Characters / Lucky Luke - The Dalton Family

Main Character Index Protagonists | Lucky Luke's Allies and Others | Antagonists (The Dalton Family)

---

The Dalton Brothers

In general

Lucky Luke's most featured adversaries and the most iconic outlaws of the series. They are, in fact, not the "real" Daltons (Bob, Grat, Bill and Emmett, who appeared in one early story and were killed off at the end of it), but their identical, if more incompetent cousins, Joe, William, Jack and Averell.

---

• Adaptation Distillation: Pretty much every animated adaption of the franchise (sans the 1991 cartoon revival), ignores their original backstory of being the identical cousins of the "real-life" Dalton brothers trying to avenge their deceased relatives, and instead presents them as the one and only Dalton gang. The Hanna-Barbera series even adapts the Outlaws story for one episode but with them instead of Bob, Grat, Bill, and Emmett like the original comic version (and needless to say, they survive it).
• Adaptation Dye-Job: In the '90s cartoon, they sport brown hair instead of their usual black.
• Avenging the Villain: They started their career in an attempt to avenge the real Dalton Brothers' death at the hands of Luke. Their hate of Luke has become more personal as the story goes on, though.
• Art Evolution: In their first few appearances, they had more simplistic looks, with pudgier faces and their mustaches were simple tuffs of hair. As the overall art style of the comics became more detailed and polished, so did the Daltons’ design, and they gained more angular faces and long pencil mustaches, which is how they have been depicted ever since, including in all their animated appearance going as far back as 1971’s Daisy Town.
• Backup Twin: Or cousins in that case. After the "real" Daltons were killed in Outlaws, they got replaced by the more iconic gang who became recurring villains.
• Big Little Brother: To the point where all their respective heights are inward proportional to their age. Joe is the oldest brother, William is younger, Jack is even younger, and Averell is the youngest.
• Breakout Villains: The original Daltons were lethal but one-shot villains who died at the end of their album; they ended up so popular that a new set of them were introduced, and ended up becoming as iconic as Luke himself.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Their whole family considers crime as a tradition in the family. They take it to such extreme that their uncle, Marcel Dalton, is considered a Black Sheep just because he is the only honest member of the family.
• Character Exaggeration: In their first story, they came across as a little different; Joe as the hard-boiled leader, William as a Trigger-Happy Gunslinger, Jack as a Master of Disguise, and Averell as a strong and athletic — if dense and food-obsessed — Brute. In subsequent stories, Joe remained mostly the same (though his Hair-Trigger Temper was enhanced quite a bit), Jack and William pretty much lost their individual traits and became full-time Co-Dragons to Joe, while Averell lost his strength and whatever competence he had and became more like a Minion with an F in Evil.
• Chronic Villainy: Any story about someone trying to redeem the Daltons (the Marcel Dalton story being the most notable example) is doomed to end up as a "Shaggy Dog" Story.
• Continuity Snarl: Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, William and Jack swap names. It happens first in their début story (for the first half, William is the shorter and Jack the taller; then it switches in the second half, making William taller and Jack shorter), and in some stories afterwards. In the 2006 movie and the 2010 animated series, the two brothers' names are likewise swapped.
• Darker and Edgier: Downplayed in the film Daisy Town, which was the first animated appearance of Lucky Luke and the Daltons. While still comical, both Joe’s Hair-Trigger Temper and Averell’s stupidity are dialed back and all four brothers are slightly more serious and intimidating, including sporting Creepy Shadowed Undereyes. They even have an intense showdown with Lucky Luke (until its abrupt and comical resolution). From their second screen appearance in Ballad of the Daltons onward, they would go back to their purely comedic personalities.
• Disappeared Dad: It's not clear what happened to their father, but he clearly isn't around anymore. Belle Starr has Ma Dalton mentioning a Noodle Incident about him using dynamite, suggesting he might be dead. Ma Dalton implies that he accidentally killed himself while using dynamite to force a safe.
• The Dreaded: As incompetent as they can be when they are pitted against Luke, they are dangerous enough to scare the crap of almost everyone else.
• Dreadful Musician: In Tortillas for the Daltons, their training to infiltrate as a mariachi band goes so badly their instructor (a hardened bandito) tries to hang himself.
• Enfant Terrible: According to their mama, some wanted posters in Daisy Town and a spin-off they were pretty mean (and pretty backwards) even as kids. Joe surpassed them all, by far, however.
• Escape Artist: Whatever prison they end up in, they will always break out.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: They honestly love Ma Dalton, and at no point do they turn against her. Not even Joe.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • For all the times they argue with each other and Joe abuses his brothers, they always stick together and have each other's backs. In one book of the Rantanplan spin-off, when Averell gets abducted, Joe is genuinely outraged at the Warden, and they escape for the sole purpose of rescuing him.
  • This extends to any and all relatives they have. To the Daltons, family is more important than anything else — they can argue and fight and occasionally try to trick each other, sure, but if a family member is in need, the Daltons are there. Even Card-Carrying Villain Joe is sympathetic towards White Sheep Marcel Dalton, reassuring him that he's heard living an honest life isn't that terrible.
• Freudian Excuse: They come from a loving family of outlaws, their best memories come from their parents taking them to attack banks and stagecoaches.
