Believe it or don’t, there is a thriving comic book community throughout the rest of the world.  And while there is a smattering of Spider-Man and Superman, there are a vast number of popular titles, few in the United States have had any experience with.

One of those is Tintin, that has been around since the 1930s.  Since we’re taking a look at Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh on this week’s Major Spoilers Podcast, we thought it would be a good idea to get some persepective from our friends across the pond.  And who better to do it, then Marlowe Lewis, the latest member of the Major Spoilers crew, and a proper Englishman.

Part Hero History, part reflection, Marlowe breaks down Tintin in a way we can all understand.

It is not an exaggeration to say that in almost every library across Europe there are extremely well read copies of all the various albums depicting the adventures of Belgium’s most famous Bande Dessinee character. These stories chart the exciting expeditions of a young investigative reporter and his faithful wire fox terrier as they follow story leads all over the world. He often finds himself in great danger but with a combination of plucky determination, intelligent deductive skills, great physical stamina and the assistance of several very close friends he always wins through in the end. That young man is of course — Tintin.

The first appearance of the Tintin character was published in a weekly youth supplement of a Brussels newspaper. The insert was called La Petit Vingtieme (The Little Twentieth) because the main newspapers title was La Vingtieme Siecle (The Twentieth Century) This original story, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, appeared in the 10th January 1929 edition. and was only two pages long because the tale was designed to be an ongoing comic serial that would take several months to complete. This decision had been taken by the man who was both editor of the La Petit Vingtieme comic section and also the artist/writer of the Tintin story — Georges Prosper Remi — who was more famous under his pen name of Herge.

Georges Remi is without doubt one of the most important and influential comic strip artists that Europe has ever produced. His was born in Brussels in 1907 to a middle class Catholic family and from an early age had an attraction to doodling, which he used to do constantly in school, to the consternation to both his teachers and parents. This affinity for comic art meshed into another of his life-long obsessions when he joined the schools Boy Scout troop. Remi’s love of Scouting was instant and the skills that he learned during is time in the movement became the template skill set for his famous creation. Indeed the first published drawings that Remi ever had were in scouting magazines.

Herge’s first job after leaving school at 18 was as a clerk at La Vingtieme Siecle and he must really have impressed his bosses there because in less than three years later he is put in complete charge of the youth supplement section. His editor-in-chief, Norbert Wallez, wanted a new comic personality created for this new section and he suggested perhaps stories about a cub reporter covering stories in the city or perhaps in Belgium itself which would tie back into the main newspaper. This proposition inspired Remi and gave him the chance to rework an existing idea that he had already published in a monthly scouting magazine called Le Boy Scout Belge. In this periodical Herge had began writing and drawing the adventures of a young scout called Totor and they had been well received within that community. Remi was clever enough to see that his creation could be adapted as the main feature for the new section with a little retooling. Turning his eponymous scout into a reporter was both copying his own life but was also a stroke of genius because it greatly opened up the artistic possibilities for his character who now had the whole world as a setting for his adventures.

From that point onward a pattern was set that would continue up until the Second World War. Herge would publish his new Tintin adventure in La Petit Vingtieme. It would take about a year to fully complete each story and after that an album edition of the collected work would be printed and sold through bookshops. The growing fame and popularity of the character lead to these album editions being adapted and translated into several other European languages and thus began the love affair that many European children have with Tintin.

During the German occupation of Belgium, Remi continued to produce Tintin stories which were published in the main Brussels French language daily newspaper, Le Soir, which could only exist at all as long as it was not critical of the subjugation forces and also printed information that the Nazis wanted spread out to the general populace. The Tintin stories that were produced in this time have a completely different style than to what had gone before. There were now more sight gags and the pace of the story action was stepped up a gear. Also, because he was painfully aware that his new masters were constantly looking over his shoulder, there was absolutely none of the political commentary that had sometimes infused his work in pre-war times such as the anti-fascist story, King Ottokar’s Sceptre.

However after Belgium was liberated by the Allied forces, Remi found himself accused as a collaborator and was placed under arrest on four separate occasions. Although never officially convicted of anything he was shunned by the majority of the artistic community and was unable to work for any newspaper anywhere in the country because the only people who could be employed in the publishing industry were those who had fought with the resistance forces. Herge was floundering both personally and professionally and needed someone to throw him a lifeline. That someone was Raymond Leblanc.

Leblanc was a genuine war hero. He had been a very active member of the Ardense Jagers resistance group and personally been chosen to go on several hazardous missions because he spoke fluent German. This mans credentials were absolutely impeccable so he was quickly able to start up a small publishing house after the war which printed romance and movie magazines but there was also one other thing that he desperately wanted to produce and that was new Tintin stories.

Leblance was ideally placed to help Georges Remi. He used his high level contacts to obtain the absolutely vital ‘certificat de civisme’ (certificate of civilisation) which was the necessary legal prerequisite that officially allowed Herge to work in the print industry again. Leblanc then finalised Remi’s rehabilitation into respectable society again by publishing the a weekly magazine devoted to Tintin which for the first time in years allowed the fans to read brand new Tintin comic strip pages. The first issue of this publication was so successful that it sold out its initial print run of 60,000 copies in only threw days. Raymond Leblanc’s faith in both Herge and Tintin proved very profitable for him both financially and artistically. With the ever increasing sales of subsequent Tintin editions, Leblance publishing house, Editions du Lombard, became a very lucrative enterprise and was the launch pad for the careers of several other famous comic strip artists.

From this point onwards Herge’s hero really began to take off and became the worldwide phenomenon that he is today. The collected editions sold very well indeed, over 200 million copies to date, and over time they were translated into a majority of the world’s different languages. Remi was also well aware of the remunerative value of his creations and began granting various licensing opportunities, such as toys, games, statues and clothing that even to this day generate millions of euros to his estate beneficiaries. Perhaps the best know licensing tool was the 104 episode Belvision animated series Herge’s Adventures of Tintin which was dubbed and shown all over the world to great acclaim.

Even though Herge was so well renowned, fans of Tintin had for years complained that the various small exhibitions of Georges Prosper Remi work that were dotted about Belgium in several locations needed to be brought together into one central exhibition space. This dream was finally realised when on the 2nd June 2009 in the town of Louvain-la-Neuve, about 20 miles outside Brussels, a brand new museum devoted to the life and work of Herge was opened. Inside there is a revolving collection of his Tintin work including pages of original art and other pieces of personal memorabilia from his home and studio. The museums mission is to both entertain and inform its visitors about the greater life and work of the man whom they in all probability first encountered in those well read editions located in their local libraries but perhaps its greatest legacy is to provide a spiritual meeting point for everyone who ever loved the tales about a young boy and his snow white dog.

Marlowe Lewis is old. I mean really, really old. So old in fact, that the first ever sequential art that he ever saw was when his lifelong friend in their small clan began painting bison on the cave walls. This was a true turning point in his life. Firstly, he was immediately and irrevocably hooked on the visual arts, and secondly he discovered another use for dried bison dung. Marlowe Lewis is British. This is not an apology.

Related posts

• Tintin without a Home (2)
• Tintin flick gets delayed release in the U.S. (4)
• On the next Major Spoilers Podcast: Tintin and the Cigars of the Pharaoh (10)
• Hero History: The Green Lama (5)
• Hero History: Gazelle (6)

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