@Cat_Stevens, continued from the R.I.P. thread:
I am ashamed to say that, despite owning at least 25 Asterix books, I was not aware of Uderzo’s other work that seems influenced by the early American adventure comic artists:
Here’s him working on a western advertising character, Jim Flokers.
He was very versatile. From 1959, the year seminal French comics magazine Pilote was launched, until 1966, Uderzo worked simultaneously on two stylistically very distinct series: Astérix, of course, and Michel Tanguy; the first one drawn in what would later evolve into his famous “funny” style, the other in a more “realistic” style, following the tradition of American comics masters such as Milton Caniff, Hal Foster and Alex Raymond. (His friend and Astérix co-creator Goscinny shared a studio with Harvey Kurtzman and other future Mad luminaries in New York during the late 1940s, by the way.) When the double workload became too heavy for Uderzo, he decided to quit Michel Tanguy (Jijé took over) and to concentrate all his efforts on Astérix. Unfortunately but understandably, most of Michel Tanguy was never translated into English: the series tells – in a sometimes quite jingoistic fashion – of the exploits of two heroic French air-force pilots.