Tintin | Tintin Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia "Eureka!" —Tintin Tintin is a reporter, adventurer, traveler, and the protagonist of the popular comic book series The Adventures of Tintin, which was written by the Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, better known as Hergé (1907–1983). Contents [ show ] Biography Tintin made his first appearance in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929–1930) as a journalist reporting on the Bolsheviks of Soviet Russia with his loyal dog Snowy and soon evolved into an investigative reporter and crime-buster whose curiosity draws him into the dangerous circles of drug-traffickers and mercenaries. Tintin seems to be physically quite strong as he sometimes defeats criminals without much difficulty with punches and once easily broke a door in The Secret of the Unicorn . Hergé never explicitly confirmed Tintin's nationality, but vaguely refers to him as Belgian and living in Brussels (the streets of Brussels are unmistakable in the backdrop of The Secret of the Unicorn and The Red Sea Sharks .

Further more, in Tintin in Tibet , the address written on Chang ‘s letter was "比國布魯塞爾", which means "Brussels, Belgium"). Hergé also never confirmed Tintin's age, but the comic books portray him as a young adult, cultured, worldly, and utterly responsible. However, in Hergé's Adventures of Tintin, Tintin's home is located in New York and is supposedly American. In earlier adventures, Tintin and Snowy live alone in an apartment, but they eventually go on to stay in one of Captain Haddock 's spare rooms at Marlinspike Hall , giving the impression that Tintin is old enough not to need the influence and presence of parents or school. In The Secret of the Unicorn , Tintin's passport states his birth year as 1929, which was the year of his first appearance in The Land of the Soviets, estimating his age to be 15, while the official Tintin website states his age as between 16–18. Hergé uses a floating timeline in The Adventures of Tintin so that while the world ages around him, Tintin does not age.

Tintin is well-educated, intelligent, and selfless with morals that cannot be compromised. He is efficient and responsible, does not smoke and rarely drinks, and is athletic (he is seen doing yoga various times throughout the series, and does stretches and warm-ups in Prisoners of the Sun ). He is a skilled driver of almost any vehicle, including tanks, motorcycles, cars, helicopters, and speedboats. The final unfinished adventure, Tintin and Alph-Art , saw Tintin being led out of his cell to be killed, although it is very unlikely that he dies at the end of the story. Character "The idea for the character of Tintin and the sort of adventures that would befall him came to me, I believe, in five minutes, the moment I first made a sketch of the figure of this hero: that is to say, he had not haunted my youth nor even my dreams.

Although it's possible that as a child I imagined myself in the role of a sort of Tintin." Palle Huld, Said to Be Tintin’s Real-Life Model, Dies at 98 - The New York Times The New York Times Books |Palle Huld, Danish Actor Said to Be Model for Tintin, Dies at 98 Search Palle Huld, a Danish actor whose fleet, youthful and highly public circumnavigation of the globe as a cowlicked teenager is believed to have inspired the popular comic-book character Tintin , died on Nov. 26 in Copenhagen. He was 98. His death was widely reported in Danish newspapers. Created by the Belgian artist Hergé (the pseudonym of Georges Remi), Tintin was a snub-nosed teenage reporter who traveled the world with his trusty dog, Snowy, doing good deeds and foiling bad men. The character made his debut in January 1929 in Le Petit Vingtième, the children’s supplement of a Belgian newspaper.

Over the next half-century (Hergé died in 1983), Tintin’s exploits were chronicled in two dozen illustrated books, starting with “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets” in 1930 and ending with “Tintin and Alph-Art,” published posthumously in 1986. Translated into many languages, the books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, remain in print and retain an immense following. A feature film, “ The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn ,” produced by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, is scheduled to open in December 2011. Photo Palle Huld, in 1928, as a teenager about to see the world. Credit Damgaard Holger/POLFOTO, via Associated Press According to many accounts in the European news media over the years, Tintin exists, at least in part, because a young Danish clerk in search of adventure happened to answer a newspaper ad one day. Mr. Huld’s life in the public eye began in 1928, when the Danish newspaper Politiken held a contest to honor the centennial of Jules Verne.

The winner would re-enact Phileas Fogg’s voyage from “Around the World in Eighty Days,” Verne’s celebrated 1873 novel. Advertisement Continue reading the main story There were to be some crucial twists: The contest was open only to teenage boys; the winner would circle the globe unaccompanied; and he had to complete the trip within 46 days, using any conveyance but the airplane. From several hundred applicants, the newspaper chose Palle, a 15-year-old Boy Scout who had left school and was working as a clerk in an automobile dealership. Palle left Denmark on March 1, 1928, and as he traveled by rail and steamship the world press chronicled his every move, through England, Scotland, Canada, Japan, the Soviet Union, Poland and Germany. Photo One of the books featuring Tintin, the traveling teenager. Credit Khaled Desouki/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images It also chronicled his triumphant homecoming, after just 44 days, to a cheering crowd of 20,000 in Copenhagen.

His safe return was “much to the relief of his mother, who had been prescribed sleeping tablets for the duration,” as The Copenhagen Post wrote in a profile of Mr. Huld earlier this year. The young Mr. Huld wrote a book about his adventures, which was published in several languages and appeared in English as “A Boy Scout Around the World” (Coward-McCann, 1929). Tintin historians (and there are many) have posited various sources for Hergé’s hero, including Palle Huld. Mr. Huld seemed to credit the connection, but Hergé was not forthcoming on the subject, and Pierre Assouline, the author of “Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin,” published in English last year, said in an e-mail to The Times that he had never heard of Mr. Huld. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to.

Sign Up Privacy Policy Nevertheless, certain similarities between the intrepid Danish clerk and the intrepid Belgian scribe are indisputable: Like his comic-book incarnation, Palle Huld was fresh-faced and freckled, with a turned-up nose and unruly red hair. On his journey, Palle was often photographed wearing plus-fours, Tintin’s breeches of choice. Palle Huld was born in 1912. He made his stage debut in 1934 at the Royal Danish Theater, with which he remained associated for many years. He also appeared regularly in Danish films and on television before his retirement a decade ago. Information on survivors could not be confirmed. Mr. Huld is survived, at the very least, by his pen-and-paper incarnation, eternally inquisitive and eternally youthful. Correction: December 7, 2010 An obituary on Monday about the Danish actor Palle Huld, who was said to have inspired the comic-book character Tintin, misstated the scheduled opening date for the feature film “The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.” It is December 2011, not this month.

A version of this article appears in print on December 6, 2010, on Page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Palle Huld, 98, Danish Actor Said to Be Model for Tintin. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe The Origins of Tintin | WatchMojo.com The Origins of Tintin in: cartoon character origins hosted by Rebecca Brayton This iconic character made his debut on January 10th 1929. Created by Belgian comic writer and artist Georges Prosper Remi, under the pen name Hergé, Tintin first appeared in the story “Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.” These adventures were produced until 1976, late into the author’s life, and were later adapted into a short-lived animated series in the early 1990s. In 2011 Steven Spielberg adapted several earlier tales within a spectacular 3D motion-capture film. Join WatchMojo.com as we explore the origins of Tintin. Blistering barnacles! It's Tintin and the evil Bolsheviks: It's a mystery worthy of the great boy reporter himself.

