I myself am a huge Tintin fan, having grown up with them, but only because my mother was a librarian and if you combed the libraries across Pittsburgh, you could find Tintin buried in the stacks and gradually got through most of the series, picking up a couple at one library, a few more at another.
Two of the most famous of these have even made headway in the states, Tintin and Asterix. I myself am a huge Tintin fan, having grown up with them, but only because my mother was a librarian and if you combed the libraries across Pittsburgh, you could find Tintin buried in the stacks and gradually got through most of the series, picking up a couple at one library, a few more at another. I never saw Tintin anywhere outside the libraries and know very few people who were aware of its existence.