YMMV / Lucky Luke

In General

• Can't Un-Hear It: In French, the voices of Pierre Trabaud (Joe Dalton) and Pierre Tornade (Averell Dalton) were pretty memorable and immediately recognizable, perfectly rendering the characters as The Napoleon and The Ditz respectively. It helps that they voiced the characters in all of the early animated installments, that being Daisy Town, Ballad of the Daltons and the first animated series (though Trabaud only did the first season).
• Older Than They Think:
  • "I'm a Poor Lonesome Cowboy" is a Real Life American Old West song the author of which is unknown, neither Morris nor René Goscinny made it up. It was first used moviewise in 1945's Along Came Jones with Gary Cooper and Loretta Young.
  • The Kid Lucky Spinoff Babies cartoon started in 2020. Not many people know it's based off a comic book series of its own that started in 1995.

Comic Books

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: 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 youself do, it's physically impossible not to draw your gun at least a little bit faster than your own shadow.
• Anvilicious: General criticism against Jul's stories is that he tends to hammer the Aesop to the readers' face, like in A Cowboy In High Cotton which tackled racism and Rantaplan's Ark, about veganism.
• Awesome Art:
  • Morris' style, even though it's not as detailed compared to other creators' works, is still appealing to the eye. Not only it's expressive, but it's full of grand cinematic panels and characters whose designs resemble that of famous western actors, making it Genius Bonus for western fans. It's true, however, that it faced a serious decline in the '90s…
  • Post-Morris era may be full of problems, but Achdé's style is definitely not one of them. The current artist does a great job mimicking Morris' style, as well as being extremely detailed and expressive.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Rantanplan. He was popular enough to have his own spin-off series, but there're also those who find him annoying and believe he makes things worse.
  • The Lucky Luke fanbase is split into two sections; the first section likes the Daltons and prefers them to Lucky Luke, even hoping that they'll beat him one day, while the second section, although they do find them funny in some stories, also thinks that they're overused and boring. The Daltons' base-breaking status was the result of the Wolverine Publicity they received in plenty post-Goscinny stories, where they'd appear even when the plot had nothing to do with them, just because they're the series' most iconic villains and for cheap laughs.
• Broken Base: Jolly Jumper's gender is a huge topic in Greece for the following reason: for many decades, Jolly Jumper was written as a female mare called Dolly. That was until the 73th issue was released, whose plot had to do with Jolly Jumper falling in love with a beautiful mare named Province. To avoid making her a lesbian, the publishers changed Dolly's gender to male, something that was followed in the next albums. Those who protest this change, mainly for being familiar with Dolly as a mare, state that her gender doesn't affect the story at all, that the horse's blonde mane and sassy personality fit her more as a female and like the idea of her being the only female companion in Lucky Luke's life. Those, on the other hand, who are actually welcomed to that change, say it's for the better, since the next generation will grow up being familiar with Dolly's correct gender.
• Crazy Is Cool: Calamity Jane is a Ladette Boisterous Bruiser Sir Swears-a-Lot who will shoot you if you don't show elementary gallantry toward women, constantly defies the Damsel in Distress trope and generally rivals Luke in sheer badassery.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Calamity Jane, for being just as crazy, yet cool as Lucky Luke, constantly defying the Damsel in Distress trope, as well as being one of the few prominent badass female characters in the series.
  • Ma Dalton may only appeared for a couple of stories, but fans absolutely adore her and consider her to be one of the funniest characters in the series.
• Estrogen Brigade:
  • It's not uncommon to hear from women who grew up with the series/franchise that they had a crush on the titular character himself, mainly helped from the fact that Luke is drawn in a pretty appealing caricatured way.
  • Averell has an unexpected amount of lady admirers himself, mostly due to being the the least evil of the Dalton brothers as well as his stupidity coming off as Adorkable to some.
• Fanon: Lucky Luke being asexual is a popular one due to his Celibate Hero status.
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • Some fans completely ignore every story written after Morris' death, others do the same with every story written after Goscinny's death and then there's a third camp who explicitly read only the stories that Goscinny wrote.
  • When it comes to the various animated adaptions, fans don’t care much for the '90s series. Despite each episode being a very faithful adaption of various comics, a lot of the comedy was heavily undermined by the cheap production values and clunky pacing. Not helping matters is that each episode had to cut out a lot of content from the original to fit it in a 22-minute episode.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Like many French-Belgian comics, Lucky Luke is extremely popular in Scandinavia, especially Sweden, to the point that there's a long-standing live show at the western-themed amusement park High Chaparral, featuring Lucky Luke and the Daltons.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Killing off Jolly Jumper in Rantaplan's Ark. We, the audience, are quickly informed that the shot of the bandit merely injured him.
• More Popular Replacement: The second set of Daltons have ended up becoming much more famous and iconic than the original, to the point that many believe that the Real Life Daltons were indeed named Joe, William, Jack and Averell.
• My Real Daddy: It's not like Morris isn't acknowledged for his work (he did the drawings until his passing after all), but many people choose to primarily associate the series with writer René Goscinny. The period when he was the writer is widely referred as the "Golden Age" of the series and the most iconic stories are mostly the ones he wrote. Not only that, but he's responsible for the comic's most known elements, like it being an Affectionate Parody of The Western genre, Luke riding Jolly Jumper at the end of each story while singing "I'm a poor lonesome cowboy" etc.
• Narm Charm: The shot that injured Jolly Jumper in Rantaplan's Ark and made Luke mistaken him for dead is a pretty heavy thing to put in a light and comedic comic like Lucky Luke. Yet, it still comes across as shocking and it leads into a last panel where Luke choses not to ride Jolly so he won't burden him.
• Seasonal Rot: Laurent Gerra's run is particularly disliked. The thinly-veiled celebrity and politician parodies (Gerra is primarily a comedian who made his fame with caricatures and imitations of French politicians and celebrities) which are a surefire way to end up Unintentional Period Pieces don't help.
• Tear Jerker:
  • In A Cure For The Daltons, the psychatrist's treatment actually works on Averell, who begins to regret his life of crime and his underlying good nature shines through. At one point, he actually breaks down sobbing after he steals thread from a store (the psychiatrist had gotten him interested in needlepoint).
    Averell: I know it's bad to steal, but I couldn't help myself! Go ahead and eat without me, I'm not hungry...
  • In the opening, Senator Beuregard is violently opposed to the idea of rehabilitating criminals, and it's all but stated he's like that because of his abusive father.
  • In A Cowboy in High Cotton, Luke inherits a large cotton farm, including the recently-freed African-American workforce. When he arrives, one of the workers speaks up to him, demanding payment for the months they've gone unpaid since the previous owner died. Two of the workers in the crowd are utterly terrified, certain that Luke will shoot her dead any moment. It's a sober reminder of the realities of slavery. While the audience knows that Luke would never harm anyone, the former slaves know all too well how cruel white men can be, and have no reason to expect Luke to be any different.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The decision to have Luke stop smoking and chewing a straw instead was not received well by some fans, and even by anti-smoking fans, who consider the cigarette that The Hero used to smoke more iconic and fitting for the character.
  • As noted above in the Broken Base section, Dolly (the Greek name of Jolly Jumper) having his gender changed to male, which didn't sit well with the Greek fans who have grown up with Dolly as female. Then again, there's also those who don't like the original decision to make the horse female and rename "her" Dolly.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Bass Reeves was the first major black cowboy to appear in the comic and being put on an equal term with Lucky Luke (with Luke even confirming that he learnt plenty of things from him), so it was a bit disappointing when he was only featured in the beginning and reappearing later at the end, when the heroes are in major danger.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Cowboy in Paris is the first story where Luke travels across the Atlantic Ocean. Unfortunately, this happens in the second half of the plot and when the cowboy arrives at the french capital, we don't get to see much of it.
• Values Dissonance:
  • This being an Affectionate Parody comic that started in the 1950s (when westerns were one of the most popular film genres in Europe) and is set in 19th-century America, there are depictions of black people, Chinese people and Native Americans that can be considered highly offensive (though as Morris himself often pointed out. Every character in the book is a not exactly flattering stereotype). Some recent editions of the comic need a foreword from the writers that explains that this was how things were in those times, and no insult was intended from a comic book.
  • Bride of Lucky Luke is full of gender stereotypes (women being terrible drivers, afraid of mice, the hairdresser being an obvious Camp Gay etc.) that can come across as sexist in today's society and one would think that they were sexist even back when the story was published. In all these stereotypes, you can still spot a sense of Irony however... There's also some Fair for Its Day to be found in it, considering how the Dalton brothers are portrayed as lazy and messy and how Jenny O'Sullivan actually compells them into cleaning their own hideout and doing other kinds of chores they normally don't care about.
• Villain Decay: The Dalton Brothers have suffered quite a bit of it over the years. In Les Cousins Dalton, their 1958 debut, they get the best of Lucky Luke, forcing him to service for a time. Within the story each brother is given different character traits. Joe is the mastermind, William is obsessed with guns and using everything on sight for target practice, Jack is a master of disguise. Averell is naive but also a superb boxer. In fact he fights Luke to a standstill. Luke only wins by using his cunning, not his fists. The two combatants agree to meet for a rematch and retreat to their own rooms for sleep. Only Luke manages to releases mosquitoes in Averell's room. The following day, Luke is fresh after a good night's sleep, Averell has not managed to sleep at all. He can barely walk, much less fight. Since then, several stories portray them as incompetents, and in some stories William and Jack may as well be interchangeable for all the characterization they get, if they are not relegated to background status within the group, where Joe and Averell tend to get the spotlight almost exclusively.

