Trivia

His inspiration for his famous cartoon character "Tintin" came from the adventures in 1928 of a young 15 year old Danish boy, later actor, Palle Huld who won a contest in the newspaper "Politiken". The prize was an around the world trip in the occasion of the centennial of author Jules Verne. Palle Huld wrote a book about his marvelous trip; "Around the World in 44 Days with Palle" which became world famous and thus inspired Hergé.

Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein citing him as a strong influence on their work.

Didn't draw Tintin's famous quiff until the second album. In the first album, Tintin's hair was combed to the front, but during a chase scene in a vintage Mercedes convertible, Tintin's hair flew back, thus giving him his trademark quiff.

His works have been criticized for being racist (two examples include "Tin-Tin in America" for its depiction of Indigenous Americans and "Tintin in the Congo" for its depiction of Africans with dark complexions). Despite these claims, he was openly critical of racism.

Has written & drawn a total of 23 complete and 1 incomplete volumes of "The Adventures of Tintin" series.

Created Tintin, a punk-haired teenage reporter and super-sleuth, in 1929 in the children's supplement of the Belgian Catholic newspaper "Le Vingtième Siecle." Tintin moved into his own magazine in 1946. Twenty-three complete stories were produced, plus one story that was incomplete at the time of Hergé's death. Tintin became the Belgian equivalent of Mickey Mouse, popular in every country around the world except for the United States.

Was inspired by Jules Verne's work.

In 1982, Belgian Society of Astronomy named a small planetoid, situated between Mars and Jupiter, after him.

Has several cameos as a blonde-haired animated character in "The Adventures of Tintin" (1991).

Directly inspired a number of contemporary cartoonists, including Joost Swarte and Dennis Tucker.

In 1989, an Anarchist graphic novel titled "Breaking Free" was published in Britain, featuring unauthorized appearances of Hergé's characters Tintin and Captain Archibald Haddock as the main protagonists. The political propaganda story is of Tintin and Haddock as Union laborers who join a revolutionary movement that, at the novel's end, is about to topple the British government (Hergé himself held very conservative political views and probably would have been horrified by this). Since the book was intentionally published without copyright, no legal action could be taken against the creators or publishers.

"The Adventures of Tintin" has been translated into more than 50 languages around the world.

Because Herge voluntarily returned to Belgium during its Nazi-German occupation to continue his comics career in German controlled Belgian publications such as "Le Soir," the cartoonist would be plagued with accusations of being a Nazi collaborator for the rest of his career. Although Herge steadfastly denied such allegations, much of his work in this period would follow the mandated anti-Semitic tone of the time. This was most obvious with the story, "The Shooting Star," which ran from October 1941 to May 1942, where Tintin raced against American rivals in the employ of a villain, Mr. Bohlwinkel, who is an obvious stereotype of wealthy Jewish plutocrat. Herge would later revise the story to tone down both aspects.

Only three of his Tintin books were not adapted for the 1991 cartoon. The first "Land of the Soviets" was not adapted for its portrayal of Russians; the second "In The Congo" was not adapted for portraying animal abuse and its depiction of certain people with dark complexions; the third "Alpha Art" was not adapted because the comic was unfinished at the time he died.

His pseudonym is the French phonetic pronunciation of the letters "R" and "G," taken from "Remi" and "Georges."

He was inducted into the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame in 2003.