Arpin Lusène

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Arpin Lusène
First appearance Uncle Scrooge #314 (first US appearance)
The Black Knight (1998)
Created by Keno Don Rosa
Characteristics
Notable aliases Le Chevalier Noir, The Black Knight

Arpin Lusène is a fictional character of the Scrooge McDuck Universe created by Keno Don Rosa.

Nicknamed Le Chevalier Noir (The Black Knight), he is a French gentleman, and a notorious thief with, naturally, a cheesy French accent which other characters have hard time understanding at times, and which often leads to clever word play. His home has been told to be his castle in Portofino on the Italian Riviera.

He is a very sticky fingered thief. On some occasions he is even seen stealing people's clothes while the victims are wearing them. His life's goal is to steal Scrooge McDuck's money, or make it disappear to make people think he stole it. His motive for this is to be remembered as the greatest thief ever to exist, rather than to make a profit out of it, as he has plenty of money already.

Lusène strictly refuses to appear in any photographs, claiming he has never been photographed. He likes to use his extreme dexterity to avoid being photographed. He once removed the filament from the lightbulb of a camera's flash, without breaking the bulb glass.

Usually on his appearances, Lusène wears an armor of a knight, almost completely covered in Gyro Gearloose's invention, a universal solvent which has the ability of absorbing all kinds of matter, excluding diamonds.

Lusène has appeared in several stories, the first one being The Black Knight in 1997. This story was mainly the introduction to the character as well as a sequel to the story Universal Solvent. As the main plot, Arpin comes to Duckburg in order to rob the Money Bin. His first attempt fails, however he steals the universal solvent and uses it to make his special armor to make another, successful attack on the Bin. Scrooge, with the help of Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie, manage to stop him. Lusène's next apparance was in the story Attaaaaaack in which Scrooge stops his new plot to raid the Money Bin thank's to an invention of Gyro's. His third apparance was in Rosa's The Black Knight GLORPS Again which is a direct sequel to event's in The Black Knight and Arpine restores his suit in it. So far he has only made appearances on covers by other artists like Marco Rota.

His name comes from a spoonerism of Arsène Lupin, a fictional character from novels by Maurice Leblanc.


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