Rating: 
Summary: Just A Note
Review: A reviewer from the UK called this book a successful collaboration between Farr and Remi. Such a collaboration would be impossible for in fact Georges Remi (the creator of the Tintin series) is dead. Herge is a name created by reversing Georges Remi's initials and writing the result, RG, phonetically
Rating:
Summary: Marvellous
Review: Any successful series tends to spawn a Guide and most of the time they add minimal value to the original series. Not so here. Farr and Remi have collaborated to produce a companion to Tintin that actually enhances the comic strip and makes you re-read them with a new awareness. The layout of the book makes it easy for you to focus on individual adventures, providing a four to six page commentary on the development, accuracy and major plot points. There is an opening section on Herge himself and how Tintin developed over forty-odd years.
It is only after reading this I have realised how accurate Herge was with his subject matter. Again and again you suddenly realise that all the backing images, all the characters are founded on intricate real detail and people to create authenticity.
Quite simply, any fan of Tintin must read this book. It supplies answers to questions you'd never think of and opens you to a whole new side of the hero and his creator.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book That Belongs On Every Fan's Shelf
Review: Anyone who has a complete set of Tintin's adventures on their bookshelves should really have this beautifully produced book to sit alongside them. Leading British Tintinologist and journalist Farr spent five years researching this book in his attempt to provide context for each book in the series. The result is a work that charts not only the personal and professional life of the Belgian cartoonist, but also shows how political, social, and technological changes influenced his storytelling. Each Tintin adventure gets about 4-6 pages, and each section is beautifully laid out, with perfectly reproduced color panels, along with photos and clippings from Hergé's files to show how reality was incorporated into the books. The main theme that emerges is how Hergé insisted that the stories be grounded in reality as much possible, and how he took great pains to create a realistic world for his little hero to operate in. It should be noted that the book is aimed at those who have already read the stories, and assumes intimate familiarity with the series. That said, longtime fans will immediately want to reread each book after reading about it in this companion.The minor downside is that Farr writes from an unabashed fan's position, and at times he's a little overenthusiastic, repeating certain information. He's also very intent on explaining away the more unpleasant episodes in Hergé's life, such as his working for (some use the term "collaboration") with a German run newspaper during the Nazi occupation of Belgium, or his divorcing his wife after twenty years to take up with a much younger woman, and so forth. One wishes that he'd spent less space as an apologist for Hergé's human failings and done a little more analysis of the stories. It also would have been nice to have an appendix listing all the stories, as well as their dates of serial and collected publication. These are minor quibbles however, because the book is very handsome, a great value considering the lovely printing and production. It will rekindle any Tintin fan's enthusiasm for the series and contains ample material for explaining why Tintin is timeless and so popular worldwide.
Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic!
Review: For all of us hard-core Tintinologists, this is a fantastic addition to our collection. Get this book, you won't regret it!
Rating:
Summary: Everything about Tintin and Herge I didnt know I didnt know.
Review: I always liked Tintin as a kid, but never appreciated the amount of work that went into the creation of the books. Herge based several drawings on real photographs, some of the originals are here. I also used to think that translating the books into different languages was just a matter of changing the stuff written in the balloons. Hell, no! For example, in the original French version of Tintin in Africa, a rhino gets blown up. In a Scandinavian edition, the Scand editors refused to print such gratuitous violence to animals and several frames had to be changed so the rhino runs away, terrified but alive. Several pages are devoted to Herge's decision to continue working in Nazi Europe. The only problem with this book is that it's not long enough. I am sure Farr could have said a lot more if he'd been allowed to by the publishers!
Rating:
Summary: Great snakes! A beautiful and enlightening book
Review: I became acquainted with Tintin in second grade, when I discovered a shelf of Children's Digests which ran abridged, black-and-white excerpts of his adventures. The digests were in no particular order, so I found myself reading, for example, a few pages of "The Black Island," then a smattering of "Tintin in the Picaros" followed by the ending of "Cigars of the Pharaohs." It didn't matter that the bits were all out of sequence and context, I loved Herge's characters and stories. Recently, a couple of decades later, I started recollecting the complete Tintin adventures and stumbled onto "The Tintin Companion" in a local bookstore. It was shrinkwrapped but I took a chance and bought it anyway. It was definitely worth it. This book gives a great history of Herge and his career and work. It also goes into detail about each of the stories and the inspirations behind the illustrations. An extremely beautiful, enlightening, well-put-together book. Fans will love it.
Rating:
Summary: Great snakes! A beautiful and enlightening book
Review: I became acquainted with Tintin in second grade, when I discovered a shelf of Children's Digests which ran abridged, black-and-white excerpts of his adventures. The digests were in no particular order, so I found myself reading, for example, a few pages of "The Black Island," then a smattering of "Tintin in the Picaros" followed by the ending of "Cigars of the Pharaohs." It didn't matter that the bits were all out of sequence and context, I loved Herge's characters and stories. Recently, a couple of decades later, I started recollecting the complete Tintin adventures and stumbled onto "The Tintin Companion" in a local bookstore. It was shrinkwrapped but I took a chance and bought it anyway. It was definitely worth it. This book gives a great history of Herge and his career and work. It also goes into detail about each of the stories and the inspirations behind the illustrations. An extremely beautiful, enlightening, well-put-together book. Fans will love it.
Rating:
Summary: From a TinTin fan
Review: I gave this to my wife for Chritsmas and scored many points in doing so. I enjoy TinTin, but she is a fanatic and reports she cannot put it down.
Rating:
Summary: From a TinTin fan
Review: I gave this to my wife for Chritsmas and scored many points in doing so. I enjoy TinTin, but she is a fanatic and reports she cannot put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Marvelous work
Review: I grew up reading Tintin (and Asterix) in the state library. For a long time I didn't even realize that they were written so long ago and originally were not in English. There was always this undercurrent of surprise in Tintin ... the fact that the "foreign" languages actually made sense - for example, in Tintin in Tibet, the porter who yells at Captain Haddock in Hindi. The words make sense in Hindi; it's not just gibberish as many other authors would have gotten away with.
This book inspired me to go out and buy the complete set and start reading them again after almost 20 years. The amount of detail that Michael Farr has gone into is obviously only surpassed by Herge himself.
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