As the waves of egalitarianism have reached comic book makers, the famous lone cowboy will go after the bad guys accompanied by a black sheriff in the book s next episode.

The story of the well-known comic book hero, cowboy Lucky Luke, has taken a historic turn after receiving a companion of not just any sort. After 80 albums portraying Lucky Luke as a lone righter of wrongs, in the next episode he will be accompanied by a black sheriff in the fight against racial segregation and the Ku-Klux-Klan, French cartoonist Jul announced on Twitter.

The new album is expected to be released on 23 October. At first, one might think that the story has been inspired by the issue of racial discrimination receiving extensive media coverage these days, but Jul says the idea for the story came up long before the current BLM protests and recent atrocities. In any case, it is the first time that a black character has been given such a key role in the comics. So far, people of colour have only appeared sporadically in the series and were often speechless, but now the black sheriff will play a role almost equivalent to that of the main character.

The album s cover portrays Lucky Luke standing in the middle of a cotton field with a gun in hand. Right beside him is his newfound companion, the black sheriff, modelled after Bass Reeves, the first black deputy marshal west of the Mississippi River. 

The adventures of Lucky Luke first came out in 1946. It is one of the best-known French-Belgian comics, which has sold over 300 million copies worldwide. The series has been translated into 29 languages, according to franceinfo.