Pipeline and Sundry: New Lucky Luke, a BD Kickstarter, Park Openings, and More
Lucky Luke Goes There
A new “Lucky Luke” adventure is coming this fall, once again from Achde and Jul. Titled “A Cowboy in Cotton,” Luke winds up in New Orleans where he’s inherited a cotton plantation, but works to redistribute the wealth…. Along the way, he’ll have the help of a black sheriff — history’s Bass Reeves — in fighting off the Ku Klux Klan.
So, yeah, there’s no half-measures here, are there?
The book is not a reaction to the current protests in America — as comic fans well know, albums like this often take a year or longer to produce. This one was well into development before recent events.
The book has a very tricky line to walk, with lots of potential pitfalls awaiting it. We’ll see what they come up with in October. Well, it’ll be available in French in October. I don’t think there’s a date for an English translation from Cinebook just yet. They turned around “A Cowboy in Paris” pretty quickly, though. So, maybe?
Asterix: A Roller Coaster Adventure
Parc Asterix opened up a couple weeks ago. Their dreaded rival, Disneyland Paris, won’t be re-opening until July 15th, if all goes according to plan.
You can find some videos on YouTube showing what the park looks like and how they’re fighting against COVID-19 while keeping the park open. It’s many of the same stories you might have heard coming out of Universal Studios here in the States — masks, social distancing, spread out lines, limited seating in rides, etc.
The video I’m embedding here has a lot of video just walking through the park, which is fun to see as someone who’s never been there. I’ve seen lots of roller coaster footage. It’s good to see what the walking areas look like surrounding it.
Parc Spirou also opened in June. Here’s a news report on that.
Asterix: Where Is The Village?
Europe Comics posted a new essay on their site with a pretty convincing argument for where Asterix’s village is along the French coastline. The map matches the art. It’s pretty clear.
The article goes on to tell the story of a city in Spain that held out against the Romans for a very long time, too. They eventually lost, but they had very Village-like tendencies in their own defense. If they had only had some Magic Potion, they might never had had to surrender….
Kickstarter BD – “Paris 2119”
“Paris 2119” is a new album written by Zep with art by Dominique Bertail. It’s also the subject of Magnetic Press’ first Kickstarter, which just opened up a few days ago.
Here’s a video with Zep and Bertail discussing the book, in English.
The good news is that the project is already funded. They set a goal for $5,000 and more than doubled it pretty quickly.
It’s a futuristic tale of a world where teleportation has changed society, but one man refuses to use it. That gets him into trouble. There’s a romantic angle thrown in there, as well.
The art is beautiful. It looks like a Heavy Metal style science fiction book. Check out the video below for some good samples.
$12 gets you a digital copy in August, while $25 gets you the hardcover in November. There are other book collections you can throw in for higher pledges, so go check those out.
Surprise: The Next Bluecoats Book
Jose Luis Munuera is drawing it! He’s promised to keep to the flavor of Willy Lambil’s work, so you’ll see a more restrained Munuera here, which I find fascinating.
There’s a bigger story behind this that I plan on doing a podcast about. In the meantime, just enjoy the cover, or skip ahead and read ActuaBD.com’s excellent article about it.
Cinebook doesn’t have this on their schedule. They’re about 50 books behind. But maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll make a special exception for this one sooner rather than later.
I’m not holding my breath, but here’s hoping…
Great thing about the Luke volume is there is finally going to be a black protagonist after so many years (I rarely, if ever, saw any).
There were a few in the past but incidental and they were always the same type of caricature as Baba the Pirate in Astérix (and in Barbe Rouge). Those were the 60s…
Cinebook’s Summer/Autumn catalogue has “Lucky Luke Vol. 77: A Cowboy in High Cotton” scheduled for November (in the UK at least). You can see a few panels in the PDF (https://www.cinebook.co.uk/uploads/files/catalogues/Catalogue_29_web.pdf)
Cool, thanks for pointing that out. If it’s November in the UK, then it’ll probably be up digitally around then, with the print edition hitting the States a couple months later. Plus, any catalog with pull quotes from me is a good catalog, as far as I’m concerned. 😉
Now there are only 4 more Lucky Luke books Cinebook has to translate into English now.
Now Jose Luis Munuera is now doing The “Bluecoats” series now, I see.
I did a whole podcast about it. Munuera even commented on it. =) https://www.pipelinecomics.com/episode-55-the-bluecoats-business-of-bd/
I know, I saw that Munuera commented on your podcast.
Cinebook’s long-dormant YouTube channel now has a nice advert for this volume –
I saw that on YouTube. Just as Cinebook did for “A Cowboy in Paris” 2 years ago in 2018, translated into English from Dargaud’s YouTube channel.
I picked up a copy of Cinebook’s UK/English publication of “A Cowboy in High Cotton” and thought it pretty good.
It has to step a fine line because even with a subject as one-sided as slavery there are bound to be complaints of ‘bringing politics’ in to comics or, inevitably, being ‘woke’, or that the authors are ‘virtue signalling’. But I think on the whole it gets the balance right and is one of the better post-Goscinny Lucky Lukes. I probably read it more closely because of the subject matter, so I might be being unfair on other volumes.
There are some very good jokes in here, including a few laugh-out-loud ones (look out for the culinary confusion), the art is exemplary, including the colouring (there’s a lovely job done for the pages set in the swamp) There’s a Creole-to-French-to-Creole segment which seems cleverly transformed in English. I can’t read French but I’d imagine a lot of the humour there is in the very close similarity over terms between each language/dialect and the confusion that can cause. That can’t have been easy to translate in to something which works the same way in English but the solution here is good.
Oh, and there’s a very neatly done reference to BLM, which avoids being anachronistic.
The one criticism which might be made, and I think may have some validity, is similar to that which was made of ‘Mississippi Burning’ decades ago. Namely that this particularly tragic episode in America’s history is told through the eyes of an outsider. Of course, this is a Lucky Luke book so he’s front and centre, but I did expect to see a lot more of Bass Reeves. The character is less of a co-star and more a guest-star.
Overall high marks from me. It is still a book for children so doesn’t dig too deeply in to the depravity of slavery, but given the potential audience I think they’ve got it as right as they can.
What do you think Lucky Luke’s next adventure will be? Possibly meeting Wild Bill Hickok, because there’s no book in the series where he meets Wild Bill Hickok. Or maybe even the 1st Kentucky Derby in 1875 possibly.