Why was Herge's first book kept hidden for 60 years? | Daily Mail Online Blistering barnacles! It's Tintin and the evil Bolsheviks: It's a mystery worthy of the great boy reporter himself. Why was Herge's first book kept hidden for 60 years? Updated: 19:46 EST, 22 October 2011 comments By FRANK GARDNER Morning in Moscow and we were outside the headquarters of Russian intelligence, the FSB. Amazingly, we had permission to film as we retraced the footsteps of the fictional young Belgian reporter in Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets. In the book, written in 1929, Tintin is continually being followed and plotted against by shadowy Bolshevik figures, evil-looking men with spike beards and long coats, clutching a ticking bomb destined to finish off the nosy reporter from Brussels. We were given a rather more subtle reception. Slowly, quietly, almost imperceptibly, a limo with blacked-out windows emerged from the building that houses the modern-day equivalent of the KGB.

On the trail: Frank Gardner tests an original 1929 Amilcar, a model used in the Tintin books With a purr of its engines, it crossed Lubyanka Square, synonymous with the infamous jail where political prisoners were taken for interrogation in Soviet times, and drew up next to us. We braced ourselves for Russian officialdom, a demand to see papers, perhaps, or passports. RELATED ARTICLES Share But instead, the black limo remained beside us, motionless, for several minutes. ‘They’re probably taking pictures,’ said our cameraman. But no windows slid down, no spies stepped out, it was just a none-too-subtle message: ‘We know you are here and we are watching you.’ Not that we had anything to hide. Our mission was simple: to unravel the mystery of the hidden first Tintin book, the prototype that went on to spawn the comic-book phenomenon and the new movie, The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn, that comes out later this week in the UK.

Modern treatment: An image from the latest incarnation of the boy reporter, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn Tintin is now the world’s most successful cartoon character, with his books translated into 70 languages. Like many others growing up in Seventies Britain, I devoured Tintin books as a boy. Flight 714, The Blue Lotus, The Black Island – these were all adventure fantasies that took me far away from the classroom and my overdue Latin homework. I loved the description and detail of far-off places drawn by Tintin’s Belgian creator Hergé – the slowly turning ceiling fans in Jakarta airport or the look of surprise on an East European soldier’s face in King Ottokar’s Sceptre. But there was one Tintin book I had never read. In fact I had never even heard of it until this year: Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets. This, I learned, was because it was not published in English until 1989, a full 60 years after Hergé wrote it, and by then I was out of shorts and into a job, reading newspapers instead of cartoon strips.

Comic book hero: Tintin with his faithful canine companion Snowy I decided to find out why it was kept hidden for so long – and began my quest in a quiet village in Buckinghamshire. Here I met Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper, who devoted 30 years of her life to translating the Tintin books from the original French into English. Now in her 80s, she showed me her rough notebooks, scribblings where she came up with the quaint curses spluttered by the irascible but lovable Captain Haddock. ‘Ten thousand blue blistering barnacles . . . yes, that was mine,’ she said proudly. Hergé, whom she knew well, was just 21 when he wrote his first Tintin book. It was 1929 and he was working his way up the ladder from the bottom at the Belgian newspaper Le Petit Vingtième. The editor saw his sketches and thought them so good that he asked him to produce a weekly children’s comic strip that came out every Thursday as a supplement to the main paper.

All over Belgium, schoolchildren would wait eagerly for the next week’s episode about the plucky young reporter Tintin who got into countless scrapes and adventures. Sometimes they would have to wait a whole week to know if their hero would be executed by firing squad. Leading role: British actor Jamie Bell plays Tintin in the latest film Hergé’s real name was Georges Remi – he just reversed his initials so in French they sounded like ‘Herr Jay’. His editor, an admirer of the Italian fascist dictator Mussolini, had a loathing for communism and for the Bolsheviks who had seized power in Russia after the 1917 Revolution. He commissioned Hergé to ‘send Tintin off’ by train to Russia to find out what life was like under communism. No prizes for guessing it’s not going to be a flattering description. Almost from the start, he is followed by a Bolshevik assassin who blows up Tintin’s train, yet our hero survives, naturally. I’d enjoyed a rather smoother journey to Brussels, loading on to Eurostar my adapted hand bike that turns my wheelchair into a go-faster trike.

The hand bike – which I use after I was shot and partly paralysed in my legs while on assignment in Saudi Arabia in 2004 – is capable of mounting curbs and rough ground. This, said my film crew, was very much in the spirit of Tintin, who was always jumping onto new modes of transport to either pursue or escape from his villains. My hand bike soon became a theme that ran through our film, allowing me to glide with ease over cobbled European squares that would otherwise have had me lurching forward in my wheelchair in jarring, kangaroo hops. At Brussels Midi station, as if in affirmation of my quest, I was greeted by a giant, wall-high poster of... Tintin on a train. This city clearly loves its poster child. In a leafy suburb, I pitched up at the Hergé Foundation’s Tintin Museum where, with great solemnity, a man in white gloves produced from the vaults one of the original art works drawn by Hergé in Indian ink. Already, I could see his artistic style developing.

Honoured: Director Steven Spielberg (left) receives the Commander of the Order of the Crown decoration from Belgium's Finance Minister Didier Reynders during a ceremony ahead of yesterday's world movie premiere Top team: Director Steven Spielberg (second left) , actor Jamie Bell, (right), French-Moroccan actor Gad Elmaleh (left) and visual effects supervisor Joe Letteri, address the media ahead of last night's world premiere But in cafes and bistros, where I went on to meet ‘Tintinologists’ and historians, I learned Hergé was ashamed and embarrassed by his first work, Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets. He felt the drawings were crude and the narrative naive. He did not want it translated, thinking his later works, which were in colour, were much superior. It remained untranslated for six decades. So that was one mystery solved. But how did Tintin, the cub reporter, get his trademark quiff? After all, in the opening pages of this first book he didn’t have one. I travelled on to Berlin, where Tintin is arrested but escapes from the stodgy-looking German police by leaping into a Mercedes Open Tourer. I was in luck.

In a back-street garage I met a classic-car enthusiast who has lovingly restored this exact model from 1928. With the roof down and the sun out, we accelerated towards the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate. As we picked up speed, I could feel my hair being swept backwards, which I noted from the pages of the book was how Tintin acquired his quiff. I spent the rest of the trip working to suppress any imitation on my own head in case people thought: ‘Does that Frank Gardner guy think he’s Tintin or something?’ Pride of Belgium: A poster promotes the latest film in Brussels, where Tintin creator Herge is a national hero In Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets, the young Belgian reporter drives east, ultimately crossing the border into Russia. When he sees the iconic onion domes of Moscow’s St Basil’s Cathedral, he exclaims to his faithful canine companion: ‘Look Snowy, Moscow!’ Hergé, who had never been there himself, goes on to depict a half-derelict city where starving children queue for bread, rationed out by cruel commissars who demand to know first if the child is a communist.