Animated Films

• Lucky Luke: Daisy Town
• Lucky Luke: Ballad of the Daltons
• Go West! A Lucky Luke Adventure

Animated Series

• Lucky Luke (1983)
• The New Adventures of Lucky Luke
• The Daltons
• Kid Lucky

Live-Action Films

• Lucky Luke and the Daltons
• Lucky Luke (2009)

Video Games

• Awesome Music: One track in particular stands out, "Train" from the first GB/GBC Lucky Luke game. While the series itself shows pretty good music overall, this one is bound to get stuck in your head for a while.
• Good Bad Bugs: A glitch exploited in an out-of-sync-audio longplay allows a steamboat to ride the riverside.
• Nightmare Fuel: The GBC title Lucky Luke: Desperado Train can get pretty creepy at times. Case in point:
  • The BGM for "Explosive Mine".
  • The Slasher Smile given by the guy in "Crazy Telegram!" if you screw up too many times (yup, someone working with a telegraph has a Slasher Smile - go figure).
  • The Scare Chord played when you die.
  • A Continue option (available by collecting a silver coin with a hole in it) where you have to shoot faster than your own shadow: they managed to make the former image for the main article◊ creepy thanks to Dramatic Wind and lack of music.
  • Most prominently, the Game Over screen, where you first see someone pointing a Gun at Lucky Luke's back (a Continue Screen available only in Sheriff mode) and then shifts to Barnaby the same-as-always undertaker as he holds his hands in cynical delight, with a poster reading Game Over (in typical "western" font). Can easily become High Octane for the most sensitive.

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