The new Lucky Luke hijacks “Rabbi Jacob” and it falls flat – LCI

COME-BACK – With “The promised land” (Dargaud), Jul screenplay, and Achdé drawing come to publish the 79th Lucky Luke adventure. A lot was expected from this crossing to the Wild West in the company of a family of ashkenazi jewish, but the gags seemed to well out.

Lucky Luke has nothing of a lonely cowboy. Whether he likes it or not, it is still surrounded by bandits, indians, crooks, on which he shoots faster than his shadow. Since his first adventure, in 1946, Lucky Luke has never aged ; like Asterix, the Smurfs or Corto Maltese, it has even survived the death of its creator, Morris, in 2001.

The artist Achdé is appropriate, the trait of Morris, down to the finest detail, like the habit of the characters to close their eyes when they speak. Side scenario, Laurent Gerra, Tonino Benacquista and Daniel Pennac succeeded to invent new adventures without the revolutionize. This year, it is the turn of Jul of sign The promised land. We found sometimes the paw of the author of Silex and the City in its word games and diversions, but in half-shade, as if the choice of the subject had required more caution than of creative madness.

This is a kind of Rabbi Jacob in the Wild West that offer Jul and Achdé : a friend of Lucky Luke request to our cowboy to escort her family, jews who have left Poland to rebuild their lives in Chelm Citu, their “promised land”. The diligence comes with a rabbi endearing, his wife and their two small children. The small group will go through the pitfalls of the classics of the great american west, with the cultural gap and the religious to whom it was to be expected.

However, if this gap was brought to his summit comedy in Rabbi Jacob, the album just play on the stereotypes (the jewish mother, the carp stuffed, the food taboos, etc.). As to resume the jokes of the film to fit awkwardly in the context, it completely falls flat (“How, Lucky Luke, you’re not jewish ?”) The word games that come of usually in Jul here are very soft, and the different reading levels promised rarely exceed the first degree. Or is it because, unlike Lucky Luke, it was aged ?