It doesn't ring a bell immediately. Do you remember anything else? Was the art style realistic or more cartoonish?

I dont go to the public library often enough, and each time I do I find brilliant stuff.

This week I was lucky enough to find a collected edition of the first five books in the Comanche series by Greg and Hermann, all from the early to mid '70s:

Red Dust
Les guerriers du désespoir (The Warriors of Despair)
Les loups du Wyoming (The Wolves of Wyoming)
Le ciel est rouge sur Laramie (Red Skies over Laramie)
Le désert sans lumière (The Desert without Light)

The creative team is simply amazing. Writer Greg was already a master of his trade at the time (and he doubled as the journal Tintin's editor-in-chief); an accomplished writer and artist, he meant to reinvigorate the slightly stuffy journal by making it more like the younger Pilote, where the works of Giraud and Druillet could be found. To that end, he started recruiting young creators who would eventually make a big splash in the world of European comics; among them was young Hermann.

How to put it? That guy is incredible. Hermann hit the ground running, with a progression curve that was comparable to that of, say, Barry Windsor-Smith's between Conan #15 and 20.

As he was drawing these excellent western adventures, he had barely been in the business for a few years but was already turning out pages that could be compared to those of Jean Giraud on Blueberry. I mean, look at this beautiful shot :



The love of Hermann for horses and the great outdoors will be obvious all the way through.

At the time, late 60-s-early 70s, Tintin did not have a serious western adventure strip, unlike its competitors Pilote (Blueberry) or Spirou (Jerry Spring). Editor-in-chief Greg meant to have one, but did not want to imitate his competitors; Comanche therefore has a flavour all its own. It does, however, pay homage to classic American cow-boy movies; John Ford of Sam Peckinpah would have felt right at home in these pages. (No Sergio Leone influence, though; I think Greg really liked his classics).

As a kid, reading the books out of order, I didn't realize how well they mesh with one another, following the development of a rural and lawless part of Wyoming as civilization creeps in. I didn't realize how the characters grew over each book, maturing and developing, sometimes growing apart not due to the imperatives of dramatic storytelling but due to their incapacity to adapt to a changing world. It's a subtle thing, but in an adventure strip which could feature only cow-boys shooting at each other, it's a welcome one.

The first chapter, Red Dust, introduces the main characters. Comanche is a young woman at the head of a struggling ranch that has land but almost no cattle, one ramshackle cabin, and one elderly and cantankerous employee. As in any good western, one day comes a tall dark stranger (who's actually not that tall and is red-headed instead of dark), whose name of Red Dust is a reference to the old Clark Gable/Jean Harlow movie. Dust has learned that shady characters in the nearby small town of Greenstone Falls are hiring thugs to put Comanche out of business, and he's clearly the kind of guy to side with the underdog. What follows is a series of crises needing prompt resolution (gunslingers trying to murder Dust, delivery of new cows who were starved beforehand, an attempt to infect the cattle with typhus) before the enemy is revealed to be an entrepreneur who meant to buy Comanche's ranch for a pittance. He had learned that the Pacific Union railroad would soon have to go over the ranch's lands, and he hoped to make a fortune then. As the plot is revealed, Comanche realizes that she will be the one benefitting from the bonanza. (See what I did there?)

As The Warriors of Despair begins, the ranch is in a better, albeit still precarious, financial health. The staff now includes Toby, a black cow-boy, and Clem, a young and impulsive neophyte. They all form a great team, but then problems arise. The nearby Cheyenne nation was promised food and other forms of support when it signed a treaty and settled in a reservation, but the land is bad and no food has been delivered. The government doesn't respond to their complaints, and facing starvation the Cheyenne have come to seize Comanche's cattle. They're not really hostile, but are truly desperate. Comanche suggests to follow them as a good will hostage while Dust travels to the nearest Indian Affairs bureau to find out why the food hasn't been delivered as promised; the Cheyennes accept. The story then develops into a bubbling cauldron of diverging interests and loyalties: the Cheyennes need food, the Indian Bureau officer has absconded with all the money, the nearby Pacific Union employees want beef in their plate and blame the Cheyennes for its paucity, Toby and Clem want to rescue Comanche, a few Comanches have had it with broken treaties and want to go to war, and the army means to suppress a new Indian revolt. It all makes for a thrilling story, in which there are few actual villains -and then they're not grand evil architects, but petty, despicable little thieves whose actions start an avalanche of tragic consequences. Good stuff.

