The Adventures of Tintin newspaper (The Twentieth Century). The success of the series saw the serialised strips published in Belgium's leading newspaper (The Evening) and spun into a successful "Tintin" magazine. In 1950, Hergé created Studios Hergé, which produced the canonical versions of ten "Tintin" albums. The series is set during a largely realistic 20th century. Its hero is Tintin, a courageous young Belgian reporter and adventurer. He is aided by his faithful dog Snowy ( in the original French edition). Other protagonists include the brash and cynical Captain Haddock and the intelligent but hearing-impaired Professor Calculus (), as well as the incompetent detectives
Tintin in the Congo the final scene. Literary critic Tom McCarthy concurred that Tintin represented the Belgian state, but also suggested that he acted as a Christian missionary, even being "a kind of god" akin to the character of Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" (1899). McCarthy compared the scene where Tintin exposes Muganga as a fraud to that in which the character of Prospero exposes the magician in William Shakespeare's "The Tempest". In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several campaigners and writers characterised "Tintin in the Congo" as racist due to its portrayal of the Congolese as infantile and stupid.