The Imitator II
And the taste for prequels
An Adventure of Tintin, Freelance Reporter for ‘Le Vingtième Siècle’ by Rodier, translated by Chris Owens
The substance of this story can be dispensed with very quickly. It was written years after the Tintin tales were already world famous, drawn — the author claims — from a scenario by Hergé, Tintin’s creator.
We meet Tintin, not yet a boy reporter, boy wonder, and his dog Snowy. They’re yet to be sent on any of their great missions, missions at the behest of the newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle. Tintin’s just standing around, just as many of his later adventures would in time begin, and this time, there’s a bank robbery, a heist, just around the corner.
Tintin and Snowy run in that direction. At this time, Tintin is not famous himself. He can’t just wander into the office of Le Vingtième Siècle and ask to be sent somewhere, anywhere, wherever in the world. He’s unknown, unproven. As Tintin and Snowy race towards the crisis, Tintin even remarks to his dog that the situation has arisen mere feet from him and yet he wouldn’t have known without the uproar. Some reporter I’d make, Tintin says. Perhaps it’s no wonder I’ve not been given my big break.
When they get to the scene of the crime, they’re met by denials and stonewalling. The criminal — known all over for his villainy — says it couldn’t possibly have been him. He’s been collared, sure, but that proves nothing. Why, he’s been away for a long time. He only got in from Italy that very day. He’d been away for quite a few days, and of course, he could supply any number of witnesses prepared and willing — palms sufficiently greased and crossed with silver — to provide him an alibi.
The police appear to have no road left. They have to let the criminal go. But Tintin keeps thinking about the problem and picking away at it. There’s something he needs to do if he wants to get this whole thing sorted out.
And then it happens. The criminal’s alarm clock — let’s assume it’s a bedside one: heavy, old — starts to ring. Tintin’s suspicions become concrete. If the crim’d been away for the past few days, arrived back only after the crime had already been committed, why had his bedside alarm been set? If the alarm clock sat solidly on his bedside table the whole time the crook was away, he could not have set it for the following morning. And if he took it with him — this is already becoming implausible — who sets an alarm while travelling for the following morning? it defies sense. Although a clever lawyer might tear the contention into rags if given half the chance.
But we are to assume from the reaction coming from all and sundry that Tintin’s logic seems airtight enough for his editor at Le Vingtième Siècle, and for the police, and for the prosecutors. All comes off well.
And then Tintin is told by his editor that they have an assignment for him this time — a real one. He (and Snowy, of course) are to go off to the Soviet Union, the land of the Soviets, which was depicted in the first book written by Tintin’s real-life originator, Hergé.
If this were a story by Tintin’s creator, there might have been a neater resolution. The villain would have given himself away in another fashion. And there would have been more peril, a story more tightly plotted, with more comedy and slapstick and falling over. I cannot critique the art style, here. Although it is manifestly not Hergé (the lignes, you see, are not all quite so claire), it’s not that far from his style. Although it’s far enough that there is no doubt. This is very much not a work that could ever be mistaken for the original.
Yves Rodier, the comic’s author and artist, appears from my cursory reading to have form with pastiching Tintin. He cannot keep himself from drawing the character, despite pleas and presumably threats from the estate of Hergé. Legally speaking, no doubt this is right. If you created a character and someone else used it often without permission, you would have to be a Bill Watterson, who doesn’t appear to go after people who use either Calvin or Hobbes for their own purposes, not to mind.
But in another sense, Rodier is only doing what many other people do recreationally, what a portion of the internet is essentially built upon: Rodier is making fan-fiction; he’s theorising like fan theorists do; he’s making up prequels because the modern world is built on prequels and the endless spinning out of IP.
People like prequels; they like hearing about the origins of things. At least to a point. If there is one lesson from contemporary slop media — think of superhero cinematic universes, or the endless products pumped out under the banners of Star Wars or -Trek — it is that people only want prequels to a point. Ten years ago, when the new trilogy Star Wars films were being made and they were being supplemented by additional prequel movies and TV shows, someone made the joke that eventually, an entire Star Wars film would be dedicated to the origin story of this lamp or that piece of scenery on the Millennium Falcon in A New Hope.
After all, how did it get there? Isn’t that an interesting story that so many people would inevitably pay to see?
But it’s not true. Didn’t turn out to be true — as box office numbers indicate. The tide has gone out. Now all we have are fan fiction, fan theories, fan prequels of another kind — the domain of small works like this which tell quite small stories, like the tale of how Tintin first proved his mettle and was hired by Le Vingtième Siècle.