• Friendly Enemy: With Lucky Luke, though Joe wouldn't agree. But, while Joe absolutely hates Lucky Luke, to the point where the mere mention of Luke's name is enough to send him into a rage, the three others don't share this extreme animosity, and will generally be quite civil to him — Averell especially. Luke on his side bears the Daltons no ill will (while he does get tired of always having to be the one capturing them when they escape) and tends to treat them fairly nicely, especially in later albums. When they get sentenced to death, he even tries everything he can to save them, down to trying to convince the President.
• Good Hair, Evil Hair: They all sport classic Dastardly Whiplash mustaches, in contrast to the clean-shaven Lucky Luke. It is such an iconic part of their appearance that it can be rather jarring to see them without them, like in Ma Dalton (where Joe, William, and Jack shave them to better impersonate their mother).
• Greek Chorus: After being introduced with different skill sets, William and Jack soon settled down to become interchangeable middle brothers who function this way between their more fleshed-out siblings Joe and Averell. Which helps to explain why even their creators Goscinny and Morris on several occasions mixed up the two.
• Historical Character's Fictional Relative: They're not the real Dalton brothers, but their identical cousins. However, their general incompetence was inspired by the lackluster record of the real Dalton gang, in particular their incredibly bungled final raid.
• Iconic Outfit: Over time, their striped prison uniforms became this, and we saw them donning their green and black cowboy outfits less frequently, especially in later animated adaptions, like the 2007 movie Go West! and their own spin-off series.
• Idiot Ball: While Averell is the default holder, it gets passed around a lot among the four of them.
• Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains: Most of the time, it's pretty obvious they aren't that much of a threat, and will probably just as easily foil their own schemes with their stupidity as they will get captured by Luke.
• Joker Immunity: Averted with the original Daltons, but played straight hilariously with their cousins; no matter how many crimes they commit, or how many times Luke arrests them, they will always be merely sent to jail with a ridiculously high prison sentence (hundreds to thousands of years), where they will usually escape from nearly as soon as they arrive due to the wardens being complete morons; this takes such proportions that it gets more and more lampshaded as the series goes on. In later albums, Luke ends up sick of having to run after them again and again, and calls out the wardens for their incompetence.
  • They actually get sentenced to death in a later album, but take advantage on an old law saving them from the sentence if they get married. Their marriage is cancelled at the end of the book and their former father-in-law, an indian chief, makes the authorities promise to not sentence them to death.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: When first introduced, the new Daltons were portrayed as so incompetent Luke was actually eager to meet them again because he found them entertaining. They eventually took lessons and became as dangerous as the original Daltons, as long as they weren't confronted with Luke himself.
  • And even now, despite their stupidity, they are shown to be actually quite dangerous. They did come close to killing Luke on occasions.
  • Their incompetence is mostly when dealing with Lucky Luke, against other people their aim is great and they show more cunning, such as jumping out of their train a few minutes before it arrives so they can ambush the sheriff that was waiting for them.
• Scooby Stack: Their peculiar size difference makes this one of their typical poses.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Joe is both the shortest and the leader of the gang, while Averell is the tallest and the most dimwitted. However, it is actually a subversion in that Joe may think he's the brains of the gang (rather in the way that Oliver Hardy's character believed himself to be much smarter than Stan Laurel's), but he's actually just as stupid as his brothers, only in a different way. Goscinny himself once pointed out that Joe is merely the most malevolent or evil of the Daltons and that evil does not equal smart.
• Siblings in Crime: They even provide the trope picture.
• Smug Snake: God, are they convinced about their own genius especially Joe.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitutes: For the original Daltons. Morris regretted killing off the original Daltons, and René Goscinny had liked the original Dalton Gang story so much that when he took over the writing for the comic, he introduced another quartet of Daltons and billed them as the cousins of the original Daltons.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Joe is mostly the obsessed one with killing Lucky Luke but there has been at least one time when he, William and Jack cheated at a poker game which would determine who gets to off him. Also William was offered once the chance to kill Luke as consolation for Joe marrying the woman that he liked.
• Thin Chin of Sin: All four have ridiculously long chins and are outlaws.
• Training from Hell: The Dalton Brothers start out as incompetent villains incapable to do anything right so they grind themselves through a brutal training regime. They end up becoming great riders, deadly shooters and very competent in general apart from their stupidity which unfortunately for them doesn't change and remains their weak point which Lucky uses to defeat them.
• Uncanny Family Resemblance: Apart from their height, the four brothers look very much identical. And apart from the moustaches and hair their mother's face looks just like her sons'; Joe and William in fact have successfully impersonated her by merely shaving their mustache and wearing her clothes.
• Ungrateful Bastard: No matter how many times Luke saves their varying sized hides, they will still attempt to eliminate him at first chance. It extends to civilians too. In the Daltons in the Blizzard they thank the Indians who saved them from drowning by violently stealing from them their sled.
• Villain Protagonists: In several stories the focus is more on their attempts to outwit Lucky Luke than it is on Luke himself. They've also appeared solo in several stories, and like Rantanplan, have starred in their own animated series in 2010, The Daltons, where Lucky Luke doesn't even appear and the focus is on the Daltons as they try to escape from prison. Earlier than that, Luke practically shared the protagonist spot with them in Ballad of the Daltons.

