Tintin first appeared in 1929. He was created by Georges Remi, better known to his fans as Hergé (a reversal of his initials - RG with a French pronouciation). He has always been a reporter from his debut in 1929 until the last Tintin album was published in 1976.

The first Tintin comic strip 'Tintin in the Land of the Soviets' was published in a Belgian newspaper which is said to have had fascist leanings. The story was essentially anti-Soviet propaganda and is a world apart from the Tintin stories most people have read.

Hergé then started to publish his strips in the magazine 'Le Petite Vigtième'. The second Tintin comic strip, 'Tintin in the Congo' was also certainly not up to today's standards of political correctness, being full of racist caricatures.

It should be noted that later on in his life Hergé called this book, along with 'Tintin in the Land of the Soviets' a "sin of youth" and said "....I am not trying to excuse myself. I admit that my early books were typical of the Belgian bourgeois mentality of the time."

The third strip 'Tintin in America' was the first of the more well known titles. In this strip Tintin travels to America and takes on Gangsters and witnesses American Indians being driven from their land. After this the Adventures of Tintin, each published in album form after they finished their run in the newspaper, were released on a regular basis.

In the following years many more albums were published. Hergé's stories were losely based on real events occuring at the time which adds an extra dimension to the stories.

For a much more in-depth (and better written) history of both Hergé and Tintin I highly recommend the book 'Tintin And The World Of Hergé', a history of Hergé and his most famous creation by Benoit Peeters.

To purchase this, or indeed any of the Tintin titles, check out the Tintin Central Bookstore!

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