My cable guide says otherwise, but according to the PBS website, tonight’s episode of P.O.V. focuses on Hergé’s Tintin, looking at the character and how he affected his creator’s life. I devoured the Tintin books as a kid, leaving the local library with at least one or two volumes whenever my parents would take me, and I’ve always been annoyed that the character wasn’t a bigger deal in the States. I know a PBS program won’t change that, but It’s still nice to see Hergé getting some recognition outside of Europe, nonetheless.

Who was Tintin? Indeed, who was his creator, Hergé? Tintin was the determined and resilient hero of a comic book series that took him on thrilling adventures around the world — and on some voyages not quite of this world. Actually, though Tintin is not as well known in the U.S. as in Europe, his distinctive tuft of ginger hair and Hergé’s no less distinctive drawing style will ring a bell with many Americans. Appearing from 1929 to 1982, the series took Tintin to the planet’s most exotic places to confront all sorts of danger, treachery and political machinations, with an emphasis on the fast-paced visuals of trains, planes, cars, bombs and other new technologies.

Both character and creator were unambiguous. Tintin was literally and emblematically a Boy Scout who always lived up to the Boy Scout code, no matter how dire, dark, strange or adult the situation. Tintin was the ideal with which Hergé totally identified. But, as revealed in Anders Østergaard’s “Tintin and I,” it was the treacherous and uncertain world around Tintin into which Hergé poured the reality of his own life. Based on 14 hours of audio interviews recorded in 1971 — heard here for the first time — “Tintin and I” shows that Hergé, while trying in life to live up to the idealized Tintin, ended up creating in art a powerful graphic record of the 20th century’s tortured history.

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