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Allan Thompson is one of the main antagonists of the comic book series The Adventures of Tintin. He was the second-in-command of the Karaboudjan under Captain Haddock, until he led a mutiny that turned the ship into a drug smuggling vessel. He is also the secondary antagonist in The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Allan is not referred to by his full name in the English versions of the series, due to the accidental similarity to Thomson and Thompson (whom were originally known as Dupont and Dupond).

Personality[]

At first glance, Allan appears to be a stoic ship captain in an honest line of work. However, Allan is a brutal drug smuggler hired by Roberto Rastapopoulos (formerly Omar Ben Salaad), and he will do anything to maintain control of his position. He has no problem getting his men to kidnap Bunji Kuraki, or trying to drop a shipping crate on Tintin.

Allan is loyal to very few people outside of his immediate crew. He has some friends from the merchant navy, such as Pedro and Tom. He can be tough on his crew but he tries to avoid putting them in danger, such as when he vouched for the Sondonesian gunmen he was leading.[1] Allan is also surprisingly loyal to Rastapopoulos, even putting up with his boss's tantrums in Flight 714 to Sydney.

History[]

Cigars of the Pharaoh[]

Allan first appears in Cigars of the Pharaoh working for the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood drug ring. Allan and his ship's crew are en route from Egypt to India, and they stop their ship near the Egypt coastline. His men take a longboat to the shore to pick up several wooden coffins (which they assume contains opium as usual, but actually contain Tintin, Snowy and Sophocles Sarcophagus). The ship is sighted by the coastguard, so Allan panics and orders his men to dump the coffins overboard. After the coastguard leaves, Allan receives a delayed message from Rastapopoulos, saying that the contained important prisoners. Allan turns the ship around to look for the coffins again.

The next morning, one of Allan's men spots the coffin containing Sophocles Sarcophagus. and goes to pick him up. Allan sends out a telegram saying that they have retrieved one coffin, but must stop the search because of a storm. Allan is frustrated by this until he receives a telegram saying that if the storm continues, to abandon search and proceed with their previous route. During this story, Allan is not working in the Karaboudjan, implying he began working with Captain Haddock between The Cigars of the Pharaoh and The Crab with the Golden Claws.

In the television adaptation of this story, Allan is revealed to be a high ranking member of the Kih-Oskh Brotherhood. He is of high enough ranking to lead a meeting in Rastapopoulos's absence in Gaipajama, which Tintin infiltrates.

Crab with the Golden Claws[]

Allan next appears as one of the primary antagonists in The Crab with the Golden Claws. In this story, he is the mutinous first-mate of Captain Haddock aboard the Karaboudjan. Here, he smuggles drugs between Morocco and Europe as a henchman of Omar Ben Salaad. He first appears when Tintin and Snowy go down to the docks to see the Karaboudjan and investigate the drowned man. Allan, along with his shipmate Tom, attempt to drop a heavy crate on Tintin, but fail since Tintin was looking at the seagulls. Tintin and Snowy tag along with Thompson and Thomson on board. Allan then orders Tom to take care of Tintin while Allan talked to the detectives. Allan tells the two Thompsons that the man who drowned man went to a pub and got extremely drunk and fell off the Karaboudjan into the water and drowned. The detectives believe him. After the meeting, Tom alerts Allan that he has tied Tintin up, and Allan tells the detectives that Tintin has left the ship without them.
Allan then goes down to Tintin in the hold and Tintin asks him why he is tied up in the hold. Allan tells him "It's no use pretending. You know why better than we do." After Leaving Tintin, Allan reveives a message from Omar Ben Salaad saying to drown him. After he realizes that Tintin has escaped, he along with the rest of the crew start searching for Tintin. He then discovers that Tintin is hiding in another hold and has locked them all out. Allan decides to starve him out, for there was no food in the hold. Allan is then alerted by Jumbo that Captain Haddock, who he keeps as drunk as possible so he can command the ship, wishes for more whisky.
Once there, Allan is further frustrated since Tintin has gone into the cabin and told the captain not to drink. Allan then sees the porthole in the captain's cabin Tintin came though and orders Jumbo to guard it. He then goes back to the hold Tintin is hiding in and orders Tom to blow open the door with TNT. After blowing open the door, they find that Tintin is not there. Allan hurries back up to the captain's cabin, only to find Jumbo tied to a chair. Jumbo says that Tintin was actually hiding in the locker under Captain Haddock's bed. Allan is then alerted by another crewmember that Tintin has tied and gagged the wireless operator. Allan punches the man, knocking him out, and is immediately alerted by another crewmember that Tintin has escaped in the longboat.
Allan is then seen much later in Bagghar and is sighted by Tintin for a short while but Tintin soon looses him. Later, Captain Haddock is sighted by Tom, who alerts Allan through a public telephone. Allan orders him to be captured. Tintin then follows Allan into their hideout and finds Captain Haddock being whipped by one of Omar Ben Salaad men. Tintin holds them up with a gun and rescues the captain, but they end up being chased by the Allan and his men into a room full of wine. They throw wine bottles at Allan and his men, who shoot back but end up hitting the large wine barrels causing them to empty onto the floor. The fumes from the wine causes Tintin and the captain to become drunk. This backfires, as the captain goes crazy and chases the men down the hall and out of the hideout. After Omar Ben Salaad is arrested, Allan attempts a quick escape on a motorboat, but Tintin follows him in another motorboat and captures Allan in a fishing net. Allan is arrested once they reach shore.

