I’m going to start by linking to the wiki page for Leopold II, after reading that read the page on the congo free state – note that to belgiums of Herge’s generation Leopold II and the CFS would have been more recent history than the segregation laws are to modern USians.

I should also point out that comics containing sambo imagery are racist by definition, comics containing sambo imagery that also portray the congolese as cannibalistic savages who need to be killed by white people is just… even herge later found that to be a horrible idea (though he found more problems with the fact that he hadn’t done any research than with the whole horrible spectre of genocide he managed to invoke – because Herge was very much a naturally occuring stereotypical dickhead francophone than anything else).

And don’t get me started on the portayal of asian-americans and native americans in the Lucky Luke comics. French comic books aimed at children, to this day, have serious issues wrt race that make america look like a genuine post-racial society.

All in all calm the fuck down. I’m a Tintin fan too but I don’t love everything about it. An American is not allowed to criticize European racism because his country has a history of racism too? What the hell kind of logic is that?

Besides, bitch about sweeping generations all you want, but I have found that the French (I KNOW HERGÉ WAS BELGIAN, SHUT UP) are massively more insensitive to racist imagery than Americans. Case in point: Banania. When I saw a box of it (this design: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Banania4.jpg) I almost had a stroke.

You get extra points for your unironic usage of the excruciatingly overdone “basement dweller” insult.

As for the racism, this book was produced in the 1930s then coloured in 1945. So, a white European was a racist 63 years ago? Big deal, in your shitty cunt-ry of America blacks were still not allowed into white restaurants and had to sit at the back of public transport and give away seats to whites less than 30 years ago.

You certainly do not have the slightest knowlege or the simplist of mental capacities to comment on Herge’s work. (who is a Belgian by the way, not a “Frenchman” retard).

Thus, I advice you to keep doing what you do best, which is masturbating in your sisiter’s soiled underpants while you surf the web on the computer located in your parents’ basement. You and the rest of your fellow americans have more important stuff to think about, like how could some degenerate cavemen destroy your cunt-ry on 9-11 and are still at large regardless of all your stupid wars, the 6000 killed in both of them, and the tens of thousands of your soldiers who will live the rest of their lives as useless puppets after losing one or more of their limbs?

Btw: the original cover of this book got sold today at an auction in Paris and became the most expensive comics drawing ever: Tintin painting sold for record price

What I like is that they remember to mention Snowy on the ticker tape parade sign. Can everybody else hear Snowy talking? If Paris Hilton brought in Osama Bin Laden, would we remember to mention Tinkerbell?