The Adventures of Tintin was quite popular in France and Europe in general, though it's originally from Belgium created by Hergé (aka George Remi) in 1929 as a comic for a Belgian newspaper. Launched initially as a comic series, later became comic books, then a cartoon series with subsequent animated films. Tintin was a reporter who traveled all over the globe with his fluffy white "Milou" (Snowy). The series covered a wide span of genres: swashbuckling adventures with elements of fantasy, mystery, political thriller, and science fiction. It was known to be silly and slapsticky but oftentimes incorporating a very sophicated outlook on politics and culture.
Early works of Tintin were criticized as a racist and colonialist because Hergé caricaturized non-Europeans in overly exaggerated and unflattering ways, or he simply implied his racist leanings. Some American publishers, in fact, required Hergé to change his drawings to minimize the offensive impact of certain portrayals. For example, The Shooting Star originally had an American villain with a Jewish name, who was changed to an American with a less ethnically specific name in later editions. I think it was just the mindset of the times.
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