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The Wolves of Wyoming refer to a family of thugs whose activities had been alluded to in the first two books; the Dobbs brothers. These outlaws terrorize the region, which still doesn't have any efficient police force. Since it's obvious that a large amount of cash sent by eastern buyers to the local cattle producers will be a prime target for the bandits, the regular diligence only carries a decoy; the real money is carried by a local drunkard. He doesn't exactly lose it, but the book shows how both the Dobbs and Comanche's people try to pick up his trace after he turns out to be late for the delivery. (He stopped for a drink at a friend's cabin, it turns out; a cabin where there'll be a lot of gunfighting as you would expect). This book also introduces the Preacher, a gunslinger turned man of god, who tries to rebuild his life by spreading the good word and chasing outlaws; unfortunately, he dies by the end.



(Notice the nice use of colours to establish the mood. These books aren't just beautifully drawn, they're also masterfully coloured).

Red Skies over Laramie :

The Dobbs are such unredeemable scum that when the elder brother (and last surviving one) makes good his escape, Dust leaves after him to prevent him from hurting anyone ever again. (He also wants to avenge the Preacher, whose handgun he carries). Alas, Dobbs will definitely hurt a lot more people before the end, but finally meets a proper fate. (Hermann insisted that Dobbs would die in garbage, to which Greg agreed).



The Desert without Light :

Laramie being somewhat more organized than Greenstone Falls, Dust is arrested and sent to jail. After 20 months, his friends manage to convince the state that he is no thereat to society and he is paroled, although under strict conditions (no booze, no weapon, must report twice a week to the authorities).



Dust returns to the ranch, but this is no happy return to the good days of old. The town and the ranch have grown considerably, and Comanche is turning into a proper lady. There is now a sheriff with zealous assistants... one of whom openly despises Dust, whom he views as a neanderthal who will doubtless revert to type the second he cuts him some slack. Meanwhile, the town folks are either embarassingly fawning over their gunslinging hero, or mocking him as a has-been who refuses to have a drink. And Dust himself, scarred by his experience in the penitentiary, doesn't know how to deal with this new Wyoming where there are barriers and rules everywhere.

Luckily(!) for his psychological balance, a gang of outlaws comes calling. Like the Dobbs of old, they're known for their totally ruthless ways. The sheriff tries to organize the town's defense, but most citizens prefer to stay hidden and let the bad guys empty the bank's coffers; for lack of personel, the sheriff deputizes Dust. Much mayhem ensues.



Dust almost dies when he can't bring himself to shoot an unarmed man who still tries to kill him, but is saved by Comanche who has no such scruples. As the smoke clears, Dust seems to have found a new place in this society.

The book concludes with a short story (probably published in the digest-sized Tintin Sélection at some point) in which we see how Ten Gallons, the ranch's elderly cow-boy, managed to capture the palomino that Dust would ride for the whole series.

Altogether, this is a brilliant package; the kind of omnibus you read in one sitting. This series definitely compares to Charlier and Giraud's Blueberry.

Reminds me "Capitaine Apache" by Lecureux & Norma... my father was collecting it although noone in our family knows french...