Joe Dalton

Voiced in French by: Pierre Trabaud (Daisy Town, Ballad of the Daltons and Season 1 of Lucky Luke) | Patrice Baudrier (Lucky Luke, Season 2) | Gérard Surugue (The New Adventures of Lucky Luke) | Clovis Cornillac (Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure) | Christophe Lemoine (The Daltons)

Voiced in Swedish by: Johan Hedenberg

Played by: Ron Carey (Lucky Luke, 1991) | Éric Judor (Lucky Luke and the Daltons, 2004)

The oldest, but shortest, and most short-tempered, of the Dalton brothers and the mastermind of their various schemes and prison breaks.

---

• Angrish: Pretty much his most frequent state.
• Arch-Enemy: What the Joker is to Batman, Joe is to Lucky Luke. At least in his mind.
• Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: The most adherent about the outlaw's life he was raised in, to the point he considers being called honest citizen an insult. While the other brothers could learn a trade or have other hobbies (cards for William and reading for Jack) Joe is all about crimes and revenge.
• Berserk Button:
  • Any mention of Lucky Luke's name is sure to make him go completely nuts and Burning with Anger. Same goes for seeing him in person, for that matter.
  • Averell's antics are a close second.
• Big Bad: The closest thing the series has to a recurring one. He is the leader of the Daltons, the most recurring villain in the franchise, and he has a sworn hatred towards Luke.
• Big Brother Bully: To Averell. Though to be fair, his anger and brutality usually is provoked by Averell's stupidity more than anything. Otherwise, it has been shown he does care about all his brothers, Averell included.
• Book Dumb: In his own mind he is by far the smartest of his brothers, but he is completely uneducated and unfamiliar with anything you would learn in school. To give an example, he thinks Christopher Columbus was the first authentic American. His one area of expertise is crime.
• Butt-Monkey: He is often subject to slapstick, things almost never go his way, and he is The Un-Favourite to his mother.
• Character Catchphrase: "Lucky Luke! I hate Lucky Luke!". A secondary one (shared with Jack and William) is "Averell, SHUT UP!"
• Card-Carrying Villain: Out of all the Daltons, he is by far the most proud to be a criminal, to the point that when he was pardoned once (due to the telegraph operator screwing up a message telling the prison to release an inmate named Joe Milton) Joe refused to leave, feeling insulted, and had to be thrown out.
• Cosmic Plaything: He is probably as unlucky as Luke is lucky.
• Deadpan Snarker: Ok not deadpan per se, but even he can get snarky considering how stupid people around him are.
• Enraged by Idiocy: He has zero tolerance for the antics of his dumbass brother Averell and regularly enrages (and usually beats him up) because of them.
• Everyone Has Standards: Played for laughs, but Joe becomes sick when he gets money that he didn't steal himself, becoming terrified and even collapsing once when he discovers that money that wasn't stolen by him was added to his loot. Lucky Luke even lampshades this, saying that Joe deep down is honest for not keeping money that he didn't rob himself.
• Evil Genius: When he is not carrying the Idiot Ball, he is the smartest of the four. Ahem, by comparison.
• Evil Is Petty: He has no trouble going for revenge where there's no gain in it, or will forsake whatever advantage/gain he has for revenge. In the end of "The Daltons Stash", when he found out he'd been lied to about hidden treasure, he broke out of prison to get to another prison to beat up the prisoner who gave him that lie.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Wrath. His temper and resentment are just as much a detriment to him as his bad luck.
  • Pride. His pride has often prevented him from thinking rationally and Luke has used it against him plenty of times.
  • Greed. Whenever there is money to be taken, Joe will always go for it. He always attempts to rob a bank, even when it always ends with him and his brothers arrested by Lucky Luke and he will grab any money in the general vicinity, even when the situation required him not to steal the money. He admits that the last thing is a problem though.
• For the Evulz: He loves the outlaw life and not just for the money. In fact considering that the idea of legally buying something seems like a bad habit to him, the loot is treated more like a trophy and its the infamy and terror that really drives him. This stands out in at least two cases. Once when their new leader said that they would go on a bloodless crime-spree he expressed a desire to bring dynamite and for at least some blood to be spilled. He also planned on hanging the first sheriff that arrested him and his brothers on his wedding day.
