Lucky Luke

This article is about the comic book and TV series. For the mobster, see Lucky Luciano.

Lucky Luke is a Franco-Belgian comics series created by Morris, the original artist, and saw its best period written by René Goscinny. Set in the American Old West, it stars the titular character, Lucky Luke, the cowboy known to shoot faster than his shadow.

Along with The Adventures of Tintin and Asterix, Lucky Luke is one of the most popular and best-selling comic-book series in continental Europe,[1] but unlike Tintin and Astérix, despite its popularity in Canada, only a handful of the series' adventures have been translated into English.

Contents

Publication history

Both a tribute to the mythic Old West and an affectionate parody, the comics were created by the Belgian artist Morris who drew Lucky Luke from 1946 until his death in 2001. The first Lucky Luke adventure named Arizona 1880 appeared in the Almanach issue of the comics magazine Le Journal de Spirou on December 7, 1946.[2] After several years of solitary work the strip, Morris began a collaboration with René Goscinny who became the series' scenarist for a period that is considered the golden age of the series. This started with the story Des rails sur la Prairie published on August 25, 1955 in Spirou.[3] Ending a long run of serial publications in Spirou, the series shifted to Goscinny's magazine Pilote in 1967 with the story Les Cousins Dalton, subsequently leaving publisher Dupuis for Dargaud.

After the death of Goscinny in 1977, several scenarists have tried to fill the role of storyteller, including Vicq, Bob de Groot, Jean Léturgie and Lo Hartog Van Banda. In addition to continuing the series, Morris started the related spin-off series Rantanplan in 1987. At the 1993 Angoulême International Comics Festival, Lucky Luke was given an honorary exhibition.[4]

After Morris' death in 2001, French artist Achdé continued drawing new Lucky Luke stories in collaboration with writer Laurent Gerra.

Lucky Luke comics have been translated into English, Spanish, Portuguese (both in the Brazilian and Portuguese forms), German, Dutch, Turkish, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Finnish, Tamil and Scandinavian[5].

Plot summary

Luke, a wandering cowboy capable of drawing a gun faster than his shadow, fights crime and injustice, most often in the form of the bumbling Dalton brothers, Joe, William, Jack and Averell (each one being taller and dumber than the previous one). He rides Jolly Jumper, "the smartest horse in the world". He is often seen with Rantanplan, "the stupidest dog in the universe", whose name is a reference to Rin Tin Tin. A cigarette was constantly on Lucky Luke's lips in the early stories, but in 1983, in response to the growing anti-smoking campaign, Morris replaced the cigarette with a piece of straw, which earned him recognition from the World Health Organization.

In the albums, Luke meets many factual Western figures like Calamity Jane, Billy the Kid, Judge Roy Bean and Jesse James's gang, and takes part in historical endeavors such as guarding of Wells Fargo stagecoaches, the Pony Express, the building of the first transcontinental telegraph, the Rush into the Unassigned Lands of Oklahoma, and accompanying French actress Sarah Bernhardt on her American tour. Many known modern-day celebrities also have a cameo in the series as caricature characters, including Alfred Hitchcock, Randolph Scott and Louis de Funès.

At the end of each story, except the earliest, Lucky Luke rides off alone into the sunset, singing (in English) "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, and a long way from home...".

Bibliography

By Morris

By Morris & Goscinny

By Morris and various writers

By Achdé & Gerra

English translations

Apart from the collections mentioned below, Lucky Luke comics were published in British comic book magazines such as Film Fun Comic or Giggle (in 1967). The Giggle version had Luke's name changed to "Buck Bingo"[6].

Lucky Luke in other media

Animation

Four theatrical animated films were created. In 1990, Disney released one of them, The Ballad of the Daltons, on VHS. Three of the movies were part of a trilogy. The first of the films was titled Daisy Town (1971), followed by La Ballade des Dalton (1978) and finished by Les Dalton en cavale (1983), meaning The Daltons on the Loose in English. In addition to the theatrical animated movies, there was also an animated Lucky Luke television series: In 1983, Hanna-Barbera studios and Morris released 26 episodes, and in 1991, 26 more episodes were released. In 2001, Xilam produced a new series of 52 episodes known as Les Nouvelles aventures de Lucky Luke (Lucky Luke's new adventures). It is now available on 8 DVDs with French and English audio tracks. This series also featured colonel Custer, in this incarnation an Indian-hater and a dwarf. Xilam recently produced a theatrical animated film (the fourth film), Tous à l'Ouest: Une aventure de Lucky Luke (Go West: A Lucky Luke Adventure), which was released in France on December 5, 2007. [7]

Live-action film and television

In 1991, two films (Lucky Luke and Lucky Luke 2) and in 1992 a television series (The Adventures of Lucky Luke) starring Terence Hill as Lucky Luke were produced. Both were disliked by Morris.

In 2004 a film titled Les Dalton featured Til Schweiger as Lucky Luke.

Yves Marmion and UGC, the producers of Les Dalton, are currently developing a €20 million stand-alone Lucky Luke feature, starring Jean Dujardin as the gunslinger, according to FilmDeCulte.com.[8]

Video games

Over the years, several Lucky Luke video games were released for many platforms, most of them by Infogrames, and only released in Europe (the only ones released for the North American were the Game Boy Color and PlayStation versions). A Lucky Luke game was also developed for mobile phones by The Mighty Troglodytes. Lucky Luke: Go West was released in Europe for the PC, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS in the end of 2007.

Lucky Luke characters of non-fiction origin

Sources

Footnotes
  1. ↑ Ratier, Gilles. "ACBD bilan 2006:new Lucky Luke had an initial run of 650,000 copies..". ACBD.fr. Retrieved on 2007-02-08.(French)
  2. ↑ BDoubliées. "Spirou année 1946" (in French).
  3. ↑ BDoubliées. "Spirou année 1955" (in French).
  4. ↑ Lambiek Comiclopedia. "Morris".
  5. ↑ German language editions
  6. ↑ Lucky Luke as "Buck Bingo" on the Forbidden Planet International Blog Log
  7. ↑ "Tous a l'ouest". Xilam Films (October 22, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-10-22.
  8. ↑ Engle, Liam (September 27, 2006). "Lucky Luke set to return". FilmDeCulte.com. Retrieved on 2006-09-20.

External links