"Donald Duck and the Rheinegold"

Here's an interesting thing (actually, it may turn out to be a really banal thing; you decide): I was reading this issue of the French digest Mickey Parade, which includes back-to-back printings of duck stories based on/inspired by the Iliad and Wagner's Ring Cycle.  Both of these were written by Ol' Man Martina.  The one was first published in January of 1959, the other in May.  So pretty similar, you'd think.  And yet, I was reading the first--which was the one I was most keen on reading, onaccouna Luciano Bottaro's art--and in spite of its high inducks ranking, it wasn't doing anything whatsoever for me.  I just found it lame and tedious, and to top it all off, you have Gladstone in the Paris-ish role acting wildly out-of-character (out of character for Gladstone, I mean.  I say if you're going to do these literary adaptations, you need to find a way to integrate the characters into them while more or less maintaining their personalities.  Otherwise, there's just no point to it).
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"Southern Hospitality"

As you know, the great majority of Barks' long-form Donald adventures were not printed in the regular, bimonthly Donald Duck book, which wasn't established until 1952, at which point he was too busy with Uncle Scrooge to contribute much; instead, they were printed as part of the Four Color Comics/One-Shots series, along with gallons of other Disney and non-Disney material.
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"Coffee, Louie or Me?"

Right, that's enough Scarpa for now.  Not that there aren't other stories worthy of note, but for now, there are other things I want to write about.

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"The Advertising Giant"

Oh man, people.  Now we come to this story--the one I really want to talk about.  This shit is fucking interesting.  I daresay it treads thematic territory that you won't see in any other Disney comic--or at least, none spring readily to my mind.  On the one hand, I hesitate to give Scarpa too much credit here, since I'm not wholly convinced that he was cognizant of the implications here...but, well, he did it.  That much is undeniable.

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"The Eternal Flame of Kalhoa"

The intro to this French edition tells us that in the thirties, Topolino ran non-Disney stories along with Mickey stuff; one of these was the adventure serial Tim Tyler's Luck.  The backstory here, we're told, is inspired by a story arc in that strip (which in turn comes, allegedly, from an H. Rider Haggard novel, though I'm not able to verify that this is a real thing.  Much later, there was an Umberto Eco novel taking the name, but that, of course, is something entirely different.

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"The Emperor of Calidornia"

Before we start on this one, I just can't help note this damned "user comment" in the story from inducks; I know picking on anonymous internet comments is just the lowest of the low, but this just bugs the shit out of me:

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"The Bleep-Bleep 15"

I have a very important question for you: why the hell has "The Bleep-Bleep 15" only ever been published outside of Italy once--in the edition I read?  When all the stories surrounding it have been widely published everywhere?  WHY?!?!?  TELL ME!!!  This goes deep, people.  VERY deep.  If you look on inducks, you'll see that even the Italian publication history is suspicious: it was first printed in 1960, reprinted in 1964, and then not published again until 1994, even though the surrounding stories were mostly reprinted in the early eighties (the case is the same for the story Dave Gerstein mentioned in comments last time that's never been printed outside of Italy).  Is there some sort of censorship involved here?  According to the accompanying essay, one of the stories we'll be looking at a bit later was explicitly suppressed for a while--but there the reasons are obvious, if (inevitably) uncompelling; here I just don't know.  VERY, VERY SUSPICIOUS.

This state of affairs is especially unfortunate because "The Bleep-Bleep 15" is fucking delightful--one of the best stories we'll be looking at, if not the best.  It feels very much like a Bill-Walsh-era Gottfredson story, in a good way.

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"The Chirikawa Necklace"

What I want to do now is talk about some of these early-sixties Scarpa MM stories that were never published in the US.  Oh, they would've been: Gemstone's plan, unless I'm mistaken, was to publish one in every other issue of Mickey Mouse Adventures.  But alas, this plan was for naught, more or less.  "Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension" appeared in MM11, but that was as far as it went.  Scarpa's follow-up was all set to run in MM13, but then the MMA series was discontinued.  You can even see what would have been the cover of that issue:
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Just messin' around...

