content, Hergé and Pratt were both ambivalent towards modernity.
Tintin feels comfortable with technology and science, which represent

52 See Corto Maltese, ‘Mi Historia’ [My History] , https://cortomaltese.com/es/mi-historia/

(accessed 5 December 2019).
53 Dominique Petitfaux, De l’autre côté de Corto [Corto’s Other Way] (Brussels: Casterman
2012), 30.
54 Barbara Uhlig, ‘The Dissolution of the Pictorial Content in Hugo Pratt’s Corto
Maltese and Lorenzo Mattotti’s Fires’, Comics Forum (2013), https://comicsforum.
org/2013/08/30/the-dissolution-of-the-pictorial-content-in-hugo-pratts-corto-maltese-
and-lorenzo-mattottis-fires-by-barbara-uhlig/ (accessed 5 December 2019).
55 Petifaux, ‘De l’autre’, 25.
110 D ani F ilc

the advantages of European culture over the colonial world.56 However,

his ideological substrate is that of conservative anti-Enlightenment Ca-
tholicism. As Catholic writer Daniel Tillinac states, Tintin is a Catholic
hero, fighting the enemies of conservative social-Catholicism: com-
munism and capitalism.57 Corto, for his part, supports social revolu-
tions, anti-imperialism and national liberation movements; but has an
anti-modern approach that embraces magic and mysticism, as seen, for
example, in Under the Sign of Capricorn, The Celts (1972, 2009) and Mū
(1988–1991, 1992).
The differences between the two, however, are greater than the simi-
larities. Pratt’s characters are much more complex than Hergé’s. While
there are some secondary characters whose motives are not quite so
clear-cut, such as Wolff in Destination Moon (1953, 1959) and Explorers
on the Moon (1954, 1959), Tintin’s adventures present mostly a dichoto-
mous moral worldview. Corto is more morally ambiguous, and there is
not always a clear moral distinction between the confronted sides, nor
characters marked ‘good’ or ‘bad’ guys.
Secondly, while Corto does not feel comfortable with the post-war
world, he is still a modern hero. In Tintin, time is circular, the end of
the story is a return to the beginning (this is, for example, very clear
in Tintin and the Picaros), whereas the flow of time in Corto Maltese’s
books is linear. Progress – if not necessary – is possible. While Tintin
is thrown into a new adventure by chance as a result of a casual en-
counter or situation he does not control, Corto is always in charge of
his own life – his adventures begin with a conscious decision. He is in
such complete mastery over his destiny, that when, as a child, a fortune
teller discovered that he lacked a lifeline on his palm, he took a knife
and engraved himself one of his own choosing.
Corto always sides with the underdog, the oppressed. He condemns
the trafficking of women in Tango (1985–1986, 2018), supports indige-
nous tribes in Under the Sign of Capricorn and anti-imperialist strug-
gles in Latin America and Africa in Beyond the Windy Isles (1970–1971,
2010) and The Ethiopian. Corto sides with Republican freedom fighters
in Ireland and the Balkans (Concerto in O Minor for Harps and Nitro-

56 Pierre Sterckx, Tintin et les médias [Tintin and the Media] (Paris: La Bibliothèque
d’Alice, 1997); René Provost, ‘Magic and Modernity in Tintin au Congo (1930) and the
Sierra Leone Special Court’, Law Text Culture 16, no. 1 (2012): 183–216.
57 Kees De Groot, ‘Tintin as a Catholic Comic: How Catholic Values Went Underground’,
Implicit Religion 19, no. 3 (2016), https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/IR/
article/view/31123 (accessed 16 February 2020); Denis Tillinac, ‘A Catholic Hero’,
L’Osservatore Romano (7 November 2011).
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 111

