Walter Elias Disney had set up a studio in Hollywood in 1923 and it is remarkable to reflect that Mickey Mouse and Tintin are exact contemporaries, each defying time and refusing to go out of fashion. For Disney, the animated picture went hand in hand with the strip cartoon—the two to him were naturally complementary with Mickey Mouse and his friends featuring in both. Although Hergé himself did not seek to animate Tintin beyond the page, he was fully aware of the Disney example and his methods. The preparatory drawings devised by members of the Disney studio are strongly reminiscent of the approach Hergé later adopted when he took on assistants and formed his own studio. In January 1979, on Tintin's 50th birthday, the Walt Disney Studios presented Hergé with a trophy of a then 50-year-old Mickey Mouse, the first time this honour had been paid to a non-American since Disney's death. As early as 1933 in an advertisement for the Brussels department store Innovation, Hergé borrowed Mickey Mouse costumes, a reference to Disney repeated in the carnival procession in his final completed Tintin adventure (Tintin and the Picaros, 1976).
—Michael Farr, Tintin: The Complete Companion