I recall it mostly because of this 18th century reminiscence of the old indian (i guess)... I was very into that era because of "The Last of the Mohicans" movie

There are not coming a lot of American comics I'm interested right now, so an increased focus on European comics for now:

Two comics by Fred Duval (Carmen McCallum, Travis, Nevada and many other comics I enjoy a lot) both based on novels by Michel Bussi, a french novelist, mostly known for Crime fiction. Both done-in-one stories, something which I'm more and more interested in compared to the endless continuing soap operas.

The first one
Un avion sans elle (lit. translation A Plane Without Her, but the novel came out with the title "After the Crash" in English if wikipedia is to be trusted. The Dutch title's translation is more like "Blue Eyes")
Art by Nicolaï Pinheiro, I don't have any other work by him. He's a more realistic style, though it's a bit more stylized than the cover would make you believe.


Plot: 1980, a plane crashes in the Mountains on the French-Swiss border, leaving only a single survivor: a 3 month old baby. In the days following, 2 different couples claim that the baby in question is their granddaughter: the wealthy Carvilles claim that she is Lyse-Rose, the poor Vitrals claim she's Emily. Years of viscious legal action follow until the judge decides which family should raise the girl (but doubt remains as all evidence is only circumstantial). At her 18th birthday, a private investigator, hired years earlier, claims to have discovered the truth at last.

The novel was pretty popular, but as a comic the story works really well as well. For a thriller it's relatively low on action, there are lots of plot twists (but they worked for me. Other people have different tolerances) and a lot of subtle references (both to dragonflies and linking up the girl's story/battle between rich and poor with the political environment in France at the time).

The second one
Ne lâche pas ma main, literally Don't let my hand go, but the novel in English is called "Don't Let Go", which is close enough (The Dutch translation is pretty much the same).
Art by Didier Cassegrain, who some of us may remember for his art on the adaption of the Conan story Red Nails.


Plot: Set on a tropical island, at a resort hotel, a husband returns to his room to find the place trashed, blood traces and his wife missing. But the police quickly establishes the holes in his story. Initially undisturbed, the husband soon goes on the run, taking his infant daughter with him.

As the first story was more of a mystery that slowly gets unravelled, this story is more of a standard thriller with tension building. I like the art in this a lot more (though Pinheiro definitely was not bad), there were still plot twists (this time a bit more unbelievable to me). So the overall plot was a bit weaker, but the characters and art more than make up for it. I'd recommend both though.



There are more Bussi adaptions (one also by Fred Duval and apparently Bussi liked the adaptions so much that he did some original comic work with Duval and others)) but my regular comic story didn't have them, so I have something to search for again.

Also bought Issue #3 of Pecau's Arcanes series. This story is closely tied to his Secret History and (unsurprisingly) Major Arcanum series, but Arcanum was the first issue I ever bought by Pecau (back in the 90s). The publisher that did the translation never published the rest of the series and I only now discovered that another company recently retranslated the title and was planning to publishing the other issues. So I'm still missing #2

Maršal Bass (Marshal Bass), v4
Darko Macan (script) and Igor Kordej (art), 2022

This fourth Croatian volume of Marshal Bass stories collects the seventh and eighth books originally published in France in 2022 under the titles Maître Bryce (‘Master Bryce’) and La mort misérable et solitaire de Mindy Maguire (‘The Sad and Solitary Death of Mindy Maquire’).
The first is basically a series of reminiscences of several characters while attending a backyard barbecue being held after the christening of Bass and Sheba’s (his wife’s) youngest child (who was fathered by a now deceased wealthy Mexican rancher – something we saw in the preceding story). So, one of the family friends tells some of the younger children about his very non-glamorous experiences during the Civil War, while Bass drifts off into a reverie of his times as a boy and then teenager living in slavery, serving as the valet of a plantation owner’s foppish son, Bryce (who ran gambling cons, often using Bass as a stake in bets), and then Sheba recalls the chaotic time at the end of the Civil War when she and Bass first met.

