While out on patrol, Blutch and Chesterfield encounter an unusual soldier: a woman wearing a Union uniform, who has come to join the army to look for her brother and uphold the family’s honour. Blutch is unconvinced, but the sergeant, won over by the combination of bravery and a pretty face, agrees to help her. That, however, means taking her along for Captain Stark’s demented charges – a prospect that could drive anyone to shirk their duty or desert...
Two companies are competing to build the intercontinental railway. When one sends saboteurs to intercept the powder needed to pierce tunnels through the mountains, the other calls upon Lucky Luke to protect a last chance convoy. The problem is, it’s not powder that gets loaded onto the train this time – it’s nitroglycerin! And as if that wasn’t enough, the saboteurs are still around ... and the Daltons are convinced the train is full of gold!
After a series of bloody battles, the 22nd Cavalry is once again depleted. Sent on a recruiting drive, Chesterfield meets only failure – between the reputation of their unit and Blutch’s constant sabotage efforts, finding volunteers is almost impossible. Until fate brings them to a penitentiary where some very unsavoury characters are about to hang. Offered a choice, the criminals will pick the uniform over the noose, but can they be controlled?
War rages on, and the wounded pile up – including Blutch, courtesy of Confederate artillery. The Union Army doctors are swamped. In order to address his shortage of healers, General Alexander brings in a quartet of female nurses. But while he did also recruit a foul- tempered ‘matron’ of sorts to discourage anyone more interested in flirting than doing their duty, he may not have planned for the possibility of one of the nurses falling for a certain small, unruly, bald corporal ...
A quiet day in the Union Army ... Soldiers are resting, Blutch and Chesterfield are arguing, and the generals are plotting strategy. Things change suddenly with the arrival of a new regiment, sent as reinforcements to counter the imminent arrival of the Confederates. With them is a young dog, Sallie, who’s been on every battlefield with her uniformed masters, and who takes an immediate liking to Chesterfield, to the point that she accompanies him on a dangerous scouting mission ...
Even as the sea blockade by the Union Navy slowly strangles the South, the picket ships begin to mysteriously blow up one after another. Lincoln, worried that the war could stretch on too long if the Rebels are resupplied, orders that the Confederates’ secret weapon be identified. That means sending spies to Charleston, though, in the heart of the enemy’s territory. And who will be the two unlucky fools the brass entrusts with such a dangerous mission ... ?
A new recruit makes the mistake of asking Blutch to tell him about the infamous battle of Bull Run ... in public! The hostility of the other Union soldiers is immediate, yet Blutch eventually explains the reason for it. That battle, the first major one of the war, which had seemed to the North like such an inevitable victory that masses of civilians had gone to watch it as spectators, ended in a complete rout. And Blutch and Chesterfield were there ...
Sent to scout the enemy, Blutch and Chesterfield are chased by a Confederate patrol and forced to cross the Rio Grande to safety. But that safety is relative: stuck between Apache bandits and Mexican outlaws, our two Bluecoats have no choice but to disguise themselves as civilians – Blutch as a peasant, Chesterfield as a monk. But the nearby village is eagerly awaiting its new ‘padre’, and the villagers aren’t fooled by the deception...
Playing at War offers an innovative focus on Civil War video games as significant sites of memory creation, distortion, and evolution in popular culture. With fifteen essays by historians, the collection analyzes the emergence and popularity of video games that topically engage the period surrounding the American Civil War, from the earliest console games developed in the 1980s through the web-based games of the twenty-first century, including popular titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and War of Rights. Alongside discussions of technological capabilities and advances, as well as their impact on gameplay and content, the essays consider how these games engage with historical scholarship on the Civil War era, the degree to which video games reflect and contribute to popular understandings of the period, and how those dynamics reveal shifting conceptions of martial identity and historical memory within U.S. popular culture. Video games offer productive sites for extending the analysis of Civil War memory into the post–Confederates in the Attic era, including the political and cultural moments of Obama and Trump, where overt expressions of Lost Cause memory were challenged and removed from schools and public spaces, then embraced by new manifestations of white supremacist organizations. Edited by Patrick A. Lewis and James Hill Welborn III, Playing at War traces the drift of Civil War memory into digital spaces and gaming cultures, encouraging historians to engage more extensively with video games as important cultural media for examining how contemporary Americans interact with the nation’s past.
Thanks to Hachiken's meticulous notes, Ezo Ag Fest has gone off without a hitch, even if Hachiken himself didn't get to enjoy any of it. No one even saved him a slice of oven-baked pizza!! His parents' visit to the hospital has left Hachiken doubting himself and his choice to attend Ezo Ag once again, but hearing stories of how the festival visitors left with newfound appreciation for horses and the farming community reminds Hachiken why Ezo Ag- and so many of the people there-have become so dear to him...