• Gun Nut: Anytime he has a gun, he threatens to shoot people just to calm his nerves.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: And how. If he sees Luke or hear his name he'll go nuts, if someone mocks or disregards him he'll start shooting them, and if Averell says or does something stupid he'll also go nuts and beat him up.
• Jerkass: Regularly verbally and physically abuses his brothers, especially Averell, and out of the four he is the most inclined to commit crime.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • When he explains to the Natives the effect the people of Daisy Town will have on them.
  • Also, in the Rantanplan spin-off, he at one point calls out the Warden for failing not only to prevent them from escaping, but also to prevent people from entering in the Penitentiary to abduct prisoners. While the scene is played for laughs, the Wardens do suck at their job.
• Like Father, Like Son: According to Ma Dalton he's the one who's the most like his late father, explaining that it's why she always had a soft spot for him despite being hard on him.
• Manipulative Bastard: Has his moments, like when he convinces the Natives to attack Daisy Town.
• Mister Big: Shortest of the brothers and also the one in charge.
• The Napoleon: Short in both size and temper. Jack even compares the two at one point.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: He occasionally comes up with good plans, such as the one of passing himself and their brothers as Ma Dalton to rob banks, knowing that bankers wouldn't expect Ma to be dangerous and that reports of Ma Dalton being everywhere would disorientate Lucky Luke and the authorities. The plan works smoothly, even more when Ma joins in, with Luke and the authorities being unable of catching them until Luke formulates a trap involving "Mother's Day" to catch Joe's brothers using their desire to please Ma.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: He often insists on killing Luke himself. He's even saved him a few times, just so he could have the chance to kill Luke himself.
• Psychopathic Manchild: When all the other kids liked to play cowboys and Indians he liked to play cops and robbers most likely without the cops, a game that he never stopped. There is much tantrum-throwing when either his Ma or Lucky Luke spoil his playing.
• The Resenter: Out of all his brothers, he is the one who hates Luke the most.
• Shorter Means Smarter: Joe is both the shortest and the leader of the gang, but it is actually a subversion in that he thinks he's the brains of the gang (rather in the way that Oliver Hardy's character believed himself to be much smarter than Stan Laurel's), but he's actually just as stupid as his brothers, only in a different way. Goscinny himself once pointed out that Joe is merely the most evil of the Daltons and that evil does not equal smart.
• Spanner in the Works: In Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure, in an attempt to buy time to find the loot he and his brothers stole from the New York City banks and hid in one of several wagons, he manipulates a group of settlers into thinking that the journey to California would be much more perilous than they believed, forcing Luke to accompany them and bring them along, giving them eighty days to find the loot. In doing so, he foiled Edgar Crook's plan to cheat the settlers out of their money and their lands by having Luke overcome every attempt at sabotage Crook threw the settlers' way.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: His impatience proves to be his downfall at times.
• Trigger-Happy: His answer for the slightest provocation is to use his gun.
• The Un-Favourite: He has a big issue with Ma Dalton liking Averell more than him. However, she eventually reveals that Joe is actually her favorite because he is just like his father. The reason she is so hard on him is because he is the smartest and toughest of his brothers and needs to be able to look after them, since they would likely get themselves killed without him.

William Dalton

Voiced in French by: Jacques Balutin (Daisy Town, Ballad of the Daltons, Season 1 of Lucky Luke) | Michel Tugot-Doris (Lucky Luke, Season 2) | Éric Legrand (The New Adventures of Lucky Luke) | Alexis Tomassian (Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure) | Julien Cafaro (The Daltons)

Voiced in Swedish by: Peter Sjöquist

Played by: Dominic Barto (Lucky Luke, 1991) | Romain Berger (Lucky Luke and the Daltons, 2004)

The second oldest Dalton brother. In a number of stories and adaptations mistakenly named "Jack."

---

• Big Brother Worship: To a certain extent he and Jack admire Joe and follow him out of respect. They have their limits however.
• Catchphrase: "Calm down, Joe!" and "Shut up, Averell!" (shared with Jack).
• Co-Dragons: With Jack. The only ones that think highly of Joe and the only ones that he considers accomplishes.
• Even Evil Has Standards: As he so eloquently put it, killing Lucky Luke is fine but wanting to kill a baby is just not nice.
• The Gambler : In Lone Riders, he end ups winning the entire money at The Casino. He then buys the casino and tries to make 1 million $ as fast as possible.
• Greek Chorus: Between their more fleshed-out brothers, William and Jack function as this most of the time. Which helps to explain why even René Goscinny and Morris mixed up the two on several occasions.
• Gun Nut: To the extent that he treats his guns like his best friends, has a whole hotel room turned into an arsenal and considers death by Russian Roulette as the most poetic and touching way to go. Unless it is his time to go...
• The Heart: Another role he shares with Jack. As such, they constantly need to keep Joe off Averell's throat.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In his confrontation with Luke, having only one bullet left, he tried to defeat him by playing the Russian Roulette with him. Needless to say, Luke, being Born Lucky, easily survived the first round and easily tricked him into believing he was losing so he could take him without killing him.
• Idiot Ball: Not as much as Averell, obviously, since he, alongside Jack, is the most sensible member of the crew, but some stories do show that when Averell isn't around, William is the one who takes over the role as the family dunce:
  • In one Rantanplan comic, when the brothers escape prison to look for the kidnapped Averell, William makes so many reckless decisions that Joe at one point attacks him with an angry "You... you Averell!";
  • It's also worth noting how in the comic "Rintindumb's inheritance", a running gag occurs in which he is convinced that he could interact with chinese people by speaking gibberish.
• More Dakka: If in doubt and Luke still stands, shoot some more!
• One-Steve Limit: Signed as "Dalton, Bill" in his first appearance, but since Bill is also the name of one of his deceased cousins he has since always been addressed and referred to as William Dalton.
• Trigger-Happy: Displayed in full in his first appearance. There are only traces of this in later stories such as Daisy Town where he has a habit of pointing his gun instead of his finger, and shooting with his gun instead of touching with his hand both in order to feel natural and to make a point.

Jack Dalton

Voiced by: Jacques Jouanneau (Daisy Town) | Gérard Hernandez (Ballad of the Daltons and Season 1 of Lucky Luke) | Olivier Hémon (Lucky Luke, Season 2) | Éric Legrand (The New Adventures of Lucky Luke) | Christophe Lemoine (Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure) | Bruno Flender (The Daltons)

Voiced in Swedish by: Tommy Nilsson

Played by: Bo Gray (1991) | Saïd Serrari (Lucky Luke and the Daltons; 2004)

The second youngest Dalton brother. In a number of stories and adaptations accidentally named "William".

---

• Big Brother Worship: To a certain extent, he and William admire Joe and follow him out of respect. Their limits are often broken despite that.
• Catchphrase: "Joe, calm down!" and "Shut up, Averell!" (shared with William).
• Co-Dragons: With William. It's in that role where they act as one person.
• Corrupt Politician: In Lone Riders, Jack tries to kidnap and ransom a bank director for 1 million $ but finds out that he can't give him money. However, that same director is looking for someone who will become a puppet mayor that will serve his interests. He went so far as to give Jack an Mayor Impunity to prevent Lucky Luke from arresting him.
• Delusions of Eloquence: He believes he is the most sophisticated in the family. Being the only one that can read to an elementary school level technically makes him this by default.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Surprisingly. In the New Adventures episode "The Daltons' Baby", he objects along with William and Averell to Joe's decision to leave the baby to the vultures, demonstrating that killing babies is off-limits for them.
• Greek Chorus: Between their more fleshed-out brothers, William and Jack function as this most of the time. Which helps to explain why even Goscinny and Morris on several occasions mixed up the two.
• The Heart: Another role he shares with William. As such, they constantly need to keep Joe off Averell's throat.
• Hidden Depths: He was apparently a good student for as long as he was at school. His father pulled him out when he got a merit for good behavior and he is the most litterate of the group.
• Master of Disguise: In his original appearance. This was dropped in later books, removing one of his unique traits.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Any pretense of him being cultured or super intelligent comes mainly from being from a family (and era) where almost no one knows how to read.
• Smug Snake: All three are this to some extent (Averell not so much), but he is almost as much as Joe, delighting in his own cunning and believing that he will be the one to trick Luke.
• Wicked Cultured: Compared to his brothers, anyway. In the The Daltons cartoon (one of the adaptations where he's the one named "William"), he's portrayed as a big reader, which means he's the most knowledgeable about things like history and different cultures, sometimes acting as Mr. Exposition to his brothers. This trait was given a few nods in subsequent comics, such as "A Cowboy in Cotton," where Jack is the most enthused about reading and spends much of the album with his nose in a book, providing trivia and exposition about the circumstances the brothers end up in.

