Chicane in Quebec
Schikane in Quebec (French original title: La belle province ), published in 2004, is the 77th volume in the Lucky Luke series. It is the first Lucky Luke volume to be produced by the draftsman Achdé and the lyricist Laurent Gerra after the death of Morris .
action
Lucky Luke travels to a place called Clearwater, Wisconsin , to arrest a dangerous gangster named Brad Carpett. He wants to track him down during a rodeo . Luke's horse Jolly Jumper falls in love with Province, the horse of a Quebec participant named Bombardier. After his departure, Jolly Jumper is lovesick and is no longer involved, until Lucky Luke rides with him to Contrecoeur, where Province lives. Already in the first saloon that Luke enters in Canada, he is confronted with local customs: Here, people are “bullied” (beaten up) with poutine - a nasty mess that makes Luke quite angry when he gets a plate in his face. Then he learns from the owner of Province that a wealthy banker is buying all of Contrecoeur's stores after they have gone bankrupt because bandits intercept all supplies to the city.
Mac Lenburger is a shrewd businessman and collector who lives in a luxurious estate and thinks he can buy anything with his money. He offers Lucky Luke $ 100,000 for his famous seven-shot Colt (see Lucky Luke vs. Phil Steel ). Luke refuses, of course, and watches Lenburger and his servant on their next “shopping tour” through the city.
When Lenburger triggers the next brawl in the saloon, Luke and Bombardier put themselves right at the top of Lenburger's hit list, because he lets him pay for the damage in cash. The next night, Province is promptly kidnapped to blackmail Bombardier into selling his property. The attempt to use Rantanplan as a search dog goes terribly wrong, of course, and he just tracks down a lot of wild animals and finally falls in love with a beaver .
Lucky Luke watches as Mac Lenburger tries to enter into a contract with Indians. He wants to sell them self-made “ fire water ” in exchange for their land. The mention of this "firewater works" ( schnapps distillery ) gave Luke the idea to stop by. Although he finds Province there, he lets himself be duped and is tied up himself. It is revealed that Lenburgers Butler leads the gang of criminals that make the area unsafe. He also meets Louis Adélard Sénécal , the construction manager of the Quebec Railroad. Lenburger buys all the land in the area in order to collect the intended compensation from the landowners.
During the night, Lenburger's gang burns down Bombardier's farm. Towards morning, Jolly Jumper frees Lucky Luke from his bonds and they start the chase. Luke meets Lenburger in his hut. Jolly knocks down Lenburger with the Rantanplan, cleverly used as a catapult, while Luke disarms the butler aka Brad Carpett. The whole gang of gangsters will be turned over to the Canadian judiciary.
Special
The band plays skillfully with some quirks of the Canadian province of Québec . Among other things, the Canadian fast food specialty poutine is caricatured by being used as a projectile in all brawls. There is also quite a mess with the language. In Québec, French is spoken , which is placed in the mouth of the characters with a corresponding accent (all H are apostrophized). As an American cowboy, Lucky Luke usually speaks English, of course, but can also speak a few bits of French. Since the stories are originally French, Luke speaks in French with a French accent - actually English with a French accent. In the German version, French was replaced by German, but the accent was retained, so many characters now speak German with a French accent. The narrator takes it to extremes when Luke sings his “Lonesome Cowboy” in French (or German) in the last picture.
output
- Chicane in Quebec . Lucky Luke. Vol. 77. Authors Maurice de Bevere, Achdé, Laurent Gerra. Translated by Klaus Jöken. ISBN 3-7704-0288-X