Herge THE MAN WHO CREATED TINTIN by Pierre Assouline

Herge THE MAN WHO CREATED TINTIN by Pierre Assouline

Author:Pierre Assouline
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: herge
Published: 2009-07-15T00:00:00+00:00


Toward Fulfillment

1950-1958

that he knew how to be generous is undeniable. Ingratitude was not in his character. He never abandoned a friend in adversity. Yet these virtues belonged to Georges Remi rather than to Herge.

Having begun a new start in midlife, the illustrator maintained a curious balancing act: the more he delegated work, the more he drew all the attention to himself; the more he was surrounded by others, the more he wanted to present the image of the solitary artist. He insisted repeatedly that the adventures of Tintin were the work of a single author and not of a factory or a collective. Interviewers sometimes had to persist to get Herg£ to recognize the contributions of others and to praise their work.

Given the vanity of artists there is perhaps nothing paradoxical about this. In Herge s case, however, his self-involvement grew the moment his work became a truly group effort. No longer was Edgar Jacobs backing up Herge, occasionally joined by temporary helpers. Now there was a team at his house working full time.

Either Herge denied them rights, or he would praise them as if they were Benedictine monks working at their illuminated manuscripts. Whether disparaged or praised, they constituted the Herge Studios.

The company was created on April 6,1950, shortly after Belgium, always unsettled about the “royal issue,” voted in a referendum in favor of the eventual return of Leopold III, who had been exiled to Pregny-Chambery near Geneva, Switzerland. (It disturbed Herge, a fervent royalist, of course, that the king led with a slight majority among the Flemish voters but not

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148 PART hi: RECOGNITION

among the Walloons.) Start-up capital amounted to 250,000 francs (current equivalent, $44,240). Herge was naturally the principal shareholder and took the title of director. On the board of directors with him were his father, Alexis Remi, Germaine, his mother-in-law, Albertine, and old friends, such as his secretary, Marcel Dehaye; his artistic advisor, Maurice Lemmens; and the illustrator Guy Dessicy.

He had created Herge Studios for several reasons. The most important was personal: to overcome his depressive state and insecurity, he needed to be part of an organizational structure. Being surrounded gave him reassurance. The second was technical: considering the scope of his production, he was forced to delegate some of the execution and even the conception to his colleagues. The last reason was purely financial: by incorporating himself, he could charge things to the company, and these things were becoming increasingly numerous.

Right from the start Herge Studios created a false comparison to the Walt Disney Company. Disney was a visionary who had somehow succeeded in bringing talking animals to newspapers, books, and the screen. The illusion was such that the viewer forgot that Disney’s characters were animals. He was also a pure businessman. Workers found lacking were pitilessly dismissed. So were those who revealed too much talent. There was no room either for the mediocre or the prima donna. Whether scriptwriters or illustrators, they knew that they were sentenced to forever be effaced by Disney, the brand name.



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