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"The Diabolical Duck Avenger"

November 19, 2015, 7:02 pm
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Well, it's my birthday, so let's celebrate by not leaving this blog barren anymore, shall we? First of all, big fat credit goes to IDW for the fantastic covers they did for the two issues to feature this story. First, there's Marco Rota, from 1983:


Man, that's just THE BEST. Then there's the new art, by Dave Alvarez:


Not quite AS cool, but hey, who can match Rota at his best? It's still plenty good enough. And it's not just the art; it's also the logo and the use of those text boxes. The whole thing is a class act, I say! Let it be known far and wide!

No denying this story's historical significance. Those Italians are wild about Duck Avenger stories, and here's where it all started, in a 1969 story by the oft-baffling Guido Martina (with the “plot” credited on inducks to one Elisa Penna, who is thereby the ONLY woman to appear in the inducks top 100, which is certainly demonstrative of something).

And...as may have happened a time or two in the past, I find myself a li'l confused by the Italian sensibility. But, let's get into things and see how it shakes out.


So, this is the idea. This story is illustrated by good ol' Giovan Battista Carpi, who's done his share of brilliantwork, but I can't say this story is one of his shining moments—it's mostly adequate at best.


As for the subject matter of the story itself...well, the whole thing is really, really slow-paced. I'm not too convinced it REALLY needed to be long enough to be broken into two parts. The first one is mostly taken up with these endless repetitions of some permutation of “you didn't win it!” “yes I did! And anyway, I deserved to win it!” It's really not that dynamic or interesting, to my sensibilities.


Generally, Donald is a huge dick in this story, as the above indicates. And not in a particularly fun or Donald-ish way. More like a “constant, barely-sublimated, seething resentment” kind of way. It reminds me of a less extreme version of that horrifying fucking Daan Jippes story “The Easter Basketcase.”


Note that, although later in the story we see some typical Gladstone obnoxiousness, here he's being totally nice just 'cause. No indication that he thinks helping the dog will end up helping him. This makes him, on balance, far more likable than Donald.


See what I mean? It just goes on and on and on in a decidedly non-enchanting way.


I'm skipping over a LOT in this story because there's just SO much superfluous dross here. But fair's fair: if nothing else, the first reveal of Donald as Duck Avenger is pretty cool-looking. Rrr!


Question: was Scrooge specifically reading Ovid in the original? To try to answer this question, I went back to the kinda wobbly English fan translation that I'd first read this story in. Unfortunately, the answer was inconclusive. He IS reading a book called “Metamorphosis” (confusing Ovid with Kafka?), but either the translator didn't get the Ovid reference, or it wasn't there to be gotten:


(Would it be pedantic of me to note that, while Midas is indeed in the Metamorphoses,this business about creating gold mines is not? Too late.)

Well, whoever came up with the idea, we have to ask, what thematic significance if any is it supposed to have? Is it just a matter of “look, Donald's ownmetamorphosis?” Well, probably. Okay, that was kind of anticlimactic. Still, it's an odd little detail to be included, for whatever reason.


So what's the Avenger's big scheme? To...steal Scrooge's mattress. Of course. It DOES turn out to be a mattress full of money, but the way he does it can't help seeming more like petty vandalism than a real heist, per se. You don't get the impression that the money is the point. I mean, I get that the goofiness is to a large extent intentional, as is the generally half-assedness of his superness.  I just...don't feel like it's creating much of an effect, you know? 


The second part of the story has another endless thing; namely, this stuff with masks. It, again, is not hugely interesting to me.


...and in the end, Donald WINS, sort of, which is something I would normally welcome, especially in a Martina story where such an outcome isn't too common, but here, bleh. It's not like Donald is toweringly awful; that might at least be interesting. Instead, he's just kind of pettily dickish. It's really difficult to know what we're even meant to feel about this. Are we supposed to be cheering Donald? He ain't much of an anti-hero, I'll tell you that much.

To perhaps gain some insight on why this story is so popular, we turn to the inducks reader reviews, and to one in particular. Okay, so some person writes “it's not how Donald steals and is a total asshole, it's how it's portrayed as the right thing to do. I've never read a duckstory before that left such a bitter aftertaste.” That's more strongly than I feel about it, but okay, I'm sympathetic. Then someone else writes, partially in response to this (in Italian; I've just run it through google translate and prettied up the grammar:

Revenge after years of suffering. Donald finally shows what he's capable of and we enjoy it a lot. The guy above is correct, and that's why the story is magnificent!

Out of all the reviews, this is the only one that actually gives a reasonfor liking the story, as opposed to just generic “great! The best ever!” kind of things. Obviously, it's not exactly scientific to take one opinion as being representative of the masses, but I think it's very plausible that this really could be what everyone likes about it. I mean, especially if you grow up on a regular diet of Martina stories, it's easy to see how you could really want to see Donald get his revenge.

However, if this is the case, it's completely alien to the way I read Disney comics. Because I like seeing Donald come out on top, sure, but not if he's a complete asshole about it. It has to seem merited. And even if Donald's just meant to seem good in comparison, Martina does a singularly bad job of bringing it off: in spite of what this narration box says,


his relatives don't seem all that awful in this story—certainly less so than Donald himself. Also, think back to Donald violently throwing away that dog—that doesn't have anything to do with getting revenge on anyone; it's just making him seem like a jerk for the hell of it. How is it supposed to be appealing to see this guy getting his revenge?  And finally let's note that, even if this is your bag, he doesn't really get his revenge by anything other than sheer luck--that Gladstone got blamed has nothing to do with him.

I don't know! Any huge fans, particularly Italians, who want to weigh in here are more than welcome. But to be honest, I think a preponderance of stories like this are a big part of the reason we generally see so little non-Scarpa Italian stuff over here: a lot of them just have this really strange emotional logic that doesn't translate very well (notwithstanding the noble efforts of our scriptwriter here, Gary Leach).

COMING UP NEXT: more goddamn Mice, probably.
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Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 75th Anniversary

November 27, 2015, 9:02 pm
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I'm a bit preoccupied with stuff, so as a little filler, it's time for...the Walt Disney's Comics & Stories 75th Anniversary Special Lightning Round! We're going to comment on each story in the book in rapid succession. I'm not including scans this time because a) it would be kind of hard to do good scans of this thing without breaking its spine and b) that would take extra time, obviating the purpose of the lightning round.


The first thing to be said about this book is that it's slick as hell. It may well have the highest production values of any Disney comic I've seen, with the cover and inside pages all being absolutely immaculate. The only criticism I'd make: ads on the inside and outside back covers? No extra comics crammed in there? I'd gladly have paid an extra dollar or two to get rid of those. I feel I am already sufficiently aware of the existence of Back to the Future and My Little Pony.

The idea is to provide an overview of the Walt Disney's Comics & Stories line, and at this it's pretty successful. As David Gerstein notes in the back, it's not really possible to do a thing like this in seventy-five pages without some lacunae—but it's really pretty solid. Just let it be noted than when I complain about something or another being missing, I'm fully aware of whyit's missing. But where would this blog be without complaining?

OKAY GO.

“The Mighty Trapper”(1943)

We open—as how could we not—with a Barks ten-pager. His seventh ten-pager, to be specific, and ample evidence that even so early in his career, he had what it took. The story's a lot of fun, even if the fixation with trapping animals is a little creepy. For my money, the best part is this exchange:

Huey: I bet we catch a wolf as big as a horse!

Dewey: Bigger'n a horse—big as a—a—elephant!

Louie: Bigger'n an elephant! Big as a—as a—uh [this “uh” possible representing some sort of sudden brain malfunction]—a bohimaton!

I'd be extremely curious to know how or if foreign publications attempted to translate “bohimaton.”

“Ridin' the Rails”(1955)

Okay okay, I'll readily admit that in a retrospective like this, you've gotta include a Fallburg/Murry joint, even though it just seems wrongsomehow that it should eat up almost a third of the book. In his little blurb that appears in the regular issues released concurrently with this book, David G notes that this “in 1993, Comics and Stories famously tried to reprint it,” but somehow—hard to fathom how this could happen, really—screwed up and only printed the third part. Notwithstanding that it seems unlikely that such a thing as a Murry/Fallberg reprint could ever be “famous” in any sense, fine! If we have to have one of these, we might as well right an old wrong! What to say about it? Not much. It's boring, as expected. Admittedly, Mickey isn't one hundred percent passive in this one, but there's also no amusingly off-kilter character like the faux-Shamrock Bones from that crystal ball story, so I guess it evens out (okay, not quite—few stories are as bad as that one is). The only sort of interesting thing is that we get a little history for Grandma Duck—she inherited this here railroad from some poor swain who failed to successfully court her, and he had named it after her, and thus we learn that in the Fallbergverse, her name is Abigail, flying in the face of Rosa continuity! And...I have to admit, Abigail is clearly a better name for her than Elvira. GO FIGURE.

“Low Diver”(1932, WDC reprint 1942)

BUCKY BUG, MOTHERFUCKERS. I don't think I read a single Bucky story as a young'un, but I must say, I have no objections to the character. I like the miniaturized universe he lives in. In this one-pager, Bucky's part of a breath-holding, underwater-staying competition. Of course, a BB story lives or dies based on how well the rhymes scan, and this one is...not terrible, but a little wobbly in places. Notably, there are a lot of lines that just have one or two too many syllables, eg: “Three minutes! That's the best I've seen!/My only chance is to use my bean!” That just jars. And the hell of it is, most of these could've been fixed with just a little thought, so here, just rewrite that second line as “My only chance? To use my bean!” Also, I can't help noting that Bucky succeeds by blatant cheating, and there's not even lip service paid to the idea that this is problematic. But what do I know of bug morality? I oft ask myself this question.

“Treed” (1940, WDC reprint 1943)

I literally ell oh ell'd when I saw that they'd actually managed to squeeze flippin' Little Hiawatha in here. This is the original one-page comic, not one of the later, actual storystories, and there's no dialogue, meaning none of the risible “have heap big pow-wow and smoke-um peace pipe”-type dialogue. I mean, it's pretty insubstantial, but it points towards those later stories—which were, after all, a WDC mainstay for a few years—without actually being one (and without, indeed, non-initiates being aware that they ever existed), which seems like a good compromise.

“Doing Bad for Good” (1957)

NOPE! I am never, ever going to be a Li'l Bad Wolf fan, and indeed, I'm never even going to theoretically understand the appeal of a character whose defining gimmick is being a huge goody two-shoes. I guess there could be a kind of macabre pathos in the fact that the only thing preventing his father from being a cannibal serial killer is his own ineptitude (intelligent humanoids eating one another—the fact that they're technically different species seems to be neither here nor there), but it's not like this can be played up within the Disney-comics context. Again, though, it's impossible to fault a retrospective like this for including the character, given his inexplicable popularity. I think I vaguely remember reading this one as a young'un. It is no better or worse than the norm.

“Game, Set, Match” (1943)

Here's one of Walt Kelly's little Gremlins vignettes, a wordless two-page thing. An interesting part of Disney's past, but I can't help but feel that more than any other stories, these have little meaning outside their contemporaneous World War II context. Even beyond that, I find this one specifically a bit on the inscrutable side.

“Looking for Some Action” (1958)

Now we turn to Scamp, who seems to me to be an odd and unique character—has there ever been another Disney-movie comic spinoff like this, let alone one with such enduring popularity? Man, and I don't even like Lady & the Tramp very much. I'm okay with Scamp comics, though, and I think Al Hubbard's art is far more appropriate here than it is in his bizarre-looking Donald & Fethry stories. This particular example of the form is adequate at best; there are some amusing moments, like Scamp breathing fire after eating a tamale (Mexican food perhaps seemed more exotic in the fifties than it does now). On the whole, though, it's just contrived: Scamp goes out to have some adventures and inadvertently does things that make the other dogs think he's heroic. Whoo. I must also note that the part where he randomly finds a cache of stolen money seems to have nothing to do with anything; it doesn't figure in his tall tales at all, and no one even seems aware after the fact that it happened. On the whole, 'salright, though. Maybe it's just nostalgia talking (well, not just nostalgia—I also remember those Li'l Bad Wolf stories from childhood, and I have no lasting attachment to them), but I would enjoy seeing some more of these reprinted as WDC backup stories.

“Three for Breakfast” (1948)

It's a Chip'n'Dale one-pager, where the chipmunks try to steal Donald's pancakes. It's okay for what it is (though rhyming “good” and “food” seems like a no-go), but I'd much rather have seen a full-length Chip'n'Dale story (I know, I know—length restrictions). I don't mind Chip'n'Dale, though the pidgin they speak in is far from my favorite thing ever. Again, I wouldn't mind seeing some of this old material reprinted, though Scamp comes much higher in order of preference.

“Magica's Missin' Magic” (1994)

I suppose it was inevitable in a full WDC retrospective, but it can't help but feel jarring as hell to straight from Western to Van Horn. To ease the transition, I would've gone with a Donald-vs-Nephews story; something that feels a little bit more Barks-ish. BUT THAT'S JUST ME. In and of itself, however...well, this story doesn't in any case rank among my Van Horn favorites. It's a highly contrived thing where Magica needs to play a specific tune to open a box, and for some reason only the Baron Itzy Bitzy (a musical flea, and surely Van Horn's most eccentric creation) can produce it. Very mild hijinx ensue. That is all. Hey IDW, when you going to get around to starting the task of bringing new-to-us Van Horn material to the States? I mean, yes, I've read a handful of stories in French, and in general, he clearly isn't operating at peak levels—but, dammit, it's still Van Horn, and we still need it. Get on that.

“March of Science: Dinosaurs” (1991)

Truly odd—not something I ever would've thought of as being particularly characteristic of WDC, but here we have a short, semi-educational (well, maybe that's pushing it) story, as Von Drake lectures us about dinosaurs. I'm glad to see it, though; it's actually rather winning, with entertainingly sketchy art by Bill White.

So what have we learned from this endeavor, boys and girls? Under the constraints, I really don't have many complaints; it's a solid retrospective. As David notes in the back, there are several entire decades that go unrepresented, but it's hard to say if this is a “problem,” since—as we all know—original Western Disney material in the late sixties through the end of Western tended to be kind of on the shitty side. Under the circumstances, “length limits” may actually be convenient to have as an excuse here; the absence of Gemstone seems more problematic, but at least it's made up for by the absence of Boom. The only thing that I really dothink should've been included is a “story.” I mean, no, I don't believe I've ever read one that isn't on the terrible side, but dammit, there's gotta be somethingthat's minimally acceptable—and really, people, it's right there in the title. Fans who aren't familiar with the classic material likely have no notion of what “and stories” is supposed to mean, and they are not getting any editorial assistance with this question.
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It Grows On You.

December 7, 2015, 9:44 pm
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Looking good, ladies and gents!  JUST IMAGINE: six years ago, this would've seemed impossible, and now, BAM, more than halfway done.  My only concern is that they may run out of color schemes for the covers. 

(I mean, more than halfway done unless they decide to go so far as to reprint twenty years' worth of gag strips, but that sounds excruciatingly monotonous.  Personally, I'd go with one best-of volume of latter-day gag strips, both because it would be interesting in itself, and--perhaps more importantly!--so we can have a nice, even number of slipcases with no odd volumes out.)

