Yucca Ranch, Tome 2
Page 5
lot 6
India ink on paper
46 x 30 cm ( 18,11 x 11,81 in )
Editor Dupuis
Unsigned
id. 6956
1954 was to be a very “Western-style” year for Joseph Gillain – the year he published the first two Jerry Spring stories in Spirou, and the year he adapted "Blanc Casque" for Le Moustique based on a novel by Joseph Pirot. For his second cowboy story, Gillain sought the help of Maurice Rosy, who was the inspiration behind Franquin’s Le Dictateur et le champignon (The Dictator and the Mushroom) and whom Dupuis had just hired as an “ideas man”. Rosy later admitted, in fact: “I had got the storyline as far as the eighth page. I’d written a synopsis, but Jijé went off at a tangent... And in the end I let it go” (talking to Philippe Capart in 2009).Page no 5, with magnificent inking and lettering by Jijé, was pub-lished in Journal Spirou for the second Jerry Spring story, which first appeared in no. 850 and then continued for the next 18 weeks. It was entitled “Le Splendide Cavalier” (The Magnificent Rider) but was then renamed Yucca Ranch the following year when Éditions Dupuis brought out the hardback album