Averell Dalton

Voiced in French by: Pierre Tornade (Daisy Town, Ballad of the Daltons, Lucky Luke) | Bernard Alane (The New Adventures of Lucky Luke, Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure, The Daltons)

Voiced in Swedish by: Mattias Knave

Played by: Fritz Sperberg (1991) | Ramzy Bedia (Lucky Luke and the Daltons; 2004)

The youngest, tallest and dumbest (or at any rate most obviously dumb) of the Dalton brothers.

---

• Adaptational Badass: While he is still the stupidest in the The Daltons TV series, Averell has shown tremendous potential as a Renaissance Man: he has been a talented artist (painter, sculptor, interior decorator, origami crafter, puppeteer, gardener...); a chef (baker, pastry chef...); an animal trainer (horses, birds); a musician (horn, duck call); and even retained some of his previous athletic prowess (karate master, vine swinger...).
• Anti-Villain: He simply follows his family's footsteps. Some gags are even about him not being wanted for his crimes since he is so harmless. Although once he was on probation, he did say it was funnier when they were stealing from banks and having the saloon for themselves.
• Big Eater: To the point one of his Catch Phrases is "When do we eat?"
• Big Little Brother: The tallest and the youngest Dalton brother.
• The Brute: He originally was introduced as the physically strongest of the the four. He still displays shades of this occasionally in later books, but for the most part, he is essentially portrayed as just the stupidest.
• Butt-Monkey: He usually is the one who takes hits when Joe is pissed off.
• Catchphrase: "When are we eating?". In ''Tortillas for the Daltons" he learns to say it in Spanish.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Despite his stupidity, he can be just as dangerous as his brothers when he wants to be.
• The Ditz: Big time. According to his brothers he only learned to walk when he was seven.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Not surprisingly. In the new adventures episode The Daltons' Baby he objects along with Jack and William to Joe's decision to leave the baby to the vultures, demonstrating that killing babies is off-limits for them.
  • He also shames Joe for stealing from their uncle Marcel, as Ma taught them to steal only from strangers or the State.
• Extreme Omnivore:
  Averell: *crunch* I really like foreign cooking! What's this delicious crust around the frijoles?
  Emilio Espuelas: That's called a terracotta bowl, amigo.
• Fatal Flaw: Gluttony and Sloth. If he wasn't always hungry and if he exercised his brains a bit more, he could be as big a threat as Joe.
• Friendly Enemies: Of all the Daltons, he has the most cordial relationship with Lucky Luke. He's the only one who's fine just having a conversation with Luke and mainly opposes him because his brothers do.
• Genius Ditz: Occasionally shown to possess unexpected skills, such as being able to craft a fake but perfect-looking revolver out of soap, but since he needed help to get all the details down he stole a real and loaded revolver from a negligent guard two weeks before and used it as model. He wanted to use the soap gun for their escape and offer the real one as Joe's birthday gift.
• Harmless Villain: His occasional bouts of competency aside, Averell isn't a very motivated criminal and probably wouldn't be one if it wasn't for his family. When the Daltons briefly went their separate ways to see who could do best on their own, Averell ended up becoming a hugely popular chef (albeit with occasionally unscrupulous business practices which were however not his doing). In comparison, Jack become a corrupt casino boss, William a corrupt mayor and Joe just went on a huge crime spree.
• Lethal Chef: Despite being the Big Eater, he is horrendous at cooking and will react quite violently when someone is criticizing his meals as seen in Daltons City. However, in Lone Riders, he is able to cook perfectly with an Italian pizzaiolo. Furthermore, in the The Daltons series, he has been a proficient Baker (Bread War), French fryer (Fries for free) and Pastry Chef (A Piece of Cake)
• Minion with an F in Evil: To the point that when first introduced, he had a "Not Wanted" poster instead of a "Wanted" one. He did act a bit meaner after his training with his brothers, but later books turn him back into a borderline Stupid Good character.
• Momma's Boy: He has always been Ma Dalton's favourite son. Technically Joe is her favorite, but she treats him with Tough Love because she has higher expectations of Joe. She dotes on Averell because she knows he will never amount to much.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain: One episode of the Rantanplan series has two scientists kidnapping him and using him as a test subject for a formula attempted to make him intelligent. This ends up turning him into an Evil Genius Bruiser who actually was even more dangerous and competent than Joe, to the point the leading scientist ended up turning him back to normal and destroying his formula.
  • And even in his normal state, there have been moments where he showed himself to be more dangerous than one would expect like The Dalton Cousins where he actually fought Luke to a tie and the Dalton's Escape where he came the closest to simply shooting Lucky Luke dead, stopped only by Joe's decision to take him as a prisoner and slave.
• Pet the Dog: Literally; he has a soft spot for Rantanplan and is, on the whole, quite kind to him.
• Sarcasm-Blind: He often interprets Joe's snarky comments about him literally. For example, when they are trying to figure out who is using which fake identity:

  Averell: And who am I supposed to be?
  Joe: You are an idiot!
  Averell: Oh, okay, that's all I wanted to know.

