You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Guess what I gave? What's that Mango?
It is part two of our Tintin Extravaganza, So if you miss part one, go check it out and come back to this one when you're up to speed on the story.
I stayed up way past my bedtime last night studying all things Captain Haddeck, Professor Calculus, and Bianca Castifiore in preparation for this one.
I am ready.
I love Professor Calculus. He is such a fun character. Did you know he was modeled after a real person, Professor Auguste Picard.
I did not know that. Who's Professor Picard?
He was an interesting guy. He was the first person to enter Earth's stratosphere and he was also the inventor of the deep sea observation vessel. It's called the Bathoscaff, but more importantly for Tinton purposes, he also had a unique hairstyle. He was balding on top and he had long and curly hair on the sides and air j would see him walking around the streets of Brussels and he kind of got inspired.
I love all these real world connections, and Airjay's were like Thompson and Thompson, the hapless nearly identical detectives. They were said to be inspired by air Jay's father, Alexi and his twin brother Leon.
Yeah, of the unknown parentage we discussed, right, Yeah, that's a Part one reference in case you're wondering, so seriously, though, go listen to part one if you haven't, But back to Thompson and Thompson.
As you know, Mango, they wear matching black suits and bowler hats, carry matching canes, and have matching bushy mustaches. I read that when Airjay was growing up, his dad and uncle would often go on walks together, wearing identical hats, carrying identical canes, black umbrellas, and with the same facial hair. I know he said his childhood was gray and boring, but these people sound pretty interesting to me.
Yeah, they sound like characters. And one of my favorite things about Thompson and Thompson that's spelled with and without a P, is that their names actually change in other languages. So their original names in French are DuPont and DuPont with a T and D, but pronounced identically in German, it's Schultz and Schultz. In Spanish, it's Ernandez and Fernandez. In Arabic it's tick and talk. But my personal favorite, however, is Icelandic, where they are known as Scoffti and Scoffty.
And apologies to any Icelandic listeners out there and also speakers of other languages. I'm sure I did not do your languages justice.
I wonder how you say I'm sorry in Icelandic French.
That's a good question. Yeah, well, Mengo.
As fascinating as these secondary characters are, let's return them to the background for now, because in today's final installment of our Tintin Adventure, we're talking comic book controversies, Tintin's arrival in the US, and some unbelievable true stories about modern Tintin adaptations. So let's dive in.
Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to part time Genius. I'm Mongish, hearticular as always, I'm here with my good friend Gabe Lucier today because Will Pearson is off and traveling and enjoying the world tinton style. Also our pal and producer Dylan Fagan. He left as a note saying he'd gone adventuring with his faithful dog I didn't even know Dylan had a dog.
Yeah, apparently he does. It's news to me, but good news. Actually, a postcard just arrived. It says, dear Gabe and Mango, having a great time on my adventures. Next stop, Sildavia. Oh love Dylan.
Sildavi? Where is a come on?
You remember? It's a fictional country and the Balkans that appears in a couple of Tintin books. In one book, Tinton goes there to stop a plot to overthrow the king, and another he learns that the Sildavian government is planning a mission to the Moon.
I vaguely remember that.
And Sildavia really feels like a vibe.
Yeah yeah, maybe more of a state of mind. But that's a great tourism slogan for a fictional country. It's a vibe.
But are Mango?
I meant to ask you this last week and I totally forgot. What would you say is your all time favorite Tintin book? I think it's got to be The Blue Lotus or the Tintin and Tibet. I actually really fell in love with tint and Tibet when I was studying a broad in Tibet, because I read it to Tibetan's to hear how they saw the misconceptions about the culture or and people were just so appreciative of it,
you know, they really loved it. There were modern Belgian comics that were coming out that exoticized Tibet did such little research and Airjay was so accurate for someone who never visited, and so I have a fondness for that story. That makes sense.
