Zig et Puce sauvent Nénette

Zig and Puce ,flanked by their penguin Nestor,were two comics heroes ,created by Alain Saint-Ogan in 1925,the very first European comic strip using speech bubbles;When he created his celebrated Tintin,four years later,Hergé patterns himself upon Saint-Ogan .Hence his historical importance in the Belgian comics school .

Zig and Puce have no parents or relatives (like Tintin) and they have a pet (like Tintin's Milou/Snowy);at the end of the short (37 min) they are asked by the wealthy couple who adopt Nénette to stay with them but they turn the offer down because they are independent.The young children of the twenties must have envied them :no school,foot loose and fancy free.

The screenplay may seem naive today (and it already was in 1953)but it was strictly aimed at the children market:Zig ,Puce and their penguin arrive in a circus where Nénette,an acrobat, is mistreated by the owner who flogs her;they help her escape from this miserable life and she tells them her story:she has lost her parents ( the flashback is the best moment of the short: the funeral is depicted by shadow-graph on the wall);the threesome and the pet help the gendarmes arrest burglars;afterward Nénette finds a new family and the heroes hit the road again.

In a long interview with Numa Sadoul,Hergé claimed Saint-Ogan's influence which spawned a whole school of drawers in Belgium :"La Ligne Claire".