Anyway, sorry for the dang ol' lack of updates here.  There are things I've been itching to talk about, but I have been GENUINELY PREOCCUPIED.  Everything should be good now, though!  I'll be off on vacation this next week and a half, but then I'll have a flurry of Christmas stories.  I already have a few written, and more in the works.  Huzzah!
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"It's a Wonderful Christmas Story"

December 20, 2015, 6:45 pm
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This Christmas, we will look at some Italian seasonal stories. The idea was that we were going to cover all Italian Christmas stories that have been published in the US, but given that that number has abruptly, like, quadrupled, it is no longer feasible. Which is a good thing! More cheer for all! Anyway, hopefully I'll get to at least one or two of the newly-published tales, but we will start with some ol' Gemstone material.


I'm going in order of least-favorite-to-favorite, so we start with this, a Romano Scarpa effort from 1998. Man, the what-if-you-didn't-exist part takes up only a small portion of It's a Wonderful Life, but when you know something is an It's a Wonderful Lifetake-off, you know that's the only part that's being talked about. Of course, the Italian title doesn't actually reference the movie; it is called “Mickey and the Sweetness of Christmas,” which seems very generic and generally a lot worse! Still, it is what it is. And I'll have more to say about that anon.



We open with a surprising slab of gritty realism. Mouseton's economy is in freefall, apparently. Was there some Italian depression in 1998 that I should know about? Certainly, this is a tone you don't see struck very often in Disney comics, though it's obviously here to set up the story.


Pete's plot: surprisingly diabolical! One of his best-ever, I'd say—and it works perfectly, too! Mickey would be totally fucked if not for his final change of heart!

 

Seriously, good job there, Pete! That was a really clever manipulation. I must say, it doesn't say anything good about Mickey that he just always automatically assume that Pete's actions can never, ever be anything other than diabolical. I mean, not that he's not mostly right, but what happened to the idealistic believer in human nature in early Gottfredson?


Really, how horrific must Mouseton's jail be if, after spending one night there, he's become so filthy and disheveled that everyone just assumes he's a transient and Pluto doesn't even recognize him?


But that was only the first part of the plan: to get Mickey out of the house so's Scuttle can sabotage his Christmas ornaments so's they blow up. Whee!


Again, a plan that worked beyond Pete's wildest dreams, though I must say, it requires Mickey's pals to be extremely lacking in the quality of mercy, such that this atypical behavior means WE'RE THROUGH, NO EXPLANATION PERMITTED. And at Christmastime, yet.


Well, on to the Wonderful Life stuff—here presented by the appropriately secular Santa Claus. It's obvious why this “what if you'd never existed?” stuff is so popular—it's an easy yet irresistible concept, and while it can be done well, it it's also well-suited for an extremely lazy, hackish writer (not that I'm accusing Scarpa of these things). It it has to be admitted, though: when you think about it for even a moment, it starts to look comically narcissistic: yeah, a world where Ididn't exist couldn't would be a horrible, useless pile of dung, right? How could it not?!? “Your life DOES have meaning!” is a perfectly inoffensive message, and perhaps useful to keep in mind when you're feeling depressed, but it easily shades over into self-aggrandizement. And, let's face it, it's almost certainly not true that you, personally, were the only person who could do what you did. None of us are really that significant on our own, as much as we'd like to think otherwise.

Also—and I realize I'm just deconstructing the hell out of this for no good reason—you have to consider that you not having existed is going to change so many unforeseeable variables in the lives of those close to you that they're just going to be totally incomprehensible to you if you look at them. It's not going to be life-affirming, just baffling. But all that is neither here nor there. Let's just accept the basic premise, to the extent that we're able.


Well, this is it. In most stories, this would take up a lot of real estate, but here Scarpa squeezes it all onto one page, almost as if he just wants to be over and done with it. Let's go over each panel individually, shall we?

First Panel: So Casey's the chief of police. And this, I can only assume, is supposed to be bad because he's only semi-competent at best? But things like this are a good illustration why these scenarios seem so dubious: you can't just say “all things being equal, it would be bad if he was chief,” because all things are NOT equal. I would go so far as to say that zero things are equal. How do you know how he'd respond to this new position? Maybe he'd rise to the challenge! Hell, maybe he did; this panel doesn't actually suggest otherwise, we're just meant to assume it. But people aren't static like that, as much as a comic might want to make us assume otherwise.

Second Panel: Kind of interesting, this. As much as people like to go to the ol'“Goofy's not really dumb, he just things differently” bromide, that is not at all a consistent thing in practice. Here, his situation looks kinda pretty exactly like that of a person with mild mental disabilities who is able to live basically independently but nonetheless needs some light supervision, which he's not getting. There's a kind of poignancy here, and I think this is clearly the best of these little vignettes.

Third Panel: Mmm...seems like a bit of stretch. I mean, can you actually point to a story (in Gottfredson, preferably) where Mickey helped him “control his ego?” I guess I'll allow it, though it's pretty borderline. Anyway, it's not all bad: apparently Clarabelle's stuck by him.

Fourth Panel: A bit oddly-phrased: not “he was demoted to...” but “he switched to...” Was this a voluntary demotion? Without meaning to, Scarpa seems to be insulting O'Hara pretty badly. Without Mickey around, he's useless at solving crimes, so he's no longer chief. Sounds...fair? I mean, it may be a tad unfair to say that he solves all his crimes thanks to Mickey—since we don't see the ones where Mickey doesn't get involved—but probably not that unfair. Still, maybe Casey is a better chief than he was! You don't know!

Fifth Panel: Yeah...when it comes to the girlfriends of the suffering [male] heroes in Wonderful Life stories, it seems almost inevitable that their outcomes are going to be sexist as shit. Imagine how horrible her life must be without the one man who gives her meaning! Bah. I don't totally understand the narration box there: “when she's not seeing Mortimer...” When she's not seeing him, she's single? When she's not seeing him, she's teaching needlepoint classes? What's your point? And why are these things bad?

Sixth Panel: This one is just weird. Is it really taking an ultra-conservative “preschool is ipso facto bad!” position? I dunno, if that's the case—or even if it's just saying “preschool is worse than spending all their time with Mickey”—Scarpa undermines himself by making them look so happy. Also, don't you think they're going to make friends and experience social development that they wouldn't have otherwise? I feel like this really worked out pretty well for them.

Seventh Panel: Yes, okay, given that this character was introduced specifically to play this role in this story, I cannot argue with the results. But, again, he looks pretty happy with the whole situation.

Eighth Panel: Another super-weird one. OMG! My beloved house! And people I don't even knowlive there! This might make more sense if there had ever been any indication that we were meant to have a sentimental attachment to Mickey's house, but as it is...you know, Mickey, whether you exist or not, they're presumably living and arguing somewhere! Your existence or lack thereof isn't materially affecting this in any way! I guess you have a point with the Pluto business, though. I could cavil, but it would not be in the spirit of the season.

So anyway, a real mixed bag. On the whole, certainly not all that memorable, though.



But don't worry, foax! The day is saved thanks to Pete's change of heart! If you kept in mind all the things Pete has done over the years—I recently read Gottfredson's “Mystery at Hidden River,” in which, among other things, he attempts to feed Clarabelle into a sawmill—something like this would not seem tenable. Is Pete a lovable antagonist, or just a psychotic one? Opinions vary! But what the hell, I like redemptive stuff like this, especially in a Christmas story.


BOY, sucks to be all those people with money problems who didn't randomly happen to save a banker's son, dunnit?

Sorry, the cynicism just wells up in me uncontrollably when faced with something like this. Hmph. Maybe instead, Scarpa could've taken another cue from It's a Wonderful Life, and had Mickey's already-existing pals help him out? Seems like a better idea to me.



I'm a sucker for concluding dinner-table tableaux like this, though. Interesting to note that these wordless cameos were the first time that both Trudy and Atomo appeared in the US. I like the fact that Pete, Trudy, and Scuttle are stealing the silverware, though I'm less enamored of the way the narration box feels compelled to call attention to this. It would be a lot more amusing without that. Note that Pluto there just looks completely stoned out of his mind. Also: why are Trudy and Casey slapping hands like that?

Well, never mind! I JUST got home, and I'm kind of too jetlagged to come up with a good conclusion to this entry! Not a transcendent story or anything, but YOU COULD DO WORSE! Probably. Expect more tomorrow, hopefully.
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"Memoirs of an Invisible Santa"

December 21, 2015, 7:27 pm
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So anyone who thinks some of the choices I've made in my localizations are a bit de tropshould be advised that a story entitled “Mickey and the Christmas Treats” was officially published in the US as “Memoirs of an Invisible Santa.” Just saying.

Not that I'm objecting to this decision; far from it. Titles don't get much blander than that original one, and a story as batty as this deserves a bizarre title to match. Originally published in 1954, this is the earliest Romano Scarpa work to ever appear in English; it's only the fifth story he drew (under the mad whims of the inescapable Guido Martina, of course). Let's get straight into it.


So we open with Mickey preparing for a Christmas party. Goofy has some innovative ideas for gifts, INCLUDING...
...this. Ominous music. Now, there is a long tradition in Italian stories where Goofy, for extremely vague reasons, obtains some sort of special ability to kickstart the plot. Anglophone readers may remember an example of this in the story that was localized as “The Great Gawrsh-Durn Champion.” This story...isn't exactly that, but you can definitely feel that it's in the same general vicinity. Here's this weird thing that he made! Maybe it'll do something unusual? I don't know! There's no way to tell!


...WHAT THE HECK?!? Okay, sure, why not, it makes them invisible. Except their shoes, for no reason that Martina bothers to even try to justify.
So they go out to try to figure out what's going on. Note this cat that keeps popping up for no reason. Now, so far all of this is fairly straightforward. I mean, the premise may be a bit odd, but nothing excessively out of the ordinary. Things start to really spin out when the guests arrive, however. This conflict and the way it plays out are really odd.


So here they are! And we can note that even at this early stage, Scarpa was perfectly competent to draw both ducks and mice. We get our first hint that something's a bit unusual in Scrooge's behavior. Look how mad he looks in the lower left there, and then look at him getting enraged at the kids for engaging in normal kid behavior. Now, yelling about how the Younger Generation is all wrong is a common Cranky Old Person stereotype, sure, but that doesn't mean it's a normal thing for Scrooge to be doing. I ask you: except when it comes to being thrifty and entrepreneurial, when has he ever cared about how kids act? When has decorum ever been his thing? “Hasn't Donald raised you right?” That's just a bizarrely out-of-character thing to hear from him in any context, let alone one as trivial as this. I suppose in justification, we could argue that this might have been early enough along in the character's development that this didn't seem so obvious. But that seems like a stretch to me.

Why does Mickey have a portrait of Daisy on his wall, anyway? What's going on here?
The important thing to emphasize here is that that “I envy an uncle with a nephew like him!” is apropos of absolutely nothing that Donald has said or done. It's just random, completely unmotivated hostility. Evidently, Martina grasped that Donald and Scrooge were frequently at loggerheads, but he hadn't quite figured out that their arguments were meant to have some actual basis,however trivial. As a result, we get this, which may well be the weirdest thing in a pretty darned weird story.


So we switch back and forth between the two plot lines, and we get various weird gags where everyone thinks they're losing their minds due to Mickey's and Goofy's invisibility—though it must be noted that none of this ever really goes much of anywhere.  I'LL TEACH YOU TO BUILD SNOWMEN ON THE ROOF!


The real action is back at the house, where the characters are becoming ever-more irrationally enraged over Mickey's non-appearance. Since when is “it” anything likeanything that Daisy “always says?” Note that Donald is reacting to this by hitting the booze early. He's clearly feeling no pain here; you will note that he's the only one in that bottom panel who appears to be enjoying himself. Good choice.


The real action amps up when Mickey and Goofy get back (having failed to solve their problem, which ends up helpfully solving itself). Is this how you would react to the unexpected absence of a host? It seems unlikely! You'd more likely assume that something was genuinely wrong, which would be accurate in this case. But, well...you're not a character in this story! So shut yer trap!


I must say, I do always laugh at the unbeknownst-to-him newly-visible Goofy wreaking vengeance.


And summarizing A Christmas Carol as “thuh heroic ghost makes thuh no-good party-poopers repent” is somehow the best thing ever.


Anyway, the whole thing resolves with this rather confusing business where Mickey and Goofy solve the conflict by making everyone else thing they've gone insane. As you do.


Why is it a “lucky break” that they didn't tell him who did the swinging? Is this one of those Kantian things where it's impermissible to lie at all, for anyreason, ever? Even though, let's face it, Goofy is alreadylying here, I mean come the fuck on?


Oh, and also, this resolution relies on all of his friends having absolutely no sense of time. Apparently the confusion has something to do with Goofy having messed with the clock to make time slow down, but it's all presented so vaguely and confusingly that it's a bit hard to figure.


If you want someone to kiss you, one good trick is to make them think you were three and a half hours late and then reveal that you were actually only an hour and ten minutes late. Works every time. Their inexplicable rage at the latter will turn into surprised delight at the former. Trust me; I'm a scientist.


I must say, I find the use of the word “snarky” incredibly jarring here. Anyway, GAME OVER. The end.


In spite of everything, however, I do enjoy the tableau at the end. What can I say?  I'm an easy tableau lay. Still, let's face it: to the extent that this story is entertaining, it's more for the gawking at how weirdit is than for any actual, you know, goodness.
 


Good way to fill in the extra half-page, I will say. More tomorrow if I'm not too drunk!
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"The Blight Before Christmas"

December 23, 2015, 12:56 pm
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Now I've read all of the slew of IDW Christmas stories—an enjoyable pastime for sure, though there's a lot of variation quality-wise. Still and all, though, I am at least glad that there's ONE story that can easily go into the “read every year” rotation. “Glad” might be an understatement, actually; I'm rather dizzy with excitement. It's only the second Italian story to join this company, and after years of no new Christmas stories of any kind, it's pretty great. And I say all this in spite of being fully cognizant that “The Blight Before Christmas” doesn't really hold together as a story all that well. That doesn't matter to me; it has more than enough charm to get itself over regardless.

(Okay, so I must admit I'm not too sure about that title—is it really necessary for absolutely everyone to always, always strain for the pun every single time, whether it's in any way meaningful or not? Gets a bit tedious, I feel.)


I tell ya, that old-school opening splash page that you see in so many vintage Italian stories warms the cockles of my heart. I'm also always happy to see more classic non-Scarpa material—still waiting, Godot-like, for Bottaro, but Carpi's fine too (and let's not forget about our writers, Abramo and Giampaolo Barosso). Of course, like Scarpa's, his characters can sometimes look a little weird (check out Mortie and Ferdie there), but he's a fine artist nonetheless, given to fun little touches like that bird in hat and scarf.


You must forgive me for the poor quality of these images; the Christmas Parade format doesn't really lend itself to effective scanning. One thing I like is the way the story sets up a really nice Christmas atmosphere. Does any of this have much relevance to the overall plot, when it emerges? Well...not exactly. But that's okay! It's still a lot of fun.


Question: do you think maybe, on some level, Scrooge actually enjoys worrying like this? It would be super-easy to just relax a little and realize, I'm super-rich, I'll always be super-rich, it's all good. But that would involve giving up the “striving” aspect of his character that's always been so important. I don't know; something to think about.