A ‘no’ answer gets a kick from a leather boot. Surely an absurd depiction, I thought, as we drove into central Moscow past glitzy shops, international brand names and affluent young Russians with money to spend. The city had changed beyond recognition from the drab grey place I first visited in Cold War times, but to grab a piece of nostalgia we checked in to the Sovietsky Hotel, a throwback to Politburo days. There were faded red carpets, an enormous portrait of Stalin, an upholstered piano bar and a photo plaque that announced ‘Margaret Thatcher stayed here’. But we were here on a quest, to find out if today’s Russians thought Hergé’s unflattering portrayal of their country in 1929 had any foundation. Because I have to say that my first impression of Hergé’s Land Of The Soviets was not a positive one. The drawings were crude, the plots improbable and it seemed almost as if the author had set out to denigrate everything Russian. Business as usual: Tintin and Capt.

Haddock get into plenty of scrapes in the latest film Earlier, in Brussels, I had learned that one of Hergé’s scenes bore a striking similarity to a passage from the angry memoirs of a Belgian consul who described a local election under the Bolsheviks. All those in favour of communism had to raise their hands, anyone with other ideas had pistols pointed at them. Another scene in Tintin showed a party of visiting British trade unionists being shown round a factory and being ‘taken in’ by Soviet propaganda. Yet another scene showed commissars persecuting the kulaks, the peasant farmers whose grain they came to steal. So surely this was just crude anti-Soviet propaganda by an artist with a fertile imagination and a fascist boss? In a Moscow apartment block, I put this question to Irena, a historian and daughter of a former KGB colonel. Well, she replied, some of the scenes are of course ‘fantastical’ (a new word for me and one I shall now use at every opportunity). But she said the spirit of the story was in keeping with what was going on in Russia at the time.

One of the great tragedies of the 20th Century, she went on, was the wholesale persecution of the kulak farmers by the Bolsheviks. ‘Literally thousands perished.’ It was time to head out to the countryside, but not before the film crew pulled the sort of stunt you normally see done to Karl Pilkington on the series An Idiot Abroad. ‘With your limited Russian,’ said Graham the director as we pulled up at one of Moscow’s many grandiose train stations, ‘we’d like to see you get your own ticket and negotiate your own way on to the train.’ This, I suppose, served me right for showing off all six words of Russian I remembered from my last trip. But the Russian railway staff, despite their dour demeanour, were incredibly helpful. Getting myself out to a provincial Russian village, I found, was easier than catching a train from Paddington. In sprawling countryside dotted with onion-dome churches, I met up with Vladimir, a farmer with several hectares. I showed him Hergé’s Tintin In The Land Of The Soviets and its tales of kulak persecution and he scoffed. ‘Of course this is accurate,’ he said, seeming almost insulted to be asked.

‘Even today we farmers have problems with the authorities.’ As if on cue, a police car drove up and an angry conversation in Russian ensued. ‘I tell him to get lost,’ said Vladimir. ‘He wants me to pay him a bribe to let me sell my vegetables on my land. My own land! This I will not do.’ I wondered what Tintin would have done at this point and concluded that he would probably have ended up pacing round a Russian jail. It was time to head home, my head full of contradictions. Now at last I understood what lay behind Hergé’s first-ever Tintin comic book, his motivation and its historical context. Would I have become a Tintin fan if this was the first book I had picked up? Probably not. But like his fans at the time, it left me feeling that this adventure was far from over. I was ready for the next one. The Adventures Of Tintin With Frank Gardner is on BBC2 at 8pm on Sunday, October 30.

A Human Rights Reading of Tintin by Sarah Joseph :: SSRN Monash University - Faculty of Law August 6, 2013 Abstract: This paper analyses Herge's Tintin books in terms of the politics of the series, as a precursor to its human rights messages, in particular regarding racism, sexism and due process. Politically, Tintin swings from right to left. Despite heavy (and often justified) criticism of the series as racist, Herge's books are more nuanced, as they include conscious if clumsy anti-racist messages. Ultimately, Tintin is a quintessentially European product of his time, and the books are in fact a unique chronicle of one half of the twentieth century, warts and all. Nevertheless, the warts (and even Herge's failure to recognise them) have not stopped the ongoing globalisation of the Tintin books' appeal many decades after their creator's death.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 25 Keywords: Tintin, Herge, human rights, racism, discrimination, politics, due process, fascism, sexism, comics Date posted: August 6, 2013 Suggested Citation Joseph, Sarah, A Human Rights Reading of Tintin (August 6, 2013). Available at SSRN: or Contact Information Hergé | Tintin Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia "I seek above all to tell a story…and to tell it clearly." —Hergé Georges Prosper Remi (22 May 1907 - 3 March 1983 ), better known by the pen name Hergé, was a Belgian comics writer and artist. "Hergé" is the French pronunciation of "RG," or his initials reversed. His best known and most substantial work is The Adventures of Tintin comic book series, which he wrote and illustrated from 1929 until his death in 1983, leaving the twenty-fourth Tintin adventure Tintin and Alph-Art unfinished. His work remains a strong influence on comics, particularly in Europe.

He was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003 . Contents Biography Childhood and early career Georges Prosper Remi was born in 1907 in Etterbeek, in Brussels, Belgium to middle class parents, Alexis Remi and his wife Elisabeth Dufour. [1] His four years of primary schooling coincided with World War I (1914–1918), during which Brussels was occupied by the German Empire. Georges, who displayed an early affinity for drawing, filled the margins of his earliest schoolbooks with doodles of the German invaders. [2] Except for a few drawing lessons which he later took at l'école Saint-Luc he never had any formal training in the visual arts. In 1920 he began studying in the collège Saint-Boniface, a secondary school where the teachers were Catholic priests. [3] Georges joined the Boy Scouts troop of the school, where he was given the totemic name "Renard curieux" (Curious fox). Recently an old strip by him was found on a wall of this school.

[4] His first drawings were published in 1922 in Jamais assez, the school's Scout paper, and in Le Boy-Scout Belge, the Scout monthly magazine. [5] From 1924, he signed his illustrations using the pseudonym "Hergé." [6] His subsequent comics work would be heavily influenced by the ethics of the Scouting movement, as well as the early travel experiences he made with the Scout association. [7] On finishing school in 1925 Georges worked at the Catholic newspaper Le XXe Siècle under the editor Norbert Wallez, a Catholic abbot who kept a photograph of Mussolini in his office. [8] The following year, he published his first cartoon series, Totor , in the Scouting magazine Le Boy-Scout Belge. [9] In 1928, he was put in charge of producing material for the Le XXe Siècle's new weekly supplement for children, Le Petit Vingtième .

