In Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934), Tintin finds himself – by chance – entangled in a drug traffickers’ ring which will take him all the way to India. In the meantime, he will have met Thomson and Thompson, two clumsy policemen whose role will progressively become more important throughout the series. Tintin, fighting against the drug traffickers of Egypt and India, meets with a few characters he will encounter again soon: villains such as Allan Thomson or the mysterious Rastapopoulos but also some of his future companions like Señor Oliveira but, above all, the indescribable Thomson and Thompson. ‘Hergé’ was born Georges Remi on 22 May, 1907 in Etterbeek, a suburb of Brussels, in Belgium. After leaving school, he worked for the daily newspaper, Le XXe Siècle (The 20th Century). He was responsibe the for the section of the newspaper designed for children. Tintin, the main character in his works, was introduced on January 10, 1929 in a story entitled ‘Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.’ Each story ran as a comic strip in the newspaper and then was published as a book. Some of these books were adapted for the small screen including The Crab With The Golden Claws, Star of Mystery, Red Rakham’s Treasure, Black Island, Objective Moon and The Calculus Affair. French TV produced longer versions of twenty of the books in 1992, which have been broadcast in over fifty countries. On 3 March, 1983, he died in Brussels. At the time of his death, he was working on Tintin and the Alpha-Art, which was published in an unfinished form.

Hashish: A Smuggler’s Tale was published in the early thirties just when Herge was writing Cigars of the Pharaoh. It seems odd that the conservative, strait-laced Herge should put a character like Monfreid in his book but one can imagine the exotic, devil-may-care, existence of the smuggler would appeal to the shy Belgium who had never left his country. Though possible it was Manfrieds attitude to Germans that appeal. On seeing the Pyramids he couldn’t wait to leave. Saying “The only thing that one might possibly admire is the stupendous effort it took to build them, and this admiration demands the mentality of a German tourist.” pp.62 #0216/1219/0120/0420/0520/1020/0621