Rastapopoulos
Rastapopoulos is a male comic character who features in The Adventures of Tintin.
Contents |
Biography
Roberto J. Rastapopoulos (Greek: Ροβέρτος Ρασταπόπουλος) was a male human born in 1891 on the Greek island of Leros. His father was said to had been a sponge diver, and he had three brothers and two sisters. According to one account, he had financially drained his other family members when he was a young man.
At his peak, Rastapopoulos was the founder of Cosmos Pictures, a movie studio and production company, the owner of Arabair Airlines, and the leader of the Kih-Oskh secret society and drug trafficking ring. While Cosmos produced legitimate theatrical films, it was part of a money laundering scheme for Rastapopoulos's criminal activities. Cosmos and Arabair both provided a cover for his constant travelling; the film "Arabian Knights" is being filmed near Abudin, just around the same time as a Kih-Oskh Brotherhood meeting. Rastapopoulos's goal is to maintain status as a wealthy debutante, no matter how many times Tintin gets in his way.
The poet Zloty is poisoned, and as he begins to receive the effects of the poison, he struggles to tell Tintin that the leader of the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood has some connection to the movie industry before finally going mad. At the end of the book, a newspaper page displays a photo of Thompson and Thomson falling over a staircase. To the left of the photo an article can be glimpsed revealing that Rastapopoulos is missing.
Rastapopoulos subsequently resurfaces in The Red Sea Sharks under the guise of the Marquis di Gorgonzola, having been forced to assume a new identity after he was arrested for his previous crimes. He can be seen hosting an opulent costume party on a personal yacht, accompanied by Bianca Castafiore, but unbeknownst to Castafiore and all the party guests, "the Marquis" is simultaneously operating a slave trading operation. Rastapopoulos's ever-loyal henchman Allan Thompson attempts to burn down the boat carrying Tintin, Haddock, Skut, and the trafficked migrant workers, but Tintin's crew is able to save and take control of the ship. Tintin and Haddock report the slave trading ring to the authorities. Rastapopoulos's yacht is soon surrounded by US navy warships ordering him to come aboard and be arrested. However, while pretending to take a small boat over to the warships, Rastapopoulos's boat appears to malfunction and sink to the bottom of the ocean, while he secretly escapes in a private submarine.
Sometime after The Red Sea Sharks, Rastapopulos became bankrupt. Rather than spend the effort to amass yet another fortune under a new name, he decided to kidnap the millionaire Laszlo Carriedas, Tintin and his companions in Flight 714 to gain the password to Carriedas's multi-million Swiss Bank account, concluding that it is easier to steal Carreidas's money than make his own fortune all over again. However he and his gang ran into a UFO during the plot, and he was hypnotized by Mik Kanrokitoff and captured by aliens when he unwittingly uses an island that is regularly used by the aliens as a location to make contact with various terrestrial agents as his base. His ultimate fate is unknown, however, many believe him to be Endaddine Akass. Some of Herge's notes that were found after his death reveal that Rastapopolous was intended to have woken up on a desert island after forgetting the entire plan to capture Carreidas.
Overview
Personality and attributes
His intelligence is demonstrated when he acted with Tintin the first time they met each other. He was very affable but it was only a cover and he soon reveals himself to be a dangerous, ruthless and psychopathic crime lord. Despite his supposed influence, he is very callous and abusive towards his henchmens, as shown in Flight 714, when he tells under the truth's serum that he would dispose of every of them when his plan will succeed, and always raging towards Allan because of his goofs. He is cruel and is ready to commit many crimes, even heinous ones like attempted child murder, slavery to make money or lying to rebels or promising help to Sondonesians rebels who helped him in his plan to get Carreidas's money, by lying to them and putting bombs in theirs boats when they will be useless to him. He was evil since his youth, proved when he told Carreidas he ruined his brothers and sisters and put his parents on unemployement.
Powers and abilities
In secret, he was the Grandmaster of the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood that were a secret society that also operated as a drug trafficking ring.
Notes
- Rastapopoulos was created by Hergé and made his first appearance in Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934).
Appearances
- Cigars of the Pharaoh: (1934)
External Links
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