A western set in South America, this story is probably contemporary with Lt Blueberry, judging by the art style. It’s credited to Moebius as both writer and artist and he did do at least one Lt Blueberry book as Moebius; however, it’s just as likely that Heavy Metal slapped the Moebius name on the story when they translated it so that the Yankees would recognize the artist.

One of the really interesting things about this story is how easy it is to spot the page numbers for when it was broken into half-pages for initial serialization – look in the bottom right corner of the third and sixth panels. The top note has an A and the bottom note has a B. Accordingly, the action stops in panel three and picks up again in panel four. It’s seamless when the half-pages are put together, but it also works if they are broken apart.

Obviously, the half-page structure drives the four-tier structure, but I was struck by how much the bottom half-page fits the eight-panel grid. In fact, between the coloring and the grids, I could well imagine that some of those panels were right out of Frank Santoro’s Composition Course.

It’s always nice when you can spot supporting evidence for a theory in the wild.

(Heavy Metal issue #69, December 1982 – Page 43 The Emerald Lake by Moebius)