Childhood Heroes

So...Here are the little Gaul Astérix, and the fastest gunslinger of the West, Lucky-Luke , two famous heroes of classic french comic-book, created respectively by Albert Uderzo, René Goscinny, and Morris with René Goscinny again (they had the same writer) .
If you're french, you definitely know what I'm talking about, and if you're not ...Well, you still might have heard of them .

You have no idea of much these guys are important for me .I started to doodle them again recently, and it reminded me of the huge impact they had to my life.
When I was kid, I was your typical lonely slightly over weighted kid with big self-esteem issues . Added to that, I happened to have a narrow-minded point of view, when it comes to tastes about fictional universes : while it was aimed to my generation, I wasn't into all Nintendo games or Pokemon stuff like that . Heck, I even overlooked famous geek universes like Star Wars or LOTR, because I felt it wasn't appealing to me !
So, besides some Disney movies, and Toy Story, Lucky Luke and Astérix occupied a big part of my childhood . They were here almost since the beginning, and they're pretty much the origins of why I started to draw around the age of 4, and dreaming about becoming a comic-book artist . It was kind of strange, because I always felt that these characters are more like 50's to 80's children's heroes , than for children around my age . Basically , I had the taste of a 70's kid at the time .^^
To me, these guys they were the best role-models you could get for children : they were standing for the right things, for justice, they were confident, they were nice, they were smart, they were strong (Asterix, because of the magic potion which gives him super-strength, and Lucky-Luke, simply because he was the GODDAMN LUCKY-LUKE !!), they were funny , and on top of that, their respective universes were full of colorful and funny characters ( I mean, come on, guys : Obelix ! Idefix ! Jolly Jumper ! The Dalton gang !)

Despite their crappy adaptations on the silver screen , and the quality decreasing of their comics over the years - René Goscinny passed away years ago, and was a great writer and a worthy replacement has yet to found (though, maybe not for Lucky-Luke . Daniel Pennac wrote good stories about the cowboy)-I still love them, and you can bet they gonna stick with until the end of my days . I shall thanks their creators many times , over and over, for giving birth to these wonderful characters .