Lucky Luke

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Lucky Luke made his debut in October 1946, in an adventure called Arizona 1880, printed in the Franco-Belgian magazine Spirou. His creator was the Belgian cartoonist Morris. The hero was a street-smart gunslinger, billed as the "man who shoots faster than his shadow".

  As of 2024, the series counts 83 albums, and it has been translated into 30 languages. It ranks among the best-known and best-selling comics in Europe. Its setting is the American Old West, yet its makers were Belgian and French.

  The comics are both a tribute to the mythic frontier and an affectionate joke at its expense. That double nature raises a few questions. Why does a famous gunslinger almost never kill anyone? How much of his Old West is real history? What did a cigarette have to do with the World Health Organization? And how does a cowboy keep riding after his own creator is gone?

  8107

• 2. The Gentle Gunslinger

  ›

  Luke is always described as a cowboy, but his real job is different. He mostly acts as a righter of wrongs or a kind of bodyguard, and he succeeds through resourcefulness and astonishing gun skill.

  The earliest stories are the exception to his gentle record. In them, Luke shoots and kills a villain named Mad Jim, along with the old Dalton brothers gang. After that, he is never seen to kill anyone. He prefers to disarm opponents by shooting the weapons out of their hands.

  Phil Defer's fate shows the rule being applied backward. Defer was killed in the story's first magazine publication in Le Moustique. When the story was collected as an album, his death was changed into a debilitating shoulder wound.

  Since 1949, nearly every story has ended with the same picture. In the final panel, Luke rides away alone on Jolly Jumper into the sunset. He sings in English that he is a poor lonesome cowboy, a long way from home. Luke first said the line in 1949, and it became a tradition. Only the earliest stories lack it.

  The words are not Morris's invention. They come from a real cowboy song, collected by John Lomax in his book Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.

  8104

• 3. Fact and Farce

  ›

  Calamity Jane, Billy the Kid, Judge Roy Bean and the gang of Jesse James all cross Luke's path. He also takes part in real events. These include the guarding of Wells Fargo stagecoaches, the Pony Express, and the building of the First Transcontinental Telegraph. He joins the Rush into the Unassigned Lands of Oklahoma, the building of the Statue of Liberty, and a tour by the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Some albums add a one-page article on the background to the events.

  René Goscinny once explained the approach. He and Morris tried to build the adventures on real events whenever they could. But a good joke always mattered more to them than a faithful record.

  The timeline is deliberately blurry, and most albums give no year at all. In the album Daily Star, Luke meets a young Horace Greeley, before Greeley moved to New York in 1831. Judge Roy Bean, who was appointed judge in 1882, appears in another album. In yet another, Luke takes part in the 1892 Coffeyville shootout against the Dalton gang.

  The real people he meets lived over most of the mid-to-late 19th century. Luke himself appears unchanged in every story.

  1112212527

• 4. Outlaws and Sidekicks

  ›

  The four Dalton brothers, Joe, William, Jack and Averell, are the villains Luke meets most often. Capturing these bumbling but menacing gangsters is a recurring task for him. They are loosely based on the real Dalton Gang of the early 1890s, and in the comics they claim to be its cousins. The album Les Cousins Dalton appeared in 1958. Later titles include Dalton City in 1969 and Ma Dalton in 1971.

  Jolly Jumper is introduced as "the smartest horse in the world". He is often on hand with a sharp remark or a clever rescue.

  Rin Tin Can is a prison guard dog, and the comics call him "the stupidest dog in the universe". He is a spoof of the film dog Rin Tin Tin.

  Outside the Dalton family, Luke's villains are either fictional or inspired by American history or folklore. Parody of the Western genre fills the stories. The dim-witted dog would eventually earn a series of his own, which began in 1987.

  2427212223

• 5. Pens and Presses

  ›

  For roughly its first decade, Morris wrote and drew the series single-handedly. On the 25th of August 1955, Spirou published Des rails sur la Prairie, the first story written with René Goscinny. Goscinny stayed as writer until his death in 1977, apart from one story, Alerte aux Pieds Bleus. This stretch is considered the golden age of the series. In the late 1960s, the adventures left Spirou for Goscinny's own magazine, Pilote, beginning with La Diligence.

  After Goscinny's death, several writers succeeded him. They included Raymond "Vicq" Antoine, Bob de Groot, Jean Léturgie and Lo Hartog van Banda. At the 1993 Angoulême International Comics Festival, Lucky Luke was given an honorary exhibition.

  Morris died in 2001, and the French artist Achdé took over the drawing. His writers have included Laurent Gerra, Daniel Pennac and Tonino Benacquista. Since 2016, the scripts have come from Jul. The 83rd album, Un cow-boy sous pression, appeared in 2024.

  Other artists have also been invited to pay homage. Matthieu Bonhomme published L'homme qui tua Lucky Luke in 2016. Later special editions came from Guillaume Bouzard, Mawil, Ralf König, Blutch and Brüno.

  The publishers changed too. Dupuis released the first albums. Dargaud published them from 1968 to 1998, and Lucky Productions followed. Since 2000, the publisher has been Lucky Comics.

  English readers met Luke in the British magazine Giggle in 1967, where he was renamed Buck Bingo. From 1972 to 1974, Brockhampton Press of Leicester issued six titles, translated by Frederick W Nolan. Cinebook began its softcover series in 2006 and releases one new volume every two months. In 2019, Cinebook added a hardcover Complete Collection. By 2022, all 82 regular albums were available in English.

  12345

• 6. Smoke and Straw

  ›

  Morris long faced criticism over the cigarette hanging from Luke's mouth. His reply was blunt: "the cigarette is part of the character's profile, just like the pipe of Popeye or Maigret".

  It is claimed that Morris was later forced to remove the cigarette. The reasons were said to be commercial, apparently to gain access to the American market. Luke, who used to be a heavy smoker, had to give it up.

  The change brought Morris an award from the World Health Organization in 1988. It honored his replacement of the omnipresent cigarette with a wisp of straw in the 1983 story Fingers.

  Later stories wink at the change. In the 2007 animated film Tous à l'Ouest, Luke appears to wear a nicotine patch. He recalls having to chew on a piece of straw for a while after quitting. In the 1994 story Le Pont sur le Mississippi, he rolls a cigarette again, but says it only hides his boredom.

  The 1982 album Sarah Bernhardt shows a relapse of temper. Luke rolls a cigarette, irate, after Bernhardt's cook lights a cooking fire against his orders. When he strikes a match, Jolly Jumper blows it out and reminds him of his own "no fire" rule.

  12132811

• 7. Screens and Spin-Offs

  ›

  The series called Rantanplan, starring Luke's dimwitted canine sidekick, began in 1987. Several successive teams of writers and artists have worked on it. The character also starred in a 76-episode animated television series in 2006.

  Kid Lucky arrived in 1995 as a second spin-off, aimed at younger readers. It showed Luke as a little boy, a format that had been popular with Spirou. Two albums, Kid Lucky and Oklahoma Jim, were credited to the writer Jean Léturgie and an unknown artist named Pearce. Pearce was later revealed as a joint pen name for Yann Lepennetier and Didier Conrad. Poor sales ended the experiment, and the two albums were removed from the official list. In 2011, the series returned with Achdé in charge, and in June 2020 an animated version was announced.

  Goscinny himself directed and co-produced two animated films, Daisy Town in 1971 and La Ballade des Dalton in 1978. The French company Xilam released a theatrical film, Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure, on the 5th of December 2007.

  Live-action versions have come from several countries. Turkey produced Ret Kid in 1970, starring Izzet Günay. Italy made two films in 1991 starring Terence Hill. France made Les Dalton in 2004, with Til Schweiger as Luke, which was one of the most expensive European films ever made. In 2009 Jean Dujardin played Luke in Lucky Luke. A live-action series from Disney+ and France Télévisions premiered on the 23rd of March 2026, with 8 episodes.

  The 1983 animated series, a collaboration among Hanna-Barbera Productions, France 3, Gaumont, Extrafilm Berlin and Morris, ran for 26 episodes. William Callaway voiced Luke, and Paul Reubens played Bushwack. In 1991, IDDH produced 26 more episodes, using album stories the first series had skipped. Xilam followed in 2001 with 52 episodes of original stories.

  The first Lucky Luke video game was a Tiger Handheld in 1984. Infogrames released most later games for the European market, and only the Game Boy Color and PlayStation versions reached North America. Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure reached Windows, Wii and Nintendo DS in 2007.

  2829313435

• 8. Tributes and Echoes

  ›

  The Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels honors Morris in a room of his own. Its entrance has saloon doors, and Luke's shadow stretches across the floor and the wall.

  In 1992, a wall in the Rue de la Buandrie in Brussels was dedicated to Lucky Luke, designed by D. Vandegeerde and G. Oreopoulos. Since 2007, a plaque beneath the street sign of the Rue des Pierres adds the name Rue Lucky Luke.

  In Charleroi, a statue of Luke stands in Astrid Park, and the nearby Parc metro station is decorated with scenes from the comics. In 2000, Luc Madou designed statues of Lucky Luke, Ratanplan and Joe Dalton for the Jules Van den Heuvelstraat in Middelkerke.

  The cowboy has also turned up in popular culture. In 1993, the French rapper MC Solaar released the song "Nouveau Western", which refers to Luke and the Daltons. The 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas shows posters of a sheriff dressed in Luke's white hat, yellow shirt, black vest and red bandana. In 2015, the Danish reggaeton band Camilo & Grande released a single called "Lucky Luke", comparing their lives to his.

  In 2022, the Belgian government put a tribute on the visa pages of its redesigned passport. It shows a blank silhouette of Luke and Jolly Jumper in Monument Valley, and the full detail of the characters appears only under UV light.

  4344474945