Lucky Luke is a 2-season French-Belgian-German-American co-production Western animated series based off the comic book series of the same name created by Morris. While the two previous animated Lucky Luke entries, the films Daisy Town and Ballad of the Daltons, were original stories, this one lifted stories directly from the comics.
Lucky Luke is a solitary street-smart and fast shooting cowboy drifting through The Wild West. Accompanied by his faithful horse Jolly Jumper, and most of the time by dumb prison guard dog Rantanplan, Luke finds himself confronted with various situations and has to deal with plenty of bandits and thugs, and the Dalton Brothers chiefly among them.
The first season aired in the USA first, then in Europe, in 1983-1984. Hanna-Barbera was involved in that run (hoping to replicate the success of The Smurfs in the US, they dropped out when it didn't). A revival with IDDH happened in 1991-1992. The 52 albums (26 for each season) that got adapted in the series in total range from 1953 to 1988, which means the series covers pretty much all of René Goscinny's Lucky Luke comic book run, plus those of a few other writers who took over after his passing in 1977.
Another adaptation in the form of an animated series, this time with original stories, was made in 2001-2003 and titled The New Adventures of Lucky Luke.
Lucky Luke provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: In "Sarah Bernhardt", the Historical Domain Character from the title is replaced with a generic opera singer from Boston for some reason (the episode is still called Sarah Bernhardt, inconsistently).
- Alliterative Title: Lucky Luke.
- Art Shift: The art style evolved between the Hanna-Barbera season and the IDDH revival, with the latter's animation being more detailed and dynamic and sticking closer to the comics.
- Ascended Extra: Rantanplan was frequently added as an extra character to episodes based on comics in which he did not appear.
- Blasting It Out of Their Hands: Like in the comics, Luke disarms his enemies by shooting their guns or other weapons out of their hands most of the time. He does it to several people, including Joe Dalton (whose gun he completely destroys), in the Title Sequence.
- Casting Gag:
- In French, Jacques Thébault voiced Luke. Thébault previously dubbed James West (Robert Conrad) in The Wild Wild West, another famous Western hero from an episodic series.
- Also from The Wild Wild West, quite amusingly, the French voice actor of the short-sized Joe Dalton (Luke's Arch-Enemy), Pierre Trabaud, voiced the Depraved Dwarf Dr. Miguelito Loveless (Michael Dunn), West's Arch-Enemy.
- Compilation Movie: In France, an arc of three episodes centering around the Dalton brothers and their mother Ma Dalton was released theatrically as a film in theaters in 1983 and titled Les Dalton en Cavale (The Daltons on the Run).
- Instrumental Theme Tune: The 1991 theme
. - Jumping Out of a Cake: As with the famous cover of Dalton City, Lucky Luke jumps out of a big cake the Daltons were about to eat, guns blazing and even twirling them.
- Leitmotif: Like the comics, each episode ends with Luke (with the singing voice of Pat Woods) singing "I'm a Poor Lonesome Cowboy" (first heard in the franchise in 1971 with Daisy Town).
- Lighter and Softer: Some of the darker plots of the earlier Lucky Luke comics are toned down severely here. For example, in "Dr. Doxey's Elixir" the titular elixir merely gives people a green skin but no other ill effects, while in the original comic it is a lethal poison.
- No Smoking: Morris started depicting Luke with a straw of hay in his mouth instead of a cigaret in the comics the very year of release of this series, and the series followed suit not only for post-1983 albums but also for all the older albums it adapted.
- Race Lift: In "Le Pied-tendre", the Native American servant of Waldo Badmington is replaced by a Caucasian man.
- Recycled Soundtrack: Several tracks from the score of Ballad of the Daltons were reused in the series, due to composer Claude Bolling working on every animated Lucky Luke installment between 1971 and 1992.
- Replaced the Theme Tune: The show had two different opening soundtracks, a sung one ("Bang Bang Lucky Luke") in 1983-1984 and an instrumental one (banjo, honkytonk piano and harmonica) for the 1991-1992 revival.
- Revival: The series lasted only one season and 26 episodes in 1983-1984 when Hanna-Barbera bowed out after an unsuccessful US run (and despite its success in Europe). It was renewed in 1991 with animation studio IDDH replacing Hanna-Barbera and 26 more episodes were added, which made the series adapt pretty much the whole René Goscinny run of Lucky Luke and then some.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Averted. The Daltons are still alive at the end of "Hors-la-loi"... because these are the fictional Daltons, not their real-life "cousins".
- Tomboyish Voice: In the French version, Calamity Janes has a low and raspy voice courtesy of Micheline Dax.
- Truer to the Text: The previous animated entries, Daisy Town and Ballad of the Daltons, didn't adapt any story in particular and instead used various characters and situations from the comics. This series, comparably to The Adventures of Tintin, went for a straight adaptation of stories from the existing comics canon at the time (that of Goscinny and some others made after his passing).
- William Telling:
- In the Title Sequence, Calamity Jane shoots the hats of all four Daltons off their heads as they leave a saloon running in fear with one single bullet, and all four hats perfectly align on the saloon's stairs as a result.
- In the title sequence again, the Dalton brothers pile up apples on Rantanplan's head like in Dalton City and shoot at them. Fortunately, they're good enough shots to get all the apples without killing the dog (who's so dumb he didn't flee in the first place).
- You Don't Look Like You: Some characters have different designs compared to their comic book selves.
- The generic opera diva who replaces Sarah Bernhardt doesn't look like her.
- Jenny O'Sullivan from Bride of Lucky Luke also has a different design.
