Hergé - Creator of Tintin

Timeline created by Irene Mar
Contributors and sources: Etienne Chevalier, Ben and Tintin and the world of Hergé by Benôit Peeters. London: Methuen, 1989.
Last modified: 7 February 2006
Latest change: continuity error corrected (thanks to Ben for spotting the mistake).

Mini Profile of Hergé
HERGÉ, (Georges Remi) 1907-83
Belgian strip cartoonist, born in Etterbeek, near Brussels, the creator of Tintin the boy detective. He had an influence on the modern art world, with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein citing him as a strong influence on their work.

Hergé Timeline
1900s | 1920s | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s | 1970s | 1980s |

1907 - Georges Remi born in Etterbeek (Rue Cranz, 25) on 22 May, at 7:30 in the morning.

1914–1918 - Attends primary school at the District School No. 3 in Ixelles.

1918–1919 - Attends School No. 11, preparatory for the Athénée (secondary school).

1920–1925 - Attends Saint Boniface school. Excels in all subjects, except art.

1925 - Joins the subscriptions department of the newspaper, Le XXe Siècle. Creates his first strip, Totor, for The Belgian Boy Scout.

1926 - Studies art at Saint-Luc school.

1926–1927 - Completes military service in the first infantry regiment. Continues the Totor series and supplies Abbot Desmedt illustrations for the publications of the Action Catholique.

1927 - Rejoins Le XXe Siècle as assistant photo-engraver and cartoonist.

1928 - Publication of the first issue of the weekly Le Petit Vingtième, on 1 November. Produces The Adventures of Flup, Nenesse, Pousette and Cochonnet.

1929 - First Tintin strip, Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, appears in the 11th issue of the Petit Vingtième (10 January).

1930 - First Quick and Flupke strip appears on Thursday, 23 January.

1931 - Thursday, September 3rd: Filled with African enthusiasms Tintin has already left again, and these are The Adventures of Tintin, Reporter in America. A concern for serious research begins to develop in Hergé, who reads The History of the Red Indians, by Paul Coze.

1932 - Marries Germaine Kieckens. Meets Chang Chong-Jen who inspires Hergé to take his work seriously.

1935–1940 - The release of The Broken Ear, The Black Island, King Ottokar's Sceptre. The second World War interrupts work on Land of the Black Gold.

1940 - Meets his first collaborator, Edgar Pierre Jacobs. Alice Devos, a female collaborator joins the team later.

1942 - Casterman must reduce the Hergé's albums to sixty-two pages, which entails the reduction of the size of the drawings. As just compensation, the albums go from black and white to color. The first 62-page, colour album appears in 1942: The Shooting Star.

1940 - Becomes chief editor of the Soir Jeunesse, a supplement to the daily Le Soir. Jacques Van Melkebebe, Hergé's principal assistant, a painter, cartoonist, and writer who will later be the first chief editor of the weekly Tintin.

Writing of The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Shooting Star, The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham's Treasure, and The Seven Crystal Balls. In the middle of this last episode the Liberation arrives.

A consequence of the paper shortage, this time from the creative side: being forced to drawing daily "strips," sequences of three or four drawings in Le Soir, proved to be, says Hergé, an excellent lesson in narration. Another important experience, following the Liberation: being put on the index. Accused of having collaborated, Georges Remi is held back from any publishing.

September 26th, 1946 - Birth of the Belgian weekly Tintin and reappearance of Hergé. The first publishing success for Raymond Leblanc. Beginning of a triumphal march for another publisher, the publisher of the albums: the editions (in color) of Casterman begin to climb regularly toward a million per year, which they will reach in 1956.

1947–1966 - Ten new stories, going from The Seven Crystal Balls (continued in Tintin) to Flight 714, as well as the recasting of Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Black Island.

1948 - October 28th: appearance of the French edition of Tintin, published by Georges Dargaud.

1950 - Creation of the Studio Hergé.

1956 - 1956 - Begins an affair with Fanny Vlamynck, colorist at the Hergé Studios since 1952

1959 - Release of the first book on Hergé, Le Monde d'Hergé, by Pol Vandromme (Gallimard).

1960 - Discovers abstract art. Travels to Italy, Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, England, Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Greece. Separates from wife, Germaine.

1971 - Visits the USA.

1972 - April: First Congress of the B.D. in New York. American cartoonists pay homeage to Hergé.
November: Hergé the guest of honor at the eighth Lucques Exhibition of Comics (Italy).

1973 - Receives the St-Michel Grand Prize for the lifetime achievement.
May: Visits the Republic of China on Taiwan.

1975 - Receives the Ardenne Prize in April. Divorces from Germaine.

1976 - Tintin and the Picaros is published.

1977 - Hergé receives the ruby red medal of the city of Angoulême, on the occasion of the 4th Exhibition of the B.D. Marries Fanny on 20 May.

1978 - Promoted to officer grade of the Order of the Crown, in Brussels. Hergé begins a new project 'Tintin and the Counterfeiters.'

1979 - The 50th anniversary of the creation of Tintin. On 17 January, Hergé receives a Mickey statuette from Walt Disney Co.

1980 - Diagnosed with leukemia.

1981 - Reunites with Chang, who is now the Director of the Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai, on 18 March in Brussels, for the first time since 1937.

1982 - Belgian Society of Astronomy names a small planetoid, situated between Mars and Jupiter, after Hergé.

1983 - Dies on 3 March, in the Saint-Luc clinic in Brussels, after a week in coma.

Comic Books by Hergé
Totor
Popol et Virginie
The Adventures of Tintin series
Quick and Flupke series
Jo, Zette and Jocko series