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Sergeant Luck (centre) and friends |
Luck
of the Legion
was a strip cartoon in the Eagle Comic
drawn by Martin Aitchison. It followed the exploits of the French
Foreign Legion in North Africa (then largely French-colonised
or controlled) and focused mainly on the chisel-jawed British
hero Sergeant 'Tough' Luck and his faithful companions, Belgian
Corporal Trenet and Italian Legionnaire Bimberg. Bimberg was the
comic relief, short and fat and perpetually dishevelled, with
a battered kepi. The strip was set in approximately 1900 - a period
of colourful uniforms and unquestioned imperial values.
Sergeant
Luck and his companions also saw service elsewhere in the French
colonial empire - such as Indo-China or West Africa. However their
adventures were normally focussed around isolated forts set in
the Sahara. Adversaries were generally tribesmen whose dress was
inexplicably Saudi Arabian rather than Algerian or Moroccan. However
on occasion Sergeant Luck found himself in conflict with unbalanced
or traitorous senior officers.
Due
to the success of the Eagle comic strip, writer Geoffrey Bond
wrote a series of novels based on the characters. These were: