Four sequences of the new Lucky Luke commented by Jul

“A cowboy in cotton” (cover detail) -

• "20 Minutes" regularly offers you a study of boxes, that is to say the commentary of some sequences of a comic book, by their author.

• Jul, the author of "Flint and the City" who is participating for the third time in the series "The Adventures of Lucky Luke", has done the exercise for "20 Minutes".

• After having escorted a family of Jewish immigrants through the Far West in 2016 then the Statue of Liberty in 2018, “his” Lucky Luke is this time confronted with the vestiges of segregation.

We know the importance of the black community in the history of the United States.

However, it remained strangely absent - or confined to the background - of the adventures of Lucky Luke.

An injustice erased by the screenwriter Jul and the designer Achdé who, four years after taking over "the man who shoots faster than his shadow", install the plot of

in the south of France. 'an America just freed from slavery.

74 years after the creation, by Morris, of the most famous cowboy of the 9th Art and more than 80 albums published (all collections combined), the authors of

(which, in 2016, evoked the American Jewish community) and

(2018), continue to shake up the codes of one of the most popular series of Franco-Belgian comics.

© Jul, Achdé & Lucky Comics (after Morris)

Summary of the album

 : Lucky Luke finds himself in spite of himself the owner of a huge cotton plantation in Louisiana.

Welcomed by the great white planters as one of their own, Lucky Luke will have to fight to redistribute this heritage to black farmers.

Will the hero of the wild west succeed in restoring justice to the shifting lands of the Louisiana swamps?

In this fight, he will be, against all odds, supported by the Dalton who came to eliminate him, by the Cajuns of the bayou, these whites left behind from the prosperity of the South, and by Bass Reeves, the first black Marshall of the United States. .

Explanation by image

Both faithful to the spirit of the series, "in which authentic historical characters and events serve as the starting point for the scenario", specifies Jul, and resolutely modernizing, this new adventure, very funny and inventive, therefore respects its Specifications.

To be sure,

asked Jul to reveal to us the main “orientations” of this new Lucky Luke album through four particularly revealing sequences:

Sequence 1

© Jul, Achdé & Lucky Comics (after Morris)

"For once the usual pattern of Lucky Luke is reversed: it is no longer" There is a problem / Lucky Luke is arriving / He fixes the problem / He leaves towards the setting sun "... This time it's him who, by inheriting a slave plantation, finds himself in deep trouble.

And for that, it was necessary to invent a hero who would come to help him: the discovery of the extraordinary Bass Reeves, authentic black Marshall and legend of the West, allowed us to give this album a magnificent impetus.

By making Lucky Luke a disciple of this black hero, we remain faithful to a historical truth, in a world where one in five cowboys was black and the majority of other Hispanics!

"

Sequence 2

© Jul, Achdé & Lucky Comics (after Morris)

“The idea of ​​sending Lucky Luke to the old South of the United States excited us: for the first time, we were able to capture these magnificent landscapes of plantations, sumptuous mansions bordered by hundred-year-old oaks, the Louisiana swamps and of the Mississippi Delta so romantic… But it was above all an opportunity to confront our hero of the West with the reality of racial segregation and the slave world, the challenge being to remain a joyful and swirling comedy without watering down reality.

This page is classic in the spirit of Lucky Luke: in a few boxes we give elements of historical context, but always with the humor that characterizes the series ... And the jokes on the tobacco plantations are nods to the quitting smoking for our cowboy - 37 years ago!

"

Sequence 3

© Jul, Achdé & Lucky Comics (after Morris)

“The element of comedy of this adventure comes above all from the Dalton: they land in Louisiana after Lucky Luke and they go through the whole album being completely off the mark!

The South is not only the great white planters facing the blacks, we also immediately thought of the Cajuns, this French-speaking people lost in the bayou, who still speak as in the 18th century and who eat crocodile on a spit!

For Averell, it is obviously paradise.

I worked a lot on the Cajun lexicon, to keep all the flavor but to allow the reader to understand a little what they are saying… at least better than the Dalton, who are convinced they are dealing with Mexicans!

"

Sequence 4

© Jul, Achdé & Lucky Comics (after Morris)

"Impossible to stage an adventure in the cotton plantations without talking about the Ku Klux Klan ... This secret society intended to sow death and terror among the blacks of the South is still sadly topical, and for Lucky Luke, it is is a threat of a new kind: accustomed to the desperadoes of the Wild West, he doesn't really know how to face an entire slave civilization, and that's why he's going to need his partner Bass Reeves, black employees. of his plantation, and unexpected allies: the Daltons in person who imagine that these oddballs wearing pointy hats are bellicose Indians.

Like what, even with regard to the Dalton, one can always find more mean and dumber than oneself!

"

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The adventures of Lucky Luke volume 9 “A cow-boy in the cotton”, by Jul & Achdé (from the world of Morris) - Lucky Comics editions, 10.95 euros.

• Imaginary

• Literature

• Goscinny

• Western

• BD

• Slavery

• Video

• Culture