The Adventures of Tintin has always been one of my favourite childhood comics. A few of my cousins & I being engrossed in reading and discussing the series is definitely a treasured childhood memory. As pictured above, the main cast of the comic book series is as follows: Captain Haddock, Tintin, Snowy the dog, Professor Cuthbert Calculus and the mumbling police detectives Thomson & Thompson. Pictured & certainly an essential supporting cast of the series includes Nestor, Captain Haddock’s butler, famed opera singer Bianca Castafiore & her maid Irma. Arch-villains are Muller the evil German doctor, and Rastapopolous the criminal mastermind.
Although the series start out with just Tintin on adventures with only Snowy for company, soon he is joined by the Captain, the Professor & the detectives. Incidentally, although they are remarkably alike in appearance and mannerisms, the detectives are not actually twins or even brothers! Something I learnt today. Which explains why they are called Thompson & Thomson (Thompson with a ‘P’ & Thomson without a ‘P’). They are always a hoot and manage to get themselves in trouble a lot.
Professor Calculus is nearly completely deaf & very absent-minded but has a lot of inventions that are widely used within the series and indeed been even the main storyline as well. Captain Haddock is a former Merchant Navy captain whose ancestor left him the beautiful Marlinspike Hall – a setting for some of the adventures. He is short-tempered and loves to drink and often uses cusswords like “billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles”, “ten thousand thundering typhoons”, “troglodytes”, “bashi-bazouk”, “kleptomaniac”, “anacoluthon”, and “pockmark”, but nothing that is actually considered a swear word.
These were often used by me and some other male cousins when verbally attacking my sister and our female cousins. And ofcourse Snowy, a loyal pet & companion who has gotten drunk on a few occasions by drinking spilled whiskey and is always on the lookout for a bone or two.