New posts soon, I hope.  Though nothing to do with the above--that's a total red herring.

"Grandma Duck, Homespun Detective"

They call it "instant justice" when it's past the legal limit…

And now, we turn our attention away from Italian silliness for a while to spotlight some good, old-fashioned American silliness.  This story was done as a Wheaties giveaway in 1950; I got a copy from ebay and scanned it.  You can download it here if you want, but don't say I didn't warn you.
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It's your money that we want, and your money we shall have!

Can we have a Very Serious Discussion here?  Now, as you may be aware, these days you can buy Disney comics from Comixology; it used to be that you could only read them on an ipad or whatnot, but now you can just use any plain ol' web browser.  No links here, for reasons that will become obvious.

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"The Fantastic Adventures of Marco Polo"

You may have heard of this story, sort of: Scarpa mentions it in an interview that was published along with the US printing of "The Blot's Double Mystery."  Specifically, there is this exchange:

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Tooting my own horn a bit...

I would like to note that this afternoon I defended my dissertation and received my PhD, hopefully quieting any nagging doubts that this blog may not be the work of a Professional.  What do you have to say about this turn of events, Herr Professor Von Drake?

…yes.  That's it exactly.  I'll be soliciting submissions for my new academic journal, Ludwig, later this month.  Look forward to it!

I was thinking: what can I do on this blog to commemorate this occasion?  There isn't exactly a surfeit of graduate-school-related Disney comics, though, is there?  Or ANY, as far as I'm aware.  Correct me with I'm wrong.  Well, whatever; I have some material for the near future that we can pretend was specifically meant for this, as opposed to just being stuff I would've posted anyway.  For starters--you oughta like this--I finally had the wherewithal to scan the English version of Carpi's "That Missing Candelabra," which you can download here.  And you SHOULD, 'cause it's super-awesome.

Anyway, more later.

"The Last Balaboo"

So I turn to this story, which I really did not like the first time around.  And on rereading it, I still really don't like it.  In fact, I kind of hate it a lot!  To quote America's favorite emotional twelve-year-old…well, take it away, Bill:

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"The Man from Oola-Oola"

And now, we continue our lackadaisical tromp through Scarpa territory.  This story didn't really leave much impression on me the first time I read it, but in rereading, I'm pleased to say that I found I actually really like it.  I think it helps that it's comparatively short and not that convoluted.  You DO have to get past the cockamamie initial premise--that Scrooge has a supercomputer that will only consent to be used by someone it "likes," and that the only person it likes is this hirsute south-seas native--but once you've done that, the whole thing runs mostly smoothly.

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"The Lentils from Babylon"

Okay, I've been reading a lot of Romano Scarpa stories lately.  I know I've been very critical of the man in the past (and I maintain that "Anti-Dollarosis" is a really poorly-conceived/realized piece of work), but there's no question that the man could turn out a quality mouse story.  So, I decided to go back and check out some of his duckwork that I had previously dismissed, to see whether my sensibilities had changed.  I propose, here, to look at a number of his stories, starting with this 1960 effort, currently ranked twenty-four (!) on inducks, his second-highest-rated thing after "The Blot's Double Mystery," which was written by my old nemesis Guido Martina, and therefore is not really a fair measuring stick for how good the man is or isn't.

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"Witch Hazel" Remastered

Good news, everyone!  Remember that 3-D giveaway, Donald Duck & Witch Hazel?  Well, MAYBE YOU SHOULD.

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"The Code of Duckburg"

Got time for another Christmas thing?  Of course we do!  After all, as we are all aware, the official Christmas season stretches until Twelfth Night and Epiphany on January sixth.  Ever wonder why that's the date specified for Jesus's birth in the "Cherry Tree Carol?"  Huh??  Well all right then.

