Tintin in the Land of the Soviets and lock Tintin in a dungeon, but he escapes with the aid of Snowy, who has dressed himself in a tiger costume. The last OGPU agent attempts to kidnap Tintin, but this attempt is foiled, leaving the agent threatening, "We'll blow up all the capitals of Europe with dynamite!" Tintin returns to Brussels amidst a huge popular reception. Georges Remi—best known under the pen name Hergé—had been employed as an illustrator at (""The Twentieth Century""), a staunchly Roman Catholic and conservative Belgian newspaper based in Hergé's native Brussels. Run by the Abbé Norbert Wallez, the paper described itself as a
Tintin (character) admitted that he did not take Tintin seriously in the early "Adventures", explaining simply that he "put the character to the test" and that Tintin was simply created "as a joke between friends, forgotten the next day." Hergé biographer Benoît Peeters noted that throughout the early "Adventures", Tintin was "supremely Belgian" in his characteristics, a view echoed by biographer Pierre Assouline, who deemed all of the protagonists of the early "Adventures" "very Belgian". Hergé himself commented: "my early works are books by a young Belgian filled with the prejudices and ideas of a Catholic, they are books that could have