European Western Comic Books - Ran Tan Plan

Rantanplan is a prison guard dog often tasked with watching over the Dalton brothers or assisting Lucky Luke in tracking them down each time they escape. However, he is unable to understand this and mistakes Joe Dalton, who hates him psychotically, for a beloved owner. As well as being stupid, Rantanplan is extremely slow and accident-prone. However, he is very good-natured, and will follow Lucky Luke to the ends of the Earth. Like Averell Dalton, he has a huge appetite and will devour anything that is put in front of him, whether it is food or not, which has ranged from bars of soap to dishwater.

Lucky Luke's horse, Jolly Jumper, a very intelligent animal, holds Rantanplan in contempt, regarding him as one of Nature's great mistakes.

Rantanplan (alternately spelled Ran-Tan-Plan and Ran Tan Plan) is a fictional hound dog created by Belgian comics artist Morris and French writer René Goscinny. Originally a supporting character in the Lucky Luke series, Rantanplan later starred in an eponymous series. Rantanplan is a spoof of Rin Tin Tin, as idiotic as Rin Tin Tin is clever. Ironically, in the Turkish translations of the series, he is indeed named Rin Tin Tin. English versions of the comic books have renamed him "Rin Tin Can" and "Bushwack" in the 1983 Hanna-Barbera Animated Lucky Luke television series.

The character first appeared in Spirou #1145 the earliest panels of the story Sur la piste des Dalton, published on February 4, 1960 in the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Spirou, and later as an album in 1962. The character remained a fixture over a long series of Lucky Luke publications (55), resulting in a series of its own spin-off publications starting in 1987 published by Dargaud. Ten years after the death of Goscinny, for the production of the Rantanplan series, Morris collaborated with scenarists such as Jean Léturgie, Bob de Groot and Vittorio Leonardo.

Maurice De Bevere, better known as Morris, was a Belgian cartoonist and the creator of Lucky Luke. His pen name is an alternate spelling of his first name.

Born in Kortrijk, Belgium on December 1,1923. He went to school in the well-known Jesuit college in Aalst, whose suits inspired him for those of the undertakers in his Lucky Luke series. His math teacher told his parents the boy would unfortunately never succeed in life, as he passed the math classes doodling in the margin of his math books. Morris started drawing in the Compagnie Belge d'Actualités (CBA) animations studios, a small and short-lived animation studios in Belgium where he met Peyo and André Franquin. After the war, the company folded and Morris worked as an illustrator for Het Laatste Nieuws, a Flemish newspaper, and Le Moustique, a French-speaking weekly magazine published by Dupuis, for which he made some 250 covers and numerous other illustrations, mainly caricatures of movie stars.

He died on July 16, 2001 of a pulmonary embolism in Brussels, Belgium.

René Goscinny was a French comics editor and writer, who is best known internationally for the comic book Astérix, which he created with illustrator Albert Uderzo, and for his work on the comic series Lucky Luke with Morris and Iznogoud with Jean Tabary.

René Goscinny was born on August 4, 1926. He was a French writer who is best known for the comic strip “Astérix”, which he created with illustrator Albert Uderzo.

Goscinny was reared and educated in Buenos Aires and later worked on children’s books in New York City. In 1954 he returned to Paris to direct a press agency and soon became a writer for the “Lucky Luke” comic strip. In 1957 he met Uderzo, a cartoonist, and collaborated with him on the short-lived “Benjamin et Benjamine” and, a year later, on the somewhat more successful “Oumpah-Pah le Peau-Rouge” (“Oumpah-Pah the Redskin”).

In 1959 Goscinny founded the French humour magazine Pilote, and at the same time, in collaboration with Uderzo, began publishing “Astérix le Gaulois,” a comic strip that concerned itself with the adventures of a diminutive Gallic tribesman at the time of Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. The title character, Astérix, and his friend Obélix belonged to the only unconquered tribe, the “Invincible Gauls.” The Romans they opposed were generally made to look stupid and clumsy. Coinciding as it did with Charles de Gaulle’s rise to power in France, the strip reflected certain political sentiments that were widespread at the time. “Astérix le Gaulois” became widely popular and brought substantial success to both Goscinny and Uderzo. Goscinny was the scriptwriter of several other French comic strips, including “Les Dingodossiers” (1965–67), with Marcel Gotlib, and also was a principal in a French publishing firm. He was made a Chevalier of Arts and Letters in 1967.

René Goscinny died on November 5, 1977 in Paris.