Hergé an unassuming genius

Hergé, or Georges Remi, born in Brussels on May 22, 1907, studied at the college of Saint-Boniface, where, in his own words, he was bored to death. In 1921, he joins the boy scouts, where he acquires the totem name of Inquisitive Fox, and his first drawings are subsequently reproduced in the boy scouts magazines? Upon completion of his studies, Georges Remi is employed in the subscription department of the magazine Le Vingtième Siècle. His career, interrupted in 1927 by his military service, takes a new turn in 1928 when he is made responsible for designing, supervising, and illustrating Le Petit Vingtième, a weekly supplement intended for the magazine's youthful readership. Tintin and Snowy make their debut there on January 10 in 1929.

In those first stories, which he considers fun things, a game, Hergé allows his imagination free rein: he improvises instead of elaborating the plot. But, in 1934, Tchong-Jen, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. The young Chinese persuades him to write well-researched stories and to get solid documentation for his material. Tchang's subsequent influence on Hergé's work is obvious. During the war, Hergé works for the news-paper Le Soir, for which he will later on be censored by certain quarters, because Le Soir was being published with permission from the occupying Nazi forces. Neverthel-ess, when reading the Adventures of Tintin, one can get a taste of Hergé's aversion (The Blue Lotus), or of his skepticism (Tintin and the Picaros), to and with the notion of totalitarian regimes.

Hergé's biography: Lignes de Vie (Philippe Goddin)

One of the amazing things about Tintin is its global reach. Hergé reflected on the world in a way that can be understood universally, by anyone from Brussels to Calcutta.

Philippe Goddin paints a frank and full portrait of Tintin's creator, revealing a complex man who was gifted with a generous sense of humour, yet who was also vulnerable and suffered intense personal torment.

As of 1946, the Tintin adventures will appear in their own weekly, titled Tintin (or Kuifje in the Dutch edition), at the initiative of Raymond Leblanc.