glycerine, Under the Flag of Gold). He is an adventurer of revolutionary

struggles. In Under the Flag of Gold, he explicitly states that he does not
understand the World War: ‘I can understand revolutionary wars […]
but not this war’ (107). Kosh, his African friend, tells British soldiers in
another of Pratt’s series, The Scorpions of the Desert, that the difference
between rebellion and revolution is that every rebellion has its own
flag, but revolution has a single and common flag. When the soldiers
ask him who taught him this, Kosh answers, ‘Hope,’ and immediately
adds, ‘I have comrades to the struggle that spoke like that, especially
one, Corto Maltese’ (109).58 Though a supporter of liberation struggles,
Corto remains an individualist who despises institutions. His behav-
iour is so because – like Don Quixote – he is committed to a personal
conception of honour.
There are also similarities and differences between the two when
it comes to gender. The adventure genre as it developed in the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries was mainly masculine. It is the
man who seeks adventure, and this is clear in both Hergé’s work (Tintin,
­Haddock, Calculus) and Pratt’s (Corto, Raspoutin, Steiner). Both comics
are played out by and seen through the eyes of men. However, while
there are almost no women in Tintin’s world, as scholars such as Cyrille
Mozgovine and Apostolidès note,59 they play a significant role in Corto’s.
The social unit that forms the basis of Tintin is the abovementioned
fratria.60 The only significant exception is that of Bianca Castafiore, and
the development of her character demonstrates the evolution of Hergé’s
approach to gender. In her first appearances, she is depicted as pompous
and ridiculous: an opera singer who sings a single line, a line that Mar-
guerite sings in Gounod’s Faust, ‘I laugh when I see myself so beauti­ful
in this mirror’. At first, the only significant woman in Tintin is one who
is focused only on her appearance. Moreover, ­Castafiore – already in The
Calculus Affair (1956, 1960) but most clearly in The Castafiore Emerald,
as analysed by Peeters and Nicolas Rouvière – represents for Haddock
castration anxiety and woman as the ultimate threat to masculinity.61

58 Quoted by Gianni Brunoro, Corto como un romanzo: Illazioni su Corto Maltese, ultimo
eroe romantico [Corto as a Novel: Allegations on Corto Maltese, the Last Romanit Hero]
(Roma: Edizioni Dedalo, 1984), 36.
59 Cyrille Mozgovine, ‘Préface’ [Preface], in Algoud and Apostolidès, eds., L’Archipel,
9–13; Benoît Peeters, Tintin and the World of Hergé.
60 Apostolidès, ‘Dans le ventre’.
61 Benoît Peeters, Les Bijoux ravis: Une lecture moderne de Tintin [The Delighted Jewels :
A Modern Lecture of Tintin] (Brussels: MagicStrip, 1984); Nicolas Rouvière, ‘Trois fi-
gures antimusicales de la BD franco-belge: la Castafiore, Gaston Lagaffe et Assurance­
tourix’, Recherches et Travaux 78, no. 1 (2011): 195–212.
112 D ani F ilc

However, in Tintin and the Picaros, Bianca Castafiore becomes part of

the community of solidarity, a community that, by incorporating her,
ceases to be a fratria. Tintin and his friends are ready to endanger them-
selves in order to rescue her from prison. The previously male-only
fratria opens its doors to a female member.
Women are much more central in Pratt’s work. Beginning with
Pandora Groovesnore in The Ballad of the Salt Sea, through Morgana
Dias, Bouche Dorée and up to Venexiana Stevenson, Corto collaborates
with some of them, and fights others, all of them being strong and
in­dependent characters. In Concerto in O Minor for Harps and Nitro-
glycerine, Banshee O’Dannan rejects Corto’s invitation to leave with
him, since she is part of the Irish national struggle. Morgana Dias
Dos Santos and Bouche Dorée are the leaders of Latin America’s anti-­
imperialist struggle.
However, Pratt does not escape from the male tradition of consid-
ering women as either submissive Eve or demonic Lilith. Against her
wishes, Pandora follows the first path, drowning in the boredom of
the Groovesnore mansion.62 Venexiana Stevenson, or Lady Rowena, are
Lilith: treacherous, diabolic and independent. It seems that Pratt saw
women mostly as the latter, when he makes one of his characters in
Under the Pirate Flag (1970; 2010) say ‘women would be wonderful if we
could fall into their arms, instead of their hands’ (47).
Colonialism is as central for Pratt as for Hergé. As Ivan Pintor puts it:
‘Pratt took inspiration from the link between adventure and geography
that characterized imperialist expansion in the nineteenth century’.63
However, Pratt is much more critical of colonialism than Hergé. In
Sergeant Kirk, he reinterprets the Western genre, adopting the Native
Americans’ perspective. In Corto, he adopts the point of view of those
defeated by colonialism but avoids Manichean or simplistic approaches.
Pratt is aware that colonial relations are complex. Bouche Dorée, Corto’s
friend, a Brazilian leader, descendant of African slaves brought to South
America and supporter of several liberation struggles on her continent,
tactically allies herself with the British imperialist power against the
Germans. In Concerto in O Minor for Harps and Nitroglycerine – based
on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges – an Irish revolutionary works
as a police officer for the British and dies considered a traitor by his

