Mister No #319 (2001) 'Two lives at stake’

This adventure series set in South America features a former soldier, now a tour guide and bush pilot, who gets roped into various adventures by those who rent his private plane. This is basically the premise of the 1954 Charlton Heston film "Secret of the Incas," which was a major inspiration for the Indiana Jones series. The comic book ran for 379 issues between 1975 and 2006.

This particular issue is an escort mission involving a reformed mob boss who is turning states' evidence. Naturally his colleagues attempt to assassinate him en route, leading to a cat-and-mouse game high in the barren Andes mountains. The story started in the previous issue and concludes here, as rival warlords Napoleon Cordero and Lope de Medeiros each lead a gang of toughs tracking our heroes.

As an Italian series set in South America, language plays a key role. The characters speak a mix of Italian and Spanish, and in one case French, but I have generally chosen to flatten it all into English for this presentation. Particularly important are the various words for a leader, including "Jefe," which is the title used throughout for the defecting leader Uriaga by his former men, as opposed to "capo" which is a more generic term for a commander. Much of the drama in this story revolves around whether Napoleon or Lope will be the next Jefe, even as they try to work together to kill Jefe Uriaga.

A typical Italian comic book runs for 100-200 pages, and the pace is very different from American titles. Conversations play out naturalistically over the course of several pages at a time. Battles occur blow-by-blow rather than in summary. Often the main character doesn't appear for a dozen or more pages at the beginning, though since this is Part II of II, that doesn't happen here.