Hergé, pseud. of Georges Remi, 1907–83, Belgian cartoonist, creator of the cartoon character Tintin. The boy reporter and his faithful fox terrier Milou (Snowy in English translations) first debuted in a French newspaper in 1929. Accompanied by charmingly idiosyncratic sidekicks, they solved mysteries and foiled crime in exotic locations worldwide, appearing in 23 books (1930–76). Artistically, the cartoons depended on the ligne claire style, which eschewed shading, using instead inked lines of uniform weight and soft colors. Hergé's early works tend to have colonialist, racist, and anti-Semitic aspects, and during World War II he worked for the profascist Le Soir newspaper. Avoiding postwar charges of collaboration, he subsequently created a series of witty, lively, and action-filled adventures that most critics consider his best, e.g., The Calculus Affair (1956), The Red Sea Shark (1958), and The Castafiore Emerald (1963). One of the 20th cent.'s most influential cartoonists, Hergé was also a talented illustrator and graphic designer. The Hergé Museum in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, opened in 2009.
See biographies by P. Assouline (1996, tr. 2009) and B. Peeters (2002, tr. 2011); B. Peeters, Tintin and the World of Hergé (tr. 1992); M. Farr, The Adventures of Hergé, Creator of Tintin (2008); J.-M. Apostolidès, The Metamorphosis of Tintin (tr. 2009); P. Goddin, The Art of Hergé, Inventor of Tintin (2 vol., 2008–).
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