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Moderator Note: Combined more than one thread

I was thinking about it, and I came up with two thoughts about The Crab with the Golden Claws:

1: Is Rastapopoulos a member of the gang in The Crab with the Golden Claws?

2: If so, is he Omar ben Salaad?

Probably so, If Omar Bin Salaad is Rastapopoulos, that fits the picture.
Allan was instructed by Rastapopoulos but maybe Rastapopoulos was just a rank below Omar Bin Salaad?
I just can't stand writing Rastapopoulos's name in my posts. I hate it because he was Tintin's long-sworn enemy.

But doesn't Omar Bin Salaad get captured at the end? I could be forgetting, but I thought that case was pretty much wrapped up, no big escape a la Red Sea Sharks or Cigars of the Pharaoh.

Well, Rastapopoulos "died" at the end of Flight 714 and came back in Alph-Art.

Omar Bin Salaad seems to be the "receiver" in the gang, not the main boss, so I don't think he's Rastapopoulos. Besides, isn't he actually shown to be an Arab? Forgive me if I'm wrong.

Rastapopoulos can come back as anything...

I think it's safe to say that ben Salaad has no relation to Rastapopoulos. Perhaps you can say that Allan and Rastapopoulos met at an international opium-dealer's convention...but that's I think as far as we can take it.

And (my opinion) Rastapopoulos is not Endaddine Akass.

miloumuttmitt

Rastapopoulos can come back as anything...


From memory (I don't have the album with me now) I think he is too fat and short to be Rastapopoulos.

I agree with Mark and Harishankar that there's no way that Hergé intended Omar Bin Salaad to be an alias of Rastapopoulos. Bin Salaad just doesn't look the same as Rastapopoulos, and if it was meant to be a disguise, surely Hergé would have had Tintin remove the disguise and recognise him by the end of the book. You might just as well say that Doctor Müller is meant to be Bobby Smiles!

The fact that Allan is working for Bin Salaad in The Crab doesn't link Bin Salaad to Rastapopoulos. At the time Crab was written, Allan hadn't started working for Rastapopoulos. Allan isn't in the original black-and-white version of Cigars of the Pharaoh, Crab was his first appearance. Hergé put Allan into Cigars in 1955 when the book was being redrawn and coloured (and then continued to have him working for Rastapopoulos in the subsequent adventures, The Red Sea Sharks and Flight 714 to Sydney).

I know he wasn't physically in the book, but was he the ring-leader of the gang hiding drugs in the crab meat tins?
Allan works for Rastapopoulos, who is his boss in Flight 714; was he doing it for Rastapopoulos back then?
Anyone else ever think that?