62 Hugo Pratt and Michel Pierre, Les Femmes de Corto Maltese [Corto Maltese’s Women]
(Paris: Casterman 1994), 11.
63 Ivan Pintor, ‘The Ballad of Corto Maltese: An Approach to the Character’, Formats
Revista de Comunicacio Audiovisual 2 (1999), https://www.raco.cat/index.php/Formats/
article/view/255450 (accessed 5 December 2019).
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 113

comrades. Revolutions need heroes, so the story’s main character dies

as a traitor to preserve the public image of a national hero, who was the
real traitor.

Tintin and Corto in Africa

The differences vis-à-vis the colonial experience between Tintin, the
first pan-European comics adventurer, and Corto, arguably the last one,
are made clear by comparing Hergé’s and Pratt’s approach to Africa
and Latin America. Delisle names three reasons that made Wallez ask
Hergé to send Tintin to the Congo: to present the colonies to young
Belgian children; to make clear the whites’ superiority over the natives;
and to make clear the Europeans’ moral superiority over the Americans
(the main villain in the story is an American mafia member).64 In this
album, Wallez, Hergé and Tintin expressed the combination of pater-
nalism and extreme exploitation represented by King Leopold II.65
Hergé’s view of Africa is almost ridiculously stereotypical, reflecting
Belgium’s perceptions of the colonies,66 and reproducing all the colo-
nial clichés through which Europeans viewed Africans.67 Tintin does
not communicate with the African characters, he only gives orders, as
argued by Marie-Rose Abomo-Maurin.68 The Africans are depicted as
lazy and indolent. When a train stops because of a fallen tree, they do
not want to collaborate to free the track until Snowy leads by example
and Tintin tells them what to do. Africans are depicted as primitive,
they are ignorant of technology, believe in witch doctors (a witch doctor
is the story’s second villain), and they are like grown-up children who
must accept the white men’s superiority. The Africans call Tintin ‘Boula
Matari’ [the good and strong white man] (62), which is reminiscent of
Sir Henry Stanley’s nickname, Boula Matadi.69
Moreover, the Africans are not real men, but cowards. On their way
to the Congo, Snowy falls from the ship. While attempting to save him,
Tintin is shocked by an eel. While he is still numbed, an African sailor

64 Delisle. ‘Le Reporter’, 271.

65 Dunnett, ‘Identity and Geopolitics’.
66 Delisle, ‘Le Reporter’, 270–274.
67 Philippe Met, ‘Of Men and Animals: Hergé’s Tintin au Congo, a Study of Primitivism’,
The Romanic Review 87, no. 1 (1996): 131–146; Peeters, Tintin and the World of Hergé;
Screech, Masters of the Ninth Art.
68 Marie-Rose Abomo-Maurin, ‘Tintin au Congo ou la stratégie d’une démarche coloniale’
[Tintin in Congo or the Strategy of Colonial Demarche] , in Soncini Fratta, Tintin,
Hergé et la Belgité, 57–73.
69 Ibid., 62.
114 D ani F ilc

throws Snowy a life jacket, but he is so clumsy that it hits Snowy on

the head. When Tintin recuperates, the sailor tells him that Snowy has
drowned. Tintin angrily asks, ‘You did nothing to save him? Now look
what a real man does’, and jumps into the water and rescues his dog.70
Tintin in the Congo manifestly reproduces the ethnic and cultural
colonial hierarchy. Since white men bring modernity and good will (as
exemplified by the mission, where, among other services, African chil-
dren are taught that Belgium is their country), rebellion is absurd.71
Thus, the panther men who oppose the white man’s presence in Africa
are represented as primitives that harm the true interests of their
people.
Pierre Halen notes that Africans are the ultimate Other, as symbol-
ised by the masks that obscure their real faces.72 In the album’s last
panel, a villager kneels before two totems containing the images of
Tintin and Snowy, symbolizing the Africans’ submission to the white
European.
While Tintin travels to Africa as a journalist for the Petit Vingtième,
as a representative of the metropolis, Corto travels to Africa by himself,
for the sake of adventure. Corto is driven by a combination of personal
gain and the will to support anti-colonial rebellion, and all the stories
in The Ethiopian deal with liberation struggles in the Horn of Africa.
Pratt and Corto not only support the anti-colonial struggle, they also
reject the colonial racial hierarchy. The two main African characters –
El Oxford and Kosh – are Corto’s friends and equals.
However, Pratt is aware that the colonial situation is complex. El
Oxford, who received his nickname because he studied at Oxford Uni-
versity, is an anti-colonialist fighter who engages Corto’s help to free an
African prince from an English jail. He sees the prince as the only one
who can head the liberation struggle since, ‘unfortunately our p ­ eoples
are still strongly influenced by the old traditions […] the day is still
ahead of a popular revolution’ (35). The anti-colonial struggle is contra-
dictory and complex, and in Pratt’s eyes, Africans are not yet modern,