He began illustrating The Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Poussette, and Cochonnet, a strip written by a member of the newspaper's sports staff, but soon became dissatisfied with this series. Wallez asked Remi to create a young hero, a Catholic reporter who would fight for good all over the world. [8] He decided to create a comic strip of his own, which would adopt the recent American innovation of using speech balloons to depict words coming out of the characters' mouths, inspired by their use by established French comics author Alain St. Ogan. [10] Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (1929) Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , by "Hergé," appeared in the pages of Le Petit Vingtième on 10 January 1929, and ran until 8 May 1930 . The strip chronicled the adventures of a young reporter named Tintin and his pet fox terrier Snowy (Milou) as they journeyed through the Soviet Union. The character of Tintin was partly inspired by Georges's brother Paul Remi, an officer in the Belgian army.

In January 1930 Hergé introduced Quick & Flupke (Quick et Flupke), a new comic strip about two street urchins from Brussels, in the pages of Le Petit Vingtième. For many years, Hergé continued to produce this less well-known series in parallel with his Tintin stories. In June he began the second Tintin adventure, Tintin in the Congo (then the colony of Belgian Congo), followed by Tintin in America and Cigars of the Pharaoh . On 20 July 1932 he married Germaine Kieckens , the secretary of the director of the Le XXe Siècle, [8] whom he had first met in 1927. [11] They had no children, and eventually divorced in 1977 . [12] The early Tintin adventures each took about a year to complete, upon which they were released in book form by Le Petit Vingtième and, from 1934 , by the -05-0023Casterman publishing house.

Hergé continued to revise these stories in subsequent editions, including a later conversion to color. The Blue Lotus (1936) Hergé reached a watershed with The Blue Lotus , the fifth Tintin adventure. At the close of the previous story, Cigars of the Pharaoh, he had mentioned that Tintin's next adventure would bring him to China. Father Gosset, the chaplain to the Chinese students at the Catholic University of Leuven, wrote to Hergé urging him to be sensitive about what he wrote about China. Hergé agreed, and in the spring of 1934 Gosset introduced him to Chang Chong-jen (Chang Chongren), a young sculpture student at the Brussels Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. [13] The two young artists quickly became close friends, and Chang introduced Hergé to Chinese culture and the techniques of Chinese art. As a result of this experience, Hergé strove in The Blue Lotus, and in subsequent Tintin adventures, to be meticulously accurate in depicting the places which Tintin visited.

As a token of appreciation he added a fictional " Chang " to The Blue Lotus, a young Chinese boy who meets and befriends Tintin. At the end of his studies in Brussels, Chang returned home to China, and Hergé lost contact with him during the invasion of China by Japan and the subsequent Chinese Civil War. More than four decades passed before the two friends would meet again. World War II The Second World War broke out on 1 September 1939 with the Nazi invasion of Poland. Hergé was mobilized as a reserve lieutenant, and had to interrupt Tintin's adventures in the middle of Land of Black Gold . [14] Prior to the invasion of neutral Belgium by German forces, Hergé published humoristic drawings in L'Ouest, a paper run by future collaborator Raymond de Becker and which strongly advocated that Belgium not join the war alongside its World War One allies France and Britain. [15] By the summer of 1940 Belgium had fallen to Germany along with most of Western Continental Europe. Le Petit Vingtième, in which Tintin's adventures had until then been published, was shut down by the Nazi occupiers.

[16] However, Hergé accepted an offer to produce a new Tintin strip in Le Soir , Brussels' leading French daily, which had been appropriated as the mouthpiece of the occupation forces. [17] He left Land of the Black Gold unfinished, launching instead into The Crab with the Golden Claws , the first of six Tintin stories which he produced during the war. As the war progressed, two factors arose that led to a revolution in Hergé's style. Firstly, paper shortages forced Tintin to be published in a daily three- or four-frame strip, rather than the two full pages every week which had been the practice on Le Petit Vingtième. [18] In order to create tension at the end of each strip rather than the end of each page, Hergé had to introduce more frequent gags and faster-paced action. Secondly, Hergé had to move the focus of Tintin's adventures away from current affairs, in order to avoid controversy.

He turned to stories with an escapist flavour: an expedition to a meteorite ( The Shooting Star ), an intriguing mystery and treasure hunt ( The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure ), and a quest to undo an ancient Incan curse ( The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun ). In these stories Hergé placed more emphasis on characters than plot, and indeed Tintin's most memorable companions, Captain Haddock and Cuthbert Calculus (in French Professeur Tryphon Tournesol), were introduced at this time. Haddock debuted in The Crab with the Golden Claws and Calculus in Red Rackham's Treasure. The Shooting Star was nonetheless controversial. The story line involved a race between two ship crews trying to reach a meteorite which had landed in the Arctic. Hergé chose a subject that was as fantastic as possible rather than issues related to the crisis of the times to avoid trouble with the censors. Nonetheless politics intruded.

The crew Tintin joined was composed of Europeans from Axis or neutral countries ("Europe") while their underhanded rivals were Americans (although in later editions the US flag was removed from the rival ship; see the image on the The Shooting Star page), financed by a person with a Jewish name and what Nazi propagandists called "Jewish features." [19] Tintin also flies in a German Arado Ar 196 plane. In a scene which appeared when the story was being serialised in Le Soir two Jews, depicted in classic anti-Semitic caricature, are shown watching Philippulus harassing Tintin. One actually looks forward to the end of the world, arguing that it would mean that he would not be obliged to settle with his creditors (see the image on the Ideology of Tintin page). In 1943 Hergé met -05-0044Edgar P. Jacobs, another comics artist, whom he hired to help revise the early Tintin albums.

[20] Jacobs' most significant contribution would be his redrawing of the costumes and backgrounds in the revised edition of King Ottokar's Sceptre which gave it a Balkan feel—in the original, the castle guards had been dressed as British Beefeaters. Jacob also began collaborating with Hergé on a new Tintin adventure, The Seven Crystal Balls (see above). During and after the German occupation Hergé was accused of being a collaborator because of the Nazi control of the paper, and he was briefly taken in for interrogation after the war. [21] He claimed that he was simply doing a job under the occupation, like a plumber or carpenter. After the war Hergé admitted that: "I recognize that I myself believed that the future of the West could depend on the New Order. For many, democracy had proved a disappointment, and the New Order brought new hope. In light of everything which has happened, it is of course a huge error to have believed for an instant in the New Order." [22] The Tintin character was never depicted as adhering to these beliefs.

