The Adventures of Tintin

Hergé's Belgian comic albums follow Tintin, a young reporter who never quite seems to file a story, and his dog Snowy, through adventures running from Shanghai to the Andes and twice to the Moon. The supporting cast became one of the most recognisable in comics: the irascible Captain Haddock, the hard-of-hearing Professor Calculus, and the near-identical detectives Thomson and Thompson. Hergé drew in the ligne claire style he made famous, where every line carries the same weight and nothing is shaded, and from The Blue Lotus onwards he researched each setting closely enough that the books double as period travelogues. Twenty-three albums were completed between 1929 and 1976, with a twenty-fourth left unfinished at his death.