Yeah, So we talked about this in the last episode. The character obviously has a massive global appeal, but in the US it's a little different. The books were never quite successful here as they were in the rest of
their world. The first tinton comics were published in Belgium in nineteen twenty nine, and the first book, Tintin in the Land of Soviets, came out in nineteen thirty, but there were actually no English language editions of Tintin until nineteen fifty two, and those were published in the UK, So the books weren't published in America until late nineteen fifty nine. And just as an interesting side note, at the time, the US had this really negative image of
comic books. Conservatives thought that they kept kids from reading proper books, and in nineteen fifty five, New York State actually passed the law banning comics.
Yeah, that does sound like something conservatives in the nineteen fifties would do.
Right, Yeah, I mean, the New York legislator believed that so called crime comics were quote a contributing factor leading to juvenile delinquency, and they banned comics that had words like horror, terror, or crime in the title or anything that talked about that kind of thing, which in practice outlawed most comics, except you know, the really tame ones like Archie or Tinton, both of actually which made their
ways to India. But back to Tinton's arrival state side, it was actually Golden Press, the publisher of Little Golden Books, who first brought Tintin to the US.
I don't know if you remember those.
Oh yeah, of course, those kids books about being good and working hard or whatever, all the you know, life lessons and moral stuff like a little red hen, a little engine that could a lot of little things, you know, Given Tintin's roots in boy scout morality, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, But believe it or not, even Tinton had to make changes for the Puritans in America. For example, Golden Press asked AIRJ to replace a couple of drawings where Captain Haddock was drinking straight from the bottle, because they said, quote, the presentation of alcoholism, especially in humors form, is absolutely taboo. They also didn't want any scenes where black characters and white characters appeared together, which is, you know, hard to
hear now. But this was just a couple of years after Brown versus Board of Education, and the country was still very, very publicly segregated. So HAIRJ ended up redrawing several panels in order to get the books published here.
So when Tintin finally came to America, was it a big hit like it had been in Europe.
No. Sales were pretty terrible initially, probably because parents still didn't trust comic books, but over time he slowly gained readers, and by the early seventies Tintin was relatively popular. And that brings us back to the incredible story we told last time about Jay's trip to New York in nineteen seventy two, and that's when he ended up meeting Andy Warhol.
He'd been invited to attend a comic strip convention, but by that point he was so famous he got to do a bunch of other things too, like he hung out at the factory. He presented the then mayor John Lindsay with the poster sized drawing of Tintin visiting the city, and it was titled Stars and Comic Strips.
Nice.
Yeah, quite got some love here. And if there's one thing we've discovered about Airj though, it's that he's every bit as controversial as he is popular. We talked last episode about the use of racial stereotypes in his work, but there's also a troubling question looming over the artist himself. Did he side with the Nazis during World War Two?
Yeah, it's obviously not a great look when people can't rule that out about you. But if you were to ask Airja supporters, they'd likely point you to this one adventure it's called King Otakar's Scepter, for proof that the artist was not sympathetic to the Nazis.
Do you buy it? Like, is it convincing to you as proof?
I mean, there's definitely an anti Nazi agenda in the books. In the comic, Tinton travels to this made up country that you mentioned, Psiladavia. The villain is a guy named Mustlaire from a country called Borduria. And obviously Tintonologists, who I have to note are not super critical of Airja, says Borduria represents Nazi Germany. The plot is that Mussler, who's a combination of Mussolini and Hitler, is trying to get Bordouria to take over Sildavia, and Tinton, of course,
is the hero who thwarts that plan. Now, King Ottocarceptra came out in nineteen thirty eight and thirty nine, right after Germany annexed Austria, so the comparison does seem pretty clear. And it's fair to say that Je didn't seem like a fan of a country taking over other countries, and the epitome of who was doing this at the time was Nazi Germany.
Well, that does make sense. But if we want to get the clearest sense of where Erje you really stood on all of this, we probably shouldn't look at just what he wrote and drew in his books. We've got to look at what he did in his own life. Right. So in May nineteen forty, after Germany invaded Belgium, Airje, his wife, and his Siamese cat all escaped to France
along with about a million other people. But later that same month, the King of Belgium, Leopold the Third, surrendered to Germany and the king asked his compatriots to return home. So Airje was a big supporter of the king and loyal to his country. And six weeks after he left he came back.
