Probably one of the best cartoonists of all time, we introduce you to the creator of the famous series of comic albums called The Adventures of Tintin currently on display at a shelf in the Grade School Learning Resource Center fREADom hub. Let's get to know Belgian cartoonist Georges Prosper Remi better known as Hergé who was born 1907 in Belgium to a lower-middle-class family.
Although he would go on to be one of the world’s most iconic cartoonists, Georges was not a particularly standout student as a young boy. Instead, he preferred to indulge in his love for adventure and games with his friends on the streets of Brussels.
In secondary school, he joined the Boy Scouts. His drawing skills quickly caught the attention of the Scout leaders. It wasn’t long before he was illustrating a Scout magazine, The Adventures of Totor series, and creating his first characters.
The title Boy Scout character would become the inspiration for Tintin. It was around this time that he decided to take the pen name “Hergé,” the French pronunciation of his initials in reverse.
Georges left school at age 17 and eventually got a job in 1925 helping create the children’s pages of a daily newspaper, Le Vingtième Siècle ("The Twentieth Century"), where he began serialising the first of his stories to feature boy reporter named Tintin under the influence of Abbé Norbert Wallez. Hergé first drew Tintin in Le Petit Vingtième (the children’s pages of the newspaper) in 1929.
The little reporter was an instant success domestically and beyond. By the 1950s, the Tintin adventures had become so popular that the cartoonist set up Studios Hergé. This not only supplied him with a team of assistants and artists to expand the reporter's universe, it also freed him to do in-depth research for his stories (which started since The Blue Lotus), many of which took his characters to places that Hergé — and his devoted readers — had never seen.
To celebrate Hergé’s seventy-fifth birthday in 1982, the Société Belge d’Astronomie gives his name to a newly discovered asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter. He died in a hospital on March 3, 1983 at the age of 75. His death received front page coverage in numerous newspapers.
Hergé's works have been widely acclaimed for their clarity of draughtsmanship and meticulous, well-researched plots, and have been the source of a wide range of adaptations. He remains a strong influence on the comic book medium, particularly in Europe. The Hergé Museum in Louvain-La-Neuve was opened in 2009, commemorating his life and artwork.
This movie is highly suspected to be inspired by Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, a play that created a humorous backstory for two minor characters from Hamlet since the original was partially based on the Shakespearean masterpiece.
