Catalogue information
The album was first published in French, as a sequel in the Walloon daily La Libre Belgique (Sat., July 26, 1958 - Fri., October 3, 1958) under the title "Les sabots battants"; this was the 30th story (V30) in the series. The first album edition, however, followed in Dutch (catalog 20997) in 1958 (see image 4 = album no. 27), and only then did the French-language album (catalog 506681) appear in 1959 (see image 2 = album no. 30). For the Dutch version, the speech bubbles were pasted over. In 1958, the story also appeared in "Der Hausfreund" (a German-Belgian magazine). For that publication, the pages were cropped and mounted in landscape (oblong) format. The Dutch texts were, in turn, pasted over and updated with German texts. The story was then republished in 1961, this time in the German weekly magazine "Felix" from Bastei Verlag, in color and under the title "Das Tal des Totes," spread across issues 144 through 147. In 1965, Bastei republished it as issue 8 (catalog 11361127) in the Bessy series, this time under the title "Stampede im Tal des Todes" (see image 5). For this reissue, it had to be shortened from 30 to 26 pages, resulting in the omission of certain scenes. An important detail: these Bastei versions were not adapted from the original "cut-up German plates." The basis for the first edition was the French-language edition (which was no longer available in its original form), while the second version is also a reworking. The texts are different, the coloring is different, and the shapes of the speech bubbles have been adjusted. What remains is the questionable quality of the Bastei editions. Sketch is attributed to Vandersteen, inks to Verschuere.
This text has been translated automatically from Dutch
Click here for the original text
