He first appears in the album Cigars of the Pharaoh (1934) and is a criminal mastermind with multiple identities, whose activities frequently bring him in conflict with his archenemy Tintin.

[6] Hergé first introduced the character of Rastapopoulos in Cigars of the Pharaoh, which was serialised in Le Petit Vingtième from 8 December 1932 to 8 February 1934.

[7] Farr noted that this idea of the hero mistakenly trusting the villain was one that had been used by John Buchan and Alfred Hitchcock, the latter of whom was an influence on Hergé.

[8] Rastapopoulos reappears— this time disguised in a trench-coat and hat— at the end of the story, where he and a fakir kidnap the crown prince of Gaipajama in vengeance for the Maharajah's war against the opium trade.

[8] Hergé reintroduced Rastapopoulos in the following adventure, The Blue Lotus, which was set in China and dealt with the Japanese invasion of Manchuria.

[10] At the end of The Blue Lotus, Rastapopoulos is exposed as the leader of the international opium smuggling organisation that Tintin had previously battled in Cigars of the Pharaoh, and is subsequently imprisoned.

Rastapopoulos subsequently resurfaces in the guise of the Marquis di Gorgonzola, a millionaire magnate and slave trader in The Red Sea Sharks, having been forced to assume a new identity after he was arrested for his previous crimes.

When explosives are used by the gang to break through a stone barrier, a volcanic eruption is set off, forcing them to flee from the Island in a rubber dinghy.

In this story written by a friend of Hergé, Rastapopoulos is a criminal gang leader directing operations from a secret underwater base.

Michael Farr argued that the relationship between Tintin and Rastapopoulos was akin to that between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty in Arthur Conan Doyle's stories.