The Artcurial auction "The World of Herge," held on November 20, features 122 lots, including this 1969 drawing paying tribute to the Apollo XI moon landing. Another highlight is an original ink drawing from "Tintin: Land of Black Gold." The auction record for the most expensive work of comic book art is a Herge drawing that sold for €3.2 million ($3.8 million) in January 2021.

If Brussels is recognized as the capital of European comics, it is thanks to the pioneering work of cartoonist George Remi, who wrote under the name Herge. In 2016 and 2017, the Grand Palais Museum in Paris held a huge retrospective on the creator of various cartoon series, including Tintin.

Herge is best known for creating Tintin, a young reporter traveling around the world for his work. Herge produced 24 volumes of his adventures; the last manuscript was unfinished but was posthumously published in 1986. These books, popular among readers of all ages, have been translated into more than 110 languages. Over 250 million books have been sold worldwide.

Born in 1907, Remi started signing his illustrations as Herge, the phonetic transcription of his initials, RG, in 1924. In 1928, he became editor of the Petit Vingtieme, a weekly supplement for the Belgian paper Vingtieme Siecle, in which the adventures of Tintin were first published.

The first volume of Tintin's adventures was initially published from 1929 to 1930 in the weekly. In this anti-communist propaganda, Tintin was sent off to the Soviet Union with his dog, Snowy, where he was hunted down by the secret police while doing research on Josef Stalin's government.

For his second adventure, in 1931, Tintin was sent to the Belgian Congo. Shown here is a page of the album that Herge later redrew and colored for the books published by Casterman, like all his other early works. This volume was later criticized for its racist colonial views. Countries such as Belgium, Sweden, the UK and the US tried to have it banned or restrict its availability to children.

Even though his early books drew on stereotypes for comedic purposes, Herge was fascinated by ancient civilizations. While studying in Brussels, he met the Chinese artist Zhang Chongren, who helped Herge depict China in "The Blue Lotus." Pictured is a cover of the Petit Vingtieme, where it was first published in 1934. From then on, Herge would depict foreign societies more sensitively.

Herge did extensive research to make his spacecraft as realistic as possible for the books "Destination Moon" and "Explorers on the Moon," initially published in 1950 as strips in the weekly "Tintin" and as volumes in 1953 — years before human space travel was achieved. Shown here is a mock-up of the rocket that appears in those stories, created by the visionary cartoonist.

In 1940, Belgium was invaded by the Nazis. The weekly that published Herge's work was banned. The cartoonist moved on to another paper, Le Soir, which was under Nazi control. Although Herge did not collaborate actively, an interview in the Paris exhibition showed how his passivity under the occupation remained "a stain on his career," curator Jerome Neutres told news agency AFP.

A little-known side of the cartoonist was also on show at the Herge exhibition. He was also a painter and an art collector. This photo features some of his paintings, revealing influences from artists such as Miro, Holbein and Rembrandt. However, painting remained a hobby for Herge.

In 1979, US pop artist Andy Warhol was commissioned by Herge to produce a series of four portraits of him. That same year, Tintin celebrated his 50th anniversary — though the reporter never aged over the years.

The cartoonist was also a graphic designer. His advertising work, as seen in these posters, featured a high level of formal creativity. Beyond Tintin, Herge was also the creator of several other characters, such as Quick and Flupke, as well as Jo, Zette and Jocko, whose adventures were told in five volumes. The prolific artist died in 1983.

Although at the time, comics were still considered the work of the devil in Germany, the first German edition of Mickey Mouse was published on August 29, 1951. Now worth thousands of euros to collectors, not even half of the original 300,000 copies were sold; the ones that went unsold were given away for free to schools or ended up in the trash. By now, Mickey Mouse is seen as a literary classic.

Many experts see German illustrator Wilhelm Busch as the forefather of comics. The German artist inspired the early comic artists of New York, and later on even Walt Disney. The protagonists he created from the 1860s onwards included animal torturers, drunk priests, hypocritical nuns and two poorly behaving kids named Max and Moritz.

