Aged 12, Georges Remi—who later became best known under the pen name
Hergé—joined the
Boy Scout brigade attached to Saint-Boniface School in his native
Brussels, becoming troop leader of the Squirrel Patrol and earning the name "Curious Fox" (
Renard curieux). With the Scouts, he travelled for summer camps in Italy, Switzerland, Austria and Spain, and in the summer of 1923 his troop hiked 200 miles across the Pyrenees. His experiences with Scouting would have a significant influence on the rest of his life, sparking his love of camping and the natural world, and providing him with a
moral compass that stressed personal loyalty and keeping one's promise. His Scoutmaster, Rene Weverbergh, encouraged his artistic ability, and published one of Remi's drawings in the newsletter of the Saint-Boniface Scouts,
Jamais Assez (
Never Enough); his first published work. When Weverbergh became involved in the publication of
Boy-Scout, the newsletter of the Federation of Scouts, he published more of Remi's illustrations, the first of which appeared in the fifth issue, from 1922. Remi continued publishing cartoons, drawings and woodcuts in subsequent issues of the magazine, which was soon renamed
Le Boy-Scout Belge (
The Belgian Boy Scout). During this time, he experimented with different pseudonyms, using "Jérémie" and "Jérémiades" before settling on "Hergé", the pronunciation of his reversed initials (R.G.), a name that he first published under in December 1924.
Les Aventures de Totor, C.P. des hannetons began serialisation in
Le Boy-Scout Belge in July 1926, and would continue to appear in the magazine until July 1929. The meaning of the name has been translated differently; Hergé biographer
Pierre Assouline translated it as "The Adventures of Totor, C.P. of the June Bugs", while Tintinologist
Harry Thompson instead translated it as "The Adventures of Totor, patrol leader of the Cockchafers", but conversely, biographer
Benoît Peeters had it as "The Adventures of Totor, patrol chief of the Scatterbrains". ("
hanneton" is French for
Cockchafer, a type of
beetle, but also the French for "scatterbrain"). Hergé had hoped that being the author of an ongoing comic strip would improve his job prospects, for at the time he was beginning to develop a reputation as a designer of postcards, stationery, and advertisements. Rather than representing an example of a comic as the medium would come to be understood in the following decade,
The Adventures of Totor consisted of square boxes containing illustrations with the captions written separately underneath, as was the style found in French comic creator
Christophe's works
La Famille Fenouillard (
The Fenouillard Family) and
Sapeur Camembert (
Sapper Camembert). Initially using four boxes per page, as the series progressed this was increased to six and then eight, with each page ending on a
cliffhanger. Hergé did not make use of
speech bubbles, an innovation that was yet to become widespread in Europe, and instead his cartoons were accompanied by captions, three to five lines long. He would begin to add simple speech bubbles into the series, stating simple comments like "Eureka!", "Bang!", and "Hip! Hip! Hip! Hurrah!". Hergé later noted that "From time to time... I risked a timid question mark, or perhaps a few stars, when, for example, a character was punched. I must have seen that in ''L'Éatant
or Les Belles Images
, the illustrated papers of the time." Hergé had come under the influence of other comic strips, such as those of the French author Alain Saint-Ogan, and British comic magazine The Rainbow''. He was also influenced by the contemporary American comics that reporter
Léon Degrelle had sent back to Belgium from Mexico, where he was stationed to report on the
Cristero War. These American comics included
George McManus's
Bringing Up Father,
George Herriman's
Krazy Kat and
Rudolph Dirks's
Katzenjammer Kids. Totor's button nose was influenced by the illustrations in
Bringing Up Father. In creating the series, he was also heavily influenced by the films of
Charlie Chaplin and
Harry Langdon, which he had enjoyed in childhood. This influence was evident in his decision to sign some of the images with the signature "Hergé Moving Pictures" or "Hergé, Director", and giving many of them titles such as "United Rovers presents a great comic film:
Les Aventures de Totor, C.P. des hannetons" and "United Rovers presents a stupendous film." He had continued writing and drawing installments in the series during his military service in 1926, but in early 1927 ceased producing the series for nine months as he focused on other projects, only returning to it in late 1927, when he included a résumé of the series at the start. Gaining work for the conservative newspaper (
The Twentieth Century), in January 1929 he began serialisation of
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets, the first of
The Adventures of Tintin, in the newspaper's children's supplement, (
The Little Twentieth). Tintinologist
Michael Farr described the character of Totor as a "natural prototype" for Tintin, while literary critic
Jean-Marie Apostolidès thought that Hergé "adopted his former hero to the new circumstances". The Tintinologists Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier thought that graphically, Totor was "virtually identical" to Tintin. The early installments of
Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and
The Adventures of Totor were contemporary with each other. Hergé decided that he wanted to focus on the new character, bringing the Totor story to an end in July 1929, when he had the main character return to Belgium. In all, the series had lasted for 26 pages.
The Adventures of Totor would continue to influence his new series, as the encounters with
cowboys and Native Americans would subsequently be reused in the third installment in
The Adventures of Tintin,
Tintin in America, although Thompson commented that the latter was "a great improvement" on
Totor. ==Critical analysis==