One of the movie posters for Spielberg's take on Tintin

My personal interest in Hergé (Georges Remi) and his beloved graphic-novel character began when I was a child, with a series of books I checked out repeatedly from the Leamington (Ont.) Public Library. There, on the bottom shelf in a metal stack in the library’s post-Carnegie addition, was a small collection to which I returned often. My first encounter with Tintin, Snowy, Captain Haddock and the rest of Hergé’s characters was in Explorers on the Moon. Only later did I discover its prequel, Destination Moon, and the rest of the Tintin volumes.

Much has already been written and said about the famous Belgian author and his career. The most authoritative is French author Pierre Assouline’s biography, Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin. Attendant to the film’s release in English Canada (it opened in Quebec earlier — a bow to Tintin’s popularity in French culture), Assouline appeared on the CBC Radio 1 program The Current, with Anna Maria Tremonti, on Dec. 21. The podcast of that radio interview can be heard here.

Similarly, much has already been written about director Steven Spielberg‘s use of motion-capture technology to cast stars such as Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis and Daniel Craig in this film’s starring roles.

It suffices to say that The Adventures of Tintin was a thrill, and cancelled my doubts about whether the books could really be successfully adapted to the big screen in a way more pleasing and true to the spirit of both Hergé and his creations than was the animated TV series from the early ’90s. Tintin aficionados, however, will recognize the fact that script of the current feature film is really a composite creation of three different Tintin books: The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham’s Treasure and The Crab With the Golden Claws.

That fact notwithstanding, The Adventures of Tintin is the truest rendition to date of the spirit of Hergé’s boy reporter and his accompanying cast of characters. It was a joy to watch, offering a warm, two-hour soak in a reverie of distant childhood. The film’s end portends a sequel, likely based on Red Rackham’s Treasure as a starting point. But my personal hope is that Spielberg, Peter Jackson and their other collaborators would someday get around the Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon — partly for old times’ sake and partly for the creative possibilities those plots would open to the filmmakers.

A review by Charles McGrath in today’s New York Times, however, puts the book on my Christmas list — or at least at the top of my shopping list for the inevitable trip to the bookstore during the upcoming holidays.

McGrath’s review isn’t especially flattering, but holds out the promise that Assouline delves into considerable detail about the man whose artistic style became distinct and who, through his storytelling, delved into topics that, for his time, pushed the boundaries of what could be accomplished through the medium of the graphic novel. I’ll be interested in learning more about a man who, at least for many North American readers, has remained rather two-dimensional, much like his drawings.

Interest in Hergé, his characters and the story lines of his Tintin series will likely continue to grow as we approach the premiere of the first of three motion pictures, directed by Steven Spielberg, based on the novels. The Secret of the Unicorn is slated for release in the fall of 2011. Accompanying the film are sure to be the long-simmering controversy about whether Remi was a tool of the Nazi occupation and the question of whether the racism reflected in some of his work — which he later regretted and, quite literally, tried to erase — negated some of his genius.