Anyway, the story kicks into action when he comes up with this great idea to get his country villa cleaned up for free. It must be admitted, though, that this is the most obvious weakness of the story: once the antagonists show up, the Barossos just completely forget about it.


Considering the source, that note is so comically obvious in its insincerity that you really have to wonder at everyone just uncritically buying it. This story really shovels the characters in; it feels a little gimmicky, I suppose, but it pretty much works. I cannot tell whether that “this isn't Gus Goose, by the way” (which is what that would say if I'd been able to scan the whole thing) was actually in the original, or if it's just for the benefit of particularly clueless newbies. Considering that it's clearly not a goose, it seems superfluous if it's meant to be serious. But a pretty good joke if not! Horace looks quite avuncular in those glasses—a good look for him, I think.

As for Gilbert, a search reveals that this is the first time in this dang ol' blog's history that I have ever had cause to mention him. And for good reason: he's probably the most irritating character in the combined duck/mouse continuum. I'll grant, in theory, that he provides a good opportunity to explore Goofy's character, and his insecurities regarding his intellect, but there really doesn't seem to be that much to be done in that regard. In any event, he's pretty much a nonentity in this story, and doesn't detract from it.


An extra helping of heroes, and villains, too, as we get Pete & Pals AND the Beagles. One thing that must be said about Carpi: he had a lot of trouble with the Beagles, seemingly never quite able to decide how heavy they should be; thus, they fluctuate wildly between “emaciated” and “obese.”


Wait...does Gus talk like that? He doesn't...does he? Since when? Am I losing my mind? What's going on here?!?


Anyway, Scrooge's plan works! Repairs are made! And Gilbert really is useless. All he does is shove these non-sequitur “intellectual” things into every conversation. It shows just how limited as a character he really is.


Turns out Pete & Pals had rented the villa's cottage to lay low after a robbery, and the story abruptly shifts to be about that.

("Ancient Sumerian texts"...oh, screw you.)


One fun thing about the story is that you get unusual pairings of characters, like Gladstone and Ludwig there.



But OH NO! They are captured! Did I say that Morty and Ferdie looked weird at the beginning? Well, get a load of them here.


GADZOOKS.


And the Beagles show up to see what's what, but they quickly get a faceful of REDEMPTIVE HOLIDAY VIOLENCE. I suppose I must concede that on some level it isa bit sexist that the women are the ones always using domestic implements here, but...well, it's still a hell of a lot of fun. What can I say?


AND MORE! You've gotta love this climax. The way Mickey and Donald glance conspiratorially at one another before hurling the pies is great, as is all the action in the bottom part. I particularly like the way Scrooge isn't necessarily contributing to the proceedings beyond just hopping up and down in rage.


Given that THAT IS NOT THE LAW, I have to wonder: what percentage of Gladstone's “luck” is just him making shit up knowing that his relatives are going to buy it uncritically?  In any case, this is a very perfunctory "something lucky has to happen to him!" moment.


Good ending, with the baddies compelled to sing in the police choir. The stunned looks on their faces are great. I can't help but note that they are “singing” A Visit from St. Nicholas, which is not actually a song. I mean, obviously I get that that was chosen as an appropriate “ending” line, but as a big ol' Christmas music nerd, I can't help but cavil. CAVIL, I say!

I like Clarabelle playing the piano, but where's Horace? The last we see of him is when he's “swat!”ing Scuttle in the image above. I certainly don't object to Gilbert's absence, though the appearance of a thoroughly deranged-looking Pluto just serves to remind us that the dog was notably absent until now.

So there you have it: “The Blight Before Christmas.” Yes, the plotting isn't very organized, and no, it doesn't use all the characters it introduces very well—but I find it to be a resounding success in spite of these problems. It leaves me feeling FESTIVE AS FUCK, and isn't that what it's all about?

Another story on Christmas Day! If you know a li'l something about US publication history, you should easily be able to guess what it is.
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"Being Good for Goodness Sake"

December 25, 2015, 7:09 am
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One thing about a lot of Christmas stories is: they don't feel all that Christmas-y. This is true with a lot of the non-Barks Western Christmas fare (which you've almost certainly never read because almost none of it's been reprinted, and for good reason) and Italian stuff alike. You start and finish on Christmas note, but you lose track of it for the bulk of the story, and it doesn't feel, thematically, very festive. “Memoirs of an Invisible Santa” is the perfect example of this, but I am forced to admit that it's true to an extent even in “The Blight Before Christmas.”

And THAT, in large part, is why this “Being Good for Goodness Sake” is my favorite Italian Christmas story. It really nails the seasonal tone throughout, managing to be cynical and goofy and heartwarming without any of these elements cancelling the others out.

This story represents the first appearance of Carlo Chendi—frequent collaborator with Luciano Bottaro and one of the few truly old-school Disney creators still living—in the US. However, you wouldn't be likely to guess this; the story feels very, very much like one of Scarpa's own, and not just because of the art; the occasional narrative hiccups feel extremely Scarpaian, to the extent where, no matter what inducks says, it's difficult to believe he didn't have somehand in the plotting here. But, perhaps that is just confirmation bias.


We open with Scrooge making his way home, and JEEZ, AM I REALLY OPENING THIS ENTRY ON A STORY I LIKE WITH ANOTHER DAMN COMPLAINT? Is this pathological, or what? Well, whatever it is, it is. I know I've repeatedly voiced approval for the whole “ludicrously unconvincing disguises fool everyone” Disney comics trope, but for whatever reason, I feel like if there's a bridge too far, this is it. I don't have to be consistent; you can't make me. Maybe I'm just reacting this way because of the Italian context—you expect to find things that don't make sense, so you look for them—but be that as it may...


To snap back to the positive, however, the above sight gag, while by no means hyper-original, always makes me laugh. Something about the art really does it for me.


AW SENTIMENT. This is probably a difference between characteristically American and Italian stories; in the former, you'd be less likely to see Scrooge as a secret philanthropist (eg). Though in fairness, I don't even know whether that bit was even in the Italian. While I don't agree with certain commenters who are really, really fixated on textual fidelity, I must admit that for purposes of serious study, it would be extremely convenient.


So here's the scoop! Is it on the contrived side? It is. Does it make little sense? You betcha! But that just doesn't bother me much. It's all about context: sometimes these weird Scarpa things (even if this is really a Chendi thing) bother me, and sometimes not (another reason one would think this was Scarpa-penned: it seems highly reminiscent of the contest in that “Duckburg 100” story that IDW printed, albeit less dopey. Still fairly dopey, but not quite as). I do have to ask, though: if Donald's gunning for this prize money (which, as we'll soon see, he is,), is he making things more difficult for himself by telling Scrooge about it? I'm sure each of us could come up with seventy-four different ways for Scrooge to get the necessary information that all make far more sense than this does.

(Also, that should be “for whoever performs...” Compare “I'll give the prize to whoever wins the contest” and “I'll give the prize to whomever I deem worthy”)


So now we get to this “competitive gifts” business. Let's just pretend for the moment that their apparent utter certainty that this is the guy to influence is justified, and note two things that remain unacknowledged: 1) if this is a presents arms race, Donald has no chance of winning; 2) BUT, it may well reach the point where it's a Pyrrhic victory for Scrooge.


Still, this present-assault stuff makes me laugh like a lunatic. I kind of vaguely remember that when I first read this story, I found it all intolerably silly, but clearly my sensibilities have changed. To an extent, it harkens back to Barks' deathless “Letter to Santa,” but—amazingly enough—the steam shovel duel in that story actually exhibits higher principles than this fracas, where both participants are explicitly in it for the money and nothing else.


Now we switch to the Beagles, and if I were inclined to be hard on this story—which I'm not—I would note that this switch is rather abrupt and segregates the story more than one might wish. There's an extent to which—even though the first half is valuable for the way it sets up the ducks' selfish behavior to contrast it with the Beagles' selfless—the first half ends up feeling like making time. That's what I would say, in an alternate universe. But in this one, I won't! Because, really, it's fine, even if the story does end up feeling slightly lumpy. Hell, I even like the ambiance here. I really feel the melancholy of being stuck in jail at Christmastime—and yet, in spite of everything, there's a certain cozy aspect to it, as exemplified by the chicken thief guy who doesn't want to leave. The harmonica accompaniment doesn't hurt either.


Anyway, this happens, and the Beagles are out. Has the old guy been in here for years based on this one chicken-snaffling incident?


And credit where due, Chendi comes up with a fairly reasonable pretext for getting the Beagles into Santa suits. I'm impressed!


And yes okay obviously he doespour it on a bit thick here. In fairness, so does Barks on several occasions. In additional fairness, few would claim that those occasions are the apex of his art; plus, this goes rather further than Barks ever did. OH WELL; it's okay as a springboard for the Beagles' spontaneous outbreak of goodness.


Man, does “playing along” really involve getting super-judgmental over lack of Christmas accoutrements?


Yeah, it's sentimental as all get-out, but I really do like this stuff. Their act of generosity may be threadbare, but, like the money itself, it's real. It's significant that this is purely spur-of-the-moment stuff. They wouldn't come up with a plan to give all their money to a poor family, but when they find themselves in an unexpected situation where such is called for, you see what they're really made of. This, of course, is only one possible interpretation of the Beagles, but I find it highly effective.


From one perspective, it's kind of a difficult situation, since Disney comics are generally pretty status-quo-y regarding Bad Guys—however noble their behavior, they're still The Beagle Boys, and thus definitionally villains, and it's extremely rare for villains to ever be allowed to get away with anything, even if the depths of their villainy are in question (that's why the case of Cinnamon Teal in that one Ducktales episode really stands out). Ideologically, this is undeniably a thing, for better or worse. The kind of thing that would really, really bother Dorfman and Mattelart, no doubt. Boy, is this post the second time in recent memory I've alluded to How to Read Donald Duck? Man, you could do a way more thoughtful Marxist reading of these things than those guys ever manage. But, that's something for the future. THE POINT IS, it's no surprise that the Beagles end up back in jail, and you may wonder whether a different denouement would've been possible. But it's okay, because they get to have dinner with their jailhouse pals! And I know that last sentence sounds sarcastic, but I don't mean it that way. I'm sure it will be a more fun Christmas than it would be otherwise.


The judge is wrong, of course—the fact that it's Christmas Eve really has nothing to do with the Beagles' actions. I certainly see no evidence of this, at any rate. I'm not sure whether we're meant to take his speech at face value or not, but I don't. Which is quite all right; there's still Christmas spirit aplenty.


And once again, if I had it in mind to criticize, I would note that this ending here is reallyunearned. It seems like it's just here because it's Christmas, dammit, and we need a seasonal closer. None of the ducks have done anything to get here. I mean, unless you count realizing that their squabbling was wrong-headed, but the story only makes that point in a very desultory way. Still, I don't, so I'll say that it's still a fine, Christmasy ending, and I wish you all, both great and small, a happy, bright new year!
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"Mummy Fearest"

January 4, 2016, 8:43 pm
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These punny titles will truly be the death of me. In theory, there's nothing wrong with them, but the problem is, it that they so often seem to privilege the bare existence of the pun over being anything more than very vaguely related to the story in question. Like they're just being mildly clever for their own sake. If someone asked you what this was about, you certainly wouldn't say, “oh, it's about the adventures of this cool, skateboarding mummy. He's wearing sunglasses, and he rocks out to surf music. It's great.” No, you would say “it's a story where Scrooge turns his Money Bin into a pyramid.” No question. Personally, I would've gone with the less-flashy but more to-the-point “The Pyramid Scheme,” and yes, I'm aware that that's the unofficial title of a Barks short, but that doesn't seem like a big problem. Maybe it was considered too obvious? Well, I like it. ANYWAY. Enough complaining.

(Ha—as if there can EVER be enough complaining!)


We can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reason for this story's existence is that Scarpa thought the idea of the Money Bin as a pyramid was striking, and he worked backwards to come up with a story to bring this vision to life. And...he wasn't wrong, I'll give him that much. In fact, I'll go further and note that it's actually a very thematically suggestive idea, given that a pyramid is a giant, ostentatious grain silo mausoleum. It would be easy to argue that this is essentially what the Money Bin is as well. Mind you, there's no evidence to be found here that Scarpa was actually thinking about any of this. It's really all just surface-level “Egyptian imagery is fun” stuff. And, again, he's not wrong! But it does, perhaps, point to his limitations as a writer.

Surprisingly...sparse narration box up there. I'd bet money that it's a more or less direct translation of the Italian (but in fact, there's no need—the scan of the original title page on inducks makes it clear that this is in fact the case). So there you have it! I mean, it's okay, I guess—hell, I'm used to reading French-language stories that are similarly unadorned—but nothin' wrong with punching it up a bit, I say.



Right, so we open with the Woodchucks patrolling the Bin and doing maintenance. In a way, it's an interesting idea, and as Scarpa demonstrates, it's certainly possible to transfer the general Woodchuck aesthetic to Bin-level. They are nothing if not versatile. It sure doesn't have anything to do with anything, though. What's the purpose of them wasting their time like this? IT IS A MYSTERY!


...boy, how could anyone have seen THAT coming? The huge fucking box that's been there for like fifty years blocks the view of things on the other side? You'd have to be some kind of psychic to figure that out! Damn you, physical laws of the universe! This will never stand!

I like the way he helpfully identifies himself by name. I suppose he's not considered sufficiently well-known in the States that that could go unstated.


Look like just about everyonein the duckiverse is “emotionally reactive,” in that case. Still and all, though, that disguise is actually pretty good, as these things go.


So anyway, skipping a bit ahead, Rockerduck's dire warnings alarm Scrooge and dispose him poorly towards the Woodchucks. Breaking their banner in half reallyseems to be taking things to another level. If you ask me, the family drama is the most interesting thing in this story, though it's so underdeveloped that it never gets the chance to shine as it ought.


I also really like Donald in this story. He's not the butt of the joke that he often is in these seventies stories. Here we see him going to deal with Scrooge for being a huge asshole to HDL, as a good parent should.


GRRRR!


Some good yellin' here. Scrooge is angry about the potential loss of his past; Donald about that of his nephews'future.  There's a good contrast for you.


And the gears grind into motion! Awkwardly so, but it's hard to imagine a super-natural way of bringing this thoroughly ridiculous concept to fruition. Even granting that, though, it must be said that Donald's line that sparks the inspiration is notably non-responsive to Scrooge.


Dammit, Scarpa—you just hadto undermine Donald's motive here, didn't you? Now he's not concerned with the kids; it's just that he likes getting outraged. “Why can't it be both?” you ask. Indeed, it can be and almost certainly is! But now he appears to have just forgottenthat he was ever concerned with his nephews here, and this whole ark, such as it is, just peters out. It's things like this that forcibly remind you that for all his scattered virtues, Scarpa is NO BARKS.
Well, on with pyramid construction. Is “Handy Andrew” a reference to this Barks short? IT HAD BETTER BE!
Hell, I suppose if you're going to be this preposterous in the first place, you MIGHT AS WELL make Scrooge win a prize where he gets to dress as a pharaoh! Why the HECK not?!?


