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Tapioca is generally depicted as being more urbane and cultured than Alcazar with a more professional network and organisation behind him but his vanity and ambition often makes him a preposterous figure all the same. Tapioca is mentioned in The Broken Ear, The Seven Crystal Balls and The Red Sea Sharks before featuring in Tintin and the Picaros. The Bird Brothers The Bird Brothers are the greedy and highly dangerous antique dealing villains from The Secret of the Unicorn. They operate from the grand Marlinspike Hall - which of course Captain Haddock inherits in the story arc that concludes with Red Rackham's Treasure.

While Hergé was sometimes guilty of caricature he clearly had a social conscience. What we can say is that the author was a product of another age who sometimes bent with the wind. He wasn't perfect and regretted some of his decisions. It's difficult to scrutinise him through time and distance. The private Hergé was a vague character and somewhat contradictory. Sometimes he was a loner who wanted the world to leave him alone but he would also speak expansively when interviewed and pose with celebrity fans like Andy Warhol.

Supporting Characters Thomson and Thompson Thomson and Thompson (Dupond et Dupont) are the bungling bowler-hatted detectives with the discombobulated way of expressing themselves and accident prone nature that is only rivalled by the likes of Inspector Clouseau. The pair were first introduced to the series in Cigars of the Pharaoh as agents X33 and X33bis and would eventually become recurring characters in Tintin's extended family. Although they look identical and have a common way of expressing themselves - with spoonerisms to the fore - they will pedantically note the small but important difference in their surnames.