Michael Farr (1953–)

Michael Farr is perhaps the ultimate English-language Tintinologist. This book - although, like any equivalent "complete companion" will leave individual fans clamoring for more on their favoured issues - is startlingly well-written, lovingly researched and put-together. Each album gets a chapter (combined, in the case of the two-parters) which details its conception, creation and reception, alongside details about Herge's life, and the political and social context in which the story was written.

Particularly notable, for me, were his thoughts on the translations to English, and where jokes are lost or effectively rewritten for a different audience. (Sometimes the changes are completely arbitrary, other times you can see the logic.) It's also fascinating to see how - even though almost all the volumes have avoided becoming tied to their political contexts - Herge's life was one of constant upheaval, and Tintin himself faced numerous threats over the years thanks to wars and the transmogrification of Europe during his 50 years on the job.

As I said at the start, any fan will take issue with any "complete companion". For me, I occasionally felt that Farr's personal opinions intruded too much; no one is expected to like all 24 albums, and you can see my reviews of them as proof of this, but the criticisms were unevenly weighted, in my opinion. Beyond this, the book exhaustively chronicles the making-of, and the artistic merit of, the series. There is certainly room for the next generation of Tintinologists to add their own voices to the fray (and for this we should be thankful) but Farr is a great place to start for oh so many reasons.… (meer)