“McDuck Named Local Pharaoh” cracks me right up. But more importantly, this is really interesting because, look, it's some ten pages later, and HDL are stillpissed off at Scrooge's behavior. And why shouldn't they? No reason, but it's so well-established, especially in Italian stories like this, that Scrooge can behave in the most outrageous ways and everyone will just forget about it almost immediately. The idea that dickish behavior could have long-term consequencescuts very much against the grain. Sure, you have the occasional Barks story centered around redemption, but that's not the norm, especially in a story where it's not really the central point. And that's why this is so effective.

I also like the way Donald just laughs off Scrooge's ridiculousness rather than getting pissed off. That's a face of the character that I really like.


Of course, this doesn't make Rockerduck any too happy. But somebody explain to me, because I DO NOT understand: what is the purpose of his line here echoing Donald's, above? What kind of parallel are we trying to draw between the two characters? I guess they're both spendthrifts, but that is wholly irrelevant in this story. And other than that, I got nothin'.


WELL OF COURSE you're gonna want to get Rockerduck into a mummy get-up. If you're going to all this trouble to tell this specific story, it would be a big waste to not.


Right, so here are listed four out of the five branches of the US Army. All I'm saying is, it would be a lot funnier if ol' Andrew had included the poor neglected Coast Guard.


I mean, it may not amount to much story-wise, but you have to admit, it's fun. Entertaining, ridiculous (I feel like I'm over-using that word in this entry), fun.


Scrooge and Rockerduck trapped in the pyramid is cool (nice Lovecraftian geometries!), and it brings up potentially interesting story ideas. Unfortunately, since Scarpa took so long to reach this point, he was about out of space and we don't get any of them.


“Pyramid of Geezer” is amusing, for sure.


Granted, characterwise, it was necessary for HDL to play some role in the rescue, but did it have to be so terse and anti-climactic? Well, yes. Unless you want this to be a double-length story, and sixty-five-odd pages would probably be rather too much.


It's one of these irritating things, though: okay, so Scrooge might've apologized for having behaved so unacceptably earlier, but does it seem particularly likely? The clear indication is that HDL are back in his good graces just because they saved his ass. He'sforgiven them,
which, you must agree, is a pretty fucked up dynamic. It reminds me of that four-part Ducktales episode. The “firefly fruit” one. I guess if you want to be generous, you could argue that this is his way of apologizing; that his pride prevents him from doing it directly, but everyone knows the score. Still, were that the case, I'd like to see Scarpa put at least a little effort into hinting at it. There's subtle, and then there's “I obviously haven't thought this through even a little.”

NONETHELESS, I actually quite like this story on balance. Seventies Scarpa is always a dicey prospect (okay, Scarpa in general is always a dicey prospect—but the seventies version in particular); his stories of the era can feel a little bland and/or perfunctory. This one is certainly neither of those things, and Joe Torcivia's lively script gives it that extra kick, my nitpicking notwithstanding.
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January 8, 2016, 11:59 pm
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JEEZ. It just goes to show: I don't imagine that Bill Walsh was actually a domestic violence enthusiast, but the fact that he could come up with a hilarious joke like this on the subject really does show how far we've come. We sorta get caught up on racial depictions in old Disney comics, and in comparison they don't seem as bad on issues of gender (though, granted, that's in part because there are so few female characters to be bad with, which is its own issue), but they could still be pretty darned bad.

There's another point to be made, too. I like plenty of Walsh's Gottfredson stories—and isn't it impressive that with “Pirate Ghostship, “World of Tomorrow,” and “House of Mystery,” he managed three stories in a row where characters are killed (sure, in two out of three you can argue that those deaths don't “count,” but really now)?—but you often find a kind of artifice in them—a distance, maybe. Like, they don't feel as close to the character as previous stories, and his behavior doesn't feel as “authentic.” The above is just an extreme example of that—can you reallyimagine Mickey Mouse, as previously depicted, getting it into his head to beat up his girlfriend? Of course not; it's total nonsense (you can see something similar, if less obviously unacceptable, in the disproportionate number of Walsh strips where Mickey is lusting after random human women). This shit is completely aliento the character. Most of Walsh's work isn't this bad, of course, but there's a prevailing air of unreality about it, for, at various times, both better and worse.
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"The Duckburg 100"

January 20, 2016, 2:55 pm
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And I said let's all meet up in the year 100, won't it be strange when...okay, never mind. I realize that that is unconnected to the story and makes no sense as a parody of ANYTHING. But for whatever reason, my brain just REFUSES to not play it whenever I hear that title. What can I say?

(Okay, jokes aren't funny when you explain them, but A) that wasn't funny to start with; and B) it's not really even a "joke," so, for the perplexed, i.e.

Well, this is a story from 1961, round about Scarpa's prime, and, well...there's a lot to like about it, and it doesn't even have too many maddening Scarpaisms with notably rare exceptions). And if that sounds ominously circumspect to you...well, read on.

But first, feast yer eyes on the great cover that Marco Rota did for a 2008 Italian reprint:


Really gets you pumped up for the story. Also, we can all be thankful that it was recolored, because here's the original Italian version:


...hate to say this, but it kinda looks like it's soaking in urine. Ours is a big improvement.


Wait...how does Scrooge know this contest involves "thrift?""Big Duckburg 100 Contest" isn't very descriptive. Oh, right, it says "campaign to encourage saving"...on a completely different building? Across the street? But I guess the banner somehow connects the two buildings, and the other is some sort of annex of the main bank? But the banner doesn't look like it's flush with the main building; it distinctly appears to be at an acute angle from it, so... wah? I dunno; there appears to be some distinctly non-Euclidean geometry going on here.

And that was a lot of harping on that, but seriously, it's pretty weird. Anyway, the main point is that there's this here contest going on.


Um...we'll come back to the details of the contest; for now, let's just note that it involves the bank, which Scrooge happens to own, giving away cash prizes to savvy savers. He has to stop them!

I'll say this for the story: it's a fairly complicated scenario--we have variously interlinking plotlines involving Scrooge himself, Donald, Jubal Pomp, and the Beagle Boys--and Scarpa handles all this surprisingly well, given his general MO. There's a lot less confusion than you'd think--so GO RO!


So...not to open a can of worms, but I'm going to open a can of worms. Because here's the translation part that just baffles me. And I mean, actually baffles. I'm not being rhetorical! So it's one thing to include anachronistic references in a story for laffs. Whether or not you philosophically agree that it's a good thing to do, you can at least understand why someone would. But including them because you want everyone to think the story was written and takes place in 2015? Donald's TV hero was clearly dubbed "Captain Retro" to allow for that bit about cell phones, and I DON'T UNDERSTAND. Is it...reallypossible that we want to trick people into thinking that this is a contemporary story? "Trick" makes it sound kind of meaner than I'm going for, but I simply don't get A) why this would be desirable; or, B) what other reason there could BE. And, I mean, even it it were, it's not likely to WORK very well. Granted, this story was printed before IDW had taken to including dates of original publication in their comics (a change that I commend in the strongest possible terms), but even so. The only ones who could possibly be fooled would be absolute Disney-comics newbies who, moreover, have absolutely no sense of curiosity, or possibly no internet access. I don't have the numbers, but I think this must be a very small portion of the readership. Whereas to someone like me, it's just jarring because it's so obviously a translation...thing. I mean, just look at that television there!* As hard as you try, pretending that this takes place in the here and now is simply not on. Romano Scarpa was a pretty good cartoonist! And he wrote his best stories in the late fifties and early sixties! What's wrong with acknowledging this?!

*I'm reminded of the Ace Attorney series of videogames, of which I'm a fan. These games are made by Japanese people, set in Japan, and often include verydistinctly Japanese elements. But the people responsible for the localizations are absolutely dead-set on these games being set in the United States. This leads to a lot of weird dissonance, as satirized in this comic:


This localization isn't on thatlevel of goofiness, of course. But it suuuure reminds me of it.
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Well, regardless of all that, I like Donald in this story. I didn't the first time I read it, but somehow on revisiting it, my opinion changed. He's so goshdarned enthusiastic! And we see by the way he immediately snaps back to reality when shit gets real that he's not reallybeing depicted as a little kid; he's just funnin'. I can relate.


And then we have Jubal Pomp! Like Gilbert in "The Blight Before Christmas," a search reveals that this is the first time I've mentioned Jubal. And for similar reasons, though it's not that he annoys me particularly; it's just that he's never really made much of an impression on me. He's a "wannabe tycoon" with frequent get-rich-quick schemes, if the shorthand that we're given in American comics is to be believed. And there's no reason why it shouldn't be! I just haven't seen enough of him, perhaps, to know what if any nuances there are to his character. He often teams up with Brigitta. That's all I got. Also, he reminds me of Van Horn's Rumpus McFowl. And it's not just the hat! ...okay, it's mostly the hat. But it's easy to picture McFowl in the role that Jubal plays here.


We also get one of Scarpa's less remarked-upon fixations: I HATE MODERN ART. Well, I SAY "modern art" but it would be more accurate to say I HATE ABSTRACT ART, 'cause really, folks, do you honestly imagine that the man had any actual understanding of the theoretical and aesthetic characteristics and concerns of modernism? It's really just GRRR ART DOESN'T LOOK LIKE SOMETHING BAD. Not what you'd call a sophisticated stance. To be fair, it's something you'd also see in Barks, on occasion. And, though I can't immediately call to mind any examples, you've gotta think Van Horn too, given his you-dern-kids-get-off-my-lawn cultural conservatism.


The only thing, plotting-wise, that falls short is this bit: the excuse the disguised Beagle uses to get into Scrooge's office to sneak in the little robot is that he CAN'T give him the statue now, because he's covered in glue and can't get it off him--but there was no way he could've known in advance he'd end up gluey. We could stipulate that the real problem is that McDuck doesn't have the cash on him, but in that case, the whole statue/glue thing becomes superfluous.


I feel bad for Jubal here--after getting blatantly ripped off by the Beagles, he gets screwed over AGAIN and then just disappears from the story. Is there no justice in this fallen world?!?


And I also like that Scrooge gives Donald a cool reward for helping out. That's sweet.


Okay, RIGHT, but now it's necessary to look at the nature of this damn contest, because it makes zero sense and this senselessness infects the entire story. "You have two choices: you can do something super-easy and make an extra hundred dollars...OR! You can do something much harder! And if you choose that option, you can make...an extra hundred dollars!" Boy, that's a tough one, innit? Seriously, this is NOT a puzzler. There is a Correct Answer here, and that answer is "stick the hundred in a desk drawer for now; then tomorrow you can use your two hundred for whatever you want." Anything else isn't even worth thinking about.

There would have been other ways to run this contest in which it made sense! In fact, I daresay mostways would've made sense! But Scarpa unerringly gravitates to the one that makes gibberish out of his otherwise well-constructed plot. It really does seem positively pathological with him sometimes.



And it leads to stuff like this, which is as nonsensical as anything I've ever seen from Scarpa. "I smell a rat?""Something's fishy?" These are sentiments that simply don't apply to the situation. "Suspicious" indicates that there's some room for doubt; we THINK Scrooge is up to no good, but golly, we just can't be sure--in spite of the fact that he's giving them ridiculous, self-evidently bad advice and not even providing any kind of specious rationale for it. "Bad advice" might be generous, actually. "Invest all your money in a Ponzi scheme!" is bad advice. "Pointlessly lose the contest!  No rationale, I just think losing is a good idea!" is...well, I guessthe term still applies, but it's so over the edge that no one would ever actually say it in so many words. It makes sense that Scrooge wouldn't be eager to bring up the downside of spending the money right now, but the fact that HDL don't bother to bring it up just makes them look dim, and this whole thing just makes your head hurt with its dumbosity.


That's the long and short of it, innit? This also just makes Donald seem unacceptably stupid. Because yeah, he can make dumb decisions, and he can have poor impulse control, but never like this. If it were just a matter of "you'll just end up owing a hundred to the bank, no matter what," you could justify it: say, okay, he doesn't want to owe money, but he's entirely sure he's never going to have this opportunity again, so damn the torpedoes." But no! This is a situation where HDL could--should say to him "dude: all you have to do is put the money somewhere safe overnight. Then, tomorrow you can in effect get the walkie talkies for free and have another c-note to to buy more Captain Retro crap." But no!


Everyone keeps repeatingthe parameters of the contest and yet still goes around acting as though they were other than what they actually are. I don't think I've ever seen a story create quite this level of disconnect. It's just such a poorly-thought-out move on Scarpa's part that it distracts from and diminishes the story's considerable virtues. Also, note the way Scrooge talks about "fooling" the Beagles. He knows perfectly well that this "investing" business makes no sense! Why doesn't anyone else? It ain't particularly arcane, foax!

Okay, so what would be the easiest way to fix the story? Well, it depends how much revision you're willing to do. If you change the contest rules so there's no saving option, it's just "invest it or give it back," then the behavior of Donald, the Beagles, and Jubal all instantly makes sense: for Donald, the walkie talkies are a matter of now-or-never, and the others are so filled with hubris that they're sure they can make profitable investments/successfully rob Scrooge. The downside is that then Scrooge dashing around urging them to SPEND SPEND SPEND becomes even more absurd. You could have him urging them to make specific investments that he knows are bad, but again, that would involve quite a lot of revision, and would also likely lengthen the story considerably. Another option that might work better would be to say, okay, one hundred extra if you save it, twohundred if you invest it. That would cover the Beagles and Jubal well enough, but it still leaves Donald with no good motivation.

I dunno--maybe youcan think of some way to have this make sense changing only dialogue, but I have a feeling that the cold hard truth is that it would require more work than that. Not to say that it would likely be particularly difficult! The plot is sound in outline! But, as we've seen time and time again, anyrevision is apparently too much to ask from Scarpa. I'll grant that in some ways, he was a genius. But boy, if only he'd been able to couple that genius with a modicum of discipline--then I can only imaginehow good he might've been.
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"The Eternal Knot"

January 22, 2016, 5:54 pm
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I can't--and indeed I think it's fair to say that I won't--stop.

Hey, as long as IDW keeps printing vintage Italian stories, no one gets hurt. That's the long and short of it. The obscurer the better. Today the Super Barosso Bros are back in a li'l 1962 jaunt. Just our thing. It's in the inducks top 1000, so it's doing okay, but several reviewers accuse it of not making sense. But...it's pretty coherent, really, unless a LOT was changed in translation to salvage it. Maybe a few things around the margins are a bit questionable, and yeah, it's a BIT choppy in a wholly typical way, but nothing serious. Also, it's pretty rich for the country awash in Scarpa to accuse otherpeople's stories of not making sense. WELL ANYWAY.


We start in flashback to Scrooge's prospector days. As you can see, he has gotten himself into a veritable tizzy. It's a good thing one of the examples he gives is this "Aunt Molly" character; otherwise, this would come across as a proto-MRA rant. Please do not try to imagine how he could have an extra aunt in the standard Barks/Rosa genealogy. You will just drive yourself to an early grave.


Here's the deal. It seems somehow appropriate that the conclusion of this, if they all stick to their guns, is nobody getting any money ever. Somebody else can spin out a metaphor from that.


Back in the present day, I like that coloring.  The red flames, blue sky, yellow moon, black silhouettes--solid.  That is all.


...the inevitable occurs. As several people note on inducks, it seems a bit odd that an Italian story of this vintage doesn't feature Brigitta in some capacity in a plot like this. Presumably, she wasn't quite established enough at the time.

