"The Duck Who Never Was"

Perhaps I haven't written much about Rosa's stories specifically because they're so self-consciously homages to Barks. Often brilliant homages, yes, but still--they're self-limiting in that sense, and they don't tend to really grapple with the zeitgeist of their age the way Barks--who was forging ahead into uncharted territory--was doing.
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"Back to Long Ago"

I'm a big fan of this story, from 1956. It's kind of low-key; not as flashy as some Scrooge stories (actually, it's really more of a Scrooge and Donald story). Although it seems like there ought to be some sort of message, it's hard to really get to the bottom of it. Still, while it's partly nostalgia on my part, perhaps, I think there's a lot to be said for it.
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"Donald Duck Tells about Kites"

"Did you see the news? Another kid fried himself by hitting our power lines with a kite!"
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Quick drive-by post

I find this awesome and hilarious in large part because Donald's nonsensical response sounds exactly like something I would say in a similar situation. Is that narcissism? Oh well.

"Cave of Ali Baba"

This story, from 1962, pushes the idea of not being able to trust one's senses pretty hard. Although it appears to be a fairly ordinary historical (or metahistorical) treasure hunt story, it turns out not quite to work out that way. It would appear that the formerly fairly solid basis on which Scrooge had built his wealth had, by this point, been pretty severely undermined by changing cultural perceptions; hence all the Magica stuff to come. This isn't the last treasure-hunt story ("Crown of the Mayas" I want to say, but don't quote me on that), but the idiom was clearly winding down.
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"Three Un-Ducks"

Sometimes you encounter a story that you have trouble thematizing in a coherent way, but is just odd enough to warrant mention. Hence: "Three Un-Ducks," from 1956. It's a virtual rewrite of 1944's "Three Dirty Little Ducks" (which was notable for being Barks' first story to feature four rather than three rows of panels), but it's more interesting to me: it contains what appears to be both Cold War and Holocaust subtexts--hey, it's not like I'm SEARCHING for these things; they kind of jump out at me. I don't think Barks was trying to construct the story to create such an impression, but it may to some extent indicate what was going on in his unconscious at the time.
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World of the Dragonlords

Okay, truth be told, I tend to be kind of a purist ("bigot," some might unkindly suggest) as far as my taste in Disney comics goes: anything non-duck-related is hateful to me, and the canon for me will always consist of Barks and Rosa. I occasionally enjoy the odd work by another writer (if I had to choose a distant third, I'd go with Marco Rota), but I always consider them kind of...unofficial.
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"Collection Crisis"

We've been focused on long stories, but we'll run out of them rather quickly at this rate. Besides, the shorter pieces can be quite interesting in their own right. So...
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Let us check ourselves before we wreck ourselves.

I enjoy writing these, but I think I'm probably going to burn out sooner rather than later if I keep doing them at this rate. Plus, sad to say, duck comics (or at least duck comics worth talking about) are a nonrenewable resource; ergo, moderation is necessary. So let's limit it to just one or two a week from now on, a'ight?

"No Such Varmint"

Uncharacteristically, 1951's "No Such Varmint" finds HDL in what I would consider the role of villains. As the story opens, we see them commenting on a parade of famous people going by--doctors, lawyers, scientists, writers, &c. This as compared to Donald, who is just...well, who he is. He hasn't "accomplished" anything in the same way that these other people have. Oh, but he does have a new raison d'être, now: he's a SNAKE CHARMER! OH YEAH BABY. And it seems he's really quite good at this. But HDL react poorly:
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"The Queen of the Wild Dog Pack"

Okay okay, before we go any further, let's just get the one cringe-inducing bit of this story out of the way:
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"Treasure of Marco Polo"

In his essay in the Magica de Spell volume of Gladstone's jumbo Comic Album Series, Geoffrey Blum puts forth the proposition--supported by quotes from Barks hisself--that the character was introduced to provide a "safe" way to tell stories: by the sixties, people were becoming more aware of the nature of imperialism and the potentially exploitative nature of the kind of treasure hunts that made Scrooge famous, so a different kind of story was called for--hence, the need for a "non-political" foil for Scrooge. Of course, as Blum also sharply notes, it says a helluva lot about our culture that the pell-mell pursuit of wealth over anything else could be considered "non-political," but there you have it.

