HERMANN

HERMANN ◊ COMANCHE Le Désert sans lumière (T.5), Le Lombard 1976 Original plate no. 1, prepublished in Le Journal de Tintin Belge no. 38, September 17, 1974. Presence of light adhesive residue on the back. of the plate. India ink on paper 36 × 47.5 cm (14.17 × 18.7 in.) This is a key plate in the series. Sentenced to five years' imprisonment for the murder of the killer Russ Dobbs in The Sky is Red over Laramie, Red Dust, with the help of his friends, is freed after twenty months. But he's broken, under the watchful eye of a sheriff's deputy who dreams of sending him back to where he came from. In the tradition of Jean Giraud, Hermann's line is organic, capable of giving life to matter, whether it's a rocky landscape or sun-weary men... Hermann's style - and the role of scriptwriter Greg has a lot to do with it - is to take this wise western, like Blueberry in Pilote, towards something more "virile", more violent, aimed at an audience of comic-book readers a little older than the usual target of the "Weekly for 7- to 77-year-olds". In this respect, he was in line with the evolution of the Hollywood western, which at the time was freeing itself from the Hays code of censorship, while in France, at the same time, comics were freeing themselves from the tutelage of the 1949 Commission de la Loi pour la protection de la jeunesse.