Hergé and 'Le Petit Vingtième'.

Above: covers of 'Le Petit Vingtième' issues 7 and 18 from February 13 and May 1st respectively, carrying Hergé's first Tintin comic adventure 'Tintin in the land of the Soviets'.

Before Georges Remi aka Hergé became famous as the artist and creator of 'Tintin', he worked for the Belgian newspaper 'Le Vingtième Siècle', creating illustrations to go with some of their articles. This was in 1925. Three years later, like so many other newspapers, 'Le Vingtième' started a seperate comics supplement called 'Le Petit Vingtième' and Georges became Editor-in-Chief.

'Le Petit Vingitième' was a small, eight page supplement and started publishing Hergé's first ever 'Tintin' story 'Tintin in the land of the Soviets' ('Tintin au pays des Soviets') in their 11th issue, on January 10, 1929. A year later the magazine would expand to 16 pages and Hergé's introduced his gag strip 'Quick & Flupke'.

The first nine stories of Tintin were published in 'Le Petit Vingtième' until publication of the magazine was halted after May 9th 1940,  when the Nazi's invaded and occupied Belgium. Publication of the last story, 'Land of the Black Gold' ('Tintin au pays de l'oir noir') was never finished.

After the war Tintin got his own comics magazine, which would publish the many other stories Hergé and his studio would create. Studio Hergé was founded in 1950 and it is no secret that much of Tintin's later adventures was drawn by his assistants, Belgian comic masters such as Edgar P. Jacobs and later also by Jacques Martin and Bob de Moor.



Above: After finishing the publication of Tintin's first adventure, the magazine left their fans guessing where Tintin would go next, but a week later showed Tintin amidst the African Jungle. Covers of issues 21 and 22 advertising the start of Herge's second comic story 'Tintin in the Congo', which started in issue 23 of June 5, 1930. In comicbook form, this story would later be renamed 'Tintin in Africa'.

'Flup, Nenesse, Poussette et Cochonnet'.

While Hergé published his first Tintin adventure, he also created a twenty page short story titled 'Flup, Nenesse, Poussette et Cochonnet'. The comic was written by the sports editor of 'Le Vingtième' and was published in the premier issue of the comics supplement, on November 1, 1928 until March 7, 1929.

I had never seen it before and recently stumbled upon this story, at a great French website containing many archived works of Hergé. Unfortunately the owner, Daniel Bellier just recently passed away. If you want to check out or read the original editions of Hergé's comic newspaper publications check out his site http://www.bellier.org (hit the 'entrée' button once you're there).

With gratitude to Bellier's site, check out one of Hergé's first comics below. It's twenty pages (in French), although pages 15/16 are omitted and have not resurfaced yet. Make sure to click the images for a much larger view: