Les Aventures de Tintin
Tita Baby, a family friend, gifted my brother his first Tintin book, a 3-in-1 hardbound version. He went on to collect many of the books — the large-format paperbacks. Reading The Adventures of Tintin became a core memory from my childhood.
The series centers on Tintin, a young reporter who goes on dangerous and exciting adventures across continents. His stories are incredibly diverse, like going after criminals, exploring the bottom of the sea, and walking on the moon. He is usually joined by: Snowy (his faithful dog), Captain Haddock (sea captain and a close friend), Thomson and Thompson (incompetent and funny detectives), and Professor Calculus (absent-minded physicist).
Ligne Claire
Hergé, the creator of Tintin, pioneered the "ligne claire" style. It uses strong lines with simple colors and no shading. I forgot where I first read about this, but I had to check the comic strips to see for myself. It never occurred to me that there was no shading used and all of the shadows were illuminated. It made me feel like it was ok even if I wasn't great at incorporating shadows in drawings. 😅
Billions and billions of blue blistering barnacles!
Ten thousand thundering typhoons!
Iconoclast! Captain Haddock
My all-time favorite character is Captain Haddock, a sea captain and one of Tintin's closest friends. He is hot-tempered and drunk most of the time, but he curses in style 🤣
Collecting the Books
I longed for my own set so I got one of the 3-in-1 books years ago. It was the fourth volume from the 2007 edition published by Little, Brown and Company. I got the sixth after some time, but I had to stop there because it was not a priority. By the time I wanted to buy the other volumes, I could no longer find the ones from the same set 😅
Late last year, I began filling up my personal library again. I thought of buying a full set of the Tintin books from another edition. That would be easier but my brain insisted on uniformity 🙂↔️
I found most of the missing volumes on Amazon. My main "problem" was that I had a recent bad experience buying directly overseas. Also, even if all things went well, the set would still not be complete. I checked again in local shops, just in case. Lucky me, FullyBooked still offered custom orders! They would take care of the sourcing for me. Many e-mails were sent back and forth for checking stocks with suppliers, confirmation, etc. They said the orders would normally take at least two to three months. I was ok with that. No rush. I paid for the books and waited.
It took longer than 3 months, but it was all worth it! The stocks did not become available all at the same time. I would get emails for order updates and direct messages from the branch manager to inform me of the books that were already available for pick-up. It was like getting a surprise gift once in a while 🎁 Oh and thankfully, I was able to use my discount card WAHAH
Actually, I kind of used girl math here. I rarely do that. However, my brain insisted that these books would serve as a token to remember one of the biggest leaps I've ever made in my engineering career. I received the first book right after I passed the certification exam I had been preparing for in the past four months. It was a treat! God is good. ♥️