An exhibition running through September 18, 2016 at the Frankfurt Art Museum, Kunsthalle Schirn, presents six predominantly US pioneers of comics, among them Cliff Sterrett (pictured: "Polly and Her Pals.") The exhibition presents the artists as "another avantgarde" creating their own art form, while anticipating later developments such as Surrealism and Expressionism.

Comics largely owe their early success to newspapers, as decreasing paper costs and more efficient printing machines made them more accessible to a greater public in the early 20th century. Comics came to play an important role in the resulting competition between different newspapers. Sometimes, the success of a particular paper depended to a large extent on the popularity of its comics.

In 1933,– at the tender age of 14, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created Superman whom they baptized "Kal-El,"– which means "God is in everything" in Hebrew. But it took them five years to find a publishing house for their hero - DC Comics, which published the first edition of the series "Action Comics" in 1938. Later, at an auction in the US, a first edition was sold for 3.2 million dollars.

Superman didn't stay alone for long. Pretty soon, Batman, Captain America, Wonderwoman, The Flash and countless other superheroes and super villains were fighting each other. Among those making cameo appearances was Adolf Hitler; during World War II, Superman & Co served as a way to raise the morale of American soldiers.

After the end of the war, many superheroes disappeared from the scene. Only a few permanent heroes were left to confront the aliens and criminal geniuses such as The Joker. Later, various film adaptations triggered a renewed boom for Superman & co, among them recent movies like "Deadpool," a comic figure from Marvel's "House of M".

An irritable animated duck made his debut in a 1934 animation film, nine years before he made his way into the "Walt Disney Comics." Donald Duck owes a lot of his popularity to artist Carl Barks. Over the next 20 years, Barks wrote and illustrated almost every month for Disney while creating numerous members of Donald Duck's family, including Scrooge McDuck in 1947 and Gladstone Gander in 1948.

Europe has produced quite a few remarkable comics in its own right. The Adventures of Asterix by French artist René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo (pictured) are among the most famous. Created in 1959, the two Gauls Asterix and Obelix play the main roles in a total of 36 original editions. Contemporary editions published today are no longer the work of their original creators.

Another world famous comic figure is Tim (Tintin), who travels around the world accompanied by his little white dog. Tintin was invented in 1929 by Belgian artist Hergé. Today, the 24 editions can be found in every bookstore. The series has even survived various accusations, including one of racism. In 2007, a Congolese student sued to stop the distribution of Tim comics in the Congo (pictured).

Another comic star from Belgium is cowboy Lucky Luke. The guy who pulls his revolver faster than his shadow was invented by artist "Morris" to be published for the first time in the magazine "Spirou" in 1946. The first Lucky Luke album was published in 1949. Apart from the Cowboy albums, Morris also wrote 17 screenplays on Lucky Luke, among them an unforgettable movie starring Terence Hill.

At times, comics had to overcome difficult challenges, as they were seen as dumb or even as putting young people at risk. In 1977, author Will Eisner (pictured) created the term "graphic novel" which was aimed at underlining the literary character of his comics. This was a clever move, as from then on, even more conservative readers got to discover their interest in comics.

The major difference between comics and graphic novels is the fact that the latter cover an entire story and are published as books. With "Maus," Art Spiegelmann made his entrance onto bestseller lists in 1986, and was even awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 - a revolution for the world of comics. In "Maus," the American artist tells the story of his father - a Holocaust survivor.

In contrast to the traditional comic strongholds France and the US, there wasn't much interest in comics in Germany for a long time. By today, some German comic artists have established themselves internationally, among them Reinhard Kleist. And there is a lot of young talent as well; in 2016, Nils Oskamp published "Drei Steine" ('Three Stars') highlighting the issue of right-wing violence.

Mangas have long been an integral part of leisure culture in their country of origin, Japan. In Europe however, they were largely rejected until the 1990s - on account of having a reputation for featuring violent or sexist content. Thanks to TV series like "Sailor Moon" they became more acceptable. In the late 1990s, "Pokemon" triggered a manga boom in Germany, which continues today.