Ah, the many ups and downs of a con-man's career (Six sequential strips from Lucky Luke's Ghost Town / La Ville fantôme, 1965)

The other day I re-read Matthieu Bonhomme's two re-interpretations of the LL character / universe, i.e.: L'Homme qui tua Lucky Luke and Wanted Lucky Luke. I found them even better than the first time around, altho the feel is vastly different from the source, with those two volumes having quite the brooding, sombre, 'Clint Eastwood' vibe.

Later, I backtracked to a couple of the earlier, Goscinny-written stories and tried to get an impression of how much things had changed. Which was a lot, frankly! Here then is an amusing sequence I rediscovered-- it involves a couple of ruthless card-sharks and con-men (of the 'clever idiot' ilk), thinking to victimize the very town Luke is staying at. Right so, let's continue the sequence:

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I think most would agree that Goscinny's LL stories aren't quite at the level of his peak Astérix work, but I think it's also good to remember that Luke's stories were set in a fairly narrow geographical and historical range (i.e. the 'Old West' of the mid-to-late 1800's), which had already been done to exhaustion across multiple media. Whereas IMO, Ancient Gaul was an incredibly fertile palette, open to bringing in a huge range of ancient cultures, histories, stories, and mythologies.

Haha, plus Morris simply hated puns IIRC, which happened to be one of René Goscinny's big strengths. In any case, here's a listing of the six, absolutely fascinating reinterpretations upon the Lucky Luke franchise:

https://www.bedetheque.com/serie-51747-BD-Lucky-Luke-vu-par.html