An adventure of Tintin. Objective Portugal
The cartoon band is television on a sheet of paper” said Adolfo Simões Müller, the godfather of comic strips in Portugal and author of stupendous children’s literature in the 40s and 50s. 1939 in New York – but it was not commercialized. (It would only be introduced in Portugal in 1956, at the Feira Popular de Lisboa, in the last year it was installed in Palhavã, territory today of the Eugénio de Almeida and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundations.) The choice of “O Papagaio”, the children’s newspaper of inspiration Catholic Church founded by Müller in 1935, it was no accident. There were other comic strip newspapers and magazines, like “Pim Pam Pum!” (associated with “The Century”), “The Mosquito” or the “Diabrete”, but “The Parrot” had a trump card: “The Adventures of Tim-Tim”, the 15-year-old reporter with spiky blonde breeches and golf pants , orphaned, but always accompanied by the faithful “Rom-Rom” – a well-thinking white wire-haired dog, of indeterminate sex – raised by the Belgian Georges Remi under the immortal pseudonym of Hergé. (A combination of the names of his first reads in reverse order, R. and G.) ‘Tim-Tim’ was what would later be called a role model, a model of virtues where ingenuity supported ingenuity. Curious and courageous, he was born to unravel mysteries and neutralize correction and catastrophes, helping the weak and innocent and punishing the wicked. The world was at war, I was a five year old kid, and I stayed with a friend for life.
Portugal was the first non-Francophone country to publish “As Aventuras de Tintin”. Better still, he did it right away in color (when in his native Belgium it would continue in black and white until the publication of the album “A Estrela Misteriosa” in 1942). The 15-year-old hero was born in 1929 with the adventure “Tintin in the Land of Soviets”, published in the children’s supplement (weekly) le petit vingtième of the Catholic newspaper “Le Vingtième Siècle”. Around here, he made his debut in 1936 in “O Papagaio” with “Tim-Tim in America (North)”. (In Spain and Great Britain it only began to be published after the war, in a publication in the 1950s.) The convinced Catholicism of the various stakeholders explains the Portuguese advance. On a trip to Belgium, Simões Müller will learn about the petit vingtième with the little-great hero Tintin. In the process of founding “The Parrot” in 1935, Müller asked his friend Father Abel Varzim – who had returned the previous year from Belgium, after a doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven – to intercede with Georges Remi in order to obtain the reproduction rights. Among Catholics, everything came together, and in 1936 ‘Tim-Tim’ made its debut in “O Papagaio”. As for Varzim, he played an active role – like Müller – in the founding, also in 1936, of Rádio Renascença, the Portuguese Catholic broadcaster. Defender of social causes, concerned with the conditions of the working class, Father Varzim would come to distance himself from the regime and fight the ideas of the Estado Novo, having been persecuted by the political police. In 1994, 30 years after his death, he was awarded the degree of Grand Officer of the Order of Liberty. ‘Tim-Tim’, the boy who doesn’t age (like Peter Pan), will have rejoiced!
This is an article from the weekly Expresso. Click ON HERE to continue reading.
Exclusive article for subscribers
At Expresso we value free and independent journalism
Did you buy the Express?
Insert the code present in Revista E to continue reading