Tintin Forums

Am I the only person who has noticed that Captain Haddock has "Orphan Annie" eyes? Maybe not exactly, as his eyes are usually the same color as his skin and Annie's were white, but his eyes are hollow circles rather than dots.

The same is true of Dr. Müller.

I think that Captain Haddock's eyes aren't nearly as strange looking as Little Orphan Annie's eyes.

Haddock's stylized pupil-less eyes certainly seem unusual compared to how most cartoon characters' eyes are drawn these days, but it's interesting that they don't jump out at you as being odd, even after you notice that they're empty circles. I wonder if this way of drawing eyes was a more common stylistic device of cartoonists when Hergé was starting out, or if he devised it for himself.

Whatever the case, it seems to suit Haddock. I'd always assumed that Hergé drew Haddock's eyes that way to give him the slightly pop-eyed or bleary-eyed look of a drunkard. But, as you point out, Müller shares the same eye style, and you'd imagine his eyes to be pretty sharp and focussed. Skut's good eye is also drawn this way, and there are no doubt other examples. So maybe it's just a device that Hergé found happened to work for certain characters' faces, regardless of the characters' personalities or habits.

Hergé was very good at eyes. Many cartoonists feel the need to draw eyes as black eyeballs within a white circle, which can help to show which way a character is looking and add to the range of cartoon expressions. Hergé, though, hardly ever draws dot-in-a-white-circle eyes (apart from characters wearing glasses), yet such is his skill in placing his minimalist dot eyes in relation to a characters' eyebrows, you can always tell exactly where a character is looking.

Of course different ways of doing eyes suit different styles of drawing and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with dot-in-a-white-circle eyes; many great cartoonists, such as Ronald Searle, draw eyes like that. But I think Hergé's way of doing eyes as minimalist dots (or minimalist discs in the case of Haddock, Müller etc) adds to the non-cartoony, realistic, deadpan feel of the Tintin books that many of us find so appealing.

Don't get me wrong. I am not criticizing Hergé. I just thought that this was an interesting technique - I'm not certain how many other artists use different styles for different people's eyes like this, and I have never seen anyone else comment on this.

I think Mark Tatulli's Lio does this.

Glaivester
Don't get me wrong. I am not criticizing Hergé. I just thought that this was an interesting technique

Don't worry; I didn't get you wrong and didn't think you were criticising Hergé. I agree with you that it's an interesting technique.

Glaivester
I have never seen anyone else comment on this.
I don't think I have either. Most books on Hergé and Tintin (at least the ones in English) seem to analyse the sociological, historical and journalistic aspects of the Tintin books, rather than the details of Hergé's drawing techniques. I haven't read the latest Michael Farr series on the main Tintin characters, though, so I don't know if these books look in any detail at the way the characters (and their eyes) are drawn.

Incidentally, I've just remembered that there is one scene when all the characters have their eyes drawn as white circles with pupils: the scene when they're hypnotised, towards the end of Flight 714. Interestingly, Haddock and Skut's pupils are drawn here as discs (within the new white disc of their enlarged eyes), a logical development of their normal eyes, whereas Tintin and the others have dot pupils, sort of matching their normal eyes. The effect here is to make the middle of Haddock and Skut's eyes look paler than the others'.

Because of this, I wonder now whether the disc eyes of Haddock, Müller and Skut were always intended by Hergé to denote a pale iris colour (ie: pale blue) for these characters.

The first time I ever really paid much mind to Haddock's eyes was in The Crab with the Golden Claws. On pg. 37, panel 9, you can clearly see the undeveloped pupils, so to speak. I was five then, and didn't grasp the concept of cartoon eyes, so I asked my dad why his eyes were like that. He said it was because he drank a lot. (My dad was just joking at the time.)

I love how Herge manages to make Haddock's face one of the most expressive without making the eyes overly detailed; eyebrows play a part in that I imagine.

Basil Bazharov (The Broken Ear, page 33-34) (a thinly disguised portrayal of real world arms dealer Basil Zaharoff) also has these type of eyes.

I can't say I have ever felt it is more unusual that Haddock and Cº have "empty" circles for eyes is any more remarkable than Tintin and Cº have "filled" circles for eyes - neither is realistic, after all.

Eye colour variation would be my thought about it too.

I hope this isn't too off topic, but a little while ago a friend I was introducing to Tintin asked me what color eyes he had. I explained that he didn't really have realistic eyes, just dots, but that did bring something to mind. What color eyes would the Captain or Tintin have? Quite frankly, I can't imagine it. All the actors who've played Tintin (to my knowledge) have had either brown or hazel eyes. Every Haddock I've seen had such thick eyebrows it somewhat impeded my ability to notice.

Mods, if this is too off-topic, I humbly apologize.

I think that cartoon eyes are perfectly all right. I shudder to think of what Captain Haddock and Tintin would look like with realistic eyes!