And I'm guessing he returned to a very different country.
Yeah.
Absolutely. For one thing, his old newspaper, the Catholic newspaper he'd been working at, Levonte Mciekla, it had been closed by the Nazis. A lot of other papers opted to shut down rather than run, and you know, have to support Nazi propaganda, as you know, collaborationists. There were also journalists who chose to quit so they didn't have to work under Nazis. But one that stayed open was Le Soois,
one of the big daily papers. It was run by Belgian Nazi collaborationists and censored by the Germans, so definitely pro Nazi, right. And when Airje got back to Brussels, the editor of Larsois asked him to come aboard.
So do we get the impression that this is a difficult decision for Je.
Not at all, It seems like it was pretty straightforward. He claimed he wasn't really thinking about politics. He just needed them money, and he also needed a place for Tintin. In his view, he'd worked hard to get tintinto where it was and he didn't want to give that up. Plus, Larsoise still had a really large readership, much larger than the other paper he'd been working on, So he was basically like, why let a war get in the way of all the work I've done?
Yeah, I mean, in my research I read that when he was asked about this later in his life, his rationalization was that it.
Was just a job.
He says, quote, I was just working like how a baker or a minor works. He also said that he didn't expect the occupation to last very long, that he viewed his time at Lesois as a temporary assignment basically, but he actually wound up working there for four years.
Yeah, it sounds to me like he was being a little, you know, willfully naive and kind of burying his head in the sand, and he may be wondering what was his time at Lasois really like? And did he ever pay a price for all that fence sitting? And we got the answers, and we're going to tell you all about it after we take a quick break.
Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
It's part two of our conversation about Tintin and the brilliant, controversial author Airja. When we left off, Airja had just taken a job at the Nazi collaborationist paper Lessois. So Gabe, tell me what happens next.
Well, as you might guess, j kept drawing comics, and the Tintin stories that came out during these years weren't suddenly repeating Nazi propaganda or anything like that, but they weren't really pushing back against it either. They were almost a political j claimed he was uninterested in politics, and you know, he wanted to keep Tintin out of what
he thought was the mess of World War two. But looking back, you can't help but wonder how could someone stay apolitical when all of these atrocities were happening right in front of them.
Yeah, and in fact, the Airja biographer Pierre Asline called Airja's fence sitting around this quote willfully obtuse, which I think is a fair assessment. Airj has definitely seemed happy to ignore what was going on. In the world and what it meant to work at a collaborationist newspaper. And even if he professed that he was political, for many people this choice was political, right, It's a political act.
Other Belgians chose not to work at collaborationist papers, so for a lot of folks, the decision to work there kind of left this real stain on his legacy.
Yeah, today and back then at the time too. That was the case. After Belgium was liberated in nineteen forty four, the entire staff at Larssois was fired and anyone who'd worked there under the Nazi occupation was banned from working all together, and a lot of people were arrested, including Airja. But even that doesn't seem to change his view on his decision to work at Lesois. His attitude seemed to
be more stunned than anything. You mean, stunned that he'd be punished for his actions or yeah, I mean, he never seemed to understand why anyone would think what he did was wrong. He thought everyone was overreacting.
He kind of has this approach earlier, right, like he doesn't really apologize and says, you know, it's sort of the feeling of the time.
Right, So what happened did he ever face any consequences?
He was really lucky. He had friends in high places, including some who'd fought in the resistance against the Nazis, and one of them was a huge Tinton fan. He'd actually been one of the kids. He showed up at that stunt we talked about in the last episode where you know that tinted actor had come in from the Congo at the Brussels train station, so that certainly helped.
Talk about full circle too.
