In Review: Lucky Luke - Fingers

Roll up! Roll up! That master of bandes dessinee humour Maurice De Bevere, also known as Morris, will astound and amaze you with his work illustrating the man who shoots faster than his own shadow, known to one and all as Lucky Luke, and introduces the prestidigitator, the one and only Gaston, also known (unfortunately) as Fingers.

The smart, handsome, immaculately dressed and intensely charming European illusionist Gaston has been arrested due to his inability to stop himself pick-pocketing anything and everything from those around him. Taken to the Texas prison that the four Dalton brothers are currently in, he lifts the prison keys from a guard and escapes with the Daltons. Lucky Luke has heard it all before, or so he thinks, before he realises that there are five prisoners that need rounded up and not the usual four. Catching the Daltons and Gaston just as they are playing cards, Luke discovers just how good Gaston is at sleight-of-hand as cards change, guns disappear and bullets become blanks.

With Gaston's help, Luke returns the Daltons to prison and petitions the Governor for amnesty for Gaston, who agrees provided that Lucky Luke takes responsibility for him. However things take a turn for the worse when Gaston lifts the feathers from three Indian warriors and the tribe's medicine man decides that the two paleskins must be sacrificed with a magic hatchet for the offence Gaston has inflicted.

Fingers dates from 1983, after the death of Morris' long time Lucky Luke writer Gene Goscinny, when he worked a variety of other writers on the books. This one was written by the rather spectacularly monikered Lo Hartog Van Banda whose plot is as sharp and quick as Gaston's fingers are. The story revolves around Gaston's apparent kleptomania, he even manages to lift a horse shoe from Jolly Jumper, and his ability to twist what is happening at any given time to his own benefit. Indeed for much of the book it is hard to decide if Gaston is actually the dandy-ish magician he portrays or actually a criminal mastermind who thinks so much faster than everyone else that his plan seems like little more that a game to him.

Morris keeps up with all the goings-on with a much larger cast of characters than normal in a Lucky Luke book as Van Banda plays with some of the conventions of the series including the traditional last panel of Luke riding off into the sunset happening in the middle of the book as well as the end.

Lucky Luke - Fingers is as fast moving as the titular character's digits and, for me, just as funny as any of the Goscinny titles.

• There are more details of the English language Lucky Luke books on Cinebook's website.

• There are more details on the original French language Lucky Luke on the official Lucky Luke website (in French). 

• Cinebook will be selling their range of books including Lucky Luke at the Comica Comiket Fall 2012 Independent Comics Fair in the City Of London on Saturday 10 November 2012 and at Thought Bubble's Royal Armouries Hall in Leeds on the weekend of 17-18 November 2012.

In Review: Lucky Luke - The Daltons Always On The Run

Morris and Goscinny's honest cowboy and his horse, Jolly Jumper returns in Lucky Luke - The Daltons Always On The Run.

The new President of the United States announces a general amnesty for all prisoners freeing amongst many others Joe, Jack, William and Averill Dalton. However just because they are free doesn't make them any more honest and, after trying to rob the bank at Awful Gulch, they steal the money  from a stagecoach delivery to the bank and hightail it into the desert with Luke in pursuit.

Meanwhile an Apache attack on the prison frees the Daltons yet again but they are soon the prisoners of the tribe. However they are able to persuade Chief Tipi Toes that Averell is a great sorcerer and so get the Apaches to help them continue robbing people. Lucky Luke now not only has to stop the cavalry going to war with the Apaches but must also convince the Apaches that they are being used by the Daltons, however the only way he can find their hidden camp is with the help of the prison's rather stupid dog, Rin Tin Can.

This Lucky Luke book is the 34th that Cinebook have published but it was originally the 24th French album when it was published in 1964. Does it feel like it is almost half a century old? Not at all. From the vertically challenged, and often incandescently outraged, Joe to the tall and somewhat dim-witted Averell, the four Dalton brothers always ensure an enjoyable Lucky Luke book, and this one is no different. What is slightly different is that its 48 pages are made up of one short and one long tale that sort of dovetail together but must have have been separate stories when they were originally published in the weekly Spirou comic in the early 1960s due to their separate page codes in the artwork.

The first story is short, sweet and fun while the second story does rather involve a lot of back and forth between the prison and the Indian camp making it feel a little longer that it probably should be. However the dumb mutt, Rin Tin Can, an obvious play on Hollywood's Rin Tin Tin, who doesn't really understand anything that is asked of him but still manages to save the day, is a nice addition especially with the reader being able to see the his thoughts as we sometimes do with Snowy in the Tintin books.

Lucky Luke - The Daltons Always On The Run with its two part structure and reliance on the characters of the Daltons and Rin Tin Can rather than Lucky Luke himself may not be to everyone's taste, but Lucky Luke books featuring the Daltons are always worth reading and this is no exception.

