Hergé

Hergé - a pseudonym of Georges Remi's initials (G.R.) in reverse (R.G.) - is the creator of the highly popular comic character, Tintin. This famous Belgian artist is often considered to be the most influential European comic artist ever. His "clear line" style was copied by many artists. At a young age, Georges Remi, like so many other Catholic boys, joined the boy scouts - an experience which greatly influenced his personality. In fact, the character Tintin was often compared with the stereotype of a boy scout.

Hergé started his artistic career in a scouting magazine, Le Boy-Scout Belge, with the character Totor, a predecessor of Tintin. Very soon after this debut, the priest Abbé Wallez, the editor-in-chief of right-wing newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, asked Hergé to work for the youth supplement of the paper, Le Petit Vingtième. On the 10th of January, 1929, the first episode of 'Tintin au Pays des Soviets' was printed in this conservative paper. Soon this pioneering European adventure series was a major hit, with a huge crowd welcoming a real life Tintin actor when he "returned to Brussels" after his adventures in the east.

Although Hergé created other characters, like Quick et Flupke and Jo, Zette et Jocko, his name will always be tied to Tintin. In the second World War Le Vingtième Siècle disappeared, and Hergé continued 'Tintin' in Le Soir, a magazine under German supervision. Though it was not completely clear whether Hergé was actually "wrong" during the war, it is certain that he was a "persona non grata" for a long time in Belgium. Another aspect of the political incorrectness of Hergé are his first Tintin stories, which contain a fair share of nasty racist stereotypes. Soon after the war, Hergé, in collaboration with Raymond Leblanc, started Tintin magazine, which grew to immense popularity.

In 1950 Hergé started his own studio because, although he was a workaholic, he could not get the work done on his own anymore. Especially the work on the Tintin reprints - which were being redrawn and colored - was too much of a burden by then. Important members of the studio Hergé were Bob de Moor, Jacques Martin, Roger Leloup and Edgar P. Jacobs. They learned their craft at the studio, and later they all started successful comic series of their own.

In time, Hergé started to suffer ever more serious bouts of depression, and gradually the time between new Tintin books increased. While the books 'Tintin au Tibet' (1959) and 'Le Bijoux de la Castafiore' (1962) are regarded as his best works, the last completed book, 'Tintin et les Picaros' (1974), is generally held to be Hergé's worst effort. One of the reasons a lot of fans were disappointed was that Tintin wore jeans in this story instead of his usual tan pants.

Hergé's death in 1983 made headlines all over the world. His work-in-progress 'Tintin et l'Alph-art' was published posthumously, unfinished and in sketched-out form. Those willing to delve deeper into the life and works of one of the most popular artists of the twentieth century, are highly recommended to check out Benoît Peeters 'Le Monde d'Hergé', an excellent effort to put Hergé and his work in context. Recently, the trio of Stanislas, Fromental and Bocquet added an excellent Hergé comic biography to the must-have list for all Tintin fans.