Lucky Luke - Lucky Luke Comics

Name: Lucky Luke Age: unknown Gender: unknown Home: uncertain Actors: Sadri Alışık (Atını Seven Kovboy) Terence Hill (1991-1992) Til Schweiger (Lucky Luke and the Daltons) Jean Dujardin (2009 film) Alban Lenoir (2026 series) Voice (English): Rich Little (Daisy Town) Douglas Lambert (The Ballad of the Daltons) William Callaway (1984 series, season 1) Christian Erickson (1984 series, season 2) Marcel Jeannin (2001-2007) Kaycie Chase (Kid Lucky) Section Header Full Name: John Luke (2009 film only) Alias: Kid Lucky (younger version), Buck Bingo (Giggle comics) Relatives: Unnamed parents Alies: Jolly Jumper, Rantanplan, Calamity Jane Enemies: The Daltons, Billy the Kid, Jesse James Lucky Luke is the titular main protagonist of the Lucky Luke franchise. He is a brave and lonesome cow-boy known for being the fastest shooter in the Wild West, being able to outdraw even his own shadow, and for chasing the Daltons. Lucky Luke was created by Belgian cartoonist Maurice De Bevere (known as Morris) in 1946, who single-handedly illustrated, as well as wrote, the series until 1955, after which he began collaborating with French writer René Goscinny. After Goscinny's death in 1977, Morris used several other writers until his own death in 2001. Since then, French artist Achdé has drawn the series, scripted by several successive writers. Origins: The comic strip does not really tell the story of Lucky Luke's origins: we do not know where he came from or where he was born. Written by Morris, there are two comic strips in which Lucky Luke appears as a child under the nickname "Kid Lucky" in the company of an old gold digger (known only as "Old-timer"), and in which Luke says he is an orphan. In the Phil Defer album, we learn that Lucky Luke had an uncle who was a gunsmith. In 2009, on the occasion of James Huth's film on the series, the cowboy's origins were invented from scratch for the purposes of the script: his name was John Luke, and he was the son of an Irish immigrant to the United States and an Indian woman who lived near Daisy Town, where he went to school. His parents were murdered by the "cheating gang" when he was only ten years old, and he was then taken under the protective wing of an old family friend: Dick Digger. The latter quickly realized that the young boy had an incredible ability to shoot just right and had an amazing chance. He is the one who gives him his nickname "Lucky Luke" to highlight the chance he had to escape the "gang of cheats" who usually do not leave any survivors. Personality: Luke is a brave, selfless, honest and incorruptible cowboy, he is always ready to fight against injustice and crime. He doesn't care about money and he will never accepts any bribes. He will not leave a criminal or a dishonest person go on with his criminal activity. But he will always take legal action to put him in prison, he will never kill anybody. Luke is a sensitive person, he is always helping and protecting people even the ones he has never seen. He is always accepting missions from the American government to make the country a better place and feels no inclinations towards the superiority of any gender or skin texture, hating those who believe whites or men are superior and treat others cruelly. He is extremely smart, cunning and resourceful, he often outsmarts criminals and uses their weaknesses against them as an advantage. He can anticipate the moves of the villains. He knows how to recognize liars and con artists, he always founds a way to expose their scam. He is a lonely man, he likes to be alone, the only character he regularly accepts help and company is Jolly Jumper. He doesn't like to spend time with a woman, despite his success with women. Despite his social flaws, he is nice, polite and friendly. He accepts the help of some people if it's necessary. Among his acquaintances are Calamity Jane, who has sometimes worked with him, Marcel Dalton and many others. Luke is sarcastic, he has a dry sense of humour, He often teases people, including his enemies, and occasionally makes little jokes on them. Luke is incredibly Calm and fearless, he is never panics. He is afraid of nobody. However, when something make him angry, he becomes impulsive, aggressive and violent. Occupation: Although his job is theoretically to lead herds of cattle from one city to another, he is often called upon either by some of his friends or directly by the American government to carry out missions when he does not dictate them to himself in order to do justice in the cities he crosses. Most often all the same, he was responsible for bringing escaped convicts back to the penitentiary (the most famous of which were The Daltons and Billy the Kid), which would bring him closer to a bounty hunter, but in the album The Bounty Hunter he systematically refused any bounty offered for the capture of fugitives and asked the sheriff to offer the sum to a