The Calculus Affair

Rascar Capac, the sinister creature featured on Hergé's album The Seven Crystal Balls (1948), has left its mark on many generations of readers. To draw it, the Belgian cartoonist was probably inspired by a mummy exhibited in the first pre-Columbian exhibition organized by the Brussels Cinquantenaire Museum in 1923. Two intrepid archaeologists embark on a fascinating journey to reconstruct the story of the mysterious mummy.

This short animated advertising cartoon promotes the Société Générale des Minerais belges, a Belgian mining company. Tintin follows the company endeavours in Belgium, Congo, the USA, France and Japan.

Professor Calculus's friend develops a blue-skinned orange that can grow on any kind of land and survive harsh weather (in the manner of Lue Gim Gong) and therefore solve world hunger. The Professor and his friends, however, run afoul of gangsters who also covet the fruit. The adventure takes them from their home in Marlinspike Hall (Moulinsart), a fictional mansion that is presumably in Belgium, to Spain, where Calculus and another scientist are kidnapped.

After the death of Captain Thémistocle Paparanic, Captain Haddock's old friend, he inherits a ship called the Golden Fleece. Once Tintin and the captain arrive in Istanbul, where the ship is anchored, they meet Mr. Karabine, a businessman who stubbornly insists on buying it even though it is in a dilapidated state.

Tintin finds himself involved in a mystery related to a drowned man, a can of crabmeat and a ship called Karaboudjan. After investigating the ship, Tintin discovers that the shipment of cans does not contain exactly crabmeat.

From the beginning, Hergé's work, Tintin's creator, was conditioned by the ideology of his publisher, the weekly child supplement of a Belgian Catholic newspaper. An exciting analysis of the political meaning of the adventures of Tintin.

Strange things are happening in the evening at the mansion: glass things break without any apparent reason. Professor Calculus, somewhat apathetic to the whole series of events, leaves the following day to attend a conference on nuclear physics in Geneva. Foreign powers get wind of his work and send their agents to investigate.

When seven archaeologists find an ancient Inca temple, they become victims of an ancient curse. Back in Europe, one by one they fall into a deep sleep and only once a day, all at the same time, they wake up for a few minutes and experience hallucinations where the sinister living mummy of Rascar Capac appears.

Tintin and Captain Haddock are sent to guard Professor Calculus, who has invented a machine that can duplicate anything, and is staying in a village near the border of Syldavia and Borduria. However, an infamous and ruthless international criminal tries to lure Calculus and Tintin away by kidnapping two children, who live nearby, in order to get his clutches on the machine.

In order to assassinate the inquisitive Belgian reporter Tintin, the evil gangster Al Capone orders Smiles, an executive under his command, to lure him to a meeting to be held in Chicago…

While on vacation in Egypt, Tintin encounters an eccentric archaeologist who believes to have found the whereabouts of Pharaoh Kih-Oskh's tomb. There Tintin finds a cigar marked with a strange emblem.

Tintin is visited in India by a Chinese gentleman who brings him a message. Then, an unseen marksman throws a poisonous dart right into his neck. The only clue Tintin receives from the now mad messenger is that there are problems in Shanghai related to a man named Mitsuhirato.