Lucky Luke: Legends of the West

Lucky Luke: Legends of the West, Morris and Patrick Nordmann, Cinebook, £6.99/$11.95

♦ The last few Lucky Luke albums have been a visit into the past of Lucky Luke, but this one brings us to 2002, and Morris’s last album (he has since been followed by Achdé).

Originally published as La Légende de l’Ouest – literally “The Legend of the West”– it’s gained a few legends to become the plural Legends of the West. Over his career, Morris’s art grew better, and happily never grew worse, so this book is pretty much Morris at his peak of beautiful, effortless, and spontaneous cartooning genius. Many comic fans still seem to believe that the grittier, more violent, and grimmer something is the more “real” it is. They have bought into the myth that only the miserable or melancholic can be true art. To those people, I would like to quote Evelyn Waugh on PG Wodehouse: “Mr Wodehouse’s idyllic world can never stale. He will continue to release future generations from captivity that may be more irksome than our own. He has made a world for us to live in and delight in.”

When I see the work of Carl Barks, Don Rosa, Roger Langridge, and George Herriman, (as well as so many others that I don’t have room to list them) in whose company Morris stands, I think of this. Why is depicting the misery in the world always thought to be a good thing, yet bringing light and humour into the world a childish thing? Writers such as Shakespeare, Shaw, and Dickens knew that the world is light and shade, and if artists like Morris and writers like Patrick Nordmann can bring a little joy into the world, we should celebrate it. As this is Morris’s last album, it seems an appropriate point to start the celebration. And if children are the only ones celebrating, then more fool the adults.

Peter Mann

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