 For his next serial , Hergé planned to put together a story that caricatured the actions of Nazi Germany , developing the plot for King Ottokar 's Sceptre . However , he temporarily set aside that project when he began to experience dreams of white and a car stuck in the snow , having ideas of sending Tintin to the north , considering Greenland or the Klondike as potential locations . The result was The Black Island , although Hergé only sent Tintin as far north as Scotland , and he instead used the idea of the car stuck in a snowdrift on a greetings card that he designed . He also had an idea of Tintin combating a group of anarchists bent on destroying Europe 's iconic buildings , but again this idea did not make it into the eventual story . Having decided to set most of his story in Britain , Hergé briefly visited London and the southern English coast to learn more about the country . There , he purchased a stainless steel <unk> <unk> G @-@ 2 pen , a type that he would continue to use throughout his life . His positive depiction of Britain was in part due to an Anglophilia that he had received from his childhood , with the British government having been a longstanding ally of Belgium , supporting its 1831 creation and liberating it from German occupation during the First World War . 
