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