TinTin Vs Bill Leak · 31 May 2007
Belgians do what PM can’t: banish Tintin
From the Australian
Sally Jackson May 31, 2007
AS Captain Haddock would say: “Slubberdegullions! Ectoplasm! Brutes!” Bill Leak, The Australian’s artist and daily editorial cartoonist, has been threatened with legal action unless he stops depicting federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd as Tintin, the tufted comic book character created by Belgian cartoonist Herge in 1929.
This follows the news that three Tintin movies are in the pipeline, with Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson confirming they would direct two of them. Leak said he’d been drawing Rudd as Tintin at least since December. Tintin’s dog, Snowy, also features in the cartoons, although not his best friend, the hard-drinking Captain Haddock.
“Sadly, Julia Gillard doesn’t have a great big black beard,” Leak said yesterday.
Readers have applauded the comparison as spot on. But Brussels-based Moulinsart SA, which owns the worldwide commercial rights to Herge’s works, is less amused.
It has asked Leak for a written undertaking not to “commercialise paintings and other cartoons reproducing parodied adaptations of Tintin and Snowy”.
It also demands that he pay “reasonable copyrights” on the sales of any cartoons or paintings featuring the characters. Otherwise, “we shall be compelled to take appropriate legal action”.
Leak said he had been a fan of the intrepid boy reporter since he was a kid. “When I discovered Tintin, I gave up reading novels,” Leak said.
“They are exquisitely drawn.”
When Mr Rudd took over as Opposition Leader late last year, the uncanny likeness struck Leak at once. Both possessed “unusually circular” heads, Leak said.
And, just like Tintin, “Rudd looks like the little bloke who is taking on the big adventure and who just might prevail in the end”, he said.
Altering Tintin to Rudd required little work: “All I did was add a bit of a chin to him. And sometimes a little bit of a firmness to the mouth.”
The Australian’s editor, Paul Whittaker, said he hoped an amicable solution could be reached.
“Bill’s cartoons are not parodies of Tintin, they are parodies of Kevin Rudd, who despite his enormous profile in Australia is probably a singularly unknown figure in Belgium,” Mr Whittaker said.
Leak said he would be disappointed to have to give up Tintin.
“Somehow, I just can’t see Rudd as the Incredible Hulk. Worst comes to worst, I might just draw him as the little nerdy bloke with glasses that he is. Usually, that’s funny enough.”
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Footnote:
In the first few toons after Rudd took over from Beazo back in December, Leak put “apologies to TinTin”, or something to that effect, at the bottom of his cartoons, but after that he stopped doing it and just continued to run with the parody.
I kept thinking to myself every time I saw him do another Rudd toon “surely someone’s going to pick him up on this. The world’s such a litigious place these days, and he’s having his stuff posted online.. he’s gonna get sprung!”..
Sure enough – in come the greasy lawyers.
