This drawing served as an illustration on February 13, 1930, on the cover of the "Petit Vingtième", an illustrated children's journal that hosted the adventures of the famous Belgian reporter, before they were published as albums.

The original illustration of the first cover that put Tintin in the spotlight, published in February 1930, was auctioned Saturday in Dallas for $ 1,125,000 (992,000 euros), announced the auction house Heritage Auctions. The drawing was published February 13, 1930 and shows the character created by Hergé reporting to the land of Soviets, cutting in a tree trunk a fortune propeller for his plane, while Snowy, covered with bandages, l 'observed.

Since January 1929, Hergé publishes the adventures of Tintin in the Soviet country every week in The Little Twentieth , supplement for children published every Thursday with the Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle . Faced with the success of the comic, Tintin went from eight to 16 pages, and won the cover of the supplement this February 13, 1930. The album Tintin in the Land of Soviets , the first in the story of the character, will be released a few months later late, in September 1930.

The drawing of the first Tintin cover sold for $ 1.1 million at auctionhttps: //t.co/iWEhUhmQuz#AFPpic.twitter.com/XHSZD5PIz9

- AFP USA (@AFPusa) June 8, 2019

Record sales

Most of Tintin's old rugs can be found at the Hergé museum in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, explained the tintinologist Philippe Goddin in the sheet published by the auction house.

The illustration sold in Dallas on Saturday, in Chinese ink with gouache retouching, is signed by Hergé: it is the design he had given to the newspaper to print on the cover. He was found in Brussels, said a spokesman for Heritage Auctions. The identities of the seller and the buyer remained confidential. Tintin regularly beats auction sales records: old boards and covers have exceeded one million or even two million euros.