My Science School

Everyone's favourite cub reporter turned 93 on Monday, January 10. Yes. The Adventures of Tintin first appeared in the year 1929 in Le Petit Vingtieme, a youth supplement of the Belgian newspaper le Vingtieme Siecle. Since then, Tintin's adventures along with his loyal dog Snowy. Captain Haddock and Professor Calculus have entertained children and adults alike.

The Adventures of Tintin is a series of 24 Franco-Belgian comics, created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, popularly known by his pen name Henge Today, the comics have been published in over 70 languages, sold over 200 million copies, and adapted to the screen, radio and theatre

Born on May 22, 1907, Georges Prosper Remi, known by his pen name Herge, was a Belgian cartoonist. He began his career by contributing illustrations to Scouting magazines. He developed his first comic series. The Adventures of Totor, for Le Boy-Scout Belge in 1926. While working with the newspaper Le Vingtieme Siecle in 1929, Herge created The Adventures of Tintin on the advice of the newspapers editor. The comics were domestically successful and were published in a book form after serialisation. Herge continued the series along with creating other comics for the newspaper.

Herge always laid emphasis on doing background research for his works, for which he was widely acclaimed. His work was also known to be meticulous.

Interesting facts

Herge appears in a cameo in pretty much all the Tintin comics and onscreen as well. Want to go back and look for him?

Brussels Airlines has dedicated an entire Airbus A320 in honour of Tintin. Called Rackham, the interior and the exterior of the aircraft is: painted with spectacular Tintin livery. The aircraft is disguised as the famous shark submarine from the Tintin album "Red Rackham's Treasure".

Herge's Museum has a cylindrical room displaying Tintin books in all the languages they have been published in. Since last year, Tintin books published in Bengali and Hindi have been added to the collection here. These were translated by Bidisha, a Bengali and Hindi language Interpreter-Translator with the Michigan Dept. of State, the United States.

You might know Neil Armstrong as the first person to step foot on the Moon. But did you know Tintin got there earlier? He explored the Moon in 1954, 15 years before Armstrong.

There is a museum dedicated to Herge in Belgium. Musee Herge or Herge Museum is located at the address, "Rue Labrador 26" in the town of Louvain-la-Neuve in Wallonia Tintin's first home in the books.

Picture Credit : Google

You might have heard of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and maybe even enjoyed reading it. You might also like novels featuring zombies and vampires and mummies. So, what would you do if these two of your favorite genres were combined together in a monster mashup?

A monster mashup

Monster mashup, or simply mashup is a relatively new type of literature. As the name suggests, this type of literature is usually a work of fiction which combines a pre-existing literature text, mostly a classic, with another genre, mostly horror. Usually, somewhere between 60 to 85 percent of the original text is retained with new plot twists added to it.

The term mashup originated from the music industry where a new song is created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs.

The Jane Austen link

Jane Austen seems to have been the first classic author whose work became a monster mashup Her 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice was mashed up with zombies by author Seth Grahame-Smith in his 2009 novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies The book became popular instantly, giving rise to several other such books, creating the monster mashup genre. While Austen has been credited as co-author in this book, not all monster mashup novels credit the original creator as the co-author.

This isn't the only Austen classic that has been turned into a Monster Mashup. Her other popular classic  Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, too was made a parody and released as Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monster by Ben H Winters. He too credited Jane Austen as co-author. Today, one can find many monster mashup books on the shelves, with some, including pride and Prejudice and Zombies being adapted into movies.

Picture Credit : Google