''Blacktown'' is a comic strip in the series '' The spiffy adventures of McConey'' ( in the original French language), by the popular French cartoonist

Lewis Trondheim Lewis Trondheim (born Laurent Chabosy, , on 11 December 1964), is a French cartoonist and one of the founders (in 1990) of the independent publisher L'Association. Both his silent comic ''La Mouche'' and Kaput and Zösky have been made into animat ...

. It was released in 1995 as volume 1 in the series. Trondheim chose the

western genre The Western is a genre set in the American frontier and commonly associated with folk tales of the Western United States, particularly the Southwestern United States, as well as Northern Mexico and Western Canada. It is commonly referred ...

for this volume, a genre he claimed to hate, as an exercise: he wanted to find out if he could create an exciting adventure out of something he originally didn't care for.

Plot

This is the first volume in the series to be set in a stock historical setting: the

Wild West The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...

. Although it uses the same main characters (Lapinot, Richard, Titi) and gives them the same type of personality, this story bears no relation to the continuing storyline of the volumes taking place in modern Paris. Lapinot is chased by outlaws for accidentally killing Rex Logan, their leader, and is later on mistaken for an outlaw himself by the villagers of Blacktown, who start chasing him as well. The story is often dark, contains plenty of action and witty dialogue, and moves at a quick pace.

References

French comics {{FrancoBelgian-comics-stub