The sums of money that you see in a lot of these Italian stories always seem kind of low. I mean, comparatively speaking. Sure, five hundred million is a lot of money, but for Scrooge, it would be essentially pocket change. Add or subtract it from his fortune; it barely makes a dent either way. But, of course, he's still fixated on it--which may provide us some insight on why you always see him obsess about tiny amounts of money, not being willing to spend a nickel on this or that, whatever. Psychologically, saving a dollar and saving a million dollars is basically the same thing for him.


A part of me wants to object that this objection to breaking the engagement is gibberish, but the more sensible part of me knows that there is little point in making such an objection about a story of this sort. It is what it is. It gets the job done. He CAN'T break off the engagement, and that is that! He just can't! Go away!

ARGH I AM GOING TO KILL MYSELF. But, uh, in a GOOD way! It must be said, though, if we were going to take this story even a little bit seriously, this would make Scrooge into quite the sociopath. You just learn that your friend (or guy you were friendly with, anyway) died horribly, and your first instinct is to make a dopey pun? Man, you might as well be James Bond.

It is rather interesting that characters are apparently allowed to be killed off in stories like this, albeit offstage.


...maybe this is what people are complaining about when they say the story makes no sense? Because no matter how many times I read this, I cannot make head or tails of what it's supposed to be saying. Is Bafflewitz figuratively in a pit, because he died and is now in Hell? Or is he literally living his life in the bottom of a hole that he can't escape from, and therefore (highly dubiously) disqualified? Neither of these seem to make a whole lot of sense, but I'm not sure what the other options are. Also, it's sure hard to parse how Scrooge's facial expressions and body language fit in here.


OH BOY MORE ABSTRACT ART HATRED! But of course, this is only drawn by Scarpa, so the question is, did the Barossos share his opinions, or is this something inserted by David on the basis that it fits in with the general milieu?

Right, so anyway, when Donald and the kids prove unable to tempt the last remaining member of the pact down the mountain, Scrooge sends Gladstone, which is kind of an interesting and unexpected thing to do, but kind of pointless in practice. Also, it must be noted that "luck" seems to have nothing to do with Gladstone's success--Donald could just as easily have brandished that porn fashion magazine himself. Sure, you could play it as "oh, what a lucky break, I just happened to have it with me!" but the story ne'er goes there.


So what happens is...this. You kind of assume at first that the absence of this Dukehart woman is setting us up for some kind of big reveal, but...no. We just never see her. Chekhov's gun remains unused. It's all a bit unsatisfactory, I must admit.

People who think a lot about duck/dogface miscegenation (that includes all of us, I assume) ought to be fans of this, though. We can't tell from her name which one Dukehart is meant to be, but she's either marrying or was going to marry someone who was whichever one she's not! Yay!


Good plan, good plan!


Ha ha! Screw you, Scrooge! I believe I am on the record as always appreciating it when Don gets one over on his uncle.


But as for this ending...okay, it's true that you won the contest and therefore get the money, and I suppose it's also true that you can stick relevant documents in your scrapbooks. Bully for you. But...I mean, the clear implication here is that, even though it seemed like you were pwned by Donald in the panels above, you're actually getting something over on everyone else that they don't know about! Ha! Cue conspiratorial winking! But...you're not, are you? This is wholly unresponsive to the above, and not in any way any kind of twist. Or maybe it's not meant to be related, in spite of everything? Either way, not great storytelling!

OH WELL WHATEVER. I'm not going to try to claim that this story is some sort of lost classic, but it's fun for what it is, at least if you fetishize this old Italian stuff the way I do. More, please!
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New Disney comics forum

January 27, 2016, 3:47 pm
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Since the dearly-beloved Disney Comics Forum appears to be gone forever, maybe this can take its place.  Tell your friends!
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Tycoonraker! or From Zantaf with Lumps

January 30, 2016, 7:50 pm
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LUCIANO BOTTARO. What more needs to be said? He's been published in the US! Finally! I feel very strongly that this is a momentous occasion, and there should be some sort of parade or something. And yet, it just happened, and no one's shouting from the rooftops. Why is this?!? Tell me!!! Well, I hope we see a LOT more of him in the months and years to come, is all I will say. It makes me sad to contemplate that a lot of his prime material is too obviously weird to be likely to see a US appearance, but that doesn't mean there isn't still plenty out there that oughta.

There were four really pivotal vintage Italian Disney artists: Romano Scarpa, Giovan Battista Carpi, Bottaro, and Pier Lorenzo De Vita (Marco Rota got going a little later). The Four Horsemen, as absolutely nobody up to now has ever called them (in this analogy, Guido Martina is Hell, who followed with them. So who's Carlo Chendi? I dunno--Nicolae Carpathia, maybe? I'm afraid this paragraph is getting a little flaky). Astute readers will note that out of these four, De Vita is now the only one to never have appeared in a US comic book. No reason I should've been, but I was sort of surprised when I first realized that. Never? Surely at least once or twice, just incidentally--no, NEVER. Part of the reason for this is probably that the best-regarded De Vita-drawn stories tend to be weird historical and/or literary pastiches of the sort that flat-out don't get published in the States (though the same could be said of Bottaro). Still, even though he's obviously the least of the four, I still hope he'll come 'round to visit one of these days. I've written about his stories here, here, here, and here. An' whaddaya know, I even made English versions of two of those suckers. Good times.

But this entry is not about De Vita! It's about Bottaro, and how awesome he is, and how badly I want to see IDW publish more of his stuff! Out of the four, Scarpa gets the most attention because he was (well, could be, let's say) a great writer, and Carpi certainly had his moments, but there's little doubt in my mind that Bottaro was the most skilled artist among them, and this story provides ample evidence of this.  Note that his characters rarely if ever go off-model the way those others' tend to.

I hadn't read the original, but I HAVE read Bottaro's sequel, "The Return of Dr. Zantaf," which, title notwithstanding, is actually a time travel story that features very little actual Zantaf. Still, I hope to see it over here sooner rather than later! It would be a good opportunity to introduce Pirate Captain Scrooge, which is one of Bottaro's favorite things to draw.

(I suppose I can't complain toomuch about that title, which is certainly more memorable than the original Mission: Zantaf, and ties into the whole spy business.)


It starts off in its meandering way, as his stories tend to. Nothing could peg this as European more obviously than the fact that Donald is watching soccer. This is one instance where you could legitimately square the circle, though: they really do call it "football" everywhere but the US (students would sometimes correct themselves when talking to me, having learned that we say "soccer" and thinking I wouldn't know what they meant by "football"), so go ahead and just call it that here and the reader can decide which kind of football we're talking about.


So here's this! If yer a USAian, you might remember the MIA from this story. You might well suspect that that bit of continuity is just a matter of localization, but no, in this case, I think it's a real thing. Inducks does, too. You will also note that, in spite of the fact that Carlo Chendi worked on both of them, they're very different kinds of stories. "Moldfinger" (as we call it) is very dense with plot, whereas this one is much more loosey-goosey (also, Bottaro's art here is much better than Carpi's there). But they're both fun! And that's what counts!




Dig the fish there. Those are extremely Bottaro; no one else was able to do anything like them. He didn't just do Disney comics, you know; he worked on a wide variety of stuff, including his own original characters--which might explain why stuff like this, to me, always looks kind of un-Disney-like in a way I can't quite pinpoint. But in spite or because of that, I still like it awfully well.


It turns out Zantaf is using this Manchurian-Candidate-esque conditioning to get money. Why not?



Yay! Tallgrassis, of course, a Barks character, but who is "Gotrocks?" It is, of course, this guy:


...or, alternatively, thisguy:



But either way, it's a reference to a non-Barks Western story! How often do you see thosesuckers? Never, is my rough estimate.

So what about the Maharajah of Howduyustan? Or what about the ultra-popular Indian Joe?"Who?" you ask. Jeez--THIS guy, of course:


Sometimes I get the impression that you're not paying attention.

(Okay okay, I'm not thatdumb; I can guess well enough why those two wouldn't have been candidates for inclusion here. No need to tell me!)


YES! More BOTTARO POWER! I really just wanted to highlight this image, and how cool it is.


Reading "Return of Zantaf" was not enough to give me a clear impression of the guy's character (seriously, guys, I went back and checked--in a sixty-two-pagestory, he appears in all of four panels*), but now that I've read his debut, I have to say--as insane supervillains go, he's pretty darned adorable. Look at him there--as the simple, childlike joy he's taking in his love of snakes! Just lovely!

*I imagine some editor going "Bottaro!  The kids are going CRAZY for this Zantaf guy!  Give us more!"  But B felt the character was played out, so he grudgingly gave them the least Zantaf-y Zantaf story he could come up with.
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(I do think most of the appeal here comes from Bottaro's art, and suspect that in just about anyone else's art he would come across as a lot more generically villainous.)

Sure, the "compulsory snake adoption" policy seems a bit undesirable at first glance, but let's think about this: a bit snake fan like Zantaf is obviously gonna want these snakes to have healthy, happy lives. And what's the best way to achieve that? By putting them in happy, healthy households, of course. And how best to do THAT? By eliminating economic insecurity, natch. So expect Zantaf to institute a robust social safety net, and also to put in place the strongest possible measures to combat climate change--he's a scientist,not some willfully know-nothing politician! And he knows that it's gonna affect snakes too. What I'm trying to say is, Zantaf for President! I'd vote for him before any members of the current Republican freakshow, that's for sure. Granted, that's not really saying much; I'd also vote for Cruella de Vil over any of them--but I'd vote for Zantaf with enthusiasm.


Also, he has sweet little chicken-bot things ("Electro-Men"). This guy is unbelievable!


This entry may turn into nothing but pro-Zantaf propaganda, but if so, so be it! He's a pretty darned chill villain. He's not gonna "liquidate" you. Tossing you behind bars is quite enough!


He's not even gonna get mad if you try to escape! He is nothing but amused to catch this electronic bowtie. Really, if you're going to be imprisoned be a deranged megalomaniac, you gotta go with the Zantster!


I mean sure, if you try to escape he's gonna wipe your memory, but can you really blame him? What else is he going to do, just keep letting you interfere with his world-dominating schemes? The US title may spoof a James Bond movie (or two), but any Bond villain would have killed you dead by now.


He likes...snakes. See? Reptiles are his true inner passion! This villain stuff is just a distraction.


Notice that he's not even angryat first--just upset that some jerk's destroyed his formula. As why wouldn't he be? YOU would be, I'll tell you that much!


Sure, he finally turns to violence, but, you must admit, only after a lot of pushing, and really, can you blame him?  Dude just won't stop messing with his schemes.

(I've been so consumed with Zantaf apologia during this entry that I haven't said much if anything about Donald, but he comports himself pretty well too--a bit bumbling but more or less competent in what he's doing. All joking about Zantaf secretly being the good guy aside, it's still a good match between the two of them).

"Is a Laocoön like an antique raccoon?" Sure, probably, why not? I do like the joke, though it'd work a bit better if "coon" and "coön" actually rhymed.


Anyway, back to talking about how great Zantaf is: LOOK HOW GREAT HE IS, even when hypnotized! He likes butterflies! Yay! I just hope this hasn't negatively impacted his love of snakes.


So the question is, isthe word supposed to be antidisestablishmentarianism? 'Cause if it is, then even if he couldn't exactly pronounce it correctly, you'd think he'd know what it was to the extent that he could look it up when he got back home. But then we see him trying out unrelated words. So I don't know.


WHAT A NON-SURPRISE. Though it reeeally must be said that it's not at all clear what her actual purpose was in this mission. Sure, she just happensto show up at the crucial moment to distract Zantaf, but who could've known that would even be necessary? Other than that, she just wanders around and acts stoned. Her role in "Moldfinger" was similarly small, but rather more crucial.


Daisy's having fun...heck, even Zantaf is having fun! And a final YAAAAAAY!!! for that. I kinda with Donald would buck the heck up, but other than that, this ending puts a big ol' smile on my face.

Truth: I think this is the best story that IDW has published to date. More Bottaro, please! A lotmore, preferably.
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"Still the Champion"

February 3, 2016, 2:52 pm
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Right, so thisis the story I was alluding to last time with this:


Looking it up on inducks I realized--I had totally forgotten this--that Gemstone actually reprintedit, in their sixtieth-anniversary issue of Uncle Scrooge. Go figure.

It comes from a Duck Album. Duck Albums were a long-running Four Color Comics series, the conceit of which is that the ducks are gathering 'round the ol' family album, and telling the stories of the various photographs--one for each character. I remember really, really liking this conceit when I was small; hell, I like it NOW--but the stories themselves are, predictably, nothing much to shout about.

In the particular issue where this appeared, there's a twist: Donald has decided that dumb ol' still photos are Old Hat:


The photographs that stories in the other albums are based on are rarely if ever justified; that is, there's no logical way a picture could actually have been taken at that moment. This "home movies" business takes that illogic to a new level, though: are we supposed to imagine that there were Secret Cameras recording each of the stories? Or are these just recreations? Neither rationale seems particularly convincing.


Also, who's supposed to have designed the title cards? HMM. But never fear; in the end, Grandma's luddite ways are vindicated:


Yeah, smug it up, Granny. But don't come crying to me when the goat comes back for your precious photo album.

SO ANYWAY, on to the story. Ol' Indian Joe's in the lead! What to do?!?


HOO BOY. But don't worry; Dan Snyder will be happy to explain to you how Scrooge is only using that word to show his deep appreciation and respect for Joe's Native American heritage. And naturally, since it's so totally non-loaded and inoffensive, there will have been NO PROBLEM reprinting it:


Huh.

But in all deadly seriousness, while this would likely cause the usual suspects to start fulminating about the dread specter of Political Correctness, I think it's wholly reasonable that ordinary citizens should be able to open a Disney comic book without fear of running smack into a racial slur.

(On a wholly unrelated note, though, I do like Scrooge's dollar-sign lamp.)


Okay, so that's ridiculous, but in fairness, it's pretty much the exact same kind of ridiculous that we see in "The Second-Richest Duck," so I guess I can't cavil. But that's okay; there's plenty else about which I CAN. And this was 1953, note; excuses that "oh, the writer just wasn't familiar enough with the character" are not valid at this late date--at least not for Americans, who don't have to wait for Western stories to appear in translation.


It's hard to imagine how he thinks he's guaranteed to stay on top if he's only ahead by one cent, but again--Barks! However, here you will note the first instance of a recurring feature in this comic, which is that all the meaningful action takes place off-stage, relayed to us second-hand. It is a less-than-thrilling storytelling technique.


Yeah, you'll really have to...wait, what? You're telling me you're not already raking in millions every DAY? I mean okay, so you maybe have to rejigger your businesses to make them more efficient or whatever, but let's not pretend that there aren't OPTIONS. This panel appears to be assuming that Scrooge's fortune is static and never-changing.


...so the anonymous writer of this story was sufficiently familiar with Barks to bring back this iconic phrase, but not enough so to have any idea how Scrooge would be likely to behave in a Barksian setting. OR--we must acknowledge the very strong possibility--the writer just didn't care; it was super-easy to gain some credibility by using this one phrase, but that doesn't mean he's actually going to do anything that requires work.