charity. We also saw it in particular: transporting the mail from the Pony Express, planting telegraph poles, settling conflicts between farmers, working to build the railway to the West, wearing the sheriff's star on several occasions, etc. So many diverse and varied activities that bring him closer to a freelance touches everything and are at the origin of all his adventures which are each time successful. But by the time we want to thank him, he is already far away on his horse, singing his famous ritornello at sunset: "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy, and a long way from home.... ». Entourage: He is lent a romance with a saloon dancer: Laura or Lotta Leggs, although this romance seems to remain platonic, to the despair of Lotta who is in love with him. This romance is particularly visible in the Lucky Luke movie with Terence Hill and in the spin-off series where Lotta confesses her love to him while they are both prisoners. He can also be seen in the animated series Les Nouvelles Aventures de Lucky Luke. During his travels, he met all kinds of characters linked to the legend of the West, starting with the four Dalton brothers, then their fictional cousins: they too, four in number and caricatures of the originals, they regularly appear on the albums, constantly escaping from their penitentiary but always ending up being taken up by Lucky Luke. Other characters who have actually existed appear in very free interpretations, such as Judge Roy Bean[2], Black Bart[3], Jesse James, Frederic Remington, Mark Twain[4], the Mormon community[5], Billy the Kid, Calamity Jane, General George Armstrong Custer and Sarah Bernhardt. Appearance: Luke is characterized by a slender build, black hair, and a signature outfit consisting of a yellow shirt, black vest, red neckerchief, white cowboy hat, and blue jeans. Often depicted with a blade of grass in his mouth. He is often seen with Jolly Jumper, who is a male white horse with blond maine and tail. TV TROPES: The Ace: Lucky Luke is good at what he does. Very much so. It is said that he can draw faster than his shadow. A lot of the later Goscinny/Morris albums (especially those following the Daltons), tend to focus more on the villains trying to top Lucky Luke than Luke himself saving the day. Many of the movies also do this. There are a few cases where Luke is shown to be inept at something (he is paralysed by stage fright when he needs to act in a play and causes a huge mess when trying to pass himself as a Chinese in one Animated Adaptation) but they are few and far between. Jolly Jumper is a horse Ace. Adults Dressed as Children: The Daltons, more than once. Happens to Luke as well in an early album after he becomes a victim of Gone Swimming, Clothes Stolen. It causes him to be made fun of by an entire town. Adventure Towns: The Wild West is naturally full of those: Roy Bean keeping up the law west of the Pecos in his town with his tamed bear, a town torn by the feud of the two largest families, Billy the Kid's hometown living in terror and much more. Affectionate Parody: The comic strip is a parody of the western genre, including all the clichés and tropes. Rocky Luke: Banlieue West is a whole album that parodied Lucky Luke and their characters. It often veered into Black Comedy. All Germans Are Nazis: Downplayed, but "A Cowboy Under Pressure" (where Luke goes to a mostly-German Milwaukee) has a number of jokes that refer to Nazi Germany's practices during the war, like using prisoners as slave labor or claiming that a German occupation (of workers in a factory in this case) "never ends well". Alliterative Name: Lucky Luke & Jolly Jumper. Jesse James, Joss Jamon, Cass Casey, Jeremy Jonathan Josaphat John, Junior... Alliterative Title: Lucky Luke. All Jews Are Ashkenazi: "La terre promise" is about Luke escorting a family of them, the narrative explains that, being 1869, Jews are already kind of rare in America so they are pretty much the only Jews Luke has heard of. Luke: How can you recognize a Jew? Passerby: It's like an American but more pessimist. All Just a Dream: In "Ruckus in Pancake Valley", Lucky Luke spends most of the story looking for the thief who stole his horse until his clue led to a suspect who was recently hanged for selling horsemeat. He then wakes up and is glad it was just a nightmare. All Psychology Is Freudian: In one album, Luke comes across an alienist arrived from Austria to study the psychology of Western outlaws. His methods parody those of the Freudian school, even though Freud's own pioneering work is still some years in the future. Referenced in the last page: a panicked nurse comes running out of a baby's room yelling, "Mrs. Freud! Little Siggy just tried to—! Always a Bigger Fish: Lucky Luke undermines Billy the Kid's fearsome image by setting himself up as an even worse crook. Ammunition Conservation: When Elliot Bell forms a posse of bounty hunters to capture an