However, it has been argued that anti-Semitic themes continued, especially in the depiction of Tintin's enemy Rastapopoulos in the post-war Flight 714 , [23] though other writers argue against this, pointing out the way that Rastapopoulos surrounds himself with explicitly German-looking characters: Kurt, the submarine (or u-boat) commander of The Red Sea Sharks ; Doctor Krollspell, whom Hergé himself referred to as a former concentration camp official, and Hans Boehm, the sinister-looking navigator and co-pilot, both from Flight 714 . [24] Post-war troubles The occupation of Brussels ended on 3 September 1944 . Tintin's adventures were interrupted toward the end of The Seven Crystal Balls when the Allied authorities shut down Le Soir. [25] During the chaotic post-occupation period, Hergé was arrested four times by different groups. [26] He was publicly accused of being a Nazi Rexist sympathizer, a claim which was largely unfounded, as the Tintin adventures published during the war were scrupulously free of politics (the only dubious point occurring in The Shooting Star , discussed above).

In fact, one or two stories published before the war had been critical of fascism; most prominently, King Ottokar's Sceptre showed Tintin working to defeat a coup attempt that could be seen as an allegory of the Anschluss, Nazi Germany's takeover of Austria. Nevertheless, like other former employees of the Nazi-controlled press, Hergé found himself barred from newspaper work. He spent the next two years working with Jacobs, as well as a new assistant, Alice Devos, adapting many of the early Tintin adventures into colour. [27] Tintin's exile ended on 26 September 1946 . The publisher and wartime resistance fighter Raymond Leblanc provided the financial support and anti-Nazi credentials to launch the comics magazine titled Tintin with Hergé. The weekly publication featured two pages of Tintin's adventures, beginning with the remainder of The Seven Crystal Balls , as well as other comic strips and assorted articles. [28] It became highly successful, with circulation surpassing 100,000 every week. Tintin had always been credited as simply "by Hergé", without mention of Edgar Pierre Jacobs and Hergé's other assistants.

As Jacobs' contribution to the production of the strip increased, he asked for a joint credit in 1944, which Hergé refused. They continued to collaborate intensely until 1946, when Jacobs went on to produce his own comics for Tintin magazine, including the widely-acclaimed Blake and Mortimer. [29] Personal crisis A cartoon of an overworking Hergé with his Siamese cat Thaïke, suffering from the pressure of his characters published in a 1947 Tintin Magazine. The increased demands which Tintin magazine placed on Hergé began to take their toll. In 1947 Prisoners of the Sun was interrupted for two months when an exhausted Hergé took a long vacation. [30] Hergé, disillusioned by his treatment and that of many of his colleagues and friends after the war, planned to migrate with his wife Germaine to Argentina, but later abandoned the plan when he began a love affair.

[31] In 1949 , while working on the new version of Land of Black Gold (the first version had been left unfinished by the outbreak of World War II), Hergé suffered a nervous breakdown and was forced to take an abrupt four month-long break. [32] He suffered another breakdown in early 1950 , while working on Destination Moon . [33] In order to lighten Hergé's workload Hergé Studios was set up on 6 April 1950. [34] The studio employed several assistants to aid Hergé in the production of The Adventures of Tintin. Foremost among these was artist Bob de Moor, who collaborated with Hergé on the remaining Tintin adventures, filling in details and backgrounds such as the spectacular lunar landscapes in Explorers on the Moon . [35] With the aid of the studio, Hergé managed to produce The Calculus Affair from 1954 until 1956 , followed by The Red Sea Sharks in 1956--05-00701957. By the end of this period his personal life was again in crisis.

His marriage with Germaine was breaking apart after twenty-five years; he had fallen in love with Fanny Vlamynck, a young artist who had recently joined the Hergé Studios . [36] Furthermore, he was plagued by recurring nightmares filled with whiteness. [37] He consulted a Swiss psychoanalyst, who advised him to give up working on Tintin. [38] Instead, he finished Tintin in Tibet , started the year before. Published in Tintin magazine from September 1958 to November 1959 , Tintin in Tibet sent Tintin to the Himalayas in search of Chang Chong-Chen, the Chinese boy he had befriended in The Blue Lotus . The adventure allowed Hergé to confront his nightmares by filling the book with austere alpine landscapes, giving the adventure a powerfully spacious setting. The normally rich cast of characters was pared to a minimum — Tintin, Captain Haddock, and the Sherpa Tharkey — as the story focused on Tintin's dogged search for Chang. Hergé came to regard this highly personal and emotionally riveting Tintin adventure as his favorite.

[39] The completion of the story seemed also to signal an end to his problems: he was no longer troubled by nightmares, divorced Germaine in 1977 (they had separated in 1960 ), and finally married Fanny Vlamynck on 20 May of the same year. [40] Last years The last three complete Tintin adventures were produced at a much-reduced pace: The Castafiore Emerald in 1961 , Flight 714 in 1966 , and Tintin and the Picaros in 1975 . However, by this time Tintin had begun to move into other media. From the start of Tintin magazine, Raymond Leblanc had used Tintin for merchandising and advertisements. In 1961 the second Tintin -05-0085film was made: Tintin and the Golden Fleece , starring Jean-Pierre Talbot as Tintin [41] (an earlier stop motion-animated film was made in 1947 called The Crab with the Golden Claws , but it was screened publicly only once).

[42] Several traditionally-animated Tintin films have also been made, beginning with -05-0088The Calculus Case in 1961. The financial success of Tintin allowed Hergé to devote more of his time to travel. He travelled widely across Europe, and in 1971 visited America for the first time, meeting some of the Native Americans in the United States whose culture had long been a source of fascination for him. [43] In 1973 he visited Taiwan, accepting an invitation offered three decades before by the Kuomintang government, in appreciation of The Blue Lotus . [44] In a remarkable instance of life mirroring art, Hergé managed to resume contact with his old friend Chang Chong-jen , years after Tintin rescued the fictional Chang Chong-Chen in the closing pages of Tintin in Tibet . Chang had been reduced to a street sweeper by the Cultural Revolution, before becoming the head of the Fine Arts Academy in Shanghai, China during the 1970s.

He returned to Europe for a reunion with Hergé in 1981 , and settled in Paris in -05-00961985, where he died in 1989 . [45] Hergé died on 3 March 1983, aged 75. [46] He had been severely sick for several years, but the nature of his disease was unclear, possibly leukemia or a form of porphyria. His death was hastened by the HIV he had acquired during his weekly blood transfusions. [47] The market artist in The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn He left the twenty-fourth Tintin adventure, Tintin and Alph-Art , unfinished. Following his expressed desire not to have Tintin handled by another artist, it was published posthumously as a set of sketches and notes in 1986 . In 1987, Fanny closed the Hergé Studios , replacing it with the Hergé Foundation. In 1988, the Tintin magazine was discontinued.

Hergé's second cameo in The Land of Black Gold animated episode An animated cartoon version of Hergé makes a number of cameo appearances in The Adventures of Tintin animated series (see List of Hergé cameo appearances ). Hergé gave all rights to the creation of dolls and merchandise after his death to Michel Aroutcheff. Michel was Hergé's neighbour and a good friend. Aroutcheff then sold on these rights only keeping the right to make Tintin's red rocket when he goes to the moon. Bibliography A short comic charting the moon landings published in Paris Match Appropriation In 1989 an Anarchist graphic novel entitled -05-0122The Adventures of Tintin: Breaking Free was published in England under the pseudonym "Jack Daniels". The propaganda story is not related to any of the original Tintin novels, but mimics Hergé's style and includes several Tintin characters. Since the book was published without copyright and was released into the public domain, Hergé's estate could not take legal action.

