The Daily Comic Book Coffee, number 18: Two thumbs up to Jim “1000 Horses” Thompson for suggesting this one. “Des barbelés sur la prairie” drawn by Morris, real name Maurice de Bevere, and written by René Goscinny, originally saw print in Spirou, a weekly comic book anthology published in Belgium. This is from the first chapter of the serial, which ran in Spirou #1411, cover-dated 29 April 1965.The serial was collected in Lucky Luke #29: Des barbelés sur la prairie, published in 1967 by Dupuis. It finally appeared in English in 2007, released by British publisher Cinebook as A Lucky Luke Adventure #7: Barbed Wire on the Prairie.
This is where I acknowledge my appalling lack of knowledge about non-English language comic books. I had not previously heard of Lucky Luke. After it was pointed out to me by Jim Thompson, an online search revealed it to be a long-running comedic Western starring gunslinger Lucky Luke and his horse Jolly Jumper, the smartest horse in the world. Barbed Wire on the Prairie sees Lucky Luke aiding a group of farmers against ruthless rancher Cass Casey, who tries to steal their land for his cattle herds.
On this opening page Goscinny and Morris discuss the lifestyle of the cowboys, including their dining habits:
Narrator: The cowboys fed themselves along the trail thanks to mobile kitchens called “chuck wagons” whose chefs had a strange understanding of gastronomy…
Chef: To make good coffee, you put a pound of wet coffee in the coffeepot and boil it for half an hour. Then you throw in a horseshoe. If the horseshoe doesn’t float, you add some more coffee.
I enjoy the Comic Book Historians group because it can be incredibly informative. I’ve definitely learned about quite a few creators and series here, such as Morris and his creation Lucky Luke.
That and I also learned a new way to prepare coffee! Anyone here got a horseshoe I can borrow?
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