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"A Christmas Quackarol"

Well, here we are: the part of this little project that I've been laboring over for the past month.  Actually, the idea of finding multiple Disney Christmas Carol things to write about came to me late in the game; initially it was just going to be this, a 1982 story written by Guido Martina and illustrated by José Colomer Fonts, who sounds like some sort of design studio but is actually just a guy.  A few dozen Fonts-drawn efforts have been printed in the US.  If you want to read the story before checking out my commentary, you had better do it and decrease the surplus population.  I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.

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"Donald Duck and the Christmas Carol"

And now, we begin our survey of Disney takes on Charles Dickens' classic Christmas Carol, which has been retold so often that it's one of those uncommon literary works that pretty much everyone knows, at least in outline.  I know I do; in addition to reading the original, I've seen a shitload of theatrical adaptations--so many in fact that I was kind of sick of it for a while, but that was some time ago, and now I'm raring to go again.  So let's do this thing.
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Hear me, readers!

My time is nearly gone!  I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate!  A chance and hope of my procuring!

You will be haunted by three blog entries.  Read them well, for without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.  Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One.  Expect the second on the next night at the same hour.  The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate.  Look to see me no more, and look that, for your sake, you remember what has passed between us!

Stay tuned.

Been busy with non-Disney-related stuff lately, but I've got some Christmas stuff in the works that will hopefully be of interest.

"The Talking Dog"

Would you believe this is the first time I've written about a Branca story?  Yeah, surprised me too, but while applying labels, I realized that I had not previously created one for the man, and that therefore it must be true.  And here I am, totally disregarding Branca's art itself.  Looks like sometimes you just can't win.
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"Witch Hazel"

I must apologize in advance for the fact that our Mystery Halloween Climax kinda bites.  But hey--you can't win 'em all, can you?

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"Hobblin' Goblins"

'Course, even if her behavior was that of a philistine, we do, I suppose, owe our thanks to Barks' editor Alice Cobb in one sense: if she hadn't chopped out nine pages of "Trick or Treat," he would not have had to scramble to put together a back-up feature, and "Hobblin' Goblins" would never have seen the light of day.  I can only imagine how irritating it must have been for him suddenly to have to create a whole new story when he thought he was done with this particular assignment.

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"Trick or Treat"

I have good news for you for those of you like my stuff and bad news for those of you hate it but for some masochistic reason feel compelled to read it anyway (fifty-fifty split, I'm guessing?): I've got three Halloween entries planned for this year.  We kick off our mini-marathon by finally tackling 1952's "Trick or Treat," long a major lacuna of this blog.

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"The Last Lord of El Dorado"

I'm writing about this story because reader Pan Miliuś repeatedly asked me to.  Does this mean that I'll write about any damn thing YOU ask me to?  Not inconceivable, but I wouldn't bet a huge sum of money on it, either.  It really all depends on my personal whims.

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Master McDucato, Chapter VII: "Dawn of the New World"

As our final installment opens, we see that Charles VIII of France has occupied Florence.  Reading up on the man, it's kind of hilariously pathetic how useless he was as a king: his main thing was these Italian wars, which accomplished nothing and got France big into debt, and then he died at the age of twenty-seven after whacking his head on a lintel (I'll bet that's why this story's never been published in France--they don't want to be reminded of the guy).  You may note that the individual we see in this story sure doesn't look like he's in his twenties, but, well, never mind.
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Master McDucato, Chapter VI: "Lorenzo the Magnificent"

Golly gee!  After that big ol' cliffhanger, I wonder how this chapter is going to deal with that whole "Palio" business?

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Master McDucato, Chapter V: "The Cave of the Winds"

Here's where it gets weird.  Weirder?  Weirdest?  I dunno.

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Master McDucato, Chapter IV: "The Pirates of Montecristo"

So who doesn't like pirates?  Eh?  Eh?  Well, actually, I feel like they're a bit played out.  You really have to do something special with them to make 'em register.  Regardless, though, here it is: another chapter, another historically dubious moment:

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