70 Hergé, Tintin in the Congo. The quotation is taken from earlier versions of Tintin au
Congo. In the French original versions, it is in the 1931 edition: ‘vous allez voir com-
ment on fait lorsqu’on est un homme!’ However, by the time of the 1946 edition, it
has been removed, to be replaced by ‘il faut le sauver, à tout prix’ [we must save him
whatever the cost].
71 This was eliminated in the 1946 version and replaced by a math class.
72 Pierre Halen, ‘Tintin, paradigme du héros colonial belge?’ [Tintin, Paradigm of the
Belgian Colonial Hero ?] in Soncini Fratta, Tintin, Hergé et la Belgité, 39–56.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 115

they cannot lead a popular revolution – the modern form of political

change – because of the strength of old traditions.
The colonial officers and soldiers are also complex. For instance,
an English lieutenant defies Corto’s stereotypes by telling him that
­Rimbaud (and not Kipling) is his favourite poet. Confronting an Afri­
can soldier serving in the British army, Corto asks him, ‘How come
that you, who are so intelligent, choose the British against your own
people?’ The soldier answers, ‘You make mistakes, and then is too late.
But it doesn’t matter which side you are, if you are poor you are on
your own’ (68).
However, the colonialist gaze is still present in Pratt’s work. For
Corto, Africa represents the absolute Other, and Africans have practices
that Corto considers barbaric, such as burning alive a British soldier,
whom Corto shoots to save him from a terrible death (90). In a way that
recalls Tintin in the Congo, we also learn about the panther men in The
Ethiopian, where Corto reflects: ‘They may have good reasons to do
what they do [attack the British in Nigeria], but I do not know anything
about that. I only know that Africa is a mysterious continent’ (125).
Though he is much more critical of colonialism than Hergé, Africa
remains a riddle for Pratt, too: the Other that cannot be truly known or
understood. Pratt, however, presents us with a self-critical twist, when
he makes a Leopard man say: ‘White people never understood Africa.
They brought their laws without understanding that we have laws of
our own, the authentic law’ (138).

Tintin and Corto in Latin America

The differences between Hergé and Pratt vis-à-vis colonialism and
the non-European are even more marked in their approach to Latin
­America. Hergé dealt with Latin America over a wide time span. Three
of the Tintin books, with publication dates ranging from 1937 to 1976,
take place in Latin America: The Broken Ear, Prisoners of the Sun, and
Tintin and the Picaros. Corto, too, visits Latin America in three of his
books: Under the Sign of Capricorn, Beyond the Windy Islands and Tango.
Tintin and the Picaros is the last album published in Hergé’s lifetime
and, as Charles Forceville argues, in many ways sums up the entire
saga.73 While forty-five years have passed since Tintin’s visit to Congo
and twenty-seven since his last visit to Latin America, we still see the

73 Charles Forceville, ‘Pictorial Runes in Tintin and the Picaros’, Journal of Pragmatics 43,
no. 3 (2011): 875–890 (876).
116 D ani F ilc

