History ComicBook / LuckyLuke

As the series has been so successful for over fifty years, it has also known several {{Animated Adaptation}}s, both with stories directly adapted from the comics and with original stories. The best and most well known are ''WesternAnimation/LuckyLukeDaisyTown'' (1971) and ''WesternAnimation/LaBalladeDesDalton'' (1978) which were made by the same animation studio that directed ''WesternAnimation/TheTwelveTasksOfAsterix'' (1976) and thus share a similar comedic style. It also helped that Creator/ReneGoscinny wrote the script.

There were also three LiveActionAdaptation films: one starring Terence Hill (which spawned a series, too), another one centered on the Dalton brothers starring French humorist duo Eric Judor & Ramzy Bédia, and one starring Creator/JeanDujardin.

** Billy the Kid is an extreme example; most of the time, he doesn't even have to point a gun at anyone to intimidate them. In one short story, he successfully robs people just by putting up a sign saying he is nearby. In ''The Escort'', Luke needs to bring Billy the Kid to a Mexican court for crimes committed there, with Billy scaring townsfolk into giving up their valuables just by being there. As soon as he has crossed the border, he finds that no-one has heard of him, and people treat him as the ill-mannered teen he looks like.

* SurprisinglyGoodEnglish: Non-Japanese example. At the end of each story, Luke sings, in English, "I'm a poor lonesone cowboy". In the original animated series, this is turned into a full song for the closing credits (also in surprisingly good English[[note]]It helps that it was co-produced by Creator/HannaBarbera.[[/note]]).
** Possibly explained by the background of the series' creator. Morris spend six years (1948-1954) as an expatriate in the United States. He was associated with the publisher EC Comics, particularly a magazine called "Mad" where his colleagues included Jack Davis and Harvey Kurtzman. He had to learn the local language.

* DeadpanSnarker:
** [[FunnyAnimal Jolly Jumper]] is this a lot.
** Luke also does it a few times.
** Joe, mostly towards Averell.

* VillainousRescue: In ''A Cowboy in the Cotton'', the Daltons of all people actually stop the KKK from executing Lucky Luke, since they want to honor of killing him.

** In ''A Cowboy In The Cotton'', [[spoiler:we get the final confrontation between the black inhabitants and TheKlan. Ammo is running low for Luke and Brass. Then all the sudden, a hurricane start devastating everything in its path. In the aftermath, we see that the clan members were devoured by alligators.]]

* ProducePelting: in the 1-page story "The Concert", Lucky Luke meets a travelling singer who has this happening to him because of his bad singing. He doesn't mind, however, because it means that he gets free fruit and vegetables after each concert.

* VillainousRescue: In "A Cowboy In The Cotton", the Daltons of all people actually stop the KKK from executing Lucky Luke, since they want to honor of killing him.

* WantedPoster: As another staple of Western, about OncePerEpisode. Some gags are milked out of the Daltons' wanted posters, as mentioned above. In the Bounty Hunter the antagonist got ran out of his hometown as a kid when he confused a wanted poster for an errand boy meant and held the butcher's son at gun point.

* WhiteSheep: Marcel Dalton, introduced in the album named after him, is despised by his family for being a straight-up good guy.
** Possibly a shout-out to the historic Dalton brothers' elder sibling Frank Dalton, a deputy U.S. Marshal in Arkansas who was killed in the line of duty.

** At the end of "Fingers", the mayor wishes to say a few words. Cut to several hours later, where he is still talking.

-->In the poussière of Ohio[[note]]In the dust of Ohio[[/note]]
-->Wearing his beautiful chapeau[[note]]Wearing his beautiful hat[[/note]]
-->But who's this caballero ?

* RaceLift: in the animated adaption of the comic ''Le Pied-tendre'', the native American servant of Waldo Badmington is replaced by a Caucasian man.

