Blistering barnacles!

March 12, 2008 5:55 PM

What Tintin comic strip/panel should my friend and I silk screen onto shirts?

We'd like to make funny Tintin shirts. The more shocking and clever the better. We've thought about his depictions of non-white people, snowy getting drunk, and Tintin holding a gun or cigarette (I'm pretty sure I saw both of those).

Any ideas? Bonus points for links to panels online.

Thanks!

posted by Corduroy to clothing, beauty, & fashion (17 comments total)

How about this one on a black shirt?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:58 PM on March 12

Blazecock Piieon, that's a very cool one. A good friend of mine actually had it on a shirt too, and it looked great.
posted by Corduroy at 6:03 PM on March 12

Billions of blue blistering barnacles!
posted by churl at 6:08 PM on March 12

Okay, well if you want shocking I'm sure this will raise a few eyebrows. And here's one from when he liberated Tibet.

Thing is... this stuff is all copyrighted so I'm not so sure you should be putting it onto shirts.
posted by miss lynnster at 6:36 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

Thing is... this stuff is all copyrighted so I'm not so sure you should be putting it onto shirts.

Being copyrighted doesn't mean it's untouchable. Putting single panels onto shirts is almost certainly fair use, especially if they're not being sold. Unless the OP is planning on moving thousands via some store, the chance of coming into conflict with the Casterman Publishing House (or whoever owns the copyright to Tintin these days) basically zero. Apologies for the derail.
posted by Nelsormensch at 6:57 PM on March 12

Loch Lomond!

I can't find the image, but one of my favorite scenes is the secret handshake between Captain Chester and Captain Haddock in The Crab with Golden Claws.
posted by theiconoclast31 at 7:04 PM on March 12 [1 favorite]

How about Snowy drinking or affected by the previously mentioned Loch Lomond...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/57/SnowyMilou.png

I've always been fond of the one where he's got his mouth open under a cask, but I can't find that online so far...I think it might be from The Black Island.
posted by dubitable at 7:30 PM on March 12

The people behind Breaking Free are really in no position to complain about copyright infringement...
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:02 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

Anything from Le Lotus Bleu. I have an excellent lithograph of a very simple scene of Tintin and Snowy sitting at a table with a tea setting on it. Or the panel of the Thom(p)sons in full mandarin gear being followed and mocked by an entire village.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:19 PM on March 12

Breaking Free is a great comic. I love its unapologetic endorsement of revolutionary violence. I sort of wish it tried to involve the actual character of Tintin in some way though, e.g. through the dialectic of revolution Tintin becomes a John Reed of sorts. If I were to choose an image from Breaking Free for a T-Shirt, I'd go with this image. I'd probably run it through that online vectorizer first, the name of which I can't remember.
posted by Gnatcho at 8:52 PM on March 12

I'd probably run it through that online vectorizer first, the name of which I can't remember.

VectorMagic
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:14 PM on March 12 [2 favorites]

VectorMagic

Which is no longer free.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:40 PM on March 12

Sorry, I should have been clear that we're making only a few Tintin shits, and they're for personal use.
posted by Corduroy at 3:03 AM on March 13

only a few Tintin shits

hm.
posted by Corduroy at 3:04 AM on March 13

If it's aesthetics you're after try this from Tintin in Tibet. The "camera" is panning across thre panels while the characters wander onwards into the mountains. Great art. Maybe not your usual t-shirt print, but that's a good thing, right?
posted by SurrenderMonkey at 9:34 AM on March 13

Which is no longer free.

True, but $3.50 an image seems reasonable to me for a one-off project like this.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:00 PM on March 13

I bought a Tintin t-shirt at the Tintin store in Montreal ages ago... it was the scene with Haddock & Tintin looking to one side from Explorers on the moon. Not the cover art - they were looking towards the reader. It was converted to line art though - just black lines on white.

Also, FY(illegal)I, I found a torrent the other day which contained a scan of every page of every Tintin book. So, you know, in case you need source material. Illegal source material.
posted by GuyZero at 1:32 PM on March 13