colonial ethnic hierarchy in Tintin and the Picaros, sustained by the

Europeans’ superior knowledge. In his analysis of Prisioners of the Sun,
Jouanny shows that Tintin’s knowledge is objective and well grounded,
while the Latin Americans’ knowledge is illusional, confusing reality
with fantasy.74 Since Latin Americans lack understanding, it is easy to
deceive them: they go to war because a European villain fools them into
believing that a totem speaks.
Hergé, as emphasised by James Scorer, is aware that European colo-
nialism exploited Latin America. The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners
of the Sun tell the story of colonial plundering and The Broken Ear shows
how a European incites a war to sell weapons and obtain oil.75 However,
while there are white villains, the true expressions of European culture
– Tintin and his friends – are innocent and have only good intentions.
They are smart and merciful, and even protect the indigenous people.
Latin America, on the other hand, notes Jouanny, is trapped in its ig-
norance and outdated rituals (the Incas in Prisoners of the Sun live un-
derground in order to preserve what for Europeans is a primitive way
of life).76 As in Africa, there is no possible dialogue between Tintin and
the Latin American natives.
In Tintin and the Picaros, Tintin flies to the imaginary state of San
Teodoro to help free the opera singer Bianca Castafiore, jailed by the
dictator, General Tapioca. Tapioca has become ruler after deposing
General Alcazar, Tintin’s old acquaintance. When they fly over the
country upon their arrival, San Teodoro appears as an enormous shanty
town, patrolled by Tapioca’s troops. Tintin and his friends join General
Alcazar, who leads a revolutionary guerrilla group (the Picaros), a group
of drunkards. Remaining sober due to a drug invented by Calculus,
Alcazar and his men manage to overcome Tapioca and free Castafiore.
The last panel shows the plane that brings Tintin and his friends back
to Marlinspike as it flies over San Teodoro – still a huge shanty town,
only with a different ruler.
However, Hergé’s characters do change forty years after The Broken
Ear. Tintin is no longer eager to travel. He wants to remain in Marlin-
spike and undertakes the new adventure only because Haddock and
Calculus insist. Haddock is not able to drink alcohol, and Calculus is

74 Jouanny, ‘Tintin et L’Amérique latine’, 94–96.

75 James Scorer, ‘Imitating Incas and Becoming Llama: Tintin in Latin America – or the
Latin American in Tintin?’, International Journal of Cultural Studies 11, no. 2 (2008):
139–156.
76 Jouanny, ‘Tintin et L’Amérique latine’, 94–96, 99–100.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 117

much more connected to the real world.77 Still, Hergé’s basic worldview
and his view of Latin America remain the same. Latin Americans are
primitive, ridiculous and cannot be trusted (the visa Tintin and his
friends receive is a trap; Pablo, who helped Tintin in The Broken Ear, be-
trays them); their courts of justice are a farce as the fake trials of Bianca
Castafiore and Thomson and Thompson show; and life is not sacred,
for example when Tintin pressures Alcazar to not execute Tapioca, the
former says: ‘A revolution without executions? […] Without reprisals?
[...] ¡Caramba! […] It’s unthinkable!’ (44). The revolutionary guerrillas
are little more than stupid drunkards who replace one general with
another, while nothing really changes and the country remains a huge
shanty town. The revolutionaries disguise themselves as participants in
a carnival parade, suggesting that the revolution is in fact a ridiculous
carnival. There is no ideological reason for Alcazar’s bid for power: he
does so because he promised his wife that she would live in the presi­
dential house. As Michel Serres points out, a general aided by his hit
men replaced another general supported by hit men.78 Latin American
politics are ridiculous and senseless. In Latin America, the subjects are
not the agents of history, evereything occurs by happenstance, and, as
Annick Pellegrin noted in her analysis of Alcazar’s revolution in Tintin
and the Picaros, politics is a carnival.79
Hergé mentions that in writing Tintin and the Picaros, he was in-
spired by Régis Debray, who fought in Bolivia with Ernesto ‘Che’
Guevara, and by the Uruguayan urban guerrilla Tupamaros.80 Though
Harry Thompson claims that this is Hergé’s most political work, the
book in fact expresses Hergé’s deep contempt for politics, which he
considers ridiculous and absurd.81 Politics do not make things better in
Latin America: poverty is the destiny of this sub-continent.
In Tintin and the Picaros, Hergé shows political involvement as
absurd, and friendship as the sole true value. When Tintin tells Haddock
that they will help Alcazar in making his men sober, the latter says, ‘We
don’t give a tinker’s cuss for his revolution, anyway’ and Tintin answers,
‘Yes captain, we certainly do […] because our friends the Thompsons,

77 Ibid., 98; Scorer, ‘Imitating Incas’, 152–154.

78 Michel Serres, ‘Tintin ou le picaresque aujourd’hui’ [Tintin or Today’s Picaresque],
Critique 358 (1977): 197–207.
79 Rod Cook, ‘Corroding the Canon in Tintin and the Naturalist Novel’, European Comic
Art 3, no. 2 (2010): 145–167; Annick Pellegrin, ‘Politics as a Carnival in Hergé’s Tintin
et les Picaros’, European Comic Art 3, no. 2 (2010): 168–188.
80 Farr, Tintin: The Complete Companion, 190.
81 Thompson, Tintin, 196.
118 D ani F ilc