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"Volcano Valley"

Here at Duck Comics Revue LLC, we have a credo. That's right, a credo. And our credo is: Carl Barks kicks ass. But wait! Our credo has a SECOND part to it, to wit: nobody is without sin, and by "sin" we mean "risible duck comics that never should have been written." Our goal is to present the master in all his dimensions, including both his glory and his lack thereof. Hence: "Volcano Valley."
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"Dangerous Disguise"

This story, from 1951, definitely deserves to be classed as one of Barks' all-time best. It's a convoluted spy story; one could, and perhaps should, think of it as being somewhat in the same spirit as "Donald Duck's Atom Bomb," but it makes me think more of Conrad's Secret Agent than anything relating to the contemporary politics of the time. Perhaps this indicates that the two eras aren't as disparate as all that.
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"Donald Duck's Atom Bomb"

This is a short (eight pages, when arranged into normal comic book form) story from 1947. Originally given away with Cheerios, so rare at one point, but now readily available in a collection along with several other random Barks stories and vaguely-related Rosa follow-ups. Good deal! It's a rather slight story in a lot of ways, but it's well worth checking out anyway for its depiction of early Cold War paranoia.
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"The Loony Lunar Gold Rush"

"The Loony Lunar Gold Rush" (1964) is a pretty funny story because it's so transparently obvious that Barks was taking an "ah, fuck it" attitude. Anything for a laff. It is "loony," after all. Continuity is dubious, characters behave really bizarrely, and the ultimate message is highly questionable. In spite of and because of these things, however, I like it a lot.
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"The Twenty-Four Carat Moon"

I was going to include two space-gold-rush stories in this post, but it got kind of long, so I'm cutting it in half. "The Loony Lunar Gold Rush" is coming soon. Please look forward to it!
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"Ancient Persia" and "King Scrooge the First"

One thing that Carl Barks was known to do was remake early stories--they were substantially different enough that you couldn't quite call it recycling, but the similarities were obvious. You can hardly blame the man: he wrote close to seven hundred stories in twenty-five years. Even if there are a fair number of one-pagers in that total, it's still a pretty prodigious output. So why not reuse old ideas? And the results are often interesting. "Land of the Pigmy Indians" is a big improvement over "Mystery of the Swamp," and if "Hall of the Mermaid Queen" pales in comparison to the story known either as "The Secret of Atlantis" or "The Sunken City"--well, what the hell. It's still fun. The stories in question today are another such pairing. The earlier one, 1950's "Ancient Persia," is a minor classic; its successor, 1967's "King Scrooge the First," isn't great, but it has a few genuinely startling moments that are worth highlighting.
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Huey is Omar Little.

Huey coming!

Important Flintheart Glomgold update!

Awesome.

Flintheart Glomgold

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Ducks in stress dreams

Not that I feel particularly stressed lately, but the fact remains, last night I had a pretty unpleasant dream where for reasons that aren't particularly clear, I wanted my students to spend a class period reading duck comics. Of course. Only I wasn't exactly prepared. I had a big stack of comics, and I was attempting to photocopy them to hand out while class was going on (specifically, I was trying to photocopy Rosa's "Return to Xanadu," although I think the idea was that I'd ultimately copy a variety of them) and running into all kinds of technical problems and feeling very self-conscious, especially since there was some kid--not the same as any acutal kids I'm teaching--who, perhaps embodying my inner doubts about the value of this exercise, was sitting at the table asleep and who, when woken up, loudly complained about how he was sleeping because this activity was so stupid. Screw you, dream kid! Duck comics are valuable! Even if I have no idea how I'd actually "teach" them!

"Voodoo Hoodoo"

You know why I love Geoffrey Blum? As a somewhat fanatical purist (although I AM trying to be more open-minded these days!), his actual duck comics tend to do little for me--the idea that Scrooge&Co would benefit by being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century is not one I agree with. No--I love him for the introductory mini-essays he wrote for Gladstone's jumbo Comic Album Series, which are generally very smart and in which, let me tell you, he is NOT AFRAID to toss around the theory. In this volume, he references Leslie Fiedler and uses the phrase "dialectic of power and submission." Yeah, that's the stuff. Unfortunately, he also kind of drops the ball in this edition, as we shall see.
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"A Christmas for Shacktown"

