Cigars of the Pharoah (The Adventures of Tintin)

Cigars of the Pharaoh is one of Tintin's earliest adventures. He and Snowy are on a cruise to Egypt when they happen to meet Professor Sophocles Sarcophagus (the first of Tintin's absent-minded professors) and join his expedition. But they become embroiled in a complicated scheme involving a fakir, cigars marked with an unusual brand, and Rajijah, the poison of madness. Most significantly, Tintin meets the detectives Thompson and Thomson as well as the movie mogul Rastapopolous. While Cigars of the Pharaoh is a self-contained story, some of the mysteries are resolved in The Blue Lotus. Herge wrote Cigars in 1932 then revised it in 1955, which is why the art has the more polished look of later stories as well as the anachronistic glimpse of a copy of Destination: Moon. --David Horiuchi