I mean seriously, not that Barks' Scrooge didn't have ethical struggles from time to time, but this seems excessive. Also, it's a pretty damned pathetic way to try to be number one. If you want that position, you should EARN it, dammit. It's not impressive if you only win by default because everyone else is losing on their own.


See? More off-stage action. Somehow, "the government is third" always cracks me up. And it must be noted how SUPER-WEIRD it is that the radio announcer would be providing these wealth standings.


D'OH! Note, again, how the writer here doesn't understand Scrooge, whose first impulse--obviously--would be to go for a swim in his cash, rather than frolic around in a park.


Okay, fair enough, renewed tenacity in the face of defeat is reminiscent of "Only a Poor Old Man." The goofy way this tenacity manifests itself--wholly devoid of business acumen--may perhaps not be, so much.


Huh. It turns out that the kid didn't REALLY have a new industrial recipe for the manufacture of gum. Who coulda knowed? Though I guess the fact that he had a working recipe AT ALL is impressive enough.


...as someone who has never mastered the art of blowing bubbles with gum, I am nonetheless fairly confident in saying that that is nonsense. Still, the kid obviously has SOME pretty amazing technique to have been able to do that.


Er...yay. A stirring victory for our hero. But WAIT; earlier he was moaning about how much he'd "have to sweat" to make just one million, but the fact that Joe is still making five million a daysomehow isn't a problem?

Okay, thinking too hard about these things isn't likely to get you much of anywhere, but a disposable story like this really does go to show why Barks was the best. This writer didn't understand something that Unca Carl did: it's not that easy to make readers root for a super-rich character to get super-richer. If you want to have a prayer at getting them to do that, one of the key ingredients is to get them to admire the character for his resilience and industry--tougher than the toughies, smarter than the smarties. By contrast, here we're apparently meant to cheer for Scrooge because, in the face of difficulties that have caused him to totally capitulate, totally unexpected things have happened that arbitrarily made him the "winner." This doesn't just make him seem less impressive; it makes him seem actively pathetic, which I don't think anyone wants.
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"The Seven Dwarfs and the Enchanted Faerie"

February 9, 2016, 10:11 pm
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"Hey!" you indignantly shout. "I come here for ducks and occasional mice; I don't want this Snow White idiocy! That's it! I'm boycotting your sponsors!"

And I hear you, I really do. But if I can convince you to put aside your righteous rage for just a minute, I think you may be entertained in spite of yourself.

Anyway, it's not like this is without precedent; you may recall that a few years back, I wrote about a Gottfredson-penned Seven Dwarfs story. At that time, I said that I was planning on looking into the world of Italian 7D stories, and if you think that was a mere idle fancy, I'm here to prove you wrong!

This here story is by the venerable Scarpa/Martina team, and seeing what they do with atypical characters should at least hold a bit of interest, I think. I went into this story with absolutely no preconceived ideas about what it would be like. I came out of it thinking "good lord, Martina. Where the hell did thiscome from?" Just try to compare this to Western-published 7D stories--I dare you. These aren't just from different worlds; they're from different universes. Different sets of parallel universes, I should say. Many dimensions separate them! I mean jeez, Italian stories may not always be good, but their scope and ambition compared to their non-Barks American counterparts is astounding, and that is never more the case than here.

Yes, the main word I would use to characterize "The Seven Dwarfs and the Enchanted Faerie" is "dumbfounding," and oh come on you know where this is going. Download my English version here (my eleventh translation! Whaddaya know about that?).  I sure as heck didn't expect to be translating a Seven Dwarfs story, of all things, but needs must.  I know I may possibly have suggested that I was giving up that little hobby as long as IDW was around, but what can I say? Sometimes you read a story and think "this really, really needs to be in English, and if I don't take things into my own hands, it is never, ever going to be." I am super damn psyched to be able to share this with all y'all.

(Okay, so technically, there was already an English version, published in many installments in an old British magazine--but good luck finding them, and if you somehow do, don't expect much from the translation, given that it's entitled "Seven Keys of Danger," in spite of there only being four keys.)

Anyway, instead of trying to go through this story beat by beat, I'm going to just list some things about it--like a Cracked article. "Five insane facts about an obscure Italian comic!" This will likely come across as somewhat disjointed if you don't read the story itself first, but hey, you should be doing that ANYWAY.  I know I ALWAYS say "read the story before reading my commentary!" but I really mean it this time.  There's a lot of rather incredible stuff here, and it would be a shame to blunt the experience by not going in blind.  BUT IF YOU MUST...

1. It makes no sense.

Let's face it: if your standards for a story's quality have anything to do with whether or not said story makes any damn sense, you're sure not gonna like this one. It would be super-easy to spend a whole entry doing nothing but pointing out nonsensical things here, but it probably wouldn't be very interesting. And besides, it would be kind of beside the point.


(but seriously, how the HELL is he narrowing the choices down like that IT MAKES NO SENSE)

Now, I'll grant you that Martina is Martina, and some percentage of this surely comes from the same sensibility that caused a lot of vintage Italian duck/mouse stories to contain nonsensical elements (certainly, I'd say that about the above). However, in this particular instance, I think there's more to it than that. Does this story really"make no sense?" Well, yes, in the conventional sense of "making sense." But that's not really the right sense with which to approach it. I mean, look at this part where Doc is turned to stone:


Questions abound: why the heck does this guy have a gun that petrifies the shooter? Is he supposed to be a minion of the Evil Queen, and if so, why is he--apparently--so sincerely warning Doc that this is a bad idea?


...and then why, when he IS petrified, does his bag o' diamonds magically turn into a bag of what, were this a role-playing game, we'd call Quest Items?

BUT, I do tend to think this is missing the point. There's a delirious dream logic to this that you don't see in stories with just an illogical bit or plot hole or two. This is the logic--appropriately enough--of faerie tales. Indeed, I'd go further, and say that there are places where the story very much resembles some sort of abstruse mystical allegory about the transmigration of the soul or some such.


I mean, this is nuts in a sense, but it sure doesn't feel like a half-assed sort of nuts. Just TRY to tell me that the above is not, in its own way, pretty flippin' amazing. The thing that shocked me most upon initially reading this was how little, tonally, it's even trying to have in common with the movie, as exemplified by things like this. Martina is bending the 7D milieu in unnatural ways that are nonetheless pretty mesmerizing. And hell, when you think about it, it's only fair: as much as I enjoy Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it's undeniable that the company has always sanitized their faerie tales--made them less gnarled and weird--for popular public consumption. This story pushes in the other way, with amazing results.

2. It's frequently incredibly macabre and/or gruesome.

So there are basically three parts to this story: 1. The dwarfs make their way to where the faerie is imprisoned and vow to rescue her; 2. They head off on their quest to do this and are one by one incapacitated; and 3. Dopey saves the day with his indomitable fortitude. And GOOD GOLLY, if this had been an actual Disney movie, that second part would be giving kids hella nightmares. Because the ways some of the dwarfs are dispatched, JEEZ. Again, this is par for the course in unsanitized faerie tales, but it's pretty doggone heavy stuff for a Disney movie.


Okay, so an old woman demanding Grumpy give her his eyes and then turning him into a scarecrow is only a little eyebrow-raising, relatively speaking...



...but how about Bashful getting fucking CONSUMED BY FLAMES? If you've ever seen anything more horrific in a Disney comic, please to be telling me what it is.


Still an' all, though, it may be that the Evil Queen gouging out Happy's eyes and making him into a fountain of tears wins the day. It's both gruesome AND macabre! No need to choose! This is what we in the biz call KID TESTED, MOTHER APPROVED.

3. It demonstrates the limits of these characters as protagonists.

So translating this thing was, I would say, a more constrained experience than most of the stuff I've done. 'Cause in a story like this, you basically need to just follow it. Sure, make it sound as good as possible, but there's really no room for pop culture references or the kinds of show-off-y gestures that one is tempted to include in a duck story. Gotta maintain the tone.

So that's good for discipline, I guess. BUT, it must be said: as much as I like the movie, the fact is, the dwarfs do not talk that much, and to the extent that they do, it's impossible to glean much of an idea of how they'd speak in an adventure scenario like this one. This is somewhat less the case for Grumpy and Doc, but only somewhat, and you will note, in any case, that those two are the first and second to be eliminated from contention. So...it's pretty tough to do much in the dialogue to characterize them, particularly since it's ofttimes impossible to tell which dwarf a given speech balloon is supposed to come from. So...there's undeniably a certainly loss of fidelity to the original story in terms of character. Note particularly that at no point does Bashful appear notably bashful (least of all when he's just attacking the shit out of a dragon).


Yup! Sure, he *yawn*s occasionally (and a lot of those were added by me, just to make him seem at least a little sleepy), but what else can you SAY about him?  NOT MUCH! Nothing to be done about it, really. It's not exactly a complaint; I think the story's great anyway--but given the things Martina was trying to do with the characters, it shouldn't be a great surprise that it wasn't exactly a perfect fit.

4. Who knew Guido Martina was such a sentimentalist?

I mean, GOOD GRAVY. The man's full of surprises, given how merciless he generally is towards are duck characters.


Whether you think this ending counts as "sweet" or "barf-inducingly saccharine" is really up to you. Me, I'm undecided, but I've got to admit, giving Dopey a line at the end is pretty effective. 'Course, it's effective exactly ONE (1) time. Martina makes the most of it, though!

5. You should read it.


Look you have EYES, don't you? As long as you're not giving them to a witch, ya might as well take advantage! Also, I didn't even mention all the different crazy forms that the Evil Queen takes throughout. Those are PROTEAN AS FUCK, and likewise cool. Read it an' see for yourself!

There are several more Martina/Scarpa 7D stories, as well as some by each of them with others. Alas, these have not been widely published outside of Italy. Perhaps someone in the know can tell me if any of the others are as cool and crazy as this.

Welp, back to ducks! Got several stories I'm planning to write about the near future, so BUCKLE THE HECK IN.
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"A 'What-If' Love Story of Imaginary Proportions!"

February 14, 2016, 9:22 am
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Happy Valentine's Day! Want a little romance in your life? Well, too bad. All you get is this story. MAYBE it'll keep you warm at night, but I wouldn't bet on it.

It turns out, according to inducks, that there have been five Brazilian stories published in the US (eight if, you want to count (of all things) Mulan stories). This is by far the longest and most ambitious, though, and thus most worthy of consideration. For better and/or worse, it is certainly unlike anything that us Americans are used to reading!


The American title is a bit of a mouthful, but it gets at the idea, which is that this is MOMENTOUS! On the other hand, I do not get the impression that this was considered the case in Brazil. The original Brazilian title (which was maintained for the Portuguese reprint, natch) is simply "The Wedding of Donald Duck," which isn't much of anything. I suppose maybe understatement was the goal--you knowwhat a big deal this is; no need to go overboard--but I feel like in this case, more would have been more. And to not even mentionhis intended? Gads (also, the story's only been reprinted once in Brazil). The French title is "Marriage of the Century," which is pretty good, but the Italians have called it, apparently, "Donald and the Bachelor Party," which, uh (let it be noted that one thing entirely absent from the story is any sort of bachelor party). And THAT'S IT! The ONLY places it's been published! You'd think a story like this would be of more general interest.

(Sidenote: A cursory googling reveals that Brazilian and Portuguese Portuguese have substantial differences--more so, I gather, than British vs. American English. This makes me curious: are the scripts of Brazilian stories revised when they're published in Portugal? Would they look weird if they went unchanged?)



So we open with Donald reminiscing about the past. Not eeeeeven gonna touch that line in the bottom left panel. Just gonna let it...sit there. Not calling attention to itself. One obvious thing you'll note about this story is that the characters are somewhat oddly-proportioned compared to what you'd tend to see in American or European stories. Female characters in particular tend to be excessively...shapely, which I have no doubt is of keen interest to someone. Ahem.


Anyway, from here we move into dream world, starting with Daisy here. Note that, partially due to the coloring, Clara Cluck appears to be wearing a Clara Cluck mask. Hopefully not in a Hannibal Lecter way. Sorry for inflicting that image on you.


So the thing about this story that really can't be stressed enough is: it has noplot. I mean, yes, things occur in a sequential fashion, but they don't make up a "story," per se. "Donald and Daisy get married; then they have kids." That's about how I'd sum this one up. Most of the space is taken up with little slice-of-life vignettes. That sounds exactly like something I'd dig, but the results are generally...not super overwhelming (the incidents are typically so short and inchoate that "vignette" almost seems like an overstatement). It has its moments, but the pleasures they offer are fairly modest.


I mean, that's pretty funny, even if the pre-wedding sections of the story pound a bit overly hard on the whole "Donald is clueless" business. I guess it's meant to be a "typical male!" kind of thing, but it really shades over into "weird, sexless man-child."


And right here, he's gotten all ripped, but if this is because it's his dream, you'd think we'd see more aspects of wish fulfillment.  But we don't, and a fair chunk of it's not even from his perspective. So it just looks kind of odd.


Did I talk about characters being weirdly proportioned earlier? Here's something that illustrates that perfectly. Daisy towers over Gladstone, in contravention of everything we know about their appearance.  The two of them do not appear to be of the same species there, I'll tell you that much.


Anyway, at a certain point it was apparently decided, okay, that's enough of thattomfoolery, and the wedding is on!

Now...for reasons not easily understood, this story has four different artists (in addition to two writers--too many cooks, people!), who trade off duties at irregular intervals throughout the story. Of the four, three of them have artistic styles that mesh fairly well, flowing seamlessly into one another. One of them--this would be a gentleman by the name of Luiz Podavin...doesn't. He only gets four pages, but he definitely makes an impact. In fact, I'd say his art is likely to be the thing that people remember most about the story as a whole, because good god is it weird. So, uh, behold:


I...don't know what to say about this. I guess I could say that this depiction of Scrooge evokes his Victorian namesake more than any other that I've seen. But really, all that's necessary is to BOGGLE.


For your benefit, here are a WHOLE BUNCH OF CHARCTERS--many of whom appear nowhere else in the story--as rendered by Podavin. Please enjoy them in good health. Note that either Mim is telling Magica or Magica is telling Mim. But in either case, who told the one who's doing the telling? It is a mystery.

An' who's that hillbilly-looking guy? Why, it's your friend and mine, Hard Haid Moe! This is a character created by Dick Kinney, who appeared in a number of the man's Fethry stories, becoming beloved by absolutely no one...except, of course, the Brazilians, who gave him his own long-running comic book series, which may be the weirdest damned fact in the history of the world. It's things like this that make the country's Disney-comic history so darn fascinating to me.


The big day! Is that a reference to Notre Duck Cathedral in the original? Do the Brazilians actually do explicit Barks references, in a way that the Italians don't? Well, probably not, I suppose. But it sure is pretty to think so!


Yeah, I won't deny it, the Vaudeville routine here is pretty funny, even if none of this shows much respect for Donald. That seems to be kind of a universal thing, doesn't it? Stories allegedly celebrating Donald tend to be less than flattering to his character. See "From Egg to Duck," for the obvious example. I guess Rosa's "Duck Who Never Was" does okay by him. Well, okay, maybe it's not a rule. But...okay, this is a complete tangent, but the fact that Donald can contain multitudes often means that, when in doubt, he gets reduced to his worst elements. Look at just about any story where Donald and Mickey team up: Mickey's gonna be the competent one, and Donald's gonna be the fuck-up. This is because there's not really any other way for Mickey to be. Donald can be competent himself, but he can alsobe a fuck-up, so that's how he gets dragooned into use. Mickey certainly can't step in in that role, and you don't want two capable, competent characters! God forbid! Sorry, I know this paragraph is kind of stream-of-conscious-y and not very useful; I should probably just delete it. But I'm not going to! I've written it, and in it goes! Please enjoy it! And please enjoy how that "please enjoy..." thing is apparently a weird writing tic I have! One among many.