  • Taken up several notches as he spends the rest of the story introducing himself as "Idiot Jones" as if it was his name.
• The Runt at the End: In a twist of this role, he may be the largest and strongest of his family but he always comes last in repeating the thoughts, words and actions of the group and he often screws them up anyway, earning himself some scowls from his three brothers for ruining their style.

Extended Dalton Family

Ma Dalton

Voiced in French by: Perrette Pradier (Lucky Luke) | Véronique Augereau (The New Adventures of Lucky Luke) | Barbara Tissier (The Daltons)

Played by: Ruth Buzzy (Lucky Luke, 1992 series) | Marthe Villalonga (Lucky Luke and the Daltons, 2004)

The aged mother of Joe, William, Jack and Averell Dalton.

---

• Affably Evil: Unlike her sons, she is a genuinely nice and kind person... as long as her boys aren't in danger.
• Anti-Villain: She isn't actually villainous, and any times she will play an antagonistic role, it usually is out of love for her children. Luke actually is in decently good terms with her otherwise.
• Badass Boast: Once delivered a great one to Lucky Luke:
  "You were nothing but a newborn when I learnt how to use a weapon!"
• Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Surprisingly despite her nice behaviour she is as much a Card-Carrying Villain as the rest of her family. She is proud of raising her sons to be a bunch of scoundrels, and is more annoyed by their swearing and stupidity.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Of the Affably Evil variety.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Not quite to the same extent as Joe, but she has quite a bit of pride in her villainous heritage. She got quite mad when a photographer said her kids didn't look scary in formal wear.
• Establishing Character Moment: Her first pages has her kindly thanking Luke for helping her cross the street, then makes a fake hold-up for her meat and right after the butcher muses that her rusty old gun is probably empty we cut to a panel where she shoots a rattlesnake dead from a long distance with her revolver.
• Happily Married: It's implied that she did very much love Pa Dalton, even if his hot-headed and impatient nature did annoy her at times, as she always went to free him from prison and admits that she has a special fondness for Joe because of how much he reminds her of his father
• Kindhearted Cat Lover: She really loves Sweetie, her cat. She dislikes dogs, however, and finds Rantanplan particularly annoying.
• Mama Bear: And how! She was ready to challenge Luke to a duel for her kids and likely would have won (Lucky Luke being unwilling to even hurt her and Ma being a great shot). She also did everything, even making a pact with a Native chieftain to get wives for her sons when they were about to be hanged, to save them from being executed.
• Miniature Senior Citizens: Which makes her even similar to her sons in looks.
• My Beloved Smother: Is perfectly fine learning her boys were let out on bail, until it turns out Belle Starr paid for it. She immediately goes to get them out of her clutches.
  Ma: A woman! How horrible!
  Sweety: Hsssss!
  Ma: This is outrageous! My little boys aren't old enough to be consorting with women!
• Never Mess with Granny: Possibly the most well-known example in Franco-Belgian Comics. She's also notably the only person to who Rantanplan obeys.
• No Name Given: She's only ever referred to as "Ma", but since her sons are explicitly referred to as the cousins of the real-life Dalton brothers, Ma is a sibling of either Lewis or Adeline Dalton.
• Parental Favoritism: Toward Averell, whom she spoils and is affectionate the most to, much to the jealousy of her other sons. Though she does admits that while she harsher on him, her actual favorite is Joe because he's the most like his father.
• Retired Badass: Never went to prison since no one was able to have her convicted and she told her children she used to break their father out of jail before they were even born.
• Retired Outlaw: She was mostly an accomplice until her husband died. Afterwards, she lives off the charity of the townsfolk.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Aside from the Dalton family, Ma Dalton is also loosely based on criminal matriarch Kate "Ma" Barker.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Townsfolks used to go with her mock hold up and give her groceries for free since she was a kindly old woman who colored the Wild West with her eccentricity. Then she showed them that her rusty gun was actually loaded the whole time.
• Why Are You Not My Son?: While she very much loves her real sons, Ma has expressed admiration for Luke's skills, wit and determination, stating that he'd make a wonderful son... if only he wasn't so insistent on bothersome things like "the law" and "justice".

