> Always baffled me how little commercial sense HNers had when I was growing up and reading this forum.
How long have you been reading HN? How have you felt the "HNers" w.r.t. nose-for-commerciality (and along whatever other dimension you think is relevant) change over time?
Ooh! I would super recommend reading into the Tintin author's friendship with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Chongren. It also touches upon and confirms/applies to what the French individuals say about Hergé, but up until his writing of The Blue Lotus, I'd argue.
The section on Zhang Chongren's wikipedia was cool
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# Influence on Hergé
Hergé's early albums of The Adventures of Tintin were highly dependent on stereotypes for comedic effect. These included evil Russian Bolsheviks, lazy and ignorant Africans, and an America of gangsters, cowboys and Indians.
At the close of the newspaper run of Cigars of the Pharaoh, Hergé had mentioned that Tintin's next adventure (The Blue Lotus) would bring him to China. Father Gosset, the chaplain to the Chinese students at the University of Leuven, wrote to Hergé urging him to be sensitive about what he wrote about China. Hergé agreed, and in the spring of 1934 Gosset introduced him to Zhang Chongren. The two young artists quickly became close friends, and Zhang introduced Hergé to Chinese history and culture, and the techniques of Chinese art. Of similar age, they also shared many interests and beliefs. Hergé even promised to give authorship credits to Zhang in the book, but Zhang declined the offer. As a result of this experience, Hergé would strive, in The Blue Lotus and subsequent Tintin adventures, to be meticulously accurate in depicting the places Tintin visited.
As a token of appreciation, Hergé added the character "Chang Chong-Chen" (Tchang in original French-language version) to The Blue Lotus.[1]
As another result of his friendship with Zhang, Hergé became increasingly aware of the problems of colonialism, in particular the Empire of Japan's advances into China, and the corrupt, exploitative International Settlement of Shanghai. The Blue Lotus carries a bold anti-imperialist message, contrary to the prevailing view in Europe, which was sympathetic to Japan and the colonial enterprise[citation needed]. As a result, it drew sharp criticism from various parties, including a protest by Japanese diplomats to the Belgian Foreign Ministry.[citation needed]
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I bought a copy of The Blue Lotus after learning about how the publication of that adventure was a turning point in Hergé's understanding and open-mindedness about other (specifically China, in this case) cultures.
Hergé's depiction of the Chinese was still quite stereotypical, although more benign than his previous treatment of non-Europeans. His depiction of the Japanese wasn't so nuanced (although fairly typical for the times).
He may have started to broaden his understanding of "foreigners", but it still took a while.
TBH, it's not really just a problem with Hergé. European comics throughout the century are full of stereotypes, typically used for comedic effect, which can look bad from a modern perspective. Asterix, by Goscinny and Uderzo, is entirely built on stereotypes. So is Alan Ford, by Secchi and Raviola.
In reality, most authors were not particularly racist; they just leveraged stereotypes to get cheap laughs, which was socially accepted back then.
Back in the day any European would laugh on itself as a tradition. Spaniards did the same with the Bruguera School (Mortadelo y Filemón, Zipi y Zape...) making fun on both the state/power/society and the outdated traditional family values. The Zapatilla brothers (Zipi and Zape) were subversive long ago before Bart Simpson and made a good laugh on the 60's Spain. MyF were basically "Get Smart" and the Superagent 86 10 years ago in the 70's, showing up a backwards Spain compared to France and Germany and making fun on the shitty infra we had on everything while we tried to fight crime. Luckly, times changed a lot in late 70's/80's.
Hope to see you guys being written about in the same fashion as https://www.bvp.com/atlas/bootstrapping-to-100-million-arr-c...
down the road.