The Adventures of Herge

by Jose-louis Bocquet, Jean-Luc Fromental & Helge Dascher

Seven-year-old Hergé first discovered his love of drawing in 1914 when his mother gave him some crayons to stay out of trouble. He continued drawing in school when he fatefully met the editor of XXe Siècle magazine, where Tintin first appeared. His popularity skyrocketed from the 1930s through post–World War Two. Hergé was perceived by some to have aided the Nazi government in Belgium by continuing to publish Tintin in a government-sanctioned magazine, and he was briefly imprisoned in the aftermath of the war and narrowly escaped execution. Also covered are his marriage troubles in the 1950s and subsequent affair with Fanny Vlamynck, who went on to become his lifelong partner; his late career in the 1960s, as his interest in Tintin waned and he occasionally "disappeared" for weeks at a time as he contemplated giving up his career to become a fine-arts painter; and a recounting of a humorous encounter with Andy Warhol.