A Colonial Subject in a Newspaper’s Children’s Supplement
Tintin in the Congo is the second volume of The Adventures of Tintin. Hergé, born Georges Remi, worked for the Brussels Catholic newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Its children’s supplement, Le Petit Vingtième, linked entertainment with the dissemination of religious and national ideas.
Hergé had wanted Tintin to visit the United States, but the newspaper’s director, Father Norbert Wallez, required a trip to the Belgian Congo instead. Boisacq places this commission in the context of colonial propaganda. Hergé had not visited the Congo and chiefly imagined Africa through guides and introductory material published in Belgium.
From the Announcement to the 1931 Book
The supplement’s cover of May 29, 1930 announced that Tintin and Snowy would leave for the Congo the following week. Serialization began on June 5. The opening moves from a station farewell to a ship’s cabin: Tintin prepares to board the Thysville in Antwerp, while Snowy creates comedy among luggage, mirrors, mosquito nets and hunting ammunition. The two pages close with a sudden cry that the ship is sinking, leaving suspense for the next installment.
The June 12 cover also connected Tintin’s colonial travel outfit with an advertisement for the Au Bon Marché department store. The serial formed part of the supplement’s publicity and consumer culture as well as its comics. The French national library’s work record gives June 11, 1931 as the final installment and confirms the first collected publication in Brussels that year. The 1931 date thus refers to the book rather than the story’s first appearance.
The Reporter, Snowy and a Sequence of Adventures
The opening installment alternates Tintin’s travel preparations with Snowy’s curiosity. While his owner is on deck, Snowy investigates the luggage, breaks a mirror and comments on mosquito nets, elephant ammunition and hunting. The animal’s monologue combines heroic adventure with comic self-undermining. Speech bubbles carry action, judgment and suspense, extending beyond captions beneath pictures.
The later story revolves around hunting, accidents, pursuit by criminals and encounters with local characters. Tintin uses cars, photographic and projection equipment, and magnets to resolve crises. Missionaries appear as helpers, while a sorcerer and criminals become opponents. The reporter increasingly takes the role of an adventure hero possessing technical knowledge and authority to decide outcomes.
Hierarchy in Character Design and Speech
Colonial assumptions also shape the characters’ speech. Tintin and Snowy use fluent French, while many Black characters speak deliberately broken, grammatically simplified French. Differences between characters become recurring comic material.
Costantini examines this speech within Franco-Belgian comics, identifying an invented imitation rather than an accurate record of an actual Congolese language. Comparing reproductions of the black-and-white and color versions line by line, he finds that some of the sorcerer’s relatively standard French was changed into more stereotyped broken speech in 1946. Updated colors, lines and wording retained a hierarchy constructed through ethnic differences.
References: [5]
What Changed in the 1946 Color Edition
Casterman published the redrawn color edition in 1946. The French national library’s bibliographic record lists Tournai and Paris as publication places and a length of 62 pages. Panels were reorganized, the black-and-white serial was compressed, and characters and scenery were redrawn. Redrawing and editing changed both the visual organization and length of the story.
Some passages explicitly referring to Belgian colonial rule were replaced. An early classroom lesson identifying Belgium as the children’s homeland became an arithmetic lesson. Exaggerated depictions and speech of Black characters remained widespread. Studies of the editions show parallel developments: more sophisticated visual organization and international publication alongside continuing colonial relationships within the story.
Later English Translations and New Reading Frames
English readers encountered changing versions. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner’s translation of the original black-and-white book appeared in 1991, followed by their color edition in 2005. A color digital edition translated by Michael Farr appeared in 2015. These dates correspond to different source versions, translators and publication media.
Terry Bradford’s comparison finds that dialogue, forms of address and prefatory explanations affect interpretation. Short prefaces to the 1991 and 2005 editions give colonial context, and the 2015 digital edition adds background material. Preserving an old text, changing its language and adding explanations each have consequences. The circulation of Tintin in the Congo includes publishers’ repeated efforts to redefine the relationship between readership, entertainment and historical explanation.
References: [6]