The Boston Globe has a quick article on the sanitisation of fairy tales in Disney films. Its not a new idea but as I begin thinking about Tintin and Asterix, I realise how like fairy tales they both are, in the original sense of the form.
Herge and Goscinny & Uderzo reimagine their version of Europe essentially using the sometime and somewhen to comment on the world around them. Both sets of authors are also clearly writing their strips to influence their young readers – since Herge write for Le Petit Vingtieme and Goscinny & Uderzo’s Pilote magazine very much drew from the influence of Herge and wrote for young adults.
I wonder if it is a cultural thing though. The twentieth century was decidedly America’s century in terms of cultural and social influences so it is content to portray a slightly winsome view of humanity whereas Europe had gone through the Second World War as a theatre of war and was jaded at itself. It wa trying to rebuild itself and refind what it meant to be French/Belgian/English and so on.