Studios Hergé

History

The Studios Hergé were established in 1950 to help Hergé with the production of The Adventures of Tintin, allowing him to focus on new stories by delegating tasks such as colouring—which he had never mastered—and background drawing. Technical elements required extensive documentation and a specific drawing technique, making assistance valuable. The studios were created while Hergé worked on Destination Moon, a story filled with technology. Some studio members influenced the stories; Jacques Martin claimed to have introduced burlesque gags not typical of Hergé's humour.

A well-known anecdote among tintinophiles illustrates the studio atmosphere: in December 1965, while Hergé was on holiday, Bob de Moor and Jacques Martin created a fake Tintin page in Hergé's style and sent it to the Swiss magazine L'Illustré, where it was published as an installment of the next Tintin adventure. Martin invented a short story, composed the page, placed characters, and sketched backgrounds; de Moor completed and inked the backgrounds while Martin inked the characters.

Hergé apparently did not react immediately, possibly letting the joke stand. The page depicts an airport scene similar to sequences in Destination Moon and The Calculus Affair, closely resembling Hergé's work, with only some tintinophiles spotting elements typical of de Moor and Martin. After Hergé's death in 1983, his widow Fanny Remi, who had worked as a colorist since 1956, inherited the rights to his works but not the derived works, which belonged to Hergé's friend Alain Baran of Tintin Licensing, who later sold those rights to Canal+.

Members of the Studios

This non-exhaustive list includes principal members only. Bob de Moor joined on 5 April 1950 and became the first assistant, known for his perfect imitation of Hergé's style; he supervised album production with Hergé and handled derived products featuring Tintin or Snowy. Jacques Martin, creator of Alix, assisted with stories from The Calculus Affair until 1972, working on The Red Sea Sharks and Tintin in Tibet. Roger Leloup joined on 15 February 1953, assisting Martin with colours and backgrounds in Alix; he worked on mechanical elements like automobiles, created the futuristic jet in Flight 714 to Sydney, and handled public relations until leaving on 31 December 1969 to focus on his series Yoko Tsuno.

Other members included Michel Demarets (1953–1986), Jo-El Azara (1954–1961), Guy Dessicy (1950–1953, founder of Publiart), Johan De Moor (son of Bob de Moor, active after Hergé's death on Quick & Flupke), Pierre Gay (hired 13 months after Hergé's death as the last cartoonist), and colorists Josette Baujot, Monique Laurent, France Ferrari, Nicole Thenen, and Fanny Vlamynck (who became Hergé's second wife and inherited his rights). Also listed are Marcel Dehaye and Baudouin van den Branden.

Works of the Studios

All works published under Hergé's name from 1950 onward can be considered studio productions, though the contributors' roles are often minimized by Hergé and later rights-holders, leading to debate over albums like Tintin and the Picaros and the third version of The Black Island, where some believe Bob de Moor completely redrew the album; Jacques Martin is sometimes said to have drawn the entirety of The Valley of the Cobras. Major studio works include Destination Moon (1953), Explorers on the Moon (1954), The Calculus Affair (1956), The Red Sea Sharks (1958), Tintin in Tibet (1960), The Castafiore Emerald (1963), Flight 714 to Sydney (1968), and Tintin and the Picaros (1976).

The third version of The Black Island (1966) was requested by the British publisher for a more realistic representation; Bob de Moor visited the country extensively and redrew most of the book. Land of Black Gold (1971) had scenes rewritten by Hergé and redrawn by de Moor. Six pop-up books, Pop-Hop, were published by Hallmark between 1969 and 1971, realized by Michel Demarets. Tintin and the Lake of Sharks (1972) was adapted from the animated movie in two versions: one with stills, the other as a redrawn comic strip.

Two books Jouons avec Tintin were combined as The Tintin Games Book (1974), also by Demarets. Later works include Les Gorilles de la Vedette (1985, two pages by de Moor), the 60th page of Récit Spatio-Temporel (1986, by de Moor), Les Magiciens d'Eau (1987, one page by de Moor), and two eight-page Citroën publicity comics from 1987 and 1988. Also listed are Jeux interdits (1985) and Tout va bien (1985).