Tintin Forums

Well the Calculus Affair is the best book in my opinion. I still love reading that story. It would make a wicked movie.

Not really true - Hergé was always taking pains to make sure that things were accurate - realistic perhaps not so much, but always basically accurate! From reading up on the politics of Russia, to putting in a readily identifiable (to petrolheads at least) Amilcar, even a book like Soviets required research, and was looking for a sense of the time and place.
His style became more refined as the adventures went on, but his attention to detail was there from the start.
As has been mentioned above, he did choose to start toning down the specifics of Brussels as a location, but even in doing that (taking the sign off the façade of the Hôtel Metropole in the book version of Seven Crystal Balls is one of the famous ones), it's still easy to identify where he was drawing.