Jolly Jumper is a horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 character in the Franco-Belgian comics

Franco-Belgian comics

Franco-Belgian comics are comics that are created in Belgium and France. These countries have a long tradition in comics and comic books, where they are known as BDs, an abbreviation of bande dessinée in French and stripverhalen in Dutch...

 series Lucky Luke

Lucky Luke

Lucky Luke is a Belgian comics series created by Belgian cartoonist, Maurice De Bevere better known as Morris, the original artist, and was for one period written by René Goscinny...

, created by Belgian

Belgium

Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 artist Morris

Morris (comics)

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.-Biography:...

. Described as "the smartest horse in the world" and able to perform tasks such as chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

-playing and tightrope walking

Tightrope walking

Tightrope walking is the art of walking along a thin wire or rope, usually at a great height. One or more artists performs in front of an audience or as a publicity stunt...

, Jolly Jumper accompanies his master in their travels across the Wild West, and delivers frequent quips.

Publication history

Jolly Jumper first appeared along with Lucky Luke in the story Arizona 1880, published in the Almanach issue of the comics magazine

Franco-Belgian comics magazines

Belgium and France have a long tradition in comics. They have a common history for comics and magazines.In the early years of its history, magazines had a large place on the comics market and were often the only place where comics were published. Most of them were kids-targeted.In the 1970s,...

 Le Journal de Spirou

Spirou (magazine)

Spirou magazine is a weekly Belgian comics magazine published by the Dupuis company...

on December 7, 1946. In his earlier appearances, he was more like a real horse, which started to change after René Goscinny

René Goscinny

René Goscinny was a French comics editor and writer, who is best known 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.-Early life:Goscinny was born in Paris in 1926, to a family...

 became the series' main writer.

Character

Jolly Jumper is a white horse with a brownish spot on his left side. He dislikes dogs, as seen in Sur la piste des Daltons where he continuously directs mean comments to the unintelligent prison-dog Rantanplan

Rantanplan

Rantanplan 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...

. Extraordinarily apt and anthropomorphic

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...

the character is very resourceful in adventure and crises, and mischievous as in Le Bandit Manchot, when he beats Lucky Luke in a dice game, winning the role-reversal to be carried on Lucky Luke's back.

Jolly Jumper also serves as the ironic yet smart voice talking from the series' background.

Sources

• Lucky Luke publications in Spirou and Pilote BDoubliées

Footnotes

External links

• Lucky Luke official site