The Adventures of Tintin - History

History

Georges Remi came up with the character of Tintin, a young boy reporter, whilst working at the Belgian newspaper Le XXe Siècle (The 20th Century). Writing under his pen name, Hergé pioneered the new character in the story Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. This comic, which involved Tintin battling the socialist authorities in the Soviet Union, was serialised in Le XXe Siècle's supplement for children, Le Petit Vingtième (The Little Twentieth), from 10 January 1929 until 11 May 1930. The series was an instant success; sales of the Thursday edition of the newspaper, the day the supplement appeared, were to increase by 600%. Hergé went on to pen a string of Adventures of Tintin, sending his character to real locations such as the Belgian Congo, the United States, Egypt, India, China, and the United Kingdom, and also to fictional countries of his own devising, such as the Latin American republic of San Theodoros and the East European kingdom of Syldavia.

The eighth Tintin adventure, King Ottokar's Sceptre (1939), involved Tintin battling the forces of fictional fascist state Borduria, whose leader, named Müsstler, was a combination of Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini.

In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium as World War II broke out across Europe, and although Hergé initially considered fleeing into a self-imposed exile, he ultimately decided to stay in his occupied homeland. To ensure their own dominance, the Nazi authorities closed down Le XXe Siècle, leaving Hergé unemployed. In search of employment, he was given a job as an illustrator at Belgium's leading newspaper, Le Soir (The Evening), which was allowed to continue publication under German management. On 17 October 1940 he was made editor of the paper's children's supplement, Le Soir Jeunesse, in which he set about producing new Tintin adventures. In this new, more repressive political climate, Hergé could no longer explore political themes in his Adventures of Tintin lest he be arrested by the Gestapo. As Tintinologist Harry Thompson noted, Tintin's role as a reporter came to an end, to be replaced by his new role as an explorer, something which was not a politically sensitive topic.

With the end of the war, Hergé left Le Soir and, in 1949, accepted an invitation to continue The Adventures of Tintin in the new Tintin magazine (Le journal de Tintin). Finally, Hergé's Tintin series reached the height of its success in 1950 when he created Studios Hergé. The studios produced eight new Tintin albums, coloured and reformatted several old Tintin albums, and ultimately completed twenty-three albums of the canon series. Studios Hergé continued to release additional publications until Hergé's death in 1983. In 1986, a twenty-fourth unfinished album was released, the Studios were disbanded, and its assets were transferred to the Hergé Foundation. The Adventures of Tintin continue to entertain new generations of Tintin fans today.