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Lucky Luke

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, but unlike Tintin and Astérix, despite its popularity in Canada, only a handful of the series' adventures have been translated into English.

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. 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. 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 the Lucky Luke tradition, such as 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.

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

Apart from the French editions, Lucky Luke has some translations in English, Spanish and Portuguese (this latter both in the Brazilian and Portuguese forms of Portuguese) as well. However, German, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Finnish and the Scandinavian languages are others in which all Lucky Luke editions have been published.

Luke, 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, and the Rush into the Unassigned Lands of Oklahoma. 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...".

Belgium, 1990, Lucky Luke

Belgium, 2008, Lucky Luke

Belgium, 2009, Comic Characters

Belgium, 2012, Persons from Comics

France, 2003, Lucky Luke

France, 2003, Lucky Luke

France, 2003, Lucky Luke

France, 2005, Lucky Luke

France, 2005, Lucky Luke's House in Angouleme

France, 2007, Lucky Luke

France, 2007, Lucky Luke

France, 2007, Lucky Luke

Belgium, 1996, Lucky Luke