I mean, yeah, anyway, this is super lucky, and this guy wanted to start a magazine and he wanted air Day to be a part of it. So he uses connections to recommend that the case be dropped, and it worked. The charges were dismissed, so.
In the end, Airja walked away pretty much unscathed.
Right.
Sounds like it was kind of helped by the fact that he was a cartoonist and not a journalist. That's kind of the distinction that was made and why the case was dropped. But just to put in perspective, there were journalists who worked for collaborationist papers who were found guilty.
Some were sent to Congo to perform hard labor, others were killed, and because the punishment was so severe, others in Airja's predicament left Belgium altogether to make a new life in France, which Airja, being the proud Belgium he was, he actually never really considered that, So, long story short, his career continued to thrive. He kept publishing comics, and as we've learned, he gradually developed a more open minded view of the world and also greater appreciation of other cultures.
So where does all this stand now, Like, what's the contemporary read on the books in air Ja? Clearly, people all over the world have loved and continue to love Tintin.
Yeah, he's still really popular, especially outside the US. That being said, if you are offended by Tintin or Erja, you know, I totally get it. The lens that I think encompasses this well is that Airj was someone who put his work before almost anything else, like both personally and politically, and often that wasn't the right thing to do. And he was really loyal to his country, even when
his country's government made horrible decisions. And while I don't think there's an excuse, and of course I obviously wish er Jay apologized for all these mistakes.
He was also limited by the time he lived in you know.
Yeah, well, which is you know, it's extra compleated. Yeah, yeah, right, because there's a lot of clearly good things about Tintin and er Ja too. They were both flawed characters, but they did have an openness to other ideas and other people and other cultures, which is really laudable, especially for the time Tintin fought for the underdog. He stood up for friendship and loyalty. And I do think there's something really enduring and you know about that and kind of redeeming too.
Yeah. I mean, I've obviously been thinking about this a lot lately, not just because of these episodes, because I think about my own kids. I wanted them to read Tintin because it was just like so full of adventure and joyous like exploration of the world and friendship. I actually read an op ed from the author of viet Tan When about this, and it was about the danger
of banning books in general. But when actually grew up reading tinton like I did, and he wanted to share these books with his son, and the essence of what he says is the Tinton books can be problematic, but
they're also really engaging and really memorable. He writes about how he and his son loved reading these adventures together and when they came across racism against non white characters, he points out that they talk about it just the same way you talk about like Huck Finn or other things like that, and the ability to have that conversation and a way into that conversation is really important.
No.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I'm a big fan of classic animation, and you run into a lot of the same problems. Right, There were really problematic depictions, and you know, does that mean that just no one should ever watch these again, or that they're artistically bankrupt there's nothing of merit anymore. No, of course not. You just have to be a little more thoughtful about it, think, right.
So, yeah, it's obviously messy. Humans are messy. But I also think like for me Tinton, but also other texts of that style, other books like they all contributed to the feeling of mental class, of part time genius, of welcoming people in of exploring It's so threaded through so much of the DNA of this show and other shows I've done, and worked on. Yeah, So like, it's very hard for me to divorce myself from that because it's inspired.
So much, you know, of my own work.
You know, there's the artist's intent, and then there's what we do with it, right, there's the art itself, and then there's what it inspires us to do.
So well, what is best for this show right now is that we take another quick break. But when we come back, let's talk about a few of our favorite tint In adaptations.
That sounds great, Welcome back to part time genius.
Okay, Gabe, it is time to go beyond the books and talk about adaptations.
So why don't you kick this off.
I'd be happy to so. Between nineteen twenty nine and nineteen seventy six, Airja wrote a total of twenty three Tintin books or albums in twenty four if you include Tintin and alf Art, which was only partially finished when Airja died in nineteen eighty three. But you know, and in the years since then, lots of other artists have
adapted those stories to different mediums. For instance, Steven Spielberg drew from three books written between nineteen forty one and nineteen forty four when Air Jay was at Lesoise to create his twenty eleven animated blockbuster The Adventures of Tintin, starring Jamie Bell as the voice of Tintin and Daniel Craig as the villain. But there's another actor I want to mention from the film, Carrie Elvis from Robin Hood the same and of course the Princess Bride. He's also
in the movie. It's a small role, but he really wanted it and he got it in a pretty unconventional way.
