his parents. In 1965, Mézières arranged a working visa through a friend of Jijé's who had a factory in Houston, Texas. In the end, however, he never took up the job in Houston. After staying in New York for a few months, the call of the West proved too strong and eventually he ended up hitchhiking across the country, first to Seattle and then to Montana (where he worked on a ranch driving tractors, laying posts and cleaning stables) before ending up in San Francisco. His initial plan was to find work in an advertising agency in San Francisco but he ran foul of the Immigration Service who told him that his visa was good for working in the factory in Houston and nowhere else. He quickly left San Francisco in search of an authentic "Wild West" cowboy experience. Arriving in Salt Lake City, Utah with no money, he sought out Pierre Christin, who was living there while teaching at the University of Utah, and turned up on his doorstep asking him if he could sleep on his settee. To make ends meet, Mézières produced some illustrations for a small advertising agency in Salt Lake City and for a Mormon children's magazine called Children's Friend as well as selling some photographs he had taken while working on the ranch in Montana. After a few months, he found work on a ranch in Utah: this time succeeding in his aspiration of living the life of a cowboy, an experience he described as "better than in my dreams". When winter came and there was no work available on the ranches, he collaborated with Christin on a six-page strip called Le Rhum du Punch, a copy of which he sent to Jean Giraud who was by now writing and illustrating Blueberry for the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote. Giraud showed the strip to Pilote'''s editor, Rene Goscinny, who agreed to publish it (issue 335, 24 March 1966). This was followed by another collaboration titled Comment réussir en affaires en se donnant un mal fou (How to succeed in business by almost killing oneself through hard work) which was also published in Pilote (issue 351, 14 July 1966). By this stage Mézières visa was almost expired and so he used the money from these strips to pay for his ticket home. In leaving America, Mézières also left behind a young woman, Linda, one of Christin's