Signora Castafiore, Irma and Mr. Wagner are in danger. And the only
way to save them is for Alcazar to defeat Tapioca’ (46). For Hergé, Latin
American society is a dehistoricized carnival; a sub-­continent whose
problems cannot be solved. Therefore, the only logical ending is that
each would live in his own place: the Europeans in Marlin­spike, and
the Latin Americans in their carnavalesque sub-continent, deprived of
history, equally poor and undemocratic in the beginning of the story
as at its end. Tintin and his friends return to the walled Marlinspike,
presaging the building of ‘fortress Europe’.
In Hergé’s final book we still find central themes from the conserv-
ative worldview: the combination of anti-socialism and anti-capitalism;
an anti-modern ecologism reminiscent of that of radical right European
ecologist movements such as the Hungarian Green Party, the True
Finns or the French GRECE; the idea of essential ethno-cultural dif-
ferences between Europeans and Latin Americans; Europe as a refuge
from non-Europeans; anti-politics; and the circular, non-linear percep-
tion of time.
Pratt’s view of Latin America is completely different. In the first two
stories from Under the Sign of Capricorn, Corto helps Tristan Bantham
– an English youth – find his half-sister, Morgana. Morgana, born in
Brazil, is the daughter of Tristan’s father. Morgana is born to an English
father and Brazilian mother of African descent, who is, like Corto and
Pratt himself, an example of the métissage so feared by Hergé. As shown
by Hugo Frey in a paper on The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoner of the
Sun, Hergé shared with the French and Belgian extreme right the fear
of retro-colonisation by the colonial subjects, métissage being a central
element of such colonisation à rebours.82
The third story, Samba for Tiro Fixo (1970, 2015), is a story of canga­
ceiros, armed groups of peasants who fought against the takeover of
their lands by oligarch Latifundists. Pratt said in an interview that in
creating this story, he was inspired by the writings of Carlos Marighella,
the Brazilian revolutionary and author of the Minimanual for the Urban
Guerrilla, and For the Liberation of Brazil.83
Bouche Dorée, Corto’s friend, asks him to take money and arms to
a group of cangaceiros fighting against a colonel who has dispossessed
dozens of peasants from their lands. On his way to the canga­ceiros,
Corto is arrested by one of the colonel’s officers and learns that Sebas-
82 Hugo Frey, ‘Contagious Colonial Diseases in Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin’, Modern
and Contemporary France 12, no. 2 (2004): 177–188 (182).
83 Carlos Marighella, Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla (Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Tribe,
1970); For the Liberation of Brazil (London: Penguin Books, 1971).
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 119

tiao, the cangaceiros’ leader, has been murdered. Tiro Fixo, a former
peasant and now a thief, frees Corto and with his help becomes Se-
bastiao’s successor. The cangaceiros attack the colonel’s mansion, and
though Tiro Fixo kills the colonels, he is killed by the latter’s men.
Like Hergé, Pratt is critical of traditional politics. Steiner, Corto’s
friend during his journeys in Latin America, asks Corto: ‘Do you think
that the colonel could have become so powerful without the govern-
ment’s support?’ (79).84 But while traditional politics may be corrupt,
change is possible, and not all political struggles are absurd. The can-
gaceiros’ struggle against the colonel symbolises the emancipatory po-
tential of politics. After Tiro Fixo’s death, Corto says: ‘The prize was too
big, it will not be easy to find a leader like him. But there will always
be a new colonel who will exploit these people’ (93).85 Apparently Corto
too adopts a circular view of history, where emancipation is impossible,
since a new colonel will always appear. But Pratt does not side with
Corto. One of the cangaceiros, a teenager, answers Corto: ‘Gringo, for
every colonel like that, one hundred Tiro Fixos will emerge. We have
learned our lesson and […] we will not forget’ (93).86 Corto gives Tiro
Fixo’s hat to the teenager, since the boy will become a legendary leader
of the cangaceiros: Capitan Corisco, Cristino Gomes da Silva Cleto. In
contrast to Corto’s pessimistic prophecy, the struggle will go on.
Under the Sign of Capricorn presents a completely different view of
Latin America from that presented in Hergé’s work. Hergé supports the
idea of chacun chez soi: ‘each in his “natural” home’ – a view which is
the only possible answer to what Frey analyses as Hergé’s mixo­phobia,
a view expressed in Tintin’s statement in The Broken Ear that he does
not want to ‘get stuck’ in Latin America (17), and in the relief they all
feel when going back to Europe in Tintin and the Picaros (62).87 Corto
views mixing and métissage as positive and enriching. Bouche Dorée
and Morgana – strong, creative, positive female characters – both have
a mixed European, African and American lineage. Latin Americans are
not inferior to Europeans, and Bouche Dorée is stronger than Corto,
Steiner or Tristan – the Europeans. For Hergé, Europeans are the ones

