Lucky Luke’s new album by Jul and Achdé, in bookstores this Friday, takes the solitary cowboy to the north of the United States, far from the wide open spaces of the Wild West.
Lucky Luke returns in A cowboy under pressurelost in the mists of the Northern United States and a social conflict in the beer industry, a completely new world for him.
“We like to confront Lucky Luke with a world that he doesn’t know. We imagined ourselves doing this clash of cultures with the German community in the United States, which is in fact considerable”, emphasizes to BFMTV Jul who signs the scenario of this new adventure.
This album, to be published Friday by Lucky Comics, is the eleventh in the new series taken up by Achdé. The designer, who succeeded the character’s creator, Morris, remains very faithful to his master’s graphics.
But, for this adventure, we had to renew ourselves: it takes place essentially in a large city, Milwaukee, and settings typical of the Industrial Revolution, very little if ever tackled by Morris, although Belgian.
“I know I put pressure on Hervé” Darmenton, Achdé’s real name, concedes screenwriter Jul (Julien Berjeaut).
Far from the Wild West
“Everything was complicated, because, well, I don’t like being in the city. I admit it, I’ve always said it: I took up Lucky Luke because I wanted to draw deserts, cacti and cow heads”, recalls the designer interviewed by AFP.
So did he enjoy representing these pipes, tanks, manufacturing lines and other brick warehouses? “Not at all. But it’s funny, let’s say it’s the challenge. Where we take pleasure is when we succeed,” he replies.
Lucky Luke, far from his Wild West, his Great Plains with ranches, small isolated towns and open horizons, is called to the rescue to reconcile brewer bosses and workers on wages and working conditions.
He is full of good will. But he knows nothing about this world of Miller, Blatz and other Schlitz, marked by the German or Nordic origin of its population and by the balance of power between social classes.
“We have forgotten it a little, but there are states, in the north of the United States, the ‘German belt’, where more than 70% were German, towns where everything was written in Gothic”, recalls Jul microphone of BFMTV.
“And we realize that these Germans, they gave the United States all the great symbols of the ‘American way of life’, the hamburger, the ketchup, the hot dog, and obviously the beer”, he lists. -he again, explaining why they chose beer as the common thread of their story.
Jul wants readers to find that “it looks like the Lucky Luke of the great era, which we love and, at the same time, it brings something new”.
Friedrich Trump, Bavarian immigrant
Hence, among other things, the collision between the Daltons and Karl Marx – the outlaw brothers are convinced that he holds a big fortune nicknamed “Capital”. Or the presence of a Bavarian immigrant, Friedrich Trump, owner of a saloon and brothel – even if, in reality, Donald’s grandfather was not based in Milwaukee.
“Donald Trump’s grandfather was a contemporary of Lucky Luke, recalls Jul for BFMTV. He was among these famous German immigrants, he arrived from Bavaria. Trump, like Eisenhower, are people who made American history, are part of this world of German settlers”.
But this album echoes current events doubly. “Lucky Luke is something that still speaks to us today, and perhaps this album even more than the others,” underlines Jul.
“What happened in the United States with the re-election of Donald Trump, we are staging it. Because it is white America, it is this America of workers who have been forgotten by the Democrats, it ‘it’s this America of the Germans, of these white people who shaped the United States, that we tend to forget in contemporary representations, and it’s them who said ‘it’s us who hold the helm of the ship’ .”
“This album is a passport to understanding this America,” he concludes.
In addition to bookstores, the man who shoots faster than his shadow also arrives in auction rooms. On Friday, Christie’s Paris is auctioning 50 original plates signed Morris. Dating from 1949 to 2001, they are estimated at prices ranging from 20,000 to 80,000 euros.
MR and Nicolas Béhar with AFP
