Original Tintin album cover drawing fetches 1.1 million US$ at auction.
An original drawing used for the first published "Tintin" cover has been sold at auction for US$1.12 million. The auction took place at the Heritage Auction House in the American city Dallas.  The illustration, by Tintin creator Hergé (the pseudonym of Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi), shows the plucky young reporter sitting on a tree stump carving a makeshift propeller for his plane after the original was damaged in a rough landing somewhere in the Soviet Union. His faithful dog Snowy sits and watches, bandaged from tail to nose.
Tintin books have been translated into more than 70 languages and are known and loved across the globe. However, in 1929 the then 22-year-old Hergé was still drawing for Le Petit Vingtième, a children's supplement to the now-defunct daily Le Vingtième Siecle.
The serialised Tintin stories proved so popular that soon Le Petit Vingtième published them in 16-page instalments instead of the original eight. On Feb 13, 1930, Tintin made the cover of the supplement. Â
Just a few months later the first book of what was to be a series of two dozen Tintin albums was published. The album was entitled "Tintin in the Land of the Soviets".
Most of the old Tintin cover illustrations are on display at the Hergé museum in Louvain-la-Neuve (Walloon Brabant)
Despite often setting his Tintin tales in exotic locations, Hergé rarely left Belgium during his lifetime. He died in 1983 aged 75.