First of all, I love that Steven Spielberg loved Tintin enough to make this movie. To me, is really joyous and in the spair of the comment, but so tell me about carry Elle was like, how did he sneak his way in?
So apparently Carrie is a huge Tintin fan. One day he was at the grocery store and I have to imagine this is La, right, because it seems very la And who does he see over there in the cereal aisle?
But Steven Spielberg, Wait, Steven Spielberg eats cereal. Yeah, and you're telling me it himself too, apparently amazing And they'd met a couple of weeks earlier and Spielberg had mentioned he was doing a Tintin movie, and Carrie's like, I love Tintin.
I have to be in this. Did I mention I really love Tintin? And Spielberg was like, yeah, all right, we'll see. So anyway, now Carrie sees him, you know, rifling through the cheerios or whatever kind of cereal you think Spielberg eats, and he's like, this is it. This is my chance to seal the deal. So he goes up to him and asks him about being in Tintin, and apparently Spielberg tells him, I have one part left. It's yours.
I mean, I honestly don't know what the lesson is here, like be bold, persevere, shopping in Steven Spielberg's neighborhood. I feel like all of these apply here.
Yeah, right, it's all of these.
Yeah.
But I like to think that the serial Isle conversation was just the first of many conversations these guys would have about Tintin. Of course, because Spielberg is also a huge fan. The funny thing is, though he'd never heard of Tintin until right after Raiders at a Lost Art came out in the eighties and a French critic wrote
a review in which he compared that film to Tintin's Adventures. So, you know, being a curious guy, Spielberg decided to check out the books, discovered he really liked them and immediately was like, hey, this could be a movie.
Do you know if he talked to J about it?
Oh?
He did, Yeah, he said. They spoke on the telephone once in nineteen eighty three and they had a plan to meet, but unfortunately J died before that could happen. Spielberg still negotiated the rights for a movie with his estate though. He even started on a screenplay with the same writer who worked on Et, but the script didn't feel right. Then Spielberg got busy with you know, other stuff, and the option dropped. So it took deck aid for the project to finally come together.
I know AIRJ was also a big fan of Spielberg, so even though he died way before the movie came out, I'm sure it was exciting to know that it might even happen. Definitely, But speaking of adaptations, do you know that Ja also wrote or co wrote two Tintin stage plays.
I did not know this are these things we can go see somewhere, if not on or off Broadway, maybe off off, but like off off off.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, in my backyard. That would be my greatest wish.
But unfortunately, as far as I can tell, the script are lost to history. At least those are the rumors in the Tintin fan community. But there was like a thread that maybe they existed still somewhere, And actually we've got this friend Rag. He wrote this book. He is for Pterodactyl. He's also a rapper and producer. He produces under the name Lush Life. And he, like me, grew
up in going to Indian in the summers. He became a huge Tintin fan and he realized that airj had written both scripts in nineteen forty one with help from the painter, journalist and writer Jacques von Melquebec, and the first one was called Tinton in India The Mystery of the Blue Diamond, so based on contemporarieous accounts of its production, it basically was like a rehashed plot of Cigars of the Pharaoh. It opened in nineteen forty one, ran for a little over a week in Brussels and start a
young woman as Tinton. Because World War two had just created this shortage of male actors. But maybe the biggest surprise is that it was actually a musical.
What please tell me? Do we know anything about the song?
No, at least I don't, but I know Roger actually located the script and is trying to rewrite it. But airj was apparently really happy with how it came out. It got decent reviews despite the short run. And I think this rings true for anyone who's ever had anything to do with the play, especially like a musical with children. This whole thing was a ton of effort to produce, and so even though he had seen it as a success, he wasn't eager to do another.