* TheseHandsHaveKilled: When Luke kills Pat Poker (even in a fair duel and as revenge for the murder of his parents), he is DrivenToSuicide and Jolly Jumper has to talk him out of it. [[spoiler: Poker faked his death to enforce the trope, since he knew "no bullet would ever kill Luke". Only when Luke is shot with his own revolver by Billy The Kid...with blanks, he realizes he has been had.]]

** PlayedForLaughs in a one-page comic that was made around the time the comic switched to a less strict publisher. In the comic, Luke enjoys the freedom the change has given him by acting completely OutOfCharacter. Namely by swearing, drinking alcohol instead of the usual lemonade, shooting a sheriff in the stomach and having implied, off-screen sex with a saloon girl, all while the other characters are pointing out that the publisher is too respectable to ever let him get away with these acts, and Luke in turn pointing out that he got a new publisher now.

One of the main points of the series is the number of historical characters Luke regularly meets and who most of the time take center stage in the story. Over the years they have included Judge Roy Bean (who owns a bar and acts as self-appointed "judge", complete with fake court proceedings, to extort money from locals... and turns out to be harmless, helping Luke against the actual BigBad), UsefulNotes/BillyTheKid (portrayed as an actual, annoying BrattyHalfPint whose defeat consists of a good spanking), UsefulNotes/JesseJames's gang (with Jesse parodied as a delusional Myth/RobinHood fan and Frank as a Shakespeare-quoting pseudo-intellectual), Calamity Jane (with whom Lucky Luke developed a very sweet platonic relationship), Creator/MarkTwain, and Wyatt Earp, among others.

The most iconic characters of the series, though, weren't historical characters but the fictional ''cousins'' of historical characters. After Morris had Luke fight the real Dalton Brothers and showed their death on the page, Goscinny found this way to bring back a similar group of baddies, since the original Daltons' regularly descending sizes and identical ugly mugs made for lots of fun potential -- and boy, did it work. At first, the Dalton cousins were hopeless bandit wannabes impressed by the fame of their relatives, but they quickly became feared outlaws in their own right in-story, while in the real world (in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Quebec anyway) they completely [[ParodyDisplacement outshone their real-world counterparts]].

* GratuitousEnglish: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTdMPRGdZWI The opening credit song of the French version]] of ''The New Adventures of Lucky Luke'' mixes French and English words in the same lines. For instance, the first verse is:

* LactoseOverLiquor: In " The Pony Express", the new recruits for the Pony Express are forced to drink milk in the saloon since their contract forbids them from drinking alcohol. This gets them mocked by the members of the Pacific Railway (the Pony Express' main competitor). Their leader, the station master, even forces William Russell, head of the Pony Express, at gunpoint to drink a bottle of whiskey. In the comic, he actually drinks it, while in the animated adaptation Luke shoots the bottle. In both versions, Luke then gets back at the station master by forcing him at gunpoint to drink a bottle of milk.

* ThouShallNotKill: Lucky Luke has the reputation of never killing his enemies, and several media refer to him as never having killed anyone, a theory supported by Goscinny's daughter, Anne. However, Luke has canonically killed EvilTwin Mad Jim, and this story was in the ''first album of the series''. This fact is ackknowledged by Joe Dalton in the album ''Belle Star''. In the original run of ''Lucky Luke vs. Phil Defer'' story, Luke kills Defer at the end in a duel. This was later [[{{Retcon}} retconned]] in the album releases by Defer only being injured but rendered crippled for life. Also, the original Daltons gang was hanged after Luke caught them. In first publication, Luke actually ''kills'' Bob Dalton by headshot... and it's [[http://www.actuabd.com/IMG/jpg/Morris-Bob-Dalton.jpg onscreen]]. In the album version, it is censored and replaced by a simple caught with a barrel -- before their hanging.

