The New Adventures of Lucky Luke (French: Les nouvelles aventures de Lucky Luke) is a 2001 French-Canadian cartoon series based off the eponymous comics by Morris (who passed away two months before it first aired), made by the French animation studio Xilam. Unlike the previous Lucky Luke animated series, it doesn't adapt any particular story from the comics and features all new stories based on the character. It is also notable for having the background and characters change colors in certain situation, something that wasn't done in the previous cartoon, but which actually originates from the comics.
It ran for 52 episodes from 2001 to 2003 and features a wide cast of characters, both one-shot and recurring. A movie made by the same studio, Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure, was released in 2007. Xilam later made a series about Rantanplan titled Rintindumb and one about the Dalton Brothers titled The Daltons.
Provides examples of:
- All Asians Know Martial Arts: Many Chinese characters in "Liki Liki" know martial arts, including Tchin-Tchin himself, Luke's ally.
- Amoral Attorney: A corrupt lawyer strikes a deal with the Daltons and not only lies through his teeth to get them acquitted from the crimes they obviously committed, but he also bribes a judge to declare Luke guilty and imprison him. His lies were too good to last though... and he has to deal both with Luke's revenge plan and the Dalton's threat over his person once they don't need him anymore.
- Bilingual Bonus: A lot of names of characters and towns reference things that evaded a lot of French viewers. For example in "War of the Medics", one of the background characters is called "Big Dick Narrowmind", needless to say, the only reason this part wasn't censored in France can be attributed to the bad English of French viewers.
- Bottomless Magazines: Played straight a third of the time where two revolvers with six shots can fire as much as 20 shots but averted in most of the episodes where the characters have to reload after firing six times.
- Everything's Louder with Bagpipes: In "Phantom and Pipes", Lucky Luke gets a bagpiper to follow his lead, waking up the whole town at night with his playing.
- Experimental Archeology: In "A Bone for the Daltons", the archaeologist decides to move an entire penitentiary using the same technique apparently used to build the pyramids.
- Gratuitous English: The opening song's lyrics are a mix of French and deliberately badly pronounced English (with one Gratuitous Spanish word, besides).
- Hartman Hips: A sizeable portion of the women in the show have hips much wider than their waists. While it could be argued for most of them that it's simply their dresses that make their hips look widernote , some like Stella in "Desperadoes Union" or Kate Norton in "The Dalton Soldiers" have outfits that leave no doubt.
- Historical Domain Character: Historical figures that haven't appeared previously include General Custer, Ulysses S. Grant and even Queen Victoria.
- Lightning Can Do Anything: In "Jackpot for the Daltons", lightning (and by extension electricity) turns Averell and Rantanplan into hyper-competent geniuses.
- Mythology Gag: In "War of the Medics", when Luke is examined by Dr. Titfeather, she asks him "So, you're an ex-smoker, are you?", a reference to how he used to smoke in the comics and the first two animated movies before replacing his cigarettes with pieces of straw.
- The Napoleon: General Custer and Colonel Oswald in "A Cannon for the Daltons" are both of small heights and have delusions of grandeur for the former and share an authoritarian personality.
- The New Adventures: The New Adventures of Lucky Luke.
- Politically Incorrect Villain:
- The main antagonist in "The Return of Liki Liki" is a former slave trafficker who built the town the episode is set in and is firmly opposed to any black man setting foot there.
- Most military commanders, especially General Custer who apparently has a compulsive need to chase any indians he sees, are firmly anti native americans.
- A sheriff in "The Daltons' Ghosts" is apparently affiliated with the Klu Klux Klan.
- Running Gag: Whenever a scene ends in the Saloon in "Martian Theory", it always ends with a Bar Brawl.
- Snake Oil Salesman: Doctor Doxey, a villain from the comics returns in "War of the Medics", having been released from prison and having created a new potion, selling it to sick miners under the pretense that it can heal their fever. According to Doctor Wititfeather, the formula is only sugar and vitriol.
- Violent Glaswegian: Some Scottish people appear in "Phantom and Pipes", being the ones responsible for the bar fight that happens early in the episode and refuse to respond to attacks with anything but violence of their own, even when escalating the situation is unnecessary.
- When All You Have Is a Hammer…: Luke, a very talented gunslinger, naturally uses his gun to fix most problems. "The Commodore" best exemplifies this: he uses his gun to shoot holes in a sabotaged water tower to stop it from dispensing molasses into a train, shoots it to break a lever that bandits were using to drop a boulder onto train tracks, blasts the leader's stirrup to get him off his horse, and shoots a shot into the air to get the train to stop.
