Georges Remi was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1907.
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, and it wasn’t long before he was illustrating a Scout magazine and creating his first characters.
Herge’s Boy Scout character, Totor, was the inspiration for Tintin.
Although Tintin traveled around the world, Hergé stayed in Belgium for most of his life. In his later years, the artist and author managed to make trips to several countries and seefirsthand the places that inspired Tintin’s exciting adventures.
Hergé first drew Tintin in Le Petit Vingtième (the children’s pages of Le Vingtième Siècle) in 1929. The little reporter was an instant success in Belgium and beyond. By the 1950s, the Tintin adventures had become so popular that Hergé set up Studios Hergé. This not only supplied Hergé with a team of assistants and artists to expand the Tintin universe, it also freed him to do in-depth research for his stories, many of which took his characters to places that Hergé — and his devoted readers — had never seen.