Lucky Luke versus Phil Steel
Lucky Luke versus Phil Steel ( French original title: Lucky Luke et Phil Defer "Le Faucheux" ) is a Lucky Luke comic album with two stories. Both the text and the drawings come from the pen of the Lucky Luke inventor, Morris . The album was published in French as early as 1956, the stories in German for the first time in 1959 as serial stories and in 1967 in the album concept.
action
Lucky Luke versus Phil Steel "Spider Leg"
Bottleneck Gulch is a small town in the American west where the law is still fairly unknown. There O'Sullivan runs the “Pik As” salon. Because he's the only one far and wide, O'Sullivan makes a lot of money with adulterated whiskey and gambling. When O'Hara opens the "Ace of Hearts" right next to it, O'Sullivan decides to chase his opponent away again immediately. Since this doesn't work, he resorted to more radical means and wrote a letter to a certain Phil Steel, called "Spider Leg", a professional killer. Steel, as a caricature of the American actor Jack Palance, is exaggeratedly tall and slim, accepts the job immediately and wants to travel to Bottleneck Gulch by stagecoach. A brief confrontation with Lucky Luke later, he is sitting in the car instead of Steel and pretending to be Steel.
Since Lucky knows Luke O'Hara, the two O'Sullivan put on a play. In the end Luke - who is still mistaken for Steel - is "shot" by O'Hara. Shortly afterwards the real Steel appears in town and begins to spread fear and horror. In particular, he terrorizes and chases the guests out of the "ace of hearts". Luke returns to town disguised as an old man and messes with Phil, who also loses out at first and is thrown out.
After that, Luke Steel and O'Sullivan begins to question their sanity by subtle means. He sends them a ticking package (only contains jumping beans ) and lets the superstitious Steel stumble across all sorts of bad luck charms.
Finally, there is a big shootout between Lucky Luke and Phil Steel. Steel thinks he's the winner as Luke used all six rounds in his revolver . Steel wants to savor his triumph and shoot Luke when he shoots him down. Lucky Luke explains to the confused onlookers that he owns the only seven-shot revolver in the West. O'Sullivan flies out of town and O'Hara now leads the salon "to the two aces".
Lucky Luke and "Pill"
In this story, told by Lucky Luke around the campfire, a certain "pill" is the main character. This pill comes in the lawless western town Smokey Town with the unicycle , and is a weakling once the laughingstock of all people. When a gangster tries to rob the saloon, Pille knocks him down out of clumsiness and is then appointed by the judge as the new sheriff. Because of the big hat that is on him, he does not see that he accidentally dips the strong whiskey instead of the lemonade. Completely drunk, it was only by chance that he managed to put a bank robber on the run. Shooting training shows that the safest place for "targeted" shots is directly behind the target.
When a gang of gangsters want to settle in town, the sheriff is supposed to book them. Already at the beginning of the shooting, Pille's glasses break, so he has even less idea where he is shooting. He enters the gangsters' barn through the entrance in the attic, where he is already expected. He falls down through a trap door between two bandits, and the two shoot each other. Three other bandits are also killed by misdirected bullets. Lefty, the boss. He waits outside and shoots first, but the pill still (coincidentally) hits him fatally. Pille saved his pill box that caught Lefty's bullet.
Lucky Luke ends the story by stating that, thanks to the pill, law and order would now prevail in Smokey Town.
Release history
The album comes from the early days of the lonely cowboy, when Morris himself contributed both text and drawings. The album was first released in French in 1956 under the title Phil Defer . The two stories are originally called Phil Defer "le Faucheux" and Lucky Luke et "Pilule" . They first appeared in 1954 as a serial in Le Moustique , a radio program magazine from the Dupuis publishing house. The stories seemed too violent for the Spirou newspaper , where Luke usually appeared. Despite several corpses, the stories are not glorifying violence. The violence was partially defused in the more recent editions due to clear criticism: While in the first editions Phil Steel was actually shot by Lucky Luke, in the current editions the doctor only says that he would never be able to shoot his shoulder again . Morris said: “The censorship inevitably meant that we [Morris and his later copywriter René Goscinny ] didn't kill anyone on our shows. In the long run it has become a game. We looked for solutions, for gags, for reversals of a situation, in order to avoid Lucky Luke killing. Before that, Lucky Luke had shot some desperados. Phil Steel, for example, was struck down by the famous seven-shot gun ... "
The idea of drawing Phil Defer as a caricature of Jack Palance came to Morris after watching the western My Great Friend Shane (Shane), which really got the acting career going. The French nickname “Faucheux” means harvestman , meaning a species of spider. Interestingly, there was also a French gunsmith named "Lefaucheux" who invented the Lefaucheux ignition for revolvers.
A first German version of the stories was published in 1959 by Alfons-Semrau-Verlag in Hamburg as Bottleneck Gulch and Der neue Sheriff in Der cheerful Fridolin . Rolf Kauka relies on the comic in the 1967 album concept as Lucky Luke: Spinnenbein doesn't shoot alone (Fix and Foxi super tip top), before Ehapa published the two comics in the eighth volume of the Lucky Luke Classics in 1994 and in the album series in 2008.
The age of the stories can be seen in them; the style, especially of the drawn faces, differs significantly from that in later volumes.
literature
- Morris - Lucky Luke versus Phil Steel; from the French by Klaus Jöken; 1st edition, Berlin 2008; Ehapa Publishing House; ISBN 978-3-7704-3242-4
swell
- Preface to the album edition from 2008 by Horst Berner .