Which Lucky Luke comic adapts the new Disney+ series?

None. Because the story takes place later… The creators explain to us.

To date, there are 82 official Lucky Luke albums published by Dargaud editions, counting the classic albums by Morris and Goscinny, those by Morris alone, and albums made by later authors (like Achdé). Suffice it to say that Mathieu Leblanc and Thomas Mansuy were spoiled for choice when it came time to bring the lonely cowboy to the screen. But the new series makes a different choice: their story takes place later, after the adventures of the comics, with an older… and more worn Luke. They explain to us:

“We didn’t ask ourselves which album to adapt. We set our story after the comics. There could be 150 adventures of Lucky Luke before ours. We shift in time and tell a story that comes after…”

The two creators confided to Première that they wanted to take a step aside, without denying the follies of Morris and Goscinny:

“We take strong ideas from different volumes that we inject here and there into the episodes,” explains Mathieu Leblanc. “We take, for example, Joe’s amnesia that we see in The Daltons Are Redeemed. My favorite comic book is The Judge. And by taking this marrow, we imagined a town where all the inhabitants would be judges…”

In short, the two authors had fun reusing pieces of the comics to create a new story. “We find a very Goscinny sap in the situations that we have imagined. And then, we color the characters in our own way.”

Ultimately, this approach is “also a way of satisfying longtime fans while surprising those who already know the comics by heart.”

Lucky Luke, currently available on Disney+.