The Adventures of Tintin following the adventures of a strong protagonist. 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." Snowy ("Milou" in Hergé's original version), a white Wire Fox Terrier dog, is Tintin's loyal, four-legged companion. The bond between Snowy and Tintin is very deep, as they have saved each other from perilous situations many times. Snowy frequently "speaks" to the reader through his thoughts (often displaying a dry sense of humour), which are not heard by the human characters in the story. Snowy has
Tintin (character) admitted that he did not take Tintin seriously in the early "Adventures", explaining simply that he "put the character to the test" and that Tintin was simply created "as a joke between friends, forgotten the next day." Hergé biographer Benoît Peeters noted that throughout the early "Adventures", Tintin was "supremely Belgian" in his characteristics, a view echoed by biographer Pierre Assouline, who deemed all of the protagonists of the early "Adventures" "very Belgian". Hergé himself commented: "my early works are books by a young Belgian filled with the prejudices and ideas of a Catholic, they are books that could have