This was just one of many cases of unofficial books being released, though often, as in the case of Tintin in Thailand , Hergé's estate were able to take legal action. For a list of such books see -05-0124List of Tintin parodies and pastiches. Awards and recognition 1971: Adamson Awards, Sweden 1972: Yellow Kid "una vita per il cartooning" (lifetime award) at the festival of Lucca [49] 1973: Grand Prix Saint Michel of the city of Brussels 1999: Included in the Harvey Award Jack Kirby Hall of Fame 2003: Included in the Eisner Award Hall of Fame as the Judge's choice 2005: Included in the running for De Grootste Belg (The Greatest Belgian). In the Flemish version he ended on 24th place. In the Walloon version he came 8th.

2007: Selected as the main motif for a high-value commemorative coin, the Euro gold and silver commemorative 100th anniversary of Hergé's birth commemorative coin minted in 2007, with a face value of 20 euro. On the obverse there is a self portrait of Hergé on the left. To the right of the portrait there is a portrait of Tintin. In the bottom of the coin Hergé's signature is depicted. According to the UNESCO's [ndex Translationum, Hergé is the ninth-most-often-translated French-language author, the second-most-often-translated Belgian author after Georges Simenon and the second-most-often-translated French-language comics author behind René Goscinny. [50] 1652 Hergé , an asteroid of the main belt is named after him (see also 1683 Castafiore ).

References tintin in the land of the soviets : definition of tintin in the land of the soviets and synonyms of tintin in the land of the soviets (English) Tintin in the Congo , 1931 Tintin in the Land of the Soviets (in the original French, Les Aventures de Tintin, reporter du "Petit Vingtième", au pays des Soviets) is the first title in the comic book series The Adventures of Tintin , written and drawn by Belgian cartoonist Hergé (1907–1983). Originally serialised in the Belgian children's newspaper supplement Le Petit Vingtième between 10 January 1929 and 8 May 1930, it was subsequently published in book form in 1930. Designed to be a work of anti- Communist propaganda for children, [1] it was commissioned by Hergé's boss, the Abbé Norbert Wallez , who ran the right wing Roman Catholic weekly Le XXe Siècle in which Le Petit Vingtième was published.

The plot revolves around the young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy , who travel, via Berlin, to the Soviet Union , to report back on the policies instituted by the state socialist government of Joseph Stalin and the Bolsheviks . However, an agent of the Soviet secret service, the OGPU , attempts to prevent Tintin from doing so, and sets traps to get rid of him. Despite this, the young reporter is successful in discovering that the Bolsheviks are stealing the food of the Soviet people, rigging elections and murdering opponents. The success of the work led to Hergé producing further Adventures of Tintin, starting with the controversial Tintin in the Congo (1930–31), as well as beginning a new comic series, entitled Quick and Flupke . Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was the only one of the 23 completed Tintin adventures that Hergé did not subsequently redraw in a colour edition. He himself thought little of the work, claiming that when he produced it, "I didn't consider it real work...

just a game", and later categorising it as simply "a transgression of my youth." [2] Due to this, he prevented its republication, but with the rising production of pirated editions being sold amongst Tintinologists , he finally allowed for an official reprint in 1973, and then an English language translation in 1989. It is one of only three Adventures of Tintin–the others being Tintin in the Congo and the unfinished Tintin and Alph-Art —that have not been used as a basis for any theatrical, radio, television or cinematic adaptations. Contents 5 External links Plot Tintin, a reporter for Le Petit Vingtième, and his dog Snowy are sent on an assignment to the Soviet Union . Departing from Brussels , his train is blown up en route to Moscow by an agent of the Soviet secret police, the OGPU , who believes him to be a "dirty little bourgeois ". Tintin is blamed for the bombing by the Berlin police but escapes to the border of the Soviet Union.

Here he is brought before the local Commissar's office, where the same OGPU agent that tried to kill Tintin on the train secretly instructs the Commissar that they must make the reporter "disappear... accidentally". After escaping again, Tintin finds "how the Soviets fool the poor idiots who still believe in a Red Paradise", by burning bundles of straw and clanging metal in order to trick visiting English Marxists into believing that Soviet factories are productive, when in fact they are not even operational. [3] Tintin goes on to witness a local election, where the Bolsheviks aim their guns at the voters to ensure their own electoral success. Several Bolsheviks then come to arrest him during the night, but he manages to scare them off by dressing up as a ghost. Attempting to make his way out of the Soviet Union, he is pursued and arrested, before being threatened with torture. [4] Escaping his captors, he reaches Moscow, which Tintin remarks has been turned into "a stinking slum" by the Bolsheviks; he then witnesses a government official handing out bread to those homeless children who adhere to the Marxist ideology and denying it to those who do not.

Snowy steals a loaf and gives it to a boy who was refused it. Then sneaking into a secret Bolshevik meeting, Tintin learns that all the Soviet grain is being exported abroad for propaganda purposes, leaving the people starving, and that the government plan to "organise an expedition against the kulaks , the rich peasants, and force them at gunpoint to give us their corn." [5] Tintin infiltrates the Soviet army and warns some of the kulaks to hide their grain from the army officials, but is caught and sentenced to death by firing squad. By planting blanks in the soldiers' rifles, Tintin fakes his death and is able to make his way into the snowy wilderness, where he discovers an underground Bolshevik hideaway in a haunted house. Here he is captured by a Bolshevik who informs him that "You're in the hideout where Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin have collected together wealth stolen from the people!" With the help of Snowy, Tintin escapes, commandeers a plane, and flies into the night. The plane crashes, but Tintin fashions himself a new propeller from a tree using a pen knife, and continues to Berlin, where he gets drunk and passes out.

[6] Captured by OGPU agents yet again, he is locked in a dungeon, but escapes with the aid of Snowy, who has dressed himself in a tiger costume. Another attempt to kidnap him is foiled when he manages to capture his assailant, an OGPU agent who "intends to blow up all the capitals of Europe with dynamite". Finally, Tintin arrives back in Brussels to a huge popular reception. [7] History Background "The idea for the character of Tintin and the sort of adventures that would befall him came to me, I believe, in five minutes, the moment I first made a sketch of the figure of this hero: that is to say, he had not haunted my youth nor even my dreams. Although it's possible that as a child I imagined myself in the role of a sort of Tintin." Hergé, 15 November 1966. [8] Georges Remi—who would become better known under his pen name of Hergé —had been employed to work as an illustrator at Le XXe Siècle (The 20th century), a staunchly Roman Catholic and conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels.

Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez , the paper described itself as a "Catholic Newspaper for Doctrine and Information" and disseminated a far right and fascist viewpoint: Wallez himself was a great admirer of Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini and kept a picture of him on his desktop, while Léon Degrelle , who would later become the leader of the fascist Rexists , worked as a foreign correspondent for the paper. As Tintinologist Harry Thompson would later note, such political ideas were not unusual in Belgium at that time, where "patriotism, Catholicism, strict morality, discipline and naivety were so inextricably bound together in everyone's lives that right-wing politics were an almost inevitable by-product. It was a world view shared by everyone, distinguished principally by its complete ignorance of the world." [9] Anti-socialist sentiment was strong, and a Soviet exhibition held in Brussels in January 1928 was vandalised amidst angry demonstrations by the fascist National Youth Movement, in which Degrelle took part.

[10] Wallez decided to begin production of a children's supplement, Le Petit Vingtième (The Little Twentieth), which was to be published in Le XXe Siècle every Thursday, and he decided to make Hergé its editor. [11] In addition to his role in editing the supplement, Hergé was initially involved in illustrating a story known as L'extraordinaire aventure de Flup, Nénesse, Puosette et Cochonnet (The Extraordinary Adventures of Flup, Nénesse, Puosette and Cochonnet), [12] which had been written by a member of the newspaper's sport staff and which revolved around the adventures of two boys, one of their little sisters, and her inflatable rubber pig. However Hergé soon became dissatisfied with this simple illustrative task, and wanted to begin both writing and illustrating his own cartoon strip. [1] He had already had some experience in creating comic strips. From July 1926 he had written a strip entitled Les Aventures de Totor C.P.

des Hannetons (The Adventures of Totor, Scout Leader of the Cockchafers) for the Scouting newspaper Le Boy Scout Belge (The Belgian Boy Scout), which was based around the life of Totor, a boy scout patrol leader. [1] Tintinologists such as Thompson, Michael Farr and Pierre Assouline have noted the strong influence that the character of Totor would have on Tintin, [1] [13] [8] with Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier stating that "Graphically, Totor was virtually identical to Tintin in every respect, except for his scout uniform." [14] Hergé never denied this, and described Tintin as being like Totor's younger brother. [8] The Lofficiers noted many other similarities between Totor and Tintin's respective adventures, particularly in the illustration style, the fast pace of the story, and the use of humour. [15] Influences Russian revolutionary and future Soviet Premier Vladimir Lenin addressing a crowd in Sverdlov Square , Moscow, 1920.

Hergé wanted to send his newly created character of Tintin on an adventure to the United States, where he could encounter the Native Americans , a people whom Hergé himself had been fascinated with since being a boy scout. Abbé Wallez, however, did not agree with this choice of destination, and Hergé would only be able to achieve it in his third Tintin adventure, Tintin in America . Instead, Wallez wanted Hergé to send his fictional reporter to the Soviet Union, a country that had been founded in 1922 by the governing Bolshevik Party , a Marxist–Leninist group who had seized power in the Russian Empire during the October Revolution of 1917. The Bolsheviks had set about greatly altering the country's society, nationalising industry and replacing a capitalist economy with a socialist one, in order to create what they saw as a dictatorship of the proletariat , or workers' state. By the late 1920s, when Land of the Soviets was written, the Soviet Union's first leader, Vladimir Lenin , had died and been replaced in this role by the former revolutionary, Joseph Stalin .

Being both Roman Catholic and politically right-wing, Wallez was very much opposed to the atheistic , anti-Christian, and extreme left-wing Soviet government, and wanted Tintin's first adventure to reflect this, thereby indoctrinating its young readers with anti-Marxist and anti-socialist ideas. [1] Later commenting on why he produced a work of propaganda, Hergé said that he had been "inspired by the atmosphere of the paper", which taught him that being a Catholic meant being anti-Marxist. [1] As Tintinologist Benoît Peeters noted, Hergé did not have the time either to visit the Soviet Union or to analyse all the published information about it. [16] Instead, he based his information on the country purely upon a single pamphlet, Moscou sans voiles (Moscow Unveiled), which had been written by Joseph Douillet (1878–1954), a former Belgian consul to Rostov-on-Don who had spent nine years in Russia following the 1917 revolution .

Published in both Belgium and France in 1928, Moscou sans voiles sold well to a public who were eager to believe Douillet's various anti-Bolshevik claims, many of which were of doubtful accuracy. [17] [1] As Michael Farr noted "Hergé freely, though selectively, lifted whole scenes from Douillet's account", including "the chilling election episode portrated on page 32 of the Tintin book" which was "almost identical" to Douillet's description in Moscou sans voiles. [18] A scene from the comic book in which the Bolsheviks force people to vote for them at gunpoint. It is a "chilling" scene lifted straight out of Joseph Douillet 's 1928 book Moscou sans voiles, being "almost identical to Douillet's description". [19] Hergé's lack of accurate knowledge about the Soviet Union led to many factual mistakes; for instance, the story contains references to bananas, Shell petrol and Huntley and Palmers biscuits, none of which actually existed in the Soviet Union at the time.

[20] Similarly, he made multiple errors in his use of Russian names, typically adding the ending of "-ski" to them, something which is actually the Polish word for "son", rather than Russian, where the equivalent term is "-vitch". [21] In creating Land of the Soviets, Hergé was also influenced by innovations within the comic strip medium. He noted that he was heavily influenced by the French comics artist Alain Saint-Ogan , who had recently been producing the Zig et Puce series. The two would meet the following year, and would become lifelong friends. He was also influenced by the contemporary American comics that the reporter Léon Degrelle had sent back to Belgium from Mexico, where he was stationed to report on the persecution of Catholics. These American comics included George McManus ' Bringing up Father , George Herriman 's Krazy Kat and Rudolph Dirks 's Katzenjammer Kids . [14] [22] Michael Farr also believed that the cinema of the time was an influence upon Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

He highlighted similarities between scenes in the comic with the police chases of the Keystone Cops films, the train chase in Buster Keaton 's The General and with the expressionist images found in the works of directors like Fritz Lang . Farr summarised this influence by commenting that "As a pioneer of the strip cartoon, Hergé was not afraid to draw on one modern medium to develop another." [23] Publication In advertising the upcoming story prior to serialisation, an announcement was featured in the 4 January 1929 edition of Le Petit Vingtième, [1] proclaiming that "we are always eager to satisfy our readers and keep them up to date on foreign affairs. We have therefore sent TINTIN, one of our top reporters, to Soviet Russia." The illusion that Tintin was actually a real reporter for the paper, and not a fictional character, was supported by the claim that the ensuing comic strip was not a series of drawings, but was actually composed of photographs taken of Tintin's adventure. [24] Literary critic Tom McCarthy drew a comparison between this and the early European novels of the 18th century, which also often made a pretense of being non-fictional.

