Hergé

On the one hand, I was profoundly shocked by the sense of social and economic decay in Brussels.

I mean, the city that I remember, which is a very elegant North French, basically French-speaking city, um, the city of Hergé and Tintin and all of that, the way that seems to be going away.

But the other thing that struck me is at the center of Brussels, there are the headquarters of the European institutions, vast hulking things.

And I've already mentioned this in various programs.

But nonetheless, no doubt it's been published somewhere.

But that long tradition and artists like Goussini and Uderzo, the creators of Asterix, and of Hergé, Georges Rémy, the creator of Tintin, sit very much within a kind of emergent culture of the picture story, which is still very, very much with us today in the French world, and also actually had a lot more exponents actually in the early 20th century who never got translated, never went viral, never went global.

So Zig et Puce was one of the big bande dessinée cartoon series in France in the 1920s.

And I think even survived World War II and a little bit after that as well, but never really took off and I think is no longer with us.

It reminds me of kind of like, who's the guy who did Tintin? Oh.

Hergé.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It used to be a lovely place.

Um, those who used to read, you know, who used to read Herge and Tintin and all the graphic novels, the Brussels I remember from the 1970s was still that place.

[laughs] It is not like that anymore today.

It, it seems very representative-

Tarzan is just perhaps the best known.

And of course, the Belgian connection, Tintin, who around that time was about to publish, Hergé was about to publish his third or his fourth album by then.

So, and again, Rick mentioned French censorship, which was a very important element also in Belgian comic production.

What was the process like for producing the project? How did you work together?