Yeah, and apparently they stay at Woodchuck Camp for the rest of the story, or at least for the rest of the dream sequence. Here's the reason: because the author(s) wanted to show Donald and Daisy as a newlywed couple who don't have kids, and then, later, have kids. If there are alreadykids hanging around, it's just gonna complicate the whole thing. So get outta here, you!



Here's an example of what I mean when I say the little vignettes never really amount to anything. You'd think the honeymoon would be a great opportunity for all kinds of incident, wouldn't you? And indeed: tempting fate! Ooh! Cue ominous music! What incident awaits them next?!?


But it's not. This is seriously all you get. I mean, I guessthe talking mosquitos are sort of amusing, but one could reasonably expect something a little more.


So they went on their honeymoon, and they thought everything would be fine, but then they were bitten by mosquitos. I do not know if my heart can take this level of pulse-pounding excitement. Really.  There aren't even any visual cues that this alleged bite fest actually happened.

(UPDATE: Okay, looking at Daisy in the second panel, I see that there clearly ARE.  It ain't much, though.)


In any case, we move on to Donald's and Daisy's married life. And...it turns out it's pretty incoherent. The above is, let's face it, pretty friggin' awful, the misogynistic hack's classic portrayal of married life. Women be henpeckin'!


...and yet, that is immediatelyfollowed up by this, which suggests that their married life is actually pretty okay.


Yay!


...but then, we're straightback to this! Hair curlers: classic lazy-ass shorthand for frigid, sexless women! What fun. I seriously cannot tell you how whiplash-inducing this is. Okay, actually, I can: verywhiplash-inducing, is how whiplash-inducing it is.


And so it goes. The authors really were determined that every single tired trope of married life be included here.


Until we get to this inevitable part. "Imagine this," the authors ask you: "Donald Duck as a father!" The problem, of course, is that the obvious response is, "uh, he's kinda alreadya father." Hence, as mentioned above, the convenient total absence of HDL.


The real what if-here is "what if Donald had children of other ages than HDL?" A somewhat more modest proposition, but at least it's something. So, yup, a bunch of kids. How's this gonna turn out?!?


Well, here they are as little kids, and I'm sorry to disappoint you, but this is the onlybit where you're gonna see them in this guise. For all that the authors set up this "what-if" scenario, they seem awfully uninterested in actually doing much with it.


The most interesting thing here for my money is "older Donald with glasses." His kids are teenagers. They want various things. And, uh, that's about all there is to it. Um. The end.


...no, seriously, the end. No denouement; Donald just wakes up and that is basically it.  We are left waiting for a punchline that never comes.  "A 'What-If' Love Story" is an interesting novelty, and an interesting glimpse at a Disney-comics culture that's largely invisible to most of us, but I'm afraid that as a story, it's largely a missed opportunity.

And there are still SO MANY QUESTIONS I have: is there someone in Brazilian comics considered equivalent to Barks in the US and Scarpa in Italy? Are there any legendary/especially beloved stories of Brazilian extraction (not according to inducks, but that doesn't mean much, since I don't think many Brazilians are voting there). I know there are at least a few Brazilians reading this, so any kind of insight you'd care to give me would be much appreciated!
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"Why All the Crabby Ducks?"

February 18, 2016, 11:15 pm
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WHY?!? TELL ME!! I REALLY WANT TO KNOW!!!

It's really one of the great questions of our time, right up there with "Is there life on Mars?""Is she really going out with him?" and "What in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue?"

Yes okay, so obviously, I'm only writing about it because of that title. Yup, it's a real story.


If you look on inducks, you'll notice that most of the foreign translations do not maintain the title's question form, which really seems to be missing the mark. I mean really, isn't the title the main reason anyone's gonna be attracted to this in the first place? Take it away and what do you even have? Well, let's see.

The initial indications are not good: this is a story written by Vic Lockman in 1971, certainly not a great time for Lockman in particular or Western-published comics in general (attentive readers will recall that several years previous, Lockman had written fan-favorite "Bird-Bothered Hero"). It's drawn by some dude named Mike Arens, which I must admit is a new one on me. Seems he was a pretty prolific Disney artist, actually, but he mostly worked on Scamp stories. This is one of only two DD stories he did. That may not seem terribly promising either.

The hell of it is, though, it's actually not a bad little story, even apart from the naming. Trawling through old Western comics to try to find worthwhile stories--especially ones of this particular vintage--is pretty rough going, because GOOD GOLLY, PEOPLE, when they're bad--as they overwhelmingly are--reading through them really sucks away your will to live. So when one is actually passable, it really stands out. And to think, I probably wouldn't have even bothered with it had it a more prosaic title.


So here's the deal. I'm...pretty sure they're crabby because of the traffic problems. That's what the evidence would suggest, anyway. But is there more to it?!?


I'm surprised to find myself saying it, but there's actually some pretty snappy dialogue from Lockman. His characteristic style is in full effect here, which is always a bit chancy, but in this case I find it's more hit than miss. I even kind of like Arens' art. Yes, obviously, his characters can look a bit wonky, but to my eyes, it doesn't look crude, and there's an energy to it that you don't find in the likes of Kay Wright.


I don't know; Donald getting outraged about this stuff is funny, and seeing him bouncing up and down on his car like that is funnier.


"Those kids take an abnormal view of everything! I just wanted to quote that line.  If there's meant to be some kind of philosophical message here about people taking advantage of human suffering, it sure isn't well developed.


Wait, the park what? Whathappened? So forget about that other stuff; this is why I like this story. Quickly granting the traditional racism and wholly unacknowledged colonialism here, this is so surreal as to be quite delightful. You can imagine this in a Pynchon novel or something.

(Incidentally, ever read "The Indian Uprising" by Donald Barthelme? One of his better known stories I think; it's pretty great and I recommend it. It doesn't have much to do with anything, but this vaguely reminded me of that.)


...and it continues to be like this.  Built on sand lolwut?



Mind you, it all becomes--to my mind--significantly less interesting when it turns out this is all due to some dude's incompetence, not just general Duckburg weirdness. But yeah! Let's find this guy and beat him up! That'll solve our problems!



The statue did what? Yup, that takes a pretty incompetent sculptor, there's no denying! I love it.


DOGGONE THAT DUDLY [sic] DUCK! Speaking of Brazilian weirdness, you will be interested to note that the character went on to appear in a couple of additional stories down there. Anyone who repurposes massively obscure old Western characters like that is okay in my book!


BLAST DUDLY DUCK! Honestly, this entry could just consist of me hollering dialogue that makes me laugh. THAT AWFUL ROGUE! Who knows what the deal is with the little blue top hat duck there.


Anyway, now everyone hates Donald, 'cause it turns out they're related. As why wouldn't they.  I can't help noting with some dismay that "No duck is a good duck" is pretty clearly a repurposed, g-rated version of "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." Gah.

What, you may incidentally ask, is "jog tunnel?"


Well, it's a major reason why all the ducks are crabby, is what it is. It's kind of interesting: as far as I'm able to determine, the word "jog" has never, ever been used elsewhere for the purpose Lockman's trying to use it for. I feel like he just took a word that "felt" as though it meant what he wanted it to mean and just shoved it into his story hoping that would somehow come through.  I mean, you could say"oh, that's just the tunnel's name: "Jog Tunnel," but as you can see Donald refers to it specifically as though a "jog" is a thing that ordinary humans should know about.


...and yet, he must have been aware on some level that it doesn't, really; that nobody would know what the hell he was talking about, because later on he included this helpful diagram. Very odd.

(UPDATE: Okay, I think I'm wrong about this.  But it IS a pretty darned esoteric sense of the word!)


WELL ANYWAY, it all comes down to this not-massively-compelling bit where Dudly [sic--seriously, does ANYONE spell it without an E?] has this invention that's gonna save the Duck family's good name.


CAN HE DO IT?!? THE SUSPENSE ARGH!


Yes he can, BUT WAIT COMICAL UNEXPECTED SIDE EFFECT. And that, teman teman saya, is that. I hope you now have a clear idea of why all the crabby ducks, and why, it appears, they will remain crabby into the foreseeable future.

It's not a lost classic or anything, but it wins me over. I will endeavor to bring you more obscure Western things like this in the future.
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"Land of the Pygmy Indians"

March 16, 2016, 4:25 pm
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One of the first books that I got when I was re-getting-into Disney comics was the first volume of Gemstone's Barks/Rosa Collection, and I distinctly remember the deep sense of satisfaction this comic gave me. A fondly-remembered Barks story plus a brand-new-to-me Rosa sequel? Who could ask for anything more?


Yay!

We will table discussion of "War of the Wendigo" for another time, but "Land of the Pygmy Indians" is something else entirely. By the time it was published, in 1957, Scrooge's character was extremely well-established. Barks' later Scrooge stories are often great; don't get me wrong. But there's generally a feeling of "okay, we know what this character is, so there's no need to think too much about it; we can just put him through his paces and everything will be jake." I have no idea why Barks is thinking in the first-person plural in this hypothetical. I daresay he has his reasons.

Whereas in "Land of the Pygmy Indians," we see a real interrogation of an aspect of Scrooge's character which is quite unusual in stories of this vintage. And the question is: is Scrooge capable of relating to the natural world in an unmediated way? Or is he so utterly corrupted by industry that this is totally impossible for him? One must imagine that Don Rosa had this story in the back of his mind when writing this, in "King of the Klondike:"


...as well as this, from "Prisoner of White Agony Creek:"


...so in that sense, this may actually be a rather pivotal and influential story.

In his essay about the story (in Gladstone's Uncle Scrooge Adventures 10), Geoffrey Blum notes that it was inspired by Barks' personal experience and resulting cynicism, so it's wholly legit to see this as a story as a more general statement about humanity's relation to the environment than something about Scrooge particularly, but to me, this feels like a more character-based story than something like "Tralla La," regardless of where the initial inspiration came from. So, let's try to approach it on those terms. As we know, Barks liked to embed aspects of his own personality in his characters, so it seems like a legitimate thing to do.


Re "Shack in San Jac," let it be noted that, according to Blum, Barks had gone to the town of San Jacinto to try to get away from it all. Let's note, however, that small and isolated as it may be, San Jacinto is still a town. You're still in civilization. Barks may have contemplated, in a general way, what it would be like to escape civilization and whether it's even possible, but he didn't do what Scrooge is trying to do here. Also, let it be noted that Scrooge isn't like just any ol' regular Joe, who probably wouldn't instinctively think about the potential commercial applications of each and every bit of nature he encounters. That's the thing, innit? The question here isn't whether the wilderness can accommodate Scrooge; it's whether Scrooge can accommodate the wilderness. The difference seems crucial, and this is a big part of why I think the story is more about Scrooge personally than it is more general social commentary.


It must be admitted, though, that as much as I admire the story for breaking new ground with regard to Scrooge's character, it can be a little on the monotonous side in the actual execution. How many bits do we get like the above, in which Scrooge thinks about how some aspect of the natural world could be used to earn BIG $$$$ with this one weird trick! Environmentalists hate him! and then gets embarrassed realizing what he's done? The answer is: manysuch bits. I was considering doing a montage showing every single one of them, but this would have quickly become extremely monotonous. It's not like he's saying anything different with each iteration of this incident. He's just repeating himself.


And now, it is necessary for me to look deep into my heart. You may recall that on the subject of "Still the Champion," I was supportive of the editing out of the word "redskin" in Gemstone's contemporary reprint. Well...here we see it again, and the story isn't censored, and I feel like I would be offended--I'd roll my eyes in irritation, at least--if it were. Gemstone obviously feels the same way; the images in this entry come from a Gladstone reprint, but it's not censored in the aforementioned Barks/Rosa Collection either. So the question is: are we just a buncha goddamn hypocrites? Well, maybe. But my general sense is that the difference is that we think of Barks as an artist,dammit! He's creating art! You don't censor art just because it's problematic in places! What's wrong with you? Whereas, seriously, who gives a shit about "Still the Champion?" It may be a vaguely interesting curiosity, but it is absolutely not anything more than that. Why should we accept racial slurs in our random bullshit? Sure, censor that sucker, and if I contradict myself, whatever, dude--I contain multitudes.

(If I recall correctly, Boom's reprint of "Luck of the North" changed "gypped" into "hosed" at one point, which, again, just looked incredibly dumb to me. Also, let it be noted that, although it obviously is, growing up, I had absolutely no notion that "gypped"--a word I learned from Disney comics--was any sort of racial slur. The etymology did not register.)

There's also the point that the word actually feels thematically appropriate in Barks' story. Not that I think there's any chance that this was down to conscious intent, but it's easy to imagine a clueless outsider like Scrooge, bumbling around in the wilderness, employing language like this. It's not harmonious, but then, he isn't harmonious with his surroundings. Point being: it works; it makes sense. Whereas there's no way to think about the way the word is used in "Still the Champion" that doesn't just boil down to "dopey, clueless writer."


As I suppose you all know, this story is actually a remake of Barks' earlier "Mystery of the Swamp." In that story, instead of Indians, we had backwoods Deliverance-esque hillbillies called Gneezles. One of the reasons that this story is superior to its predecessor is that the Peeweegahs are much more appealing characters than the Gneelzes ever were. You can also see Barks' own ethical development. The Gneezles aren't exactly villains, but they aremuch more straightforwardly the ducks' antagonists than the Peeweegahs are. The notion that the ducks are invadersand maybe not wholly sympathetic doesn't really register--or at least, Barks doesn't seem to feel the question is really relevant. Whereas here, it's the whole point.

It's probably Barks' most sympathetic depiction of indigenous people (none more so is springing to mind, but if you've got one, let me know). And the fact that he has them speaking in Longfellowian trochaic tetrameter--jeez. It just goes to show what we already knew: that sophistication-wise, Barks was so far above his peers that from up there, they must've looked like so many ants scurrying around.

Still. Still still still. As much as I appreciate this, there remains an unanswerable point: Native Americans are people, like anyone else. Whereas these are...something other than people. I mean okay, sure, unlike the Gneezles, who are specifically other than human, I suppose they are technically, but, you know, for all practical purposes, they're obviously not. I'm certainly not condemning the story for this reason, but we have to recognize that it isproblematic. This sort of dehumanization--even if, as here, it's done with no malign intent--is nonetheless something to be discouraged. It never leads anywhere good.


I've never understood just what the point is of kidnapping the guy, as opposed to just giving him the message and letting him go. What's the endgame here? This is probably just a relic of "Mystery of the Swamp," in which Donald has an actual motive to capture a Gneezle:


Not the smartest or most ethical motive, but at least it's comprehensible. Whereas in "Pygmy Indians?" Shrug.


