Misadventures of Tintin land French artist in court battle
Famously litigious head of Hergé stable says sculptor’s use of cartoon character’s image breached copyright
A FRENCH sculptor who made busts of Tintin faces a counterfeit claim today in the latest legal battle waged by the controversial British head of the Hergé empire, who for three decades has sued anyone found using the image of the comic book hero without a licence.
The case is one of dozens brought by Nick Rodwell, 68, who is married to Fanny Vlamynck, 86, Hergé’s widow. His penchant for litigation sparks regular rows among Tintin fans and even prompted the Briton to proclaim himself “the least popular man in Belgium”.
Today, a Marseille court will rule whether Christophe Tixier, alias Peppone, an artist from Provence, breached copyright rules by producing 90 busts of the plucky reporter whose adventures with his dog Snowy have sold around 300 million albums since 1929.
A 2018 criminal lawsuit against Mr Tixier failed but Moulinsart, the company run by Mr Rodwell that owns the Tintin catalogue, is now pursuing the artist in a civil court for €200,000 (£175,000) in damages and a demand that all the busts be withdrawn.
Moulinsart has also sued a Paris art gallery that exhibited Mr Tixier’s works, some of which are over two metres tall.
Before the trial, Mr Tixier argued that every artist had outside influences but “nobody says that Picasso plagiarised African art”. His lawyer, Delphine Cô, even questioned whether Tintin’s official Belgian creator, Georges Remi, who used the pen name Hergé, could claim paternity for the adventurer journalist.
“Was it really Hergé who invented the Tintin character?” she asked, pointing out that French illustrator Benjamin Rabier had published an album of stories in 1898 called Tintin-lutin (Tintingoblin) with a blonde bequiffed character in golf trousers.
“To claim authorial rights to a character, the work must be original to be protected,” she argued, adding that as Moulinsart did not sell busts of Tintin, it had no grounds for counterfeit claims.
The court case is far from unique. Next month, another French court will hand down a verdict in a counterfeit case over racy paintings showing Tintin with glamorous female companions by French artist Xavier Marabout.
The mildly erotic nature of some of the 24 works depicting the cartoon adventurer in the world of the American painter Edward Hopper are an infringement of moral rights, Mr Rodwell’s lawyers have argued.
Among other lawsuits, French novelist Bob Garcia had his house seized in 2009 for daring to reproduce a Tintin drawing in a book for scholars and students with a print run of 200 copies. He appealed to Steven Spielberg, who produced The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn in 2011, to pressure Mr Rodwell into being more lenient.
Such actions saw the Briton bestowed with an “Award for Nastiness” by comic book authors at the Angoulême festival in 2010. Le Figaro recently called him “the man who locked down Tintin” while Pierre Assouline, Hergé’s French biographer, wrote in L’express: “From an oeuvre, all he thinks about is creating a brand.”
However, other “Tintinophiles” insist he and his wife have skilfully protected the Tintin legacy, notably by refusing to sanction lucrative comic book spinoffs, unlike the Asterix series.
Benoît Peeters, author of The World of Hergé, told Le Figaro recently that while it was “perfectly normal for rights holders to protect themselves” from the commercial use of Tintin, more leeway should be given to those who cite his work. “But you have to hand it to him for keeping a certain grip on Hergé’s image and a certain respect for graphic quality, which hasn’t always been the case even in Hergé’s lifetime,” Mr Peeters said.
‘Nobody says that Picasso plagiarised African art… was it really Hergé who invented the Tintin character?’