page_title: The Seven Crystal Balls
section_title: Publication
hierarchical_section_title: The Seven Crystal Balls / History / Publication
caption_attribution_description: English: Section from the book Galerie de Traitres ("Gallery of Traitors") published clandestinely by the Belgian resistance group "L'Insoumis". The page open deals with Georges Remy¨&#32;&#91;sic&#93; (actually Georges Remi, aka Hergé), condemned as a collaborator. “ "L'Insoumis", charged with the mission to denounce and hunt down traitors, has managed to penetrate into the lair of the collaborators in the ersatz-LE SOIR... Friends, readers, look at these faces!...The crimes of these men are known and proved... ” The text also mentions that Remy &#32;&#91;sic&#93; is "According to certain information obtained, a Rexist, but we have not be able to find proof." In the National Museum of the Resistance, Anderlecht.
context_page_description: The Seven Crystal Balls is the thirteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. The story was serialised daily in Le Soir, Belgium's leading francophone newspaper, from December 1943 amidst the German occupation of Belgium during World War II. The story was cancelled abruptly following the Allied liberation in September 1944, when Hergé was blacklisted after being accused of collaborating with the occupying Germans. After he was cleared two years later, the story was then serialised weekly in the new Tintin magazine from September 1946 to April 1948. The story revolves around the investigations of a young reporter Tintin and his friend Captain Haddock into the abduction of their friend Professor Calculus and its connection to a mysterious illness which has afflicted the members of an archaeological expedition to Peru.
  The Seven Crystal Balls was a commercial success and was published in book form by Casterman shortly after its conclusion. Hergé concluded the arc begun in this story with Prisoners of the Sun, while the series itself became a defining part of the Franco-Belgian comics tradition.
context_section_description: The story began serialisation in Le Soir under the title of Les Sept Boules de Cristal on 16 December 1943. However, Hergé's health declined, as he was afflicted with flu, sinusitis, and ear ache. This was accompanied by general exhaustion, depression, and fear that upon the imminent collapse of German administration, he would face retribution as a collaborator; many accused of being collaborators had already been killed by the Belgian Resistance. Experiencing a breakdown, he took a hiatus from producing The Seven Crystal Balls between 6 May and 6 July 1944, during which a message was posted in Le Soir stating:
  They're coming! Who? Why, Tintin and Snowy, of course! Perhaps, since you have not heard anything about them lately, you have been afraid, dear readers, that something bad had happened to them? Nothing of the sort! Tintin and Snowy were simply waiting for our excellent associate and friend Hergé to return to better health, as he was sick for a few weeks.
  The story returned to its serialisation in Le Soir on 7 July, starting with a summary of the story so far.
  However, it would be interrupted again on 2 September 1944. Brussels was liberated from German occupation by the Allied forces on 3 September, upon which Le Soir immediately ceased publication. Hergé had been forced to abandon the story after 152 strips, equivalent to fifty pages of the later published book volume. The story had been left unfinished after the scene in which Tintin leaves the hospital where he sees the seven members of the expedition enduring a simultaneous fit. Three days later the entire staff were fired and a new editorial team introduced.
  Hergé was arrested on 3 September, having been named as a collaborator in a Resistance document known as the "Gallery of Traitors". This would be the first of four incidents in which Hergé was arrested and freed: by the State Security, the Judiciary Police, the Belgian National Movement, and the Front for Independence, during which he spent one night in jail.
  On 8 September the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force issued a proclamation announcing that "any journalist who had helped produce a newspaper during the occupation was for the time being barred from practising his profession." Blacklisted, Hergé was now unemployed. A newspaper closely associated with the Belgian Resistance, La Patrie, issued a strip titled The Adventures of Tintin in the Land of the Nazis, in which Hergé was lampooned as a collaborator.
  The period witnessed widespread allegations against accused collaborators, with military courts condemning 30,000 on minor charges and 25,000 on more serious charges; of those, 5,500 were sentenced to life imprisonment or capital punishment. A judiciary inquiry into Hergé's case was launched by the deputy public prosecutor, Mr Vinçotte, although in his report he urged lenience, stating that "I am inclined to close the case. I believe it would bring ridicule on the judicial system to go after an inoffensive children's book author and illustrator. On the other hand, Hergé worked for Le Soir during the war, and his illustrations are what made people buy the newspaper." Unable to work for the press, Hergé worked from home re-drawing, and Jacobs colouring, the older Adventures of Tintin for publication by his book publisher Casterman, completing the second version of Tintin in the Congo and starting on King Ottokar's Sceptre. Casterman supported Hergé throughout his ordeal, for which he always remained grateful. He and Jacobs produced a comic strip under the pseudonym of "Olav", although no publishers accepted it. Although this period allowed him an escape from the pressure of daily production which had affected most of his working life, he also had family problems to deal with; his brother Paul returned to Brussels from a German prisoner-of-war camp and their mother had become highly delusional and was moved to a psychiatric hospital.
  In October 1945, Hergé was approached by Raymond Leblanc, a former member of a conservative Resistance group, the National Royalist Movement (MNR), and his ass
caption: Booklet published by the Belgian Resistance group L'Insoumis, denouncing Georges Remy  [sic] as a collaborator. Hergé later admitted that "I hated the Resistance thing ... I knew that for every one of the Resistance's actions, hostages would be arrested and shot."[45]
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