French Artist Marabout Sued Over Using Tintin In ‘Hergé – Hopper’ Series

French artist Xavier Marabout is in court defending his right to create his Hergé – Hopper mashup series imagining Tintin in the landscapes of Edward Hopper.

Marabout created 21 pieces from 2013-2017 in his Hergé – Hopper series that imagined the boy reporter and other Tintin characters inhabiting the lonely, isolated world of Edward Hopper’s landscapes of American culture.

But Marabout is the latest artist to fall foul of the Moulinsart (The Hergé Foundation), the company in control of Hergé‘s estate, who have taken him to the French courts over his mashup work, including this, Taxi for the Night Owls, based on Hopper‘s Nighthawks…

You can easily see what he’s doing with just a few examples, cleverly and cheekily putting Hergé’s famous boy reporter and other Tintin characters into Hopper’s landscapes and dialing up the cheesecake of the female characters a notch.

But Moulinsart doesn’t see it anywhere near as charitably as I do, accusing him in the French courts of ‘”taking advantage of the reputation of a character to immerse him in an erotic universe”.

It’s perhaps not as high in the mix in his Nighthawks mashup, but it’s more obvious in the likes of Vacation in Buick Roadmaster…

Now, irrespective of my opinion that they’re somewhat stretching the definition of erotic here, this is serious for Marabout as Moulinsart really don’t like the idea of anyone but them using Tintin without their express consent and especially don’t like this sort of work that changes the context and tone of the characters.

And Moulinsart is very, very quick to threaten/take legal action, just as they have here with Marabout.

Moulinsart was created by Fanny Rodwell, Hergé’s widow, in 1987, to run Hergé’s estate, and is now overseen by Nick Rodwell, Fanny’s husband. Over the years, Moulinsart has been incredibly litigious over the work, pursuing anyone and everyone who used images of Tintin or made new unauthorized Tintin works. Litigious to the point of the ridiculous at times, as pointed out by Bart Beaty in this Comics Reporter piece from 2015…

It is important to bear in mind that Nick Rodwell, who runs Moulinsart, is one of the most disliked people in European comics amongst fans. The husband of Hergé’s second wife, he has taken hold of the Tintin empire and consistently reined over it in a way that antagonizes fans and scholars (Moulinsart is relentless in the protection of the Tintin copyrights even to the point of discouraging academic study of the Tintin books).”

Things changed substantially in 2015, with a bombshell court ruling (see Artnet and Comics Reporter for more) that meant that the actual publishing rights to Tintin have never belonged to Moulinsart but instead belong to Hergé’s publisher, Casterman, meaning that publishing images from the Tintin books for the purposes of review, academic use, etc, is no longer the ridiculous problem it once was.

However… the actual ownership of Hergé’s creations, the intellectual property, that still belongs to Moulinsart – and that’s why Marabout’s mashup work of Hergé’s famous character is now before the Judge and could land him in a lot of trouble if the ruling, due in May, goes against him.

Marabout describes his work as ‘strip art‘, something that ‘strips distant artistic universes to merge them together’, and has included the series Tex Avery-Picasso, mixing Tex Avery‘s Wolf and Droopy with Picasso‘s work, and Super Heroes – Art New, taking various superheroes, including Batman, Black Widow, Iron Man, and adding figures or stylings from Klimt and Mucha.

Of course, we’re in the realms of parody as fair use here, something that’s always a hideously grey area in copyright law.

‘Taking advantage of the reputation of a character to immerse him in an erotic universe has nothing to do with humour,’ was how one of Moulinsart’s lawyers put it.

Marabout’s lawyers responded by bringing up what they called ‘conflict between copyright and freedom of expression and creation’.

We shall find out who the French courts agree with in May.