(Bass meeting up with his owner after another successful swindle)
The second story is set up by the last scene in preceding one, where we learn that one of the prostitutes in the town brothel, Mindy Maguire, killed an elderly customer, took all of his gold and skipped town with his mule. The sheriff gathers a posse to hunt her down, while the brothel’s madame begs Bass to find her first and bring her in to save her from getting killed by the posse. Bass reluctantly agrees, and eventually does find Mindy hiding out in the woods before the posse does, but also a whole heap of other problems. The latter includes a rather unhinged Lakota warrior, apparently a veteran of Little Bighorn, who’s stalking around the woods armed with only a bow and three arrows asking anyone he finds to give him whiskey – or else.

(Mindy dealing with some young miscreants in the woods)
These are solid stories, but as with the preceding installments, I can’t say their knocking my socks off. As usual, Kordej’s art is the real attraction here. The back of this Croatian edition contains about 10 pages of his color and black & white illustrations…

Back in the late ’50s, the Smurfs were introduced as supporting characters in Peyo’s medieval series Johan & Pirlouit. Their popularity proved to be such that they soon warranted their own series in the Spirou weekly magazine. Eventually they’d make it to TV, and from then on they became an exploitable IP that retained most of the look of the comics but lost most of their charm.

Originally, as was the case for series like Astérix, the Smurfs were equally suitable for kids and for adults; many comments on the human condition were stealthily incorporated in the little fellows’ fanciful adventures.

In Le Schtroumpfissime (translated as “King Smurf”, although the name in French is more grandiose than that), writer Yvan Delporte and artist/creator Peyo give us a tale of ambition, corruption and rebellion that evokes in equal parts Robin Hood, the life of Napoleon and George Orwell’s Animal Farm. I loved it as a kid, and re-reading it proved to be a lot of fun.



Published in 1965, this book has the original, simpler cast of 99 Smurfs. They all look and dress alike, except for Papa Smurf (who has a white beard and dresses in red) and Brainy Smurf, who wears spectacles. Some of them have defining characteristics: there’s a grumpy Smurf (a side effect of having been stung by the Bzz fly in the first book of the series); there’s a brawny one, there’s a joker, there’s a poet and so on. No Smurfette yet, nor any baby Smurf, nor any farmer dressing the part.

The story opens as Papa Smurf realizes he needs seeds of Euphorbia for his lab, as hellebore just won’t do (and let us raise our hat to the way European comics used to enrich the kids’ vocabulary in those days). Leaving the village for a while with a recommendation for the others (called “little Smurfs” although I don’t know if that term made it to the cartoon) to behave themselves in his absence.

By the way, one thing that distinguishes early Smurf stories from what little I’ve seen on TV is that they used the word “schtroumpf” to replace most nouns and most verbs. This led to an amusing fake language that was at times incomprehensible, and even led to a story in which there was a fight based on the proper use of language (reminding us of all the countries, including my own, where such a conflict exists). Do you say “I must open the smurf” or do you say “I must smurf the door?” Early on, they’d even often say “I must smurf the smurf”.

So… Papa Smurf leaves, and the Smurfs immediately argue about who should lead them. Eventually it’s decided that a vote should be held, and every Smurf votes for himself (except Grumpy Smurf, who doesn’t like to vote).

ù

Since they’re at an impasse, the Smurfs decide to take another vote a while later. Brainy Smurf immediately tries to convince a fellow Smurf to vote for him, forcing him to listen to a long-winded series of reasons. As Brainy leaves, our main protagonist (whom we don’t know at this point) commiserates: “what a pain in the neck!” “Yes, you can say that again”. “If I was elected, there would be a law against bores like him”. “Really? Then I’ll vote for you!”