There you go: "save it--and me." It's not just a matter of saving the place from industrialization; it's also--not to be overly dramatic or nothin'--a battle for Scrooge's soul. I really like his dreamy, heavy-lidded expression as he soliloquizes here. It carries the strong suggestion that this is all just a big delusion--as, of course, is his abrupt snapping back to reality ("Hey! That's a lump of pure nickel around your neck!). The story isn't through, but we have the strong suggestion that this venture of Scrooge's was doomed before it started.


Good depiction of Donald battling the fish. It truly is...odd? Interesting? I don't know...how often Donald finds himself swallowed by marine animals. I suppose it's related to his status as embattled everyman, ever subject to ridiculous force beyond his control.


I feel that this denouement could serve as a powerful statement: Scrooge thinks he's finally come to terms with himself, and that he can live in harmony with nature...but his body literally physically rejects this idea. He's too acclimated to late capitalism to ever be part of anything else.


It could do that...but then we come to this. No, it's not anything about who he is; he's just been poisoned. Maybe the Peeweegah was justified in doing this; as I noted above, this effort to get back to nature pretty clearly seemed ultimately doomed in any case...but man, it still feels like dirty pool, and it severely muddles the story's message. Blum notes the irony--that Scrooge is "hoisted on his own petard, sabotaged by a dose of the very mineral he showed the pygmies how to mine." Yes, BUT: let's also note that without the oxide of strombolium, the ducks wouldn't have been able to solve the Peeweegahs' sturgeon problem (I feel like there's a "sturgeon general's warning" joke lurking in here somewhere), which stands out and really undermines what Barks was trying to do. I cannot help thinking that this is another instance where the story isn't helped by its relationship to a previous story, which had a similar conclusion--the Gneezles give Donald and the kids "fergettin' juice" so they won't reveal their existence. Only there, there was no real battle of principles going on, so it worked better.

Hey, I still think this is a very good story, and even if it's a li'l bit muddled, it's great to see Barks grappling with issues that his contemporaries would never have had the talent or ambition to do.
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"A Little Something Special"

March 20, 2016, 7:27 pm
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Er...uh. So some time ago, it was commenter Pan Miliuś' birthday, and in a fit of magnanimity, I offered to write about a story of his choice, which turned out to be this one. And then, there's no other way to say it, I just completely flaked the fuck out, and forgot about the whole thing before I actually did any writing (which he has generously failed to call me out on). So it's time to redress an old wrong. Sorry, dude! Uh...happy birthday, even though if anything, it's probably closer to your next birthday at this point! Or some other, future birthday! Who knows!

In my partial defense, I didn't keep putting it off just because I'm lazy. It's also because it weirds me out and embarrasses me in a way that no other Disney story does, and I always kinda felt that the best--or easiest, at least!--thing to do, therefore, was just ignore it. But I guess in the interest of free inquiry, I can no longer do that. So let's get the fuck into it. I'm going to assume that everyone reading this is familiar with this story, and I'm not going to try to go through it beat by beat.


The point of this story, of course, is to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Scrooge's inaugural appearance in "Christmas on Bear Mountain," by celebrating his putative original arrival in Duckburg (according to Rosa's chronology, that would set this in 1952). So the main questions we want to ask is: what exactly are we celebrating, and how are we celebrating it?


Well, the easiest thing to point out here is the villains that we're commemorating. I don't think there's that much to say about this aspect of the story, to be honest. It works okay. It's true--as they awkwardly spell out for the benefit of readers, above--that none of the three "overlap," exactly. Villain team-ups rarely if ever avoid that gimmicky feeling, and there's a certain rote quality to their scheming, but, again--it's okay.


Hell, this part's even pretty funny, I think. Novel and amusing!


A minor complaint about this story may be the general lack of spectacle, which is surprising from Rosa, especially when he's specifically trying to do a Spectacular like this. That device could be super-cool, after the manner of dueling steam shovels or Paul Bunyan machines, but it never gets a chance to shine, and makes basically no impression. Perplexing.

But those are the villains. The question is, why are we celebrating Scrooge? What do we like about him? That is an enormous question.


Okay, but WHY WHY WHY?!? I mean, okay, so this "contest" is secretly being run by the villains, but FIFTY YEARS OF SCROOGE IN DUCKBURG is clearly meant to mean something! It's the whole point of the story!

(Sidenote: is that supposed to be...Von Drake on the right there? Unless it's the mysteriously vanished Casey Coot (seriously, what happened to that guy?), I don't see who ELSE it can be. Which just goes to show: a good part of Rosa's appeal is because he's so willing to push the limitations imposed on him to their absolute limits, but this can also be problematic: having the guy appear just once like this is distracting and just raises the question of why we don't see any more of him.)


I mean, the above is meant to be a joke, but, I mean, it's a pretty accurate representation of Rosa's Scrooge.  Why the fuck would anyone want to celebrate this asshole?


Do you find this particularly convincing?  'Cause to me, it seems like a pretty perfunctory effort at a justification.  See, I had an insightwhile thinking about this story, which I think explains a good part of why it doesn't exactly work for me. Because, sure, Scrooge has been great for the community--I guess? Maybe?--but really, who cares? Nobody who is a fan of Scrooge is a fan because of the economic benefits he's brought to the town. We're fans because he's adventurous and tough and smart and cantankerous-with-a-heart-of-gold, and his childlike relationship to money is fun.

DA POINT BEING: Scrooge is not a civic figure. You could make a good argument that he's anti-civic. His relationships that matter are those with his family, not with the community at large. And that's why emphasizing the latter just seems weirdly irrelevant.


OF COURSE, you could say that it's not fair of me to fixate on this one technical point and ignore what the story does have to offer. And to that I say: FAIR ENOUGH! SUFFICIENTLY FAIR! I really DO think the fact that the story is trying to do something incompatible with Scrooge's character is damaging, but I will admit that this undercity stuff is pretty neat (though probably thinking too hard about how this could've happened--in less than fifty years!--is not going to get you anywhere).


...this would be extremely compelling if the idea was that Scrooge was actually willing to let them escape with his money rather than destroy the city.  But...then, oh, he knew all along it wasn't gonna happen.  Whee?  Rosa really dropped the ball on this one.


This is pretty awesome, though. As far as Scrooge's alleged deep affection for the town goes, I'm gonna have to respond with a big ol' CITATION NEEDED. Still, Rosa pulls it well enough that that almost doesn't matter; you get swept away in spite of everything (though if we're really interested in this theme, the definitive piece is obviously "His Majesty, McDuck," which I recently reread for the first time in a long time and which is so good it makes me WEEP).


I mean, okay, AWWW. Rosa may oft err on the side of making Scrooge excessively mean, and this doesn't exactly make up for that, but still: AWWW.

Hoo boy, but now we're going to have to get into this "secret desire" stuff, and frankly, the whole reason I was reluctant to write about this story was because I really, really didn't WANT to talk about Scrooge's "secret desire." BUT WHAT THE HELL, RIGHT? LET'S DO THIS THING. DAMN THE TORPEDOES.

Look, let me start by confirming that I am a huge fan of Rosa. My occasional sniping shouldn't obscure that fact. Certain people from certain defunct Disney forums can get passive-aggressive about it all they like, but the fact is, he got popular because he was really, really good at doing a thing that resonated with a lot of people, including me. Obviously, that's not to say that his thing was the onlyvalid thing that a Disney cartoonist can do, but the fact remains, what he was good at he was goddamn good at, and it really, really noticeably stood out from what every one else was doing. You can make a pretty durn persuasive case that if not for the renewed interest in the form that he kindled, we wouldn't haveDisney comics in the States right now.

That said, his work, on occasion, has some serious flaws, many of which are closely related to the very things that make him great. As I noted above, his willingness to try to push his stories to do things that Disney comics aren't meant to do is exciting, and it's a large part of his appeal. On the other hand, the fact remains that when you're trying to do something and the form won't quite let you do it, the results can be unsatisfying, if not actually misbegotten. I feel like this is leading to something, somehow.

Man I KEEP trying to write something about Scrooge and Goldie, and then it keeps being unsatisfactory and I keep deleting it and starting over. This does not appear to be getting anywhere, so just forget it. Let's approach this part of the story for what it is.
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Okay, so in light of comments which have ably convinced me that I'm almost certainly wrong (how did this douchebag get a PhD in literary analysis? you may wonder. I often ask myself the same question), I feel that the responsible thing to do is to rewrite the second part of this entry. Partially this is because it only seems fair to Rosa, to whom I apologize for slandering his story (though given that what follows isn't going to be super-positive either, it's anyone's guess how far that apology goes).

In addition, it's partially because, hell, I feel I can do BETTER. I would like it to be the case that people browsing around years in the future who come across this blog will be able to glean value from this nonsense, and for that to happen, I feel like it's better if more than half of this post not be focused on tilting at windmills.

So, okay, for the record, as of right now, I do not believe that the idea that Goldie was shipped over for a brief assignation with Scrooge is a viable interpretation. HOWEVER, in fairness--fairness?--to me, at least part of this confusion is probably due to the fact that this aspect of Rosa's Scrooge is one that I find kind of hard to swallow in any case. Yes, I know that various entries I've written in the past contradict this, but for whatever reason, these days I'm a li'l less starry-eyed and a li'l more cynical about this relationship. I think "Last Sled to Dawson" is FINE, maybe Rosa's first great story, but I feel that there is value in leaving it at that. Because the more I think about it, the more dubious I get. Let's face it: after Scrooge leaves the Klondike, he and Goldie have been living separate lives for fifty years. It appears that they have had no contact between "Back to the Klondike" and "Dawson." Sure, maybe at one point they had a brief thing, and I'm not saying that that thing didn't have value and meaning for what it was, but c'mon, at this point they're effectively strangers. Why would you assume that their brief fling would translate at such a remove into long-term domesticity? Not that people haven't reunited under similar circumstances--more things on heaven and earth!--but the idea that this is DESTINED TO HAPPEN just feels incredibly immature to me. Look--I'm speaking from my own experience here, but I imagine many of you can relate--think about the first person you had a really intense romance with. Think about how all-consuming it seemed, and how the idea of living without this person seemed inconceivable. NOW, think back to that, keeping in mind that the interval between then and now is almost certainly a LOT less than fifty years, and ask yourself: do you think you're DESTINED to get back together? If you're like me, your answer is no, of course not, that's insane. I mean granted, judging Scrooge and Goldie purely by how "realistic" their relationship is may be missing the point by a good margin; there's room for romantic license. But boy--I just have somuch trouble buying it; if something like this is gonna work at all, I feel like there has to be a lot of groundwork which Rosa never did--granted, in large part because, working under the Disney regime, he wouldn't have been allowedto, but I'm not judging anyone's platonic ideal of Scrooge/Goldie here; I'm judging what, for better or worse, we have.

Maybe there's more to it than that. Maybe some people aren't necessarily married (ho ho) to the idea of Scrooge and Goldie per se; they just think Scrooge may be lonely without female companionship. Aw, that's sweet. But--and I realize that this is probably the Most High Blasphemy, from Rosa's perspective--I have to say, I think that if such a thing needs to happen at all (not that I really think it does), probably Brigitta would be a better match for Scrooge than Goldie. Not Scarpa's original toxic, pathetically clingy Brigitta, of course, but the later, stronger version; sure, why not? They know each other well, they largely understand and have at least grudging respect for one another--I think the idea that their relationship could blossom into love is a lot more plausible than the idea that, at this late stage, Scrooge and Goldie would be right for one another. Feel free to tell me in comments that I'm crazy.

Well lookit me, I SAID I didn't want to write about Scrooge and Goldie, and then I barfed up six hundred words about them. Go me. BUT ANYWAY, the POINT of all this is that if I've had trouble really grasping the last part of this story, it's gotta be in part because I don't really grasp themthese days.


One thing that hasn'tchanged for me about this story is that I continue to find Daisy's and Miss Quackfaster's sly smugness here hella creepy. Argh. I'm very strongly struck by Debbie Anne's idea, in comments, that these two may just really, really not know what they're doing. This runs strongly against Rosa's grain, but it seems to me that it makes a lot of sense to think of this segment in those terms. There's all sorts of unresolved stuff here that they don't have a clue about; they're just mixing volatile chemicals willy nilly and blithely assuming nothing bad will come of it. Scrooge isn't wrong to be upset about this.


For all my criticism of this, I'll admit that that first panel is an effective bit of staging, as she appears like a vision. Can we concede, at least, that "Something only I can give him! Just a little something...special!" is an awkward line, and that my original interpretation was not wholly out of left field? Also, did Rosa take his notion of what ducks kissing on the lips should look like straight from Barks' prehistoric ten-pager "Lifeguard Daze?"


Survey sez yes!

And now, I'm going to push back just a little regarding what I think is going on here. Do I think that Miss Quackfaster and Daisy specifically summoned Goldie for some sorta one-night stand? Well, no; I think the most likely thing is that they didn't have all that clear an idea of whatexactly was going to happen when the two of them were together. Just try it an' see! Still, even if it's not quite as crass as I was originally envisioning it, I think it's certainly true that--as with any romantic relationship, particularly one as fraught at this one--love and lust are all tangled up in Scrooge's mind, and Goldie's possible sexual availability right here right now can't notbe part of what's going through his head, even if Goldie isn'ttalking dirty to him there--even if it's more along the lines of a marriage proposal (say). Certainly, Scrooge's shell-shocked appearance there is due to all of this shit that's been simmering in his mind utterly unexpectedly all coming to a boil at once.

(I won't deny that that whisper does still bug me; it's hard to think of any really natural-sounding thing she could be saying there that makes a whole lot of sense. I know it's meant to be ambiguous, but there's good-ambiguous and bad-ambiguous.)


Seriously, I would LOVE to hear what people think about that whole "this won't be something for the eyes of a Junior Woodchuck" bit, 'cause I am NOT buying that it can possibly have anything to do with that kiss, which is something you could see in any ol' PG-rated movie, and which in any case I presume--hope!--that Daisy and Miss Quackfaster aren't spying on Scrooge and Goldie either. To me, this has gotta be the most maladroit thing in the story, and I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of a way that it makes sense.


...I will concede that "I'll wait" doesn't necessarily mean "...for a few minutes, while you psych yourself up," especially given that "bye, Scrooge." Yes, it's more likely that it's a "come up north when you're ready and we'll get this show on the road" sort of thing. But dammit, this is just more of the sort of thing that annoys me about this whole "romance:"more deferment? Seriously, fifty years wasn't enough? You're no spring chickens, you know!  I mean JEEZ, if you REALLY need a little more time, it can't be more than a few days, so just get her a hotel room!  Her going back to the Klondike again is pure idiocy!  Let alone having her wait years while you do more adventures.  And THIS, for good and all, may be where Disney's strictures trip Rosa up. Yes, MORE deferment, because that's the way it has to be, by Disney law! I mean, not that Disney law is even wrongabout this; obviously you can't suddenly have Scrooge be married. But it's just death for this storyline, I'm sorry to say.

...and I would still really like to know what these bars of music are. SOMEONE has to know!

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A thing that may be of interest

April 20, 2016, 7:08 pm
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Ray Foushee, co-author of "Return to Duckburg Place," recently showed up in comments, the gist of which is that he's kind of mortified by the story in retrospect, but that he and Don sure had a lot of fun making it, and others.  Can't get much fairer than that!
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