Hergé

Hergé (1907-1983) was the pen name of Georges Remi, a Belgian cartoonist who created The Adventures of Tintin, a series of 24 comic albums that had sold more than 200 million copies in over 70 languages by 2007.

He was born on 22 May 1907 in Etterbeek, Brussels. His first drawings appeared in scouting magazines, and from 1924 he signed his work "Hergé", the French pronunciation of his reversed initials, R.G. In 1926 he created Totor, a forerunner of Tintin. Tintin and his dog Snowy first appeared on 10 January 1929 in Le Petit Vingtième, the children's supplement of the Brussels newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle, in Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, serialised until May 1930 and issued as a book that year. In late 1933 Casterman offered to take over the book editions and became his publisher. During the German occupation he continued the strip in Le Soir; after liberation he was accused of collaboration, but no charges were brought and the case was closed in December 1945. He founded Studios Hergé on 6 April 1950. Later albums include Tintin in Tibet (1960) and Tintin and the Picaros (1976), and the unfinished Tintin and Alph-Art appeared in 1986. He died in Brussels on 3 March 1983.

For collectors. Tintin first appeared in English in 1951, when King Ottokar's Sceptre ran in the British weekly Eagle. In 1958 Methuen, his British publisher, commissioned English translations led by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, who worked closely with Hergé. The Black Island was redrawn in 1966 after Methuen listed 131 errors of detail, so copies before and after that date differ in artwork. In the 1970s Atlantic Monthly Press and Little, Brown reissued the British translations in the United States.