The Thing About Belgium
March 5th, 2009
Off to Brussels for the Book Fair.
I was in Turnhout for a comics festival in late 2007 and I noticed something odd. It was moist, cool, and windy, and when I caught my own reflection in a shop window, my hair was blowing back into a small tuft directly over my forehead—exactly like Tintin. I mentioned this to cartoonist/genius Kevin Huizenga at dinner that night and he confirmed that he’d noticed his hair doing the same thing whenever he was in Belgium and had even written about it. Was Hergé a realist?
Updates might be spotty for a few days. Returning home Monday.
Posted in Travel
March 3, 2021
did you visit the comics museum?
when i went i’d had little/no exposure to continental european comics and didn’t really get much from it other than, “oh that’s pretty cool, i guess”… but the Hergé stuff was very cool!
I did indeed. It’s very near my hotel in fact. Enjoyed looking at the original art pages on exhibit and looking through the bookstore which has a pretty good selection.
If you read the very first book “Tintn in the land of the Soviets”, you could see how the tuft appears after a rapid car escape in an open car.
The wind caused it in the original books, as well.
This iconic comics moment seems to happen at page number eight, apparently (or ten including the covers).