Well you must have made an exception then, right, because you said there were two plays.
Yeah.
So later in nineteen forty one there was mister Bullock's disappearance or the disappearance of mister Bullock depending on the translator. We know even less about this play, except that you know they did find a young male to play Tintin, and plot wise, it's a whole new story. It's not just a rehash of an older book. Tintin travels all over the world, from China to Tibet, to Morocco, to Argentina and then back home to Brussels, and from what I can tell, the reviews were a little less stellar.
That seems to be the end of Tintin and the theater experience, at least as far as air Ja's direct involvement with it.
Right, Yes, I figure you're referring to the adaptation of Tintin and Tibet that was performed in the UK in two thousand and five. Right, It got mostly MIDI it did have another run a couple of years later, so I don't know. There must be something to it, or maybe it's just all that pent up demand for Tintin on stage.
Right, Yeah, I mean I know Raj and the Tintin is stayed are talking and then figuring out how to possibly get this play back on in.
A new form. And as someone who loves Tintin, I would.
Really really love to see revised for today's times.
I'll tell you what, Mango, if it ever happens, I'll buy you a ticket.
I mean, I think we can get in for free, but I'll make sure you get in.
Its sounds good to me. But on that note, I think it's time for a fact off all right, this is a fun one. So did you know that Ja would hide himself in the Tintin books like an early iteration of Where's Waldo? It was apparently inspired by Hitchcock's idea of breaking the fourth wall and winking at the audience, and famously he hid himself in all of his movies too. But for example, in King Ottokar's Scepter is dressed as a cavalry officer in the royal court. In The Broken Ear,
he's a museum goer. In The Calculus Affair, he's standing with a sketch pad and pen. He goes on and on.
That is so fun.
I actually did not know that. Now I've got to go back and look for him.
Yeah. Yeah. And in a nod to this, Spielberg has a little animated Airja cameo in his Tintin movie too, So I look out for that. I love that.
Okay, So I've got another one for you.
In twenty twenty one, a rare Tintin cover illustration was sold at auction for nearly three point two million euros around three point eight four million dollars, making it the world's most expensive comic book art. The art itself is actually the original idea for the Blue Lotus, the adventure that took place in China, where Airj did a bunch of research ahead of time thanks to his friend John. Now I've seen pictures of this long lost artwork and
it is really beautiful. It would have actually made an amazing cover, but when Airja showed it to his publisher, they said it had too many colors and would be too expensive to produce using the technology they had.
At the time.
So instead Airja gave the original art, the actual one he had painted, to his publisher's seven year old son, and it just stuck around in their family for a long time.
Well, you know what's extra crazy about that is that Tintin had already set the previous record for the world's most expensive comic book art. And I was back in twenty fourteen when some original drawings sold for two point six five million euros, and there has been other Tintin art that's sold for well over a million dollars over the years. One reason why these pieces go for such high dollar marks is besides you know Tintin's popularity, of course,
is that Tintin's estate is notoriously strict. It's run by Rgey's widow, Fanny and her second husband, a guy named Nick Rodwell. He's hard fisted in his approach to dealing with Tintin copyright, let's just say that. And in the Tintin world he's almost universally hated. He's been described, or maybe describes himself as quote the least popular man in Belgium. And that's because of you know how often he's litigated
copyright cases. For example, in twenty twenty one he sued a French sculptor for the ninety busts of Tintin he had made, and that same year he also sued a French painter who had paid to Tintin in the World of Edward Hopper, but in a manner Rodwell deemed quote mildly erotic. Oh no, yeah. And in two thousand and nine a French novelist had his home seized because he had reproduced a Tintin drawing in a book for students,
which had a print run of two hundred copies. So I mean he didn't even make a profit off it. Rodwell says he's just protecting Airs and Tintin's legacy from bad quality spinoffs. That kind of stuff. Can water down an artist's legacy after they die, and j himself was adamant that he didn't want any Tintin books to come out after his death. But repossessing somebody's house because of a book for students, Yeah, that's a little over the top.
