Tintin Forums

Tintin has a quiff, right. Well, I just looked through Chang's hairstyle and guess what. Tintin would have the same hairstyle as Chang and one more character, Flupke if he never had the quiff. Well, what do you think? Coincidence, isn't it.

I'm not sure how you can tell that Tintin and Chang would have the same hairstyle if one of them changed their hair to match the other's. Certainly its obvious that Flupke and Chang have the same hairstyle, but I'm lost as to where Tintin comes in to it.

I guess Tintinspartan sees the resemblance when Tintin's hair is down sideways as seen on page 43 in Blue Lotus and when he jumps into the river from the train in Prisoners of the Sun.

I wouldn't say coincidence, as if Tintin grew a beard it might look like Haddock's, I think you are reading to much into this and taking som liberties with how Tintin would part his hair had he not been fond of the quiff. Who knows, maybe he would have shaven his head bald or gotten a bad perm job, or dyed it black à la Marilyn Manson or whatever.

When his hair is wet and falls sideways is does resembles Chang's and Flupke's somewhat but not enough.

I guess a short-back-and-sides with the front left relatively long was a fairly standard haircut for boys and young men in the early-to-mid-20th Century. I suppose some people, like Tintin, brylcremed the longer hair up at the front, and some people let it flop down over their forehead a bit like Chang and Flupke. (And obviously there were dozens of other options). In the first pages of Soviets, before Tintin's hair gets swept back by the wind speed and stays quiffed up forever, his hairstyle does look much the same as Flupke's or Chang's; it's the same basic haircut.

On the subject of haircuts, in The Calculus Affair Sponsz has a sort of Tintinesque haircut, but taken to military extremes, with the back, sides and top shaved down to bristles, and the front in a hedgehog-like quiff. According to Harry Thompson's book, Tintin's appearance was based on the way Hergé's brother looked as a young man, and Sponsz was based on the way Hergé's brother looked when he was a bit older. (Hergé's relationship with his brother was somewhat strained apparently.) Harry Thompson suggests from this that if we want to know what Tintin would look like if he'd aged realistically throughout the series, we only have to look at Sponsz to see the answer!

Whether Hergé's brother grew a neat beard in the 1970s and thus inspired Sponsz's aditional facial hair in Picaros, I have no idea.

if Tintin grew a beard it might look like Haddock's

You have a bad habit to hit the point Labrador. Take a look at the Affair (55-56). By making tiny changes that Tintin (in the stupid looking disguise) could be either Calculus or Thompson, eller hur? :-)