The man who drew the most morally upright boy reporter in comics was arrested four times, jailed, and blacklisted as a collaborator at the height of his career. This episode charts Georges Remi, known as Hergé, from a childhood he described as gray in 1907 Brussels, through his escape routes in silent cinema and the Boy Scouts, to his job under Abbé Norbert Wallez, a fascist priest with Mussolini's photo on his desk who commissioned the first adventures as explicit anti-Soviet, pro-colonial propaganda.

We follow the 1934 turning point when Chinese art student Zhang Chongren taught Hergé calligraphy, Taoist philosophy, and the reality of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, transforming him from propagandist into researcher. Then comes the German occupation, his decision to work for the Nazi-controlled Le Soir and its 600,000 readers, the ant ...