And so the seeds of political corruption are planted: our Smurf realizes that he can buy votes by saying the things people want to hear, by promising them stuff and/or by performing small services for them. A few pages are devoted to his campaign, which is pretty funny at times, and it culminates in a “debate” in which he exposes his plans for the future:



“Smurfs! Tomorrow you’ll smurf to the polls to smurf the one who’ll be your Smurf! And to whom shall you smurf your smurf? To any Smurf who doesn’t smurf farther than the smurf of his smurf? No! You need a strong Smurf on whom you can smurf without smurf! And I am that Smurf! Certain Smurfs -whom I won’t smurf here- will smurf that I opnly smurf for honours… That is not smurf! It is our common smurf that I smurf and I will smurf until smurf if needed so that smurf reigns in our smurfs! And what I smurf, I shall smurf! Smurfing is my motto! That’s why you will smurf for me! Hail the Smurfs! Hail me!”

As Brainy smurf (the only other candidate) prepares to start his speech, our protagonist says that there’s free raspberry juice outside, and only Grumpy smurf remains to listen to a dry and boring speech.

Election day comes, and Brainy smurf is caught trying to vote twice (astonished that they recognized him, even if he’s the only Smurf to wear spectacles). The third time he tries to vote, without his glasses, his short-sightedness betrays him. The final results see our enterprising candidate win the top spot.

The first thing he does is to change his clothes, prompting immediate hilarity.



“Why are you dressed in yellow?” ask the laughing Smurfs. “It’s not yellow, it’s GOLD!" protests the new ruler, who insists on being called “smurfissimo” -or King Smurf, I suppose- prompting even more hilarity. The crowd is quite happy with its new leader, who will surely prove to be an amusing fellow.

But things go south pretty quickly. The musician smurf is given an important job, barely music-related: that of publicly announcing King Smurf’s decrees. The first on the list is a law stipulating that all Smurfs must respect and obey the king; any failure to do so will be severely punished. Naturally this doesn’t go well with the electorate, and Brawny smurf is sent to tell the “king” what’s what. However, the new leader quickly develops a real political flair as he names Brawny smurf the captain of a brand new Smurf militia in charge of enforcing the law.



This militia will soon force everyone to take part in the building of a palace.



Brainy smurf is the only one to applaud King Smurf’s totalitarian tendencies, and one is tempted to see there a criticism of those "moral" individual always ready to side with authority (think of the Church under fascistic regimes). On a side note, Brainy Smurf's original name is French translates as "moralizing Smurf".

When a practical joker is thrown in jail for making fun of King Smurf, a popular revolt arises; it is however forcibly quieted by the guard and prompts the rise of a secret rebel movement. I thought those guys looked so cool when I was a kid! I still have a latex figurine of one of them, bought in 1976.



The rebellion establishes a secret base on the fourth moon of Yavin in the forest, very Robin Hood-like, and from there leads a campaign against the regime (starting with graffiti). An expedition to root out the rebels meets with embarrassment as the rebel camp isn’t found but many soldiers desert.

Seeing how the rebel movement gains in popularity, King Smurf has a wall built around the village.



The rebels offer terms of surrender (which are basically “give up the throne”), but King Smurf intends to hold on to power. Surely you realize… this means WAH! Tomatoes are the main type of ammunition used, thankfully.



Lovely battle scene, here. You can see one Smurf crying on the ground and another one biting an opponent on his little tail (Smurfs have a tail), like the zombie-like black smurfs used to do.

One quick-thinking rebel finds Papa Smurf’s lab and uses nitroglyvesmurf to blow up the king's palace. Surrounded, down to his last few loyal guards and asked to surrender, King Smurf manages to channel both General McAuliffe and Général Cambronne at the same time :



As the final assault is about to begin, Papa Smurf returns, causing an immediate ceasefire. He chastises his little Smurfs for acting like humans, and everyone is pretty embarrassed… none more so that the erstwhile King Smurf, who shamefully starts cleaning up the mess he made. Seeing his genuine contrition, his fellow Smurfs all pitch in, because after all this is a story meant for children!



Excellent tale overall, charming, witty and exciting all at the same time. It’s a good illustration of how democracy can be subverted, and how power is easily abused… as well as how tyranny must be resisted.