Paris-A rare India ink drawing of boy-detective Tintin and his faithful dog Snowy has been sold for almost $500,000 (£380,000) at auction in Paris.

The picture from the 1939 comic album King Ottokar’s Sceptre was among items by Hergé, the Belgian artist who created Tintin, to go under the hammer. An original strip from the book The Shooting Star fetched $350,000.

But a copy of Tintin adventure Destination Moon, signed by US astronauts, failed to find a buyer.

Other items by Hergé on sale at the Paris auction included books, sketches and drawings.

Tintin is one of the most recognisable comic-book characters ever created.

Translated into 90 languages and selling in excess of 200m copies, the cartoons remain popular to this day.

Last year a comic strip from the Tintin book Explorers on the Moon sold for a record $1.64m in Paris.

The same year, a rare drawing of Tintin in Shanghai from the book The Blue Lotus sold for $1.2m at auction in Hong Kong.