I’m a poor lonesome cowboy, and a long way from home…
‘Lucky Luke’ is an extremely popular comic book series originally created in French by Maurice De Bevere, and written by the great René Goscinny himself. These tales of adventures set in the American Old West featuring Lucky Luke, the cowboy who shoot faster than his shadow, are immensely enjoyable for readers of all age groups and was a hugely successful comic-book series in Europe.
When Maurice De Bevere (1 December 1923 – 16 July 2001), who was a Belgian cartoonist, comics artist and illustrator, better known as Morris, collaborated for two decades with French comic editor and writer René Goscinny (14 August 1926 – 5 November 1977), a bestselling series (translated into 23 languages), which remained so for more than 20 years was born. Morris got the inspiration for Lucky Luke, a gunslinger in the American Wild West, from the adventures of the historic Dalton Gang and other outlaws.
Riding Jolly Jumper, the smartest horse in the world, Lucky Luke roams the chaotic horizons of the American Old West capturing gangsters, and righting wrong with his lightning fast gun reflexes and ingenuity. Lucky Luke is the epitome of the classic American Cowboy hero.
Morris created Lucky Luke in 1946, for Spirou magazine (Le Journal de Spirou), a weekly Franco-Belgian comics magazine published by Dupuis. The first adventure was “Arizona 1880“, which got published in L’Almanach Spirou 1947, released on 7 December 1946. Le Journal de Spirou began as an 8 page comics magazine in 1938, with a mixture of short stories and gags, serial comics, and a handful of American comics.
Goscinny has once conceded that the plots are based on real life events from the Wild West when ever possible, and this can be observed in the stories, with ‘Lucky Luke’ usually meeting up with some legendary personalities from the period like Buffalo Bill, Dalton Gang, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Calamity Jane, Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln, and participating in some of the most epic actual events of the old west during the course of the series.
In ‘Billy The Kid’, Lucky Luke comes across a town that is terrorized by a spoiled brat of bully named Billy the Kid. The fear for Billy among the town folks is so great that no one stands as witnesses to his various deeds of crime. So Lucky Luke stands against Billy in a mission to bring him to the local justice. After a series of adventures filled with humor and scheming Lucky Luke brings normalcy to the town by placing Billy in jail.
Compared to Asterix (also by Goscinny), you may find the Lucky Luke comics a bit dull visually, but with the fast action packed story line they are as appealing as Asterix & Tintin. What makes these titles really worth reading are the extreme simplicity and charm Morris & Goscinny has placed into the narrations and the drawings. The story is simple to understand and the humor is clean & straightforward with great use of Wild West clichés and stereotype characters.
The cartoon panels have a surreal appeal to them, thanks to the color tones that are employed and the style of the art involved. This surreal feel of the sketches connects cleverly with the time period, which makes it more appealing.