Pa Dalton

The father of the Dalton Cousins, who died some time before the comics began.

---

• Generation Xerox: According to Ma Dalton, he looked exactly like Joe, and his "Wanted!" Poster does confirm that. However, that means he also looks exactly like his other kids, and since the poster doesn't show height, it's not confirmed if he was as short as Joe as well.
• Like Parent, Like Child: Ma implies that he was very hot-headed, short-tempered and impatient, traits Joe inherited from him, with Ma saying that Joe strongly reminds her of him.
• No Name Given: His first name is never revealed, he's simply referred to as the father of the Dalton Cousins.
• Prison Escape Artist: According to Ma, she helped Pa escape from prison several times long before their children were born.
• Safe Cracking: This was his specialty when he was alive, until one fateful day when he used too much dynamite...
• "Wanted!" Poster: He's already dead by the time the series begins, so his only appearance is through one of these.

The Original Dalton Gang

A notorious gang of outlaws, consisting of brothers Bob, Grat, Emmett and Bill Dalton, who spread terror throughout the West long before their inept cousins ever did.

---

• Adaptational Badass: Like a lot of legends from the Old West, the Daltons' reputation was heavily embellished over the years, while contemporary records showed them to be fairly incompetent, albeit not to the extent of their fictional cousins. Here, they're just as dangerous and vicious as their legends made them out to be.
• Adapted Out: The reason the real-life group was known as The Dalton Gang and not just the Dalton Brothers was because several non-related outlaws were also members; George "Bitter Creek" Newcomb, "Blackface" Charlie Bryant (neither of whom participated in the Coffeyville robbery), Dick Broadwell, Bill Powers, Bill Doolin and Charlie Pierce. Broadwell and Powers died in Coffeyville along with Bob and Grat, while Doolin fled alongside Bill Dalton. None of them have ever appeared in any Lucky Luke album.
• Death by Adaptation: The historical Emmett Dalton did not die in Coffeyville, instead being sentenced to 14 years in prison, and eventually being released, dying of old age in 1937. Here, at the end of the album, he's said to have been hanged with his brothers — though this is Retconned in the later album The Dalton Uncles, where Emmet's fate is changed to be more in line with his historical counterpart.
• Dies Differently in Adaptation: In real life, the Daltons (with the exception of Emmett) were killed in a shootout with a posse of townspeople after their bank heist in Coffeyville failed. Here, they're defeated by Luke, taken to prison, and eventually hanged.
• The Dreaded: Regarded as among the most feared criminals in the west, being able to scare folks with a simple boo.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: The original version of the comic had Bob getting shot through the head by Luke in a gunfight while hanging from his suspenders from a lamp. For obvious reasons, this was changed for the finished version as him just being captured in a barrel.
• Magic Plastic Surgery: Those Daltons temporarily have plastic surgery to look completely different... and easily revert to their original faces soon after.
• Sadly Mythtaken: Bill Dalton was not a member of the Dalton Gang when his brothers died. After their deaths, he would go on to form the Wild Bunch with Bill Doolin.
• Small Role, Big Impact: They appeared once, but their encounter with Lucky Luke would eventually start the feud between him and their cousins Joe, William, Jack and Averell.
• Sole Survivor: Emmet's fate is retconned so he survived being repeatedly shot.
• Team Member in the Adaptation: As stated above, Bill wasn't actually a member of the gang in real life.
• Villainous Legacy: Their crimes would inspire their cousins to follow in their footsteps and battle Lucky Luke.

Marcel Dalton

Uncle of the usual Dalton Gang, who lives in Switzerland and works as a banker. In the eponymous book, he comes to the US and tries to get his nephews to work an honest job, with... expected results.

---

• Strong Family Resemblance: Like the rest of his family. Being on the tall and lanky end, he looks exactly like Averell in a suit.
• White Sheep: Apparently the only Dalton who ever stayed on the right side of the law.

Junior

The illegitimate son of Emmett Dalton and an unnamed saloon girl, Junior was left under the custodianship of his uncle Averell and his chaperone, Lucky Luke.

---

• Canon Foreigner: Emmett Dalton did not have any known children.
• Disappeared Dad: Emmett survived the Coffeyville shootout due to a Retcon, but never returned to his girlfriend, and it's unknown if he even knew about his son.
• In the Blood: Seemed to be the case at first, as Junior was quite a Spoiled Brat and bully, but all he needed was a proper role model, as Luke managed to turn him around.
• White Sheep: Like Marcel Dalton, he's not inherently evil like his father and uncles, just in the need of someone to raise him right.

---