Yeah, okay, Gabe.
So have you ever thought about the fact that even though the Tintin book spanned forty years, Tintin himself was ageless, like his appearance never changes.
You know.
I hadn't thought about that, but now that you mention it, I'm thinking about it.
Yeah, that's true, because I brought it off. Well, Lucky for you, there are some scientists who also thought about it, or, more precisely, a scientist and his two young sons. In two thousand and four, a Canadian professor of medicine named Claude Syr published a satirical paper about his efforts to figure out why Tintin hadn't aged over the decades, and he and his kids went through the books and counted the number of times Tintin lost consciousness, which you know
is a lot. Fifty times. Forty three of those times were considered severe. Professor Sear decided that these repeated blows to the head had led to growth hormone deficiency and because of that also a condition called hyponatotropic hypogonadism, which you know is a mouthful but it's.
A real thing.
It can lead to delayed or totally missing puberty for the people who are affected by it.
Wow.
All right, but well here's what I really want to know. Did he ever explain snowy? I mean that dog is still going strong, he still has puppy energy. Yeas one hundred.
Years later, that is a fair point. Maybe his kids have done to study on this. I'll have to report back, please.
Do Yeah, keep us posted. All right, So I'm going to pivot here, but I was really excited to learn that. In twenty twenty two, a new Belgian passport was introduced that features illustrations from famous Belgian cartoons and comics in general are really beloved over there and considered high art. So the passport pages included drawings of famous Belgium cartoon characters like Tintin and the Smurfs, and apparently, when UV light is shown on the drawings, additional details like facial
expressions are revealed. And not only is that absolutely delightful, but these details also make it a lot harder to counterfeit.
Oh, I love that Belgians just really love comics, so staying in the vein of Belgium pride. In twenty fifteen, Brussels Airlines unveiled in airbus A three twenty named Rackham, which refers to the Tintin book read Rackham's Treasure.
The outside of the.
Planet is painted to look like the submarine from that book, and the cabin inside has pictures of Captain Haddock and Tintin, and a of course red Rackham's Treasure is available on board for reading well.
Our final fact is yet another example of how Tintin keeps appearing in Belgium today. For the twenty twenty four euro Cup, the Belgian soccer team's away kit was inspired by you Guessed It our man himself. The players wore a uniform based on Tintin's iconic outfit, a light blue jersey with a white collar, brown shorts and white sox.
I know, I was so excited when I saw that.
I'm obviously a soccer fan and loved but they did that.
But you know, there's actually one book where Tintin breaks from the standard outfit and dresses just a little differently. Really. Yeah. In nineteen seventy six, air J published what would be the last fully completed Tintin adventure. It was called Tintin and the Pickereas and strikingly, while Tintin has the same blue shirt, his brown pants are long in this one, not short, and on the cover drawing the pants are noticeably flared.
Well, I mean it was the seventies, right, so even Tintin wore bell bottoms. But a way, Mangel, I'm really glad that you convinced us to explore the life and times of a cartoon adventurer. So I think you get today's trophy. You earned it. And there's actually two trophies, one for last time as well.
Well I'll take them, and I guess I'll share these with my fellow tinton fans and Dylan wherever he is. That concludes our two part Tintin series. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please share these episodes with a friend or follow us on Instagram Blue Sky if you have any questions, comments, or just want to tell us what your favorite Tinton book is or how you feel about this complicated legacy emails at high Geniuses at
gmail dot com. That's Hi Geniuses at gmail dot com, or give us a call at three oh two four oh five five nine two five. That's three oh two four oh five five nine two five. We are always looking to hear from you. This episode, as well as Part one, was written by the wonderful of Marissa Brown.
Thank you so much, Marissa.
We will be back next week with another new episode, but in the meantime from Gabe, Mary, Dylan, Will and myself, thank you so much for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongais Chatikler and researched by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan with support from
Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced for iHeart by Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social media support from Sasha Gay, trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shoring. For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,