By Morris & Goscinny
Publisher: Cinebook
ISBN: 978-1-905460-83-0
You could probably argue that over here in Blighty, Lucky Luke is the third best known European comic export after Asterix and Tintin, but that said you'd have been hard-pressed until recently to have read many of his adventures in English.
Like all of Goscinny's work, The Black Hills is packed with wit and full of fun, but what sets the Lucky Luke books apart is that Goscinny is clearly a fan of the American West and is able to spin enjoyable tales out of the real-life characters and situations of the time. In this instance Lucky Luke has to escort four bumbling scientists across the Black Hills to get to the wilderness of Wyoming, so along the way we experience lawlessness, the perils of the railroad, the Cheyenne and the dangers of fire-water. It's hardly an educational text book, but the creators clearly care about the subject matter, leaving you feeling that little bit more enlightened.
Like with most of the books, Lucky Luke himself takes a back seat to the auxiliary characters ending up very much the straight-man to everyone else's ineptitude and foolishness, but it works, and it raises a smile, and isn't that what we pay pay our money for?
And if you liked that: This is book 16 in the Cinebook collection, so plenty more to try.
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