One intrepid boy reporter and his white dog have made a triumphant comeback this year with the release of the Tintin movie by Steven Spielberg.

Tintin is the most widely-translated comic strip hero of all time and it is partly thanks to his creator, Herge, that Belgium became the birthplace of scores of other iconic comic strip heroes such as Lucky Luke and the Smurfs.

“Herge was like the locomotive for the entire comic strip train,” said Willem De Graeve of the Belgian Comic Strip Center, an Art Nouveau temple dedicated to what the Belgians refer to as a “ninth art.”

“Herge was the very first artist in Belgium to become famous with his comics,” added De Graeve. “Tintin was a bestseller from the start and that inspired other artists here to follow in his footsteps.” Read more.

See: Deutsche Welle