Death As a Character - Coda #2

Yesterday I said that, after the story arc "El pais de los mungos" [Mungo country]. Hugo Pratt's art declined. I didn't change my opinion since then, but there are some cinemascopic panels on the covers of the next long story arc, "Ruta de sangre" [blood route] (119 pages) that seem to disprove me. What happened is that Hugo Pratt realized at some point that, since Misterix had a landscape format (with three tiers) the best that he could do was to adapt drawing wide panels (that's, by the way, why his adaptation of the series to the portrait format in Ivaldi's Sgt Kirk magazine is so "unnatural" - I gave you an example of what I'm saying below already). These are some sparks in a rather gray panorama, though. The brilliance of "El pais de los mungos" was far behind...

It's not the first cinemascopic panel in the series by any means, but here's a good example before "Ruta de sangre":

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a),"El Sargento Kirk: Blanca Sombra" [White Shadow], Editorial Abril, Misterix # 403, June 22, 1956.

Without further comments here are three examples of what I'm talking about above (the height of these panels is bigger than the height of the black and white panel because the cover had two tiers instead of three):

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), Stefan Strocen (c), "[El] Sargento Kirk: Ruta de sangre," Editorial Abril, Misterix # 422, November 2, 1956.

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), Stefan Strocen (c), "[El Sargento Kirk]: Ruta de sangre," Editorial Abril, Misterix # 426, January 2, 1957.

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), Stefan Strocen (c), "[El] Sargento Kirk: Ruta de sangre," Editorial Abril, Misterix # 430, February 8, 1957.

...Oh, and, by issue # 387 of Misterix it was Summer already:

Héctor Germán Oesterheld (w), Hugo Pratt (a), "El Sargento Kirk: El Espantado" [The Startled One] Editorial Abril, Misterix # 387, March 2, 1956.