The Adventures of Tintin publication history

Original publications

Hergé joined the subscription department of Le Vingtième Siècle in September 1925, later becoming a photojournalist and cartoonist from August 1927 after military service. He illustrated stories for the daily and its literary supplement, also contributing to Le Boy-Scout belge and Le Sifflet. In 1928, Norbert Wallez placed him in charge of Le Petit Vingtième, a weekly youth supplement first issued on November 1. The first Tintin adventure, Tintin au pays des Soviets, appeared there on January 10, 1929.

The story ran until May 8, 1930, with two plates each Thursday in the centerfold, totaling 69 episodes. The December 25, 1929 special Christmas edition had double pages, a cover by Hergé, and three plates—two printed in two-color process, an exception until World War II. From the start, Hergé and his team mixed fiction and reality to build reader loyalty, publishing fake interviews and a threatening letter. Charles Lesne suggested staging Tintin's return to Belgium as real.

On May 8, 1930, at Brussels' Gare du Nord, a large crowd gathered; 15-year-old scout Lucien Pepermans played Tintin, giving a speech, receiving flowers, and signing autographs.

Other publications

After publishing a revised short story by Harry Mortimer Batten, Cœurs Vaillants ran Tintin in the Land of the Soviets from October 26, 1930, to February 1932. Courtois added recitatives under drawings without Hergé's knowledge, who stopped the changes. The periodical published all adventures through The Secret of the Unicorn in September 1944. In April 1932, Abbot Henri Carlier of Geneva's L'Écho illustré secured Swiss rights, beginning with L'aventure chez les Soviets on September 3, 1932, and carrying all adventures, not always in order.

Tintin's first non-French appearance was in Portugal on April 16, 1936, with Aventuras de Tim-Tim na America de Norte in O Papagaio, edited by Abbé Abel Varzim and Adolfo Simões Müller. The story was colored and its strip distribution changed without Hergé's approval. O Papagaio published subsequent adventures through The Secret of the Unicorn in April 1948, except Ottokar's Sceptre, and altered texts: the Portuguese merchant Oliveira da Figueira became Spanish, and Tintin's journey was set in Angola instead of the Congo.