For his fourth "Adventure", Hergé was eager to write a mystery story. The 1930s saw mystery novels flourish across Western Europe with the success of authors like Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen. The decision to create a scenario around the tomb of Kih-Oskh was influenced by the 1922 discovery of Pharaoh Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and the surrounding tabloid claims regarding a Curse of the Pharaohs. Hergé returned to this theme for "The Seven Crystal Balls" (1948). The name Kih-Oskh was an allusion to the kiosks where was sold. The Kih-Oskh symbol was described by Hergé as a distortion of the Taoist symbol of the Taijitu, with biographer Benoît Peeters thinking that it foreshadowed the "Yellow Mark" that featured in the "Blake and Mortimer" comic "The Yellow "M"" (1952–54) authored by Hergé's later collaborator Edgar P. Jacobs. Hergé was aided in the production of "Cigars of the Pharaoh" by his assistant Paul "Jam" Jamin, who was heavily influenced by British magazines "The Humorist" and "Punch".