 In 1929 , Hergé began The Adventures of Tintin comic strip for Le Petit Vingtième , a series about the exploits of a fictional Belgian reporter named Tintin . Following the success of Tintin in the Land of the Soviets , serialised weekly in Le Petit Vingtième from January 1929 to May 1930 , Hergé wanted to send Tintin to the United States . Wallez insisted he write a story set in the Belgian Congo , then a Belgian colony and today the Democratic Republic of the Congo . Belgian children learned about the Congo in school , and Wallez hoped to encourage <unk> and missionary zeal in his readership . He believed that the Belgian colonial administration needed promotion at a time when memories " were still fairly fresh " of the 1928 visit to the colony by the Belgian King Albert and Queen Elisabeth . He also hoped that some of his readers would be inspired to work in the Congo . 
