One of my fondest memories of our grade school library is the hunt for Tintin comics. When I was in grade school, our library had the whole set, but everyone wanted to read them, so while they were marked “for room use only,” (maybe because copies kept disappearing) they were still not very easy to find, as most girls (well, including me and my friends when we found them) stashed them in secret hiding places around the library, often behind what we supposed were the books nobody ever read.

In case you’re not familiar with the series, The Adventures of Tintin is a comic strip series created by the Belgian artist Hergé, a.k.a.  Georges Remi (G.R. backwards is R.G., which sounds like Hergé), dating back as early as 1929, originally in French. It is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century, translated in over 50 languages, with 200 million books sold worldwide. It features the reporter Tintin, who has a knack for stumbling upon mystery — and more trouble than his white fox terrier, Snowy, would care to get entangled in.

I loved the series when I was younger, and I still love it today, and so when I started earning my own money to build my book collection, Tintin comics were high on the priority list. I’ve been acquiring pieces slowly, because they’re not exactly cheap. Today they’re around P400 ($8) at Fully Booked and National Book Store, and P450 ($9) at Powerbooks so as much as I’d love the complete set, I’m just happy I’m past the halfway point. Tintin comics were never cheap, but at the rate they were selling a decade ago, I want to kick myself for starting this late.

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