YMMV / Tintin - Tintin in the Congo

• Common Knowledge: Among the accusations of racist portrayal of Sub-Saharan Africans, this story is sometimes wrongly accused of depicting them as cannibals, which doesn't actually happen; it is very likely this is the result of readers confusing this story with Hergé's other comic book series, Jo, Zette and Jocko where the protagonists do actually meet a stereotypical black Cannibal Tribe that tries to eat them.
• Condemned by History: Once one of the albums that helped launched Tintin into a massively successful series, since WWII it's become difficult to find anyone who'll defend the story over its Mighty Whitey narrative, racist depiction of Congolese natives, and the rampant murder of wildlife Played for Laughs. Even Herge later came to view it as an Old Shame.
• Designated Hero: Partly because of Values Dissonance. Tintin is extremely rude and condescending to the Congolese, he forces them to upright a train after he crashed into it and hunts lots of animals — dispatching several in particularly cruel and violent ways — yet he's worshipped by everyone.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Congolese love Tintin in the Congo. Oddly enough, the album is quite popular in francophone Africa, and in modern Democratic Republic of the Congo itself in particular. Interviews of locals show that people don't mind the caricatures there (saying that local caricatures of white people there are in fact worse than what Hergé made of African people), considering them as purely humor, and that Hergé actually made the country's name world-famous and inspired the country's comic book creators to the point of making it Africa's number one provider of them. Not to mention the boost it gave to tourism.
• Never Live It Down: Tintin himself will either be seen as a bland featureless innocent hero... or the embodiment of white racist colonialism, solely because of this story.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Every once in a while, there are attempts at lawsuits to ban the album in either Belgium or France as it remains a piece of paternalistic racism that's still being sold, despite recent editions clearly explaining the context of its making in preface.
• Ron the Death Eater: This infamous early portrayal of Tintin has gotten him characterized as a racist, paternalistic and arrogant white colonizer in the eyes of many, and is often subject to Take That! parodies with this version in mind, depicting him as even more racist than he ever was in this comic.
• Sophomore Slump: Often seen as the worst Tintin story; while Land of the Soviets was probably worse in terms of storytelling and artwork, its clumsy anti-Communist propaganda can at least have something of a Narm Charm to modern readers, something that can't be said about the racism and pro-hunting stance of this story. Fortunately, things quickly started improving over the course of the next three stories.
• Squick: The entire sequence of Tintin — in an attempt to retrieve Snowy from a chimpanzee that stole and carried him up a tree — shooting another chimpanzee, skinning it, and then immediately wearing its skin to climb up and get him without suspicion. Although no gore is shown, it's still absolutely horrible to think about.
  Ceebeegeebee: "WITHOUT AROUSING HIS SUSPICIONS"?! You’re a human being who has gutted a dead monkey and draped yourself in its still-warm fur, and now you’re walking around with your face sticking out of its neck, wearing a hat and carrying a rifle. Everything about this would arouse a monkey’s suspicions!
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • When Tintin shows the natives film footage of the wizard and the villain partying together, the film is silent and in black-and-white, as most films still were in 1930, when this comic strip story was drawn.
  • Tintin teaches the children about "their fatherland Belgium" in the original story. (In the color version, it was changed to a simple "2+2=4" lesson.). Since 1960, Congo is no longer a Belgian colony.
• Values Dissonance: Tintin being carried around and worshiped as some kind of Mighty Whitey by black Africans is less innocent today than it was when the story was first published and this is what the story is largely known for now.

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