This is a more recent (2020) installment for Lucky Luke, and the trend seems to be similar with Asterix, the next generation of authors keep putting out new volumes, but they seemingly do not make the standard of the original series. Same here, compared to the previous one we read, this felt much more forced, especially that it took a very sensitive topic, slavery and black equality.
The story happens 5 years after the end of the civil war in the South, Louisiana (so around 1870). Even 100 years later, it was still a problem, enough to just think about Martin Luther King, who among others is also referenced in the book. From Oprah to Barack Obama we hear references that might sound contemporary in 2020. I'm sure they wanted to use them as positive examples of what black people can achieve later but it kind of feels weird. This kind of humor does not work for me very much due to the topic being extremely sensitive. Unfortunately, the world is still not a much better place compared to what's depicted in the comic and maybe it's premature to have fun and ridicule this. Although Lucky Luke is a positive character, who wants to give all his inheritance to the poor black population. Still in the details, like the depiction of the black people, it's still kind of proliferates a negative, laughable art style that might have been unintentional, but it's kind of frustrating and does little to confirm that those characters are equal.
Oh well, maybe I just did not get the vibe, still I think this will be one of the less-fun installments I have read. Still a thumbs-up for sharing the real-life story of Bass Reeves and weaving him into the comic. He was a real successful black-american sheriff in the Wild West and we even get a brief description of his life in the end as an appendix.