HERMANN

HERMANN COMANCHE Furie rebelle (T.6), Le Lombard 1976 Original plate no. 36, prepublished in Le Journal de Tintin belge n° 47, November 18, 1975. Signed. India ink on paper 36.6 × 44.8 cm (14.41 × 17.64 in.) This is one of the best-known sequences in Greg and Hermann's Comanche series: the one in which, for the first time in the West, a reconnaissance airship is used over the battlefield. The process had been decisive in the Battle of Fleurus during the French Revolution in 1794, and was used extensively in the American Civil War and in the Indian Wars from 1861 onwards. This while the Indians, in this episode, got their hands on another formidable weapon of the time: a cannon aimed at the Comanche ranch. A highly tactical sequence that Hermann draws with great skill and precision. Note in the second panel the foreshortened arm pointing at the balloon, or the cannon pointing skyward with stone blocks wedged under the wheels. We're right at the heart of the battle.