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The character of Tintin was created on January 10, 1929, and his 75th birthday was widely celebrated in 2004.[6] Tintin was largely based on Hergé's earlier character Totor, a boy-scout with a striking resemblance to Tintin. The comics starring Totor, Les aventures de Totor, chef de patrouille des Hannetons, appeared in the magazine Le Boy-Scout Belge between 1926 and 1929. In the later comic book series, Tintin is a young Belgian reporter who becomes involved in dangerous cases in which he takes heroic action to save the day. Almost every adventure features Tintin engaging in some kind of investigation, but rarely does he actually turn in a story.[7]

Tintin's age is never accurately revealed, with the character described as an 'adolescent' in the character description within the special DVD features, and referred to as 'kid' several times within the television shows. Various newspaper articles on the series have recounted his age as being 15[7], Time refer to him as a teenager,[8] whilst the official site Tintin.com lists his age as somewhere between 16 and 18.

Tintin has been cited as representing an everyman character, commentators noting his neutral manner, which is sometimes criticised as bland, as allowing balanced reflection of the evil, folly and foolhardiness which surrounds him. His boy-scout ideals, which represent Hergé's own, are never compromised by the character, and his everyman status allows the reader to assume his position within the story, rather than merely following the adventures of a strong protagonist.[9] Tintin's iconic representation enhances this aspect, with Scott McCloud noting that it "allows readers to mask themselves in a character and safely enter a sensually stimulating world".[10]

Tintin's character changes in the last albums, starting with The Castafiore Emerald. Tintin no longer actively seeks out adventure but rather gets taken along with what happens around him, this being especially evident in Flight 714 and Tintin and the Picaros. These final three adventures are held in contrasting opinions by readers and critics, representing either a late period of eccentricity, or puzzling disappointments. Hergé commented on this change in the works: "Tintin has lost control, he is not on top of events anymore, he is subjected to them."[11]

Shortly before his death, former Belgian Nazi collaborator Léon Degrelle created controversy by stating that the Tintin character was originally based on himself. Degrelle had indeed known Hergé during his early career as a journalist, but this allegation is generally considered a fabrication of the notorious self-booster Degrelle.[7] The earlier version of Tintin was apparently inspired, at least in part, by Hergé's youngest brother. Hergé later became estranged from his brother, and depicted him as the villainous Colonel Sponz in The Calculus Affair. Tintin and Sponz, although physically very different, have actually quite similar hair spikes.[12]

Hergé himself has noted that Tintin existed as his personal expression, and although he recorded in 1947 that that he knew "Tintin is no longer me, that, if he is to go on living, it will be by a sort of artificial respiration that I will have to practise constantly and which exhausts me, and will exhaust me more and more"[13], he was also fond of stating "Tintin, c'est moi!"[1]

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