"He's a character from the West who isn't a great shot but has a zest for life. The stoy was originally intended to take place in Argentina so as to question every conventionalism: demystify the local military, redeem the villainous Indian, etc. It ended up being an early version of the revisionist westerns that would be published later on."

“It started out as a short story, just 70 panels long. But then it turned into a much longer story, a sort of sci-fi adaptation of Robinson Crusoe. I was mesmerized by the idea of a family left alone in the world, surrounded by death and an unknown and unreachable enemy. I thought about myself, my family, isolated in our house, and I began to wonder ´what if...´"

"I have never taken part in any actual battle, nor do I have any real-life combat experience. But I have always been concerned about what happens to the human beings who end up beign sent to fight and who are, ultimately, ignored or forgotten. So I created this series of stories based on marginal anecdotes about the feelings, emotions, and problems of these individuals, regardless of which army´s uniform they wore.”

Thos story was first published 1962, during Misterix´s magazine brief second period. It is a comic strip full of anguish and reflections on death, memories, and the past. When I wrote it I was in a very dark place, and I think my own state of mind was reflected in the character, Mort Cinder. In addition, Breccia, the illustrator, was also going through a very tough period, and this ended up creating quite a mind-blowing combination of matching text and drawings.