Review by Frank Plowright

When René Goscinny died in 1977 he and Morris had collaborated on 37 Lucky Luke stories, a run stretching back twenty years. After the publication of The Singing Wire Morris had no intention of continuing the series, but was eventually drawn back, although not immediately ready to consider producing full albums with different writers. From 1979 he eased his way back into the feature by illustrating some short stories written by others. The results are mixed.

Bob De Groot is the best known of the new writers, his Clifton and Leonard series already running, and his closing story is surely the reason it took until 2022 before the album saw an English edition, the final Lucky Luke reprint volume. ‘Lee Chee’s Story’ is eight pages of racist caricatures, with Luke’s participation restricted to the opening couple of panels. Cinebook’s front of book apologies ring very much of having their cake and eating it in asking readers to overlook what they refer to as “casual racism”. God love Cinebook for their magnificent track record of publishing treasures previously unseen in English, but they have a blindspot when it comes to what’s acceptable in the present day, and there’s no way this reprehensible story should have seen print in 2022. And to be clear De Groot’s dialogue is as responsible as Morris’ drawings.

De Groot’s other two contributions deal with Luke meeting a Zorro equivalent in a corrupt town and a preacher, but neither offer many laughs unconnected with the great cartooning from Morris. That’s apparent all the way through, with Morris certainly enlivening Vicq’s strained title script about a rogue benefiting from the hanging of others by lunch mobs.

When De Groot and Morris later collaborated on The Painter Dom Domi would accuse them of plagiarism, and ‘The Camel’s Mine’ by him is a decent script, certainly better than The Painter. It scores for researching an obscure piece of Western history, and for giving Morris the chance to draw a goofy camel alongside a laconic Jolly Jumper.

Martin Lodewijk is far better known for more serious action comics, but his ‘Shootout at Purgatory’ is a highlight of this collection, offering good jokes, verbal and visual, and good twists in a compact seven pages. It’s all the stranger for the jokes in his action series often falling flat. Perhaps it’s all in the translation.

That just leaves the second strip, which earns Goscinny his posthumous cover credit. It’s a case of showing everyone else how it’s done by involving the Daltons in a train robbery, packing those jokes in, and setting up a good finale in six pages. But oh dear, there’s yet another racist caricature, thankfully this time not carrying the entire strip, but inexcusable nonetheless.

While the caricatures are a massive elephant in the room, the cartooning is otherwise exemplary, yet two good strips and one that’s okay from seven isn’t a great ratio overall. However, it’s not possible to give anything other than the barest recognition to a collection featuring the offensive final strip.