We're All Neighbours

Readers and critics have described Tintin as a well-rounded, yet open-ended character, noting that his rather neutral personality -- sometimes labeled as bland -- permits a 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 status allows the reader to assume his position within the story, rather than merely following the adventures of a strong protagonist.[4] 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".[5] Tintin is remarkable in that he is apparently devoid of sexual or romantic feeling, a feature he shares to a certain degree with most of the other characters in the books.

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 practice constantly and which exhausts me, and will exhaust me more and more"[9], he was also fond of stating "Tintin, c'est moi!" ("Tintin, that's me!").[10]