[25] The front page of the 1 May 1930 edition of Le Petit Vingtième, declaring "Tintin Revient!" ("Tintin Returns!") from his adventure in the Soviet Union. [26] The first installment of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets appeared in the 10 January 1929 edition of Le Petit Vingtième, and would subsequently run in the paper in installments every week until 8 May 1930. [27] [1] [28] Hergé had not plotted out the storyline in advance, instead improvising new twists and situations to strand Tintin in on a weekly basis, leading Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier to remark that "Story-wise and graphically, Hergé was learning his craft before our eyes".

[29] Hergé admitted that the work that he produced for the story was rushed, saying that "The Petit Vingtième came out on Wednesday evening, and I often didn't have a clue on Wednesday morning how I was going to get Tintin out of the predicament I had put him in the previous week." [30] Michael Farr believed that this was particularly evident, remarking that the work's composition looked hastily produced, with many drawings being "crude, rudimentary, rushed; there is none of the polish and refinement which subsequent work methods brought." At the same time, however, Farr believed that Land of the Soviets contained "plates of the highest quality where the freedom and confidence of line is proof of Hergé's outstanding ability as a draughtsman." [31] The story was an immediate success amongst its young readers. As Harry Thompson noted, the plotline would have been popular with the average Belgian parent, exploiting their anti-socialist sentiment and feeding their fears that the Russians were a malevolent people.

[30] Indeed, the popularity of the series led Wallez to decide on performing publicity stunts to increase interest in it: the first of these was the publication of a faked letter on April Fool's Day claiming to be from the Soviet secret police and confirming the existence of Tintin the reporter. [32] The second was a staged publicity event, suggested by the reporter Charles Lesne, [26] that took place on Thursday 8 May 1930. During the stunt, an actor named Henri de Donckers was employed to portray Tintin, dressed in stereotypical Russian clothing and bringing along a white dog on a lead, representing Snowy. De Donckers was then accompanied by Hergé and ordered to get off of the train from Moscow that was pulling in to Brussels' Gare du Nord . Both the actor and Hergé were greeted by an adoring crowd of avid fans, who mobbed De Donckers and pulled him into their midst.

[33] The duo then took a Buick limousine to the offices of Le Vingtième Siècle, where they were greeted by further crowds, and so standing upon the building's balcony, Hergé gave a speech before presents were distributed amongst the assembled fans. [26] Tintin in the Land of the Soviets also began serialisation in a French Catholic magazine, Coeurs Vaillants (Valiant Hearts), from 26 October 1930 onward. [28] The success of the strip meant that the story was then assembled and published in book form by the Brussels-based Editions du Petit Vingtième, with a print run of 10,000, [34] in French only, the first five hundred of which were numbered. [32] [28] Later publications When, from 1942 onwards, Hergé began redrawing his earlier Tintin stories for the modernised colour versions at Casterman , he chose not to redraw Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, believing that the story was too crude. He was embarrassed by it, labelling it a "transgression of my youth".

[28] Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier believed that another factor in his decision not to redraw it might have been that the story was too virulently anti-Marxist in a period when many across Western Europe were sympathetic to Marxism following the Second World War. [28] As The Adventures of Tintin became more popular in Western Europe, and some of the rarer books became collectors items, the original printed edition of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets became highly valued. Because of this, Studio Hergé brought out 500 numbered copies to mark the series' 40th birthday in 1969. [32] Nonetheless, this only encouraged a larger demand for the book, and soon a "number of mediocre-quality pirated editions" were produced and sold at "very high prices." [32] To stem this illegal trade, Hergé agreed that it could be published in 1973 as a part of the Archives Hergé collection, where it was released in a collected volume along with Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America.

The release of pirated editions however continued, and so it was decided that a facsimile edition of the original would be published through Casterman in 1981. [32] Over the next decade it would be translated into nine different languages, [20] with an English language edition being published by Sundancer in 1989, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner. Sociologist John Theobald noted that by the 1980s, when the book had begun to see widespread publication in the western world, the plot was being "rendered socially and politically acceptable in the climate of the Reaganite repolarisation of the ' Cold War ' and the final push towards the demise of the Soviet Union". It was because of the new political acceptability of the comic's anti-Soviet themes that it was "to be found on hypermarket shelves as suitable children's literature for the new millennium." [20] Critical reception This section requires expansion .

In his study of the cultural and literary legacy of Brussels, André De Vries remarked that Tintin in the Land of the Soviets was "crude by Hergé's later standards, in every sense of the word." [35] Sociologist John Theobald argued that instead of providing factual material on the Soviet Union, Hergé depicted the Bolsheviks rigging elections, killing opponents and stealing the grain from the people, all of which was done in order to portray them in a negative light in the minds of his young readers. [20] Hergé displayed the Bolsheviks and their Marxist-Leninist ideology as being "absolute Evil", and set Tintin to fight against them, but as Jean-Marie Apostolidès noted, "because [Tintin] does not understand [the Soviet government's] origin, he does not directly engage with but merely observes this world of misery", simply fighting Bolsheviks rather than fomenting counter-revolution to actively overthrow them. [36] References ^ Apostolidès 2010 [2006] . p. 18. Bibliography Apostolidès, Jean-Marie (2010) [2006].

The Metamorphoses of Tintin, or Tintin for Adults. Jocelyn Hoy (translator). Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-6031-7 . Assouline, Pierre (2009) [1996]. Hergé, the Man Who Created Tintin. Charles Ruas (translator). Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-539759-8 . De Vries, André (2003). Brussels: A Cultural and Literary History. Oxford: Signal Books Limited. ISBN 1-902669-46-0 . Farr, Michael (2001). Tintin: The Complete Companion. London: John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-5522-0 . Goddin, Philippe (2008). The Art of Hergé, Inventor of Tintin: Volume I, 1907–1937. Michael Farr (translator). San Francisco: Last Gasp.

ISBN 978-0-86719-706-8 . Grove, Laurence (2010). Comics in French: The European Band Dessinée in Context. United States: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-84545-588-0 . Hergé (1999) [1930]. Tintin in the Land of the Soviets. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner (translators). London: Methuen Children's Books. ISBN 978-0-416-19765-5 . Lofficier, Jean-Marc; Lofficier, Randy (2002). The Pocket Essential Tintin. Harpenden, Hertfordshire: Pocket Essentials. ISBN 978-1-904048-17-6 . McCarthy, Tom (2006). Tintin and the Secret of Literature. London: Granta. ISBN 978-1-86207-831-4 .

Peeters, Benoît (1989). Tintin and the World of Hergé. London: Methuen Children's Books. ISBN 978-0-416-14882-4 . Theobald, John (2004). The Media and the Making of History. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. ISBN 978-0-7546-3822-3 . Thompson, Harry (1991). Tintin: Hergé and his Creation. London: Hodder and Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-52393-3 . External links

Question: Which fictional reporter made his debut in "Land of the Soviets" in 1929?
Answer: Tintin