Secondary characters and settings in The Adventures of Tintin

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[edit] Professor Cuthbert Calculus (Professeur Tryphon Tournesol)

Professor Calculus (Professeur Tournesol)

Main article: Professor Calculus

Professor Cuthbert Calculus is a distracted, hard-of-hearing professor, who invented many objects used in the series, such as a one-person shark-shaped submarine, the Moon rocket, and an ultrasound weapon. Calculus seeks to benefit mankind by inventions such as a pill that cures alcoholism by making alcohol taste horrible to the patient.

Calculus's deafness is a frequent source of humour, as he repeats back what he thinks he has heard, usually in the most unlikely words possible: "attachez votre ceinture" (fasten your belt) is repeated as "une tache de peinture?" (a paint stain). He does not admit to being near-deaf and insists that he is merely 'hard of hearing' in just one ear. The two "Moon" books notably depart from this pattern, when Calculus is fitted with a hearing aid. For the duration of the album he has near-perfect hearing, making this a more serious character (as long as the word "goat" is not uttered in his presence). However, in later adventures Calculus loses his hearing aid and goes back to being his old eccentric, deaf self. Calculus is a fervent believer in dowsing, and carries a pendulum for that purpose.

Calculus first appeared in Red Rackham's Treasure, and was the end result of Hergé's long quest to find the archetypal mad scientist or absent-minded professor: for instance, Dr. Sarcophagus in Cigars of the Pharaoh, and Prof. Alembick in King Ottokar's Sceptre.

NOTE: A literal translation of his French name would be Tryphonius Sunflower or Tryphonius Litmus Paper.

[edit] Thomson and Thompson (Dupond et Dupont)

Thomson and Thompson (Dupont et Dupond)

Main article: Thomson and Thompson

Thomson and Thompson are two bumbling detectives who, although unrelated, look like twins with the only discernible difference being the shape of their moustaches.^[1] They provide much of the comic relief throughout the series, as they are afflicted with chronic spoonerism. They are thoroughly incompetent, and always bent on arresting the wrong character, but in spite of this their superiors always charge them with surprisingly complex missions, such as ensuring security for the Syldavian space project. When they get into a terrible mess (like falling over) they come up with lazy excuses such as 'Well I was following you' to make themselves seem less buffoonish.

The detectives usually wear bowler hats and carry walking sticks, except when abroad, when they insist on wearing the "national costume" of the country they are visiting so as to blend into the local population, but in general only manage to find some ridiculous folkloric attire that makes them stand out even more.

The detectives were in part based on Hergé's father and uncle, identical twins who wore matching bowlers.

[edit] Minor characters

See: List of The Adventures of Tintin characters and Minor characters in Tintin

Rastapopoulos, the most heavily featured antagonist throughout the series.

Bianca Castafiore, the main female character of the series.

Some of the notable characters are:

• Abdullah
• General Alcazar
• Ben Kalish Ezab
• Bird Bros. (Max & G. Bird)
• Bianca Castafiore
• Chang Chong-Chen
• Oliveira da Figueira
• Irma
• Mitsuhirato
• Dr. J.W. Müller
• Nestor
• Pablo
• Rastapopoulos
• Bobby Smiles
• Tharkey
• Jolyon Wagg
• Igor Wagner

[edit] Fictional settings

• Syldavia in the Balkans is by Hergé's own admission modelled on Albania^[2], and is threatened by neighbouring Borduria — an attempted annexation appears in King Ottokar's Sceptre — this situation parallels respectively Czechoslovakia or Austria and expansionist Nazi Germany prior to World War II. In The Calculus Affair, Borduria is used as a metaphor of a Communist state.

Ben Kalish Ezab, emir of Khemed.

• Khemed, in Arabia. Khemed is subject to a revolution in The Red Sea Sharks and in the Land of the Black Gold.
• The events of Flight 714 take place on the island of Pulau-Pulau Bompa (Pulau-Pulau is Indonesian words for Islands).
• Sondonesia, a country in South East Asia. Said to be undergoing a civil war or a war for independence, with rebels for hire. Rastapopoulos's hired gun, Allan, recruits Sondonesians as gun-toting muscle in Flight 714. They appear to be thinly disguised Khmer Rouge or the East Timor fighters for independence, and Hergé's insistence that Sondonesia is in a state of civil war shows amazing clarity of vision as to the true state of the conflict in Cambodia at that period. The name Sondonesia is a portmanteau of Sunda and Indonesia. However, the location of the Kemajoran airport of Jakarta and the latest radio message from 'Makassar' before the plane was hijacked to one of the Sondonesian islands suggests that the location itself is not far from the Malay/Indonesian archipelago. Herge gave further evidence by some 'Sondonesian' conversations (the angry sailor on the boat, and the two bunker guards) which were spoken in Indonesian Malay.

Tintin and General Alcazar, the on-and-off dictator of San Theodoros. From the Swedish edition of Tintin and the Picaros.

• San Theodoros in South America, a prototypical banana republic where US-based companies and Borduria (meant as an allusion to the USSR or Cuba) vie for power, with "advisors" of local generals.
• São Rico in South America. Sao Rico was added as a reference in a later versions of The Shooting Star. The original version had the villainous masterminds as stereotypical Jewish American puppet-masters — the later version darkens their skin tone and inserts Sao Rico as a reference.
• Nuevo Rico, bordering San Theodoros. The two countries go to war over oil in The Broken Ear, which is parallel to the 1930s Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia.
• El Chapo, after the South American Chaco region. The Broken Ear is set in a war inspired by the Chaco War.
• Pilchardania and Poldavia are both mentioned in The Blue Lotus. Pilchardania is mentioned on a newsreel that Tintin views while hiding in a cinema from the police. The Poldavian consul gets mistaken for Tintin in a beard and wig in the Blue Lotus opium den (Note: could be a typo, as "Moldavia" is the former name for the present day country of Moldova).
• Gaipajama, an Indian principality based on those that existed during the British Raj, is mentioned in Cigars of the Pharaoh.
• Rawhajpoutalah: Uncomfurted country listed as a Tintin country on the Flags of the world website (http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/fic_tint.html).

[edit] Notes and references