Q77: Rastapopoulos's plane

We know from The Red Sea Sharks that Rastapopoulos has a private yacht, The Scherherazde.

In which other book do we learn that he owns an aeroplane?

Book, page and frame number please.

In The Cigars of the Pharaoh, page 60, frame D2 (bottom right corner frame), there's a newspaper clipping.
To the left of the main news story about Tintin smashing the drug ring is a smaller story, only partially in the frame, headlined (we can guess from what's visible): Cosmos King Vanishes.

This news story details the disappearance of milionaire film magnate Rastapopoulos, and includes the sentence (again, trying to fill in the gaps from the words we can see):

"No news has been received since his un-planned(?) departure in his private(?) plane for an unknown(?) destination."

I remember first spotting this apparently unrelated little news story as a child only on my umpteenth reading of the book, and rushing to my big sister and brother to show them that this told us that the mysterious baddie was Rastapopoulos.

To adult readers, of course, this fact may be quite obvious even without this news clipping but as children we hadn't been at all sure, and it had confused us how Rastapopoulos seemed to be a goodie in this book, helping Tintin at his desert film camp, when he was a baddie in other books we had, such as The Red Sea Sharks.

(It wasn't until The Blue Lotus was translated into English many years later, that it was finally confirmed beyond a shred doubt that Rastapopoulos was definitely the chief baddie of The Cigars of the Pharaoh.)

A flawless answer Balthazar, earning you a well-deserved point!

I also read Cigars of the Pharaoh long before The Blue Lotus was published in English, and I guessed too that Rastapopoulos was the boss because of the news clipping and the unidentified villain's use of "Diavolo!" on page 59 (frame D1).

It came as no surprise to learn that he really was when the English Lotus finally came out.

It's over to you for the next question.

"No news has been received since his un-planned departure in his private plane for an unknown destination."

This IS a sentence. Obviously crammed in to a small space.

This IS a sentence. Obviously crammed in to a small space.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by “This IS a sentence”. No-one’s disputing that. Balthazar was pointing out that many of the words in the news clipping are incomplete because it is cropped in the frame (in the English edition at least) leaving us to fill in the gaps.

I agree with Balthazar that it probably says “No news has [been r]eceived since his un[plan]ned departure in his [privat]e plane for an un[know]n destination.” The bracketed words are missing in the clipping so have been guessed, but even without them it is clear what it means.

Off-topic - I thought another interesting thing about the clipping was the partially obscured headline “Moon shot” just below the Rastapopoulos report - it takes the story right out of it’s original 1934 setting. Not having a French copy to compare I assume it was added by the English translators. My feeling is that it’s a nod to Tintin’s moon adventure and the fact that ‘real’ moon shots were actually happening by the time the adventure was first released in English in 1971.

Oh I see. I didn't have the book to hand to look at the frame. I didn't realise he was guessing at the words Un-planned etc. Sorry about that - oops.

No problemo MrCutts!

I realize that this ongoing trivia challenge is based on the English editions but it also means that some questions and answers are based on the work by the English translators and not by Hergé.

Take this thing about Kosmo King Vanishes, and the plane of Rastapopoulos, for example.
True, I haven't got the colour version of the French edition but this additional info on Rastapopoulos isn't in the original B/W-version, nor in the Swedish and - curiously enough - Latin versions (which I do have).
In other words, I suspect that this bit was added by the English translators.
Likewise, previous questions about connections between Tintin, Rodgers & Hammerstein and the Beatles are also restricted to the English editions.
Another example is Snowy's comment about Marlinspike in the beginning of Cigars of the Pharaoh.
As for the trivia challenge, these details are really not important but my point is that those translations give English readers ideas of Tintin which simply aren't in the original work of Hergé.

That's interesting, Mikael. I had wondered whether that news-clipping appeared in Hergé's original version, as for the sharp-eyed reader, it does rather weaken the effect of Rastapopoulos's big revalation towards the end of The Blue Lotus when he finally tells Tintin that he is the gang's mastermind. In the original serialized and book versions, did Hergé intend the reader to be as surprised as Tintin is by this?
If the news-clipping was an addition by the English translators, I'd guess this was because at the time Methuen first brought out The Cigars of the Pharaoh, they knew that British readers wouldn't be able to read The Blue Lotus anytime soon and wanted to do something to tie up the loose end of the mysterious baddie's identity, and make the book seem more completed and less like part one of an unfinished story. It's done very subtley though, and from what I've read about Hergé's relationship with his English translators (check out the very interesting intervew with them on this website), I'd guess he probably would have fully approved.

To be honest, some of the other changes that Hergé seems to have been quite willing to make to his books to please his foreign publishers do bother me - eg: removing black characters to appease American segregationists; changing the white British soldiers who are sent to beat up Tintin in The Blue Lotus into Sikhs.

But I'm in danger of drifting off into another discussion thread!

Mikael Uhlin:this additional info on Rastapopoulos isn't in the original B/W-version, nor in the Swedish and - curiously enough - Latin versions

It's in a German colour edition which I have. Perhaps somebody with a French colour edition of Les Cigares Du Pharaon could tell us whether the news clipping appears there?