If you're going to attempt some sort of Marxist hermeneutics of Uncle Scrooge--AND YOU ARE! DON'T TRY TO DENY IT!--"A Christmas for Shacktown" is going to have to be pretty well at the center of your analysis. How is it that Scrooge can mostly be a more-or-less sympathetic character? Only because his massive wealth is, in point of fact, divorced from any real-world socioeconomic significance. He might as well be an especially avid stamp collector. This is the way it has to be, because if he were, let's say, surrounded by children dying of easily treatable diseases that he REFUSED to help because MONEY MONEY MONEY MINE MINE MINE, he would just be a monster. Even a modern-day Flintheart Glomgold (who is South African, dontcha know) would be unable to recognize the AIDS epidemic because, as villainous as he is (I should have a LOT more to say about ol' Flinty at a later date, incidentally), there's no way he could be portrayed as being THAT evil.
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Gyro is a beatnik.

What more need be said?

Donald is a pyromaniac.

Seriously:

Don Rosa's Sexy Ducks

One rather amusing thing about Don Rosa's work as compared to Barks': substantially more sex appeal. That is, if you find anthropomorphic ducks sexually appealing. Which I...don't. Yes. That's the ticket. Nonetheless, here's a pictorial guide.
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Crie du Coeur, addendum

Actually, let's try to be optimistic: maybe Disney comics could still be viable. It seems possible to me that a big part of the reason for Gemstone's failure may simply be poor business practices--possibly because in the past, these things were so popular you didn't really NEED to do much to promote them. If a new publisher could get better distribution (Gemstone's comics were only available in specialty shops. I got my entire collection online; I never actually saw any for sale, and certainly very few kids would have), along with some savvy advertising in kids' magazines/TV programs--well hell, maybe they could make a go of it. And if they needed some more promotion for cheap, they could just give me a call! With the power of Inchoatia on your side, how could you possibly fail?

A Duck Comics Crie du Coeur

According to Gemstone President Steve Geppi, "it seems almost certain that [their Disney comics] will continue in some form." According to editor Gary Leach, Gemstone Disney comics are DEAD DEAD DEAD. I kind of tend to believe Leach, unfortunately. Geppi's statement seems like standard corporate boilerplate combined with some serious wishful thinking (IFONLYTHEY'DATLEASTRELEASEDTHEDONALDSEVENTIETH ANNIVERSARYVOLUMEFIRSTARGH). One can hold out hope that he's right nonetheless, or if not that some other brave (ie, suicidal) souls will pick up the license, but it seems HIGHLY doubtful. I hate to seem overly pessimistic, but I can't help thinking that Disney comics' race is run--that, indeed, it's probably been run for quite some time and we just didn't know it. In retrospect, is it not possible that Don Rosa simply provided a potent but limited shot of adrenaline that has now run its course? I've read that the Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney's Comics lines had miniscule circulations--between five and six thousand. Back in the day, kids were what kept them solvent, but nowadays, what do you think the ratio of kids to grown-up diehards is among their readers? Not too bloody high, I'd say. And there aren't that many people like us, sadly, and we're sure not an expanding demographic. And while the situation is less grim in Europe, even there I'm afraid it's only a matter of time. I read that the French publisher recently discontinued Disney comics. Ominous.
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My Fantasy Scenario

Have I mentioned lately how much I loveloveLOVE the duck stories of Don Rosa? 'Cause I do. It's not that other contemporary duck writers aren't in the same league as him so much as it is that they're not playing the same game. Nobody else even tries to do stories as insanely ambitious as Rosa does. Certainly no one else is as respectful of Barks' legacy.
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The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck

Who would have thought that the great roman-fleuve of our time would involve anthropomorphic waterfowl?
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Statement of Intent

How often to you hear THAT phrase? Yeah, it looked like the case from the state of the webpage, and I got it confirmed via email: there will be no more duck comics in the US for the time being. The representative assured me that they "have every intention of resuming production as soon as possible," but when or if this will happen is anybody's guess. It's not surprising, I suppose: even comparatively popular superhero comics aren't THAT big in this day and age; fuckin' Disney comics? Fergedaboudit. Yeah, the recession's all fun and games until it takes away my Scrooge McDuck fix. But seriously, it really is a shame; Barks and Rosa stories are national treasures, and I feel like it's some sort of sin against aesthetics that they aren't freely available anymore--and with so many stories left not easily or cheaply attainable in any form. Sure, you can find a lot of them online, but it's really not the same.

So anyway, I think this would be a good time for this blog to feature an irregular series of posts highlighting various duck stories that are for whatever reason of especial interest. Stay tuned.