Paris (France) (AFP) – “The comic book hero is enormously lucky: he doesn’t age!”, smiles Jul, the screenwriter of Lucky Luke, who has reached the venerable age of 80 but continues to “shoot faster than his shadow”.
Published on: 04/11/2026 - 09:49
Created in 1946, the solitary cowboy is celebrating his anniversary with a new album, "Saint Lucky Luke", which comes out Friday, has some 350,000 copies printed and promises to be one of the bestsellers of the end of the year.
“Lucky Luke is a timeless and transgenerational hero. Parents give him to their children, children to their parents or grandparents. We often want to share him,” notes Julien Berjeaut, who signs Jul.
“Opening one of his albums is like finding a good friend,” adds François Le Bescond, the publisher of Lucky Luke at Dargaud.
The readers "are from all social classes, which is rather rare in culture", underlines Achdé, the designer of the series for 25 years.
Like Asterix, another emblematic hero of Franco-Belgian comics, Lucky Luke survived the death of its creators, Goscinny and Morris, then experienced ups and downs, and was adapted into more or less convincing series or films. Translated into around thirty languages, it has sold more than 300 million copies, according to estimates.
“Although he operates in a western setting, Lucky Luke speaks to everyone: with his solitary side, vigilante, defender of the widow and the orphan, he embodies positive and universal values,” underlines François Le Bescond.
Even the Pope
In the new album "Saint Lucky Luke", the hero confronts a subject that seems to exceed him: God and religious fanaticism. He is erected as the new messiah for having saved Kansas from a series of calamities, including an invasion of locusts.
“I found it interesting to find a way to make people laugh at the puritanical order, combined with businessism, which are themes that resonate today with Donald Trump's America,” explains Jul, who is a history graduate.
The author had the nerve to offer the album in person to Pope Leo XIV during his recent trip to France. “I told him: ‘Lucky Luke, who is an icon of popular culture, carries the same values as you.’ The pope didn’t know him but laughed and seemed really interested,” he recalls.
In addition to "Saint Lucky Luke", the 80th anniversary is celebrated this year with the publication of two albums "Lucky Luke seen by..." ("The man who saw" by Guillaume Bouzard and "The long march of Lucky Luke" by Matthieu Bonhomme), and "Morris" (Dupuis), a rich monograph of the creator of the cowboy.
Blake and Mortimer also 80 years old
Lucky Luke isn't the only hero celebrating his 80th birthday. “The Adventures of Blake and Mortimer” was also created in 1946 in Tintin magazine by the Belgian Edgar P. Jacobs.
The improbable duo formed by the blond soldier Francis Blake and the bearded scientist Philip Mortimer also remains one of the sure values of comics with 31 albums, the majority of which were created by various authors after the death of Jacobs.
“Relaunching the series in the 1990s was a gamble far from won. But the readers responded: they appreciated the mix of adventure and realism, as well as the very marked aesthetics of the 1950s,” explains François Le Bescond, from Dargaud, its publisher.
The 80th anniversary is marked by the release of an album, “Closed Cases”, which offers ten new stories which “reveal still hidden episodes from the world of Blake and Mortimer”.
© 2026 AFP
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