The Red Sea Sharks[]

Allan reappears in The Red Sea Sharks, now working directly under Rastapopoulos, whom is going under the pseudonym of the Marquis di Gorgonzola. Allan commands a ship called the Ramona; while it appears to be a regular merchant ship, it is actually used to transport migrant workers for illegal slave trading. When Tintin, Captain Haddock, and Piotr Skut are rescued from sea, they unknowingly are brought onto the Marquis's cruise ship. Rastapopoulos then arranges for the trio to be picked up by the Ramona, and then "disposed of". Initially, the plan is to have Haddock and Tintin dumped off in Wadesdah, where Sheik Bab El Ehr wants them dead.

On the Ramona, Haddock and Tintin are locked in a cabin separate from Skut. Allan swings by their cabin to taunt Haddock before leaving him a bottle of whiskey "to console [him]".[2] When the Ramona catches fire, Allan offers Skut to join the rest of Allan's crew. When Skut refuses to leave Haddock and Tintin, Allan knocks Skut out and leaves him on the burning ship. Allan escapes on a longboat with his crew, but much to his dismay, he sees from a distance that Haddock, Tintin, and the migrant workers have succeeded in putting out the ship's fire. Allan is later picked up by a Danish cargo vessel and detained.

Flight 714 to Sydney[]

Allanrasthadd

Allan and Rastapopoulos harassing Haddock

In Flight 714 to Sydney, Allan is working as Rastapopolous's right-hand man and assists in capturing Laszlo Carreidas. Allan helps detain Carreidas, Tintin, and their companions on the South-East-Asian island of Pulau-Pulau Bomba. Allan leads a crew of Sondonesian nationalists who have been conned into Rastapopoulos's schemes in hopes of money and political independence. While Rastapopoulos and Dr. Krollspell interrogate Carreidas, Allan has the rest of the captives detained in an old Japanese bunker.

The plan goes awry almost immediately. Allan chases Tintin's group to a cave after they escape, and threatens to throw a grenade in after them. After remembering how his boss wanted Carreidas alive, he heaves the active grenade in a different direction. This backfires, as it explodes near Rastapopolous, greatly angering him. Allan attempts to make up for this by joking around with Rastapopoulos, but accidentally winds up comparing him to a proboscis monkey.

After going down into the cave after Tintin and the others, Allan and Rastapopoulos are blocked by a secret door behind an astronaut statue. Allan is ordered to go get dynamite to blow away the statue blocking the passage. Allan tries to force the Sondonesian militia to go down into the cave, but they refuse, and savagely beat Allan before fleeing. When Allan returns to Rastapopoulos, he has had his teeth knocked out and some of his hair ripped out. Later, he, along with Rastapopolous and the rest of his associates, are captured by aliens and face an unknown fate.

Tintin And Alph-Art (Yves Rodier version)[]

Allan Thompson2

In Rodier's version of Alph-Art, Allan quit his life as a mariner and became a mailman in the mainland United States, presumably under the hypnosis of Mik Kanrokitoff. At some point, Rastapopoulos attempted to reach out to Allan and offer him a job, but Allan refused to return to the criminal underground. Mailman Allan is briefly seen being chased by a dog (german shepard) while on the job.

Gallery[]

Other Portrayals []

In the movie The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, Allan is still depicted as the first mate on the Karaboudjan, but is a lackey of Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine instead of Rastapopolous or Omar Ben Salaad. He is one of the men who pose as delivery men to capture Tintin. Once Tintin is on the ship, Allan, along with Tom, search for the scrolls on the young journalist. As they leave, Allan shuts the door but doesn’t catch Snowy sneaking in. Later, Allan is one of the men who blow open the door to the hold (along with Tom, Neil, and Ali) only to be met with a spray of corks from the wine inside the hold.

Afterwards, he is confronted by Sakharine, who tells him to kill Tintin but let Haddock live. Later, Allan is seen in the radio room with Tom and is one of the men shooting at Tintin as the journalist flees the ship. Once Tintin and Captain Haddock fall into the sea with the lifeboat, Allan tells one of his men to turn the ship around. Despite his efforts, which include hitting a lifeboat with the ship, Tintin and Haddock escape.

Later, in Bagghar, Allan sneaks up on Haddock outside of the palace, as Tom distracts him, and knocks him out with a bottle of alcohol. He takes the scrolls back to Sakharine and shoots at Tintin as he and Haddock, who recovers from the hit, pursue them. After a city wide chase, resulting in Haddock’s capture, Allan and Tom throw Haddock into the harbor at Sakharine's command. In the finale, Allan tries to stop Haddock with his pistol from delivering Sakharine to the cops. After a brief fight, Haddock throws him out of the crane's cabin. Allan falls and lands in the bed of a pickup truck, and is assumedly caught and arrested with the rest of the crew.

Allan also appears in the BBC radio drama adaptation of The Red Sea Sharks. Unlike his previous appearances, Allan speaks with a thick Cockney British accent.

References[]

  1. The Adventures of Tintin: Flight 714 to Sydney, pg. 41. Methuen Publishing, 1968.
  2. The Adventures of Tintin: The Red Sea Sharks, pg. 42. Methuen Publishing, 1960.
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