The most iconic characters of the series, though, weren't historical characters but the fictional ''cousins'' of historical characters. After Morris had Luke fight the real Dalton Brothers and showed their death on the page, Goscinny found this way to bring back a similar group of baddies, since the original Daltons' regularly descending sizes and identical ugly mugs made for lots of fun potential -- and boy, did it work. At first, the Dalton cousins were hopeless bandit wannabes impressed by the fame of their relatives, but they quickly became feared outlaws in their own right in-story, while in the real world (in France, Belgium, and Quebec anyway) they completely [[ParodyDisplacement outshone their real-world counterparts]].

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Lucky Luke drawing his gun noticeably faster than his own shadow is a mighty impressive feat--the emphasis being on the word "noticeably". Since your shadow always moves a fraction of a second later than your yourself do, it's physically impossible ''not'' to draw your gun at least a little bit faster than your own shadow.

* ThouShallNotKill: Lucky Luke has the reputation of never killing his enemies, and several media refer to him as never having killed anyone, a theory supported by Goscinny's daughter, Anne. This is close to CriticalResearchFailure: Luke has canonically killed EvilTwin Mad Jim, and this story was in the ''first album of the series''. This fact is ackknowledged by Joe Dalton in the album ''Belle Star''. In the original run of ''Lucky Luke vs. Phil Defer'' story, Luke kills Defer at the end in a duel. This was later [[{{Retcon}} retconned]] in the album releases by Defer only being injured but rendered crippled for life. Also, the original Daltons gang was hanged after Luke caught them. In first publication, Luke actually ''kills'' Bob Dalton by headshot... and it's [[http://www.actuabd.com/IMG/jpg/Morris-Bob-Dalton.jpg onscreen]]. In the album version, it is censored and replaced by a simple caught with a barrel -- before their hanging.

* HateSink: Bounty hunters are this in-universe. Elliot Bell has the worst reputation of all of them, to the point that saloon singers refuse to perform when he is present and the bartender spills his alcohol on the bar when he asks for a drink, even when he calls a round for everyone the barman just pour bottles on the bar.

** Slim, the FatBastard BigBad from "Barbed Wire on the Praire" has an unusually quick one when the plot wraps up; after the other cattle barons and the farmers have made peace and agreed to share land and resources on the prairie, one of Slim's mooks asks him what they'll do now. Slim's response basically comes down to "we admit we acted like idiots and hope the farmers forgive and forget".

* EveryEpisodeEnding: Lucky Luke drives off into the sunset, while singing ''"I'm a Poor Lonesome Cowboy"''. A short comic book story has the Daltons in hiding. Averell tries to warn the others that Lucky Luke is about to turn up, but they don't believe him. Then Luke appears and finds them. Averell explains that it's sunset, and that Luke always rides by this location at sunset.

* CutAndPasteComic: Morris had a tendency to do this in his last stories, when old age was slowing him.

* FalseRoulette

** A barkeep in ''The Devil's Ranch'', which features a HauntedHouse, is based on Alfred Hitchcock.

* RhetoricalQuestionBlunder: In "Bounty Hunter" rich ranch owner thinks his favorite horse was kindnapped y his help, when Luke asks if he is sure the horse didn't run away by itself the owner asks if Luke knows a horse that can pick locks.

* ARoundOfDrinksForTheHouse: When the Dalton Brothers come to a city in Canada, a gold digger arrives and uses his gold to buy a round. The saloon owner says that the gold diggers all do that and then go back to digging gold for another six months. Cue to Joe Dalton planning to take over the saloon...

** In the Dutch translations, they dropped two letters to make it "Rataplan", which is a slightly archaic Dutch word for a chaotic mess. As the Dutch version of Wiki/ThatOtherWiki states: "This indicates perfectly how this dog's brain functions."

* FeudingFamilies: Exaggerated UpToEleven with the O'Timminses and the O'Haras in ''The Rivals of Painful Gulch''.

** Taken UpToEleven by the villain from "The One-Armed Bandit", a professional gambler who has derringers stashed almost everywhere on his person. His secret weapon is a miniature derringer hidden ''in his ear''!