Indian accused of stealing a horse, he has to tell his men to shoot faster because despite being compensated for the bullets, they are scrupulously keeping track of how much ammunition they use. Amnesiacs Are Innocent: The Daltons try to fake this after a real one is released from prison. Amusingly Awful Aim: One story has the titular hero training a wannabe crimefighter who's such a lousy shot that even standing directly behind him is not a guarantee of safety. "The Rivals of Painful Gulch" has Luke dealing with two Feuding Families who will fire without warning at their rivals, or anyone they think is associated with their rivals. Unfortunately, their extremely bad aim makes them a danger to any bystanders rather than the actual target. At one point Luke tries to negotiate with them and they chase him off, with Luke himself admitting that he only survived the encounter because they are such lousy shots. Anachronism Stew: The comic cherry-picks historical characters from around 1850 to the early 1900s while Luke of course never seems to grow older. Like in Asterix, the comic often draws a lot of humor from using anachronisms on purpose and by making references to events that have not yet past during the time period the comic is set in. Strangely, The American Civil War is almost totally absent from the first seventy-eight albums.note The seventy-ninth album, A Cowboy in High Cotton, doesn't show the war itself, but addresses the consequences directly, plunging Lucky Luke in reconstruction-era Louisiana where he has inherited a cotton plantation worked by former slaves. Unsurprisingly, it is one of the darkest episodes of the series. The adult Lucky Luke meets (and helps out) the Earp brothers in the album O.K. Corral, while in Oklahoma Jim a much younger Lucky Luke cites Wyatt Earp as an example of a sheriff who has been shot... In Lucky Luke vs. the Pinkertons, Abraham Lincoln, traveling to his inauguration at the time of the Baltimore plot, refers to having met Lucky Luke in The Singing Wire... but in the Singing Wire, Lincoln is already president and living in the White House. The titular device in "The One-Armed Bandit" is supposed to be the very first of its kind, but another one appears in "Western Circus", which was printed eleven years earlier. Early bicycles had been around in Lucky Luke's time, but in the Homage issue Lucky Luke sattelt um, he rides a fairly modern bike. It even has pneumatic tires; when these were patented for bicycles, The Wild West was already history. Antagonist in Mourning: When Luke briefly believes the Daltons to be dead, he has a moment of this. He even admits how strange this is, given that there is little love lost between him and the Daltons. Anti-Nepotism: The 20th Cavalry Regiment is headed by a colonel whose son is also in the regiment, and is punished for just about every single thing he says by the colonel to avoid any accusations of nepotism (according to the son it was by pure coincidence that the Cavalry assigned him to his father's regiment). The son finally snaps back at the colonel, who is stunned that his son is finally a man. Of course, old habits are hard to break, and at the end of the story, the son is punished for speaking out of turn (that is, saying "Goodbye, Luke" without asking Permission to Speak Freely). Arch-Enemy: Luke chases the Dalton brothers far more than any other bandits. Most enemies appear in only one episode, with only Billy the Kid getting one return appearance. The Daltons have appeared in more than a dozen episodes, and in the animated adaptation, they have their own theme song. Art Evolution: And how; over the years Lucky Luke went from looking like this◊ to his current appearance (the image on top of this page) Artistic License – Animal Care: Averted. Jolly Jumper is semi-frequently shown drinking beer. However, contrary to most people's intuition, beer is a perfectly harmless and fairly healthy treat for a horse. In fact, adding beer to water is a fairly common way to ensure that a dehydrated horse drinks. Jolly Jumper tends to get plenty of excuses due to being just that awesome. Rantanplan gets a few thanks to general weirdness. Art-Shifted Sequel: While Achdé tries his best to imitate Morris' style, the makers of the Homage issues are given the liberty to draw in their own personal styles. Celibate Hero: While the term "celibacy" refers specifically to sexual activity, the history of celibacy connects the desire to romance someone with the desire to have sex with them, traditionally taking the form of marriage and kids. Ironically, the act of being celibate results in Celibate Heroes running into more opportunities for romantic encounters than if they were actively seeking them out. This is not to say that the Celibate Hero is unable to be affected by the force of The Dulcinea Effect, only that they either are acting on a higher ideal (chivalry) or resist its power later on.