84 Hugo Pratt, Caribbean Suite (San Diego: EuroComics, 2005), 79. This volume,
translated by Dean Mullaney and Simone Castaldi, corresponds to Sous le signe du
Capri­corne (1971), which originally appeared in black and white, with colour French
versions, then released under the titles Suite caraïbéenne (1990; episodes 1 to 3) and
Sous le drapeau des pirates (1991; episodes 4 to 6).
85 Ibid., 93.
86 Ibid.
87 Frey, ‘Contagious Colonial Diseases’, 83.
120 D ani F ilc

who represent morality. In contrast, Pratt presents Bouche Dorée as

adopting a strong moral stand, and Corto as a cynic who says to her:
‘I do not believe in moral principles. What is right for you may be wrong
for me and vice versa’ (77).88 Corto, oscillating between cynicism and
a very individual sense of honour, has no moral superiority over non-­
Europeans. Europeans are not always the holders of true knowledge.
­Corisco the teenager is the one who can learn from experience, not
Corto. It should be acknowledged, however, that Pratt’s challenge to the
colonial hierarchy is not total, since it is Corto who gives Corisco Tiro
Fixo’s hat, the symbol of leadership. The European is still the one who
appoints the leader.
As in Tintin and the Picaros, the question of the execution of the de-
feated also appears in Samba for Tiro Fixo. In Pratt’s story, Corto is the
European who convinces the Latin American, Tiro Fixo, to spare the
life of the defeated officer, who had previously arrested Corto. However,
despite the apparent similarity, Pratt’s story presents two significant
differences from Hergé’s. Firstly, Corto convinces Tiro Fixo by telling
him to ‘think […] what Sebastiao would have done’ (87).89 He inspires
Tiro Fixo to let the officer live, not in reference to European ethics but
to Latin American practices. The second difference is that while Alcazar
accedes to Tintin’s plea and yet remains corrupt, Tiro Fixo internalizes
Sebastiao’s ways and thus becomes a leader.
Pratt’s conception of time is also significantly different from Hergé’s.
The last panel of this story shows Corto and Steiner sailing from Brazil.
Steiner asks Corto, ‘You truly believe that Corisco will fight the big land
owners?’ Corto answers: ‘You can be sure of it. And after him there
will be another; until there is justice and freedom for all. There is no
turning back’ (94).90 History is not circular; you do not go back. Change
is not mandatory, but it is possible. Thus, the ends of the adventurers’
stories are entirely dissimilar.
Understanding, like Corto, that in a post-colonial world there is no
more room for the European adventurer, Tintin goes back to Europe
and entrenches himself in Marlinspike, far from the chaotic circum-
stances outside Europe. Corto’s two possible endings are strikingly
different from Tintin’s. He either remains in Europe but dies fighting
against fascism, or grows old in Polynesia, far away from Europe, shar-
ing his last days with Tao, his Maori friend.

88 Pratt, Caribbean Suite, 77.

89 Ibid., 87.
90 Ibid., 94.
 Tintin and Corto Maltese 121

Dani Filc, MD, PhD, is a full Professor in the Department of Politics

and Government, Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social
Sciences at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and holds the Michael
Halperin Chair on Global Law and Policy. Among his publications are
the books The Power of Property: Israel in the Globalization Age, edited
with Uri Ram (Van Leer Institute, in Hebrew), Hegemony and Populism
in Israel (Resling, in Hebrew), Circles of Exclusion: The Politics of Health-
Care in Israel (Cornell University Press), The Political Right in Israel
(Routledge) and Comics and Politics (Resling, in Hebrew). He has pub-
lished articles on populism, health policy and political theory.
Email: dfilc@bgu.ac.il