• There are more details of the English language Lucky Luke books on Cinebook's website.

• There are more details on the original French language Lucky Luke on the official Lucky Luke website (in French).

•  Cinebook will be selling their range of books including Lucky Luke at the Comica Comiket Fall 2012 Independent Comics Fair in the City Of London on Saturday 10 November 2012 and at Thought Bubble's Royal Armouries Hall in Leeds on the weekend of 17-18 November 2012.

In Review: Lucky Luke - The Daltons' Escape

Cinebook reaches their thirtieth Lucky Luke book with the first English translation of The Dalton's Escape written by Rene Goscinny and illustrated by Morris.

Hearing that Lucky Luke is close to their jail, Joe Dalton convinces the three other Dalton's to escape and they go on a rampage through the nearby towns before settling into their hideout to plot revenge on Luke. In the meantime as Lucky Luke follows their trail, he soon realises that the Dalton's revenge to is put up fake wanted posters about him that turns the nervous townsfolk against him. Luke's only recourse is to find the Dalton's on his own but all does not go quite to his initial plan.

This was originally printed as L'Evasion Des Daltons in the weekly Spirou magazine in 1958/59 and then published as an album in 1960 and, while it may be over half a century old, it doesn't show its age at all.

Morris and Goscinny, as ever, have fun with the different heights of the Dalton's be it with the depth of the river that they hide in after their initial escape or the different heights of the wanted posters they put up when trying to frame Lucky Luke. However my favourite panel in the whole book is one that doesn't even need to be there, from a plot point of view at least, and shows Morris' playful use of the comics medium as he illustrates the Dalton's walking past a still lake which has the reflections of the four brothers and of the landscape around them as well as of the single speech balloon. It doesn't need to be there, but it is charming that it is.

The plot falls into two distinct parts, Luke's initial hunt for the Daltons and then the more unusual section with Luke as their not so reluctant prisoner. Indeed both parts go against type with those wanted posters making Luke the bad guy, in the eyes of the town folk at least, while the second part shows Luke's cunning as, despite being a prisoner, he twists the Daltons around to doing what he needs them to do. Perhaps the funniest moment of this section is when Luke gets three of the brothers knitting until Joe puts a very red-faced stop to such craziness.

Lucky Luke - The Dalton's Escape was a delight to read from start to finish and shows just how good Morris and Goscinny were when they worked together on the character.

• There are more details of the English language Lucky Luke books on Cinebook's website.

• There are more details on the original French language Lucky Luke on the official Lucky Luke website (in French).

In Review: Lucky Luke - The Judge

Cinebook continue their English language translations of the Lucky Luke books with their 24th book The Judge based on the real life Judge Roy Bean who lived in Texas during the late 1800s. While the character is probably best known to British audiences through the 1972 Paul Newman movie The Life And Times Of Judge Roy Bean, if even half the tales of the real Judge Bean are true then he is an obvious character to be incorporated into a humorous western strip like Lucky Luke.

The story begins with Lucky Luke agreeing to lead a cattle drive from Austin, Texas to Silver City, New Mexico during which he is arrested by Judge Roy Bean as a cattle thief. Frustrated by the bizarre trial that the judge conducts in his own saloon, Luke escapes and ends up helping Judge Bean against an even more crooked judge attempting to set up his court in the same town.

The story uses many of the quirks of the real Judge Bean from holding court in his own saloon to expecting jurors to buy drinks during the court's recess. Indeed it would seem that the more bizarre the judicial method related in the book, the more likely it is to be based on fact. Even the illustration of his saloon, The Jersey Lilly, with its hoardings advertising both justice and ice beer is based on the real building in Langtry, Texas.

While Cinebook credit the book solely to Morris (Maurice De Bevere), the character's creator, this is actually the fourth of the Lucky Luke series to be written by Rene Goscinny with art by Morris. Also while this book's copyright date is given as 1971, this story first appeared as Le Juge in Spirou issue 1021 in 1957 and would go on to be published in 1959 as the 13th Lucky Luke book. Yet despite The Judge being over fifty years old, it has lost none of its wit and humour. Nor does the Lucky Luke series seem to have lost any of its popularity with comic book readers despite its age since the latest book regularly goes to the top of Cinebook's own sales chart with the previous one issued often in the number 2 slot.

From the Chinese undertaker trying to help his own business along during the trials by crying "Give him rope!", to the tame liquor swilling bear, Lucky Luke -The Judge is a fun read for both children and adults.


• There are more details of the Lucky Luke books on Cinebook's website.

• There are more details on Lucky Luke on the official Lucky Luke website (in French).