"Just for Laughs"

Here's a li'l Van Horn joint which I am presenting as an antidote of sorts to the last story. Donald is totally out of his mind throughout the entire thing, but nobody could possibly be disturbed by this.
It's actually a little bit difficult to write cogently about Van Horn, or at least I have found it to be so. Most of his stories are nothing more than extended, goofy riffs, and while you can certainly isolate thematic concerns if you try hard enough, the stories are--or seem to me to be--resistant to much in the way of deep analysis. This isn't a bad thing. It, like the stories themselves, is what it is. Onward.

Actually, "Just for Laughs" might be the quintessential Van Horn story. There is no plot to speak of; we just get ten pages of concentrated, Donaldic wackiness. As we open, our hero is angry at milk for getting his cereal soggy.



Then, he's angry at the comics for not being funny.



'Twasn't always thus, but it's hard to argue with his assessment in this day and age. Okay, Zits is funny sometimes. And Doonesbury. But where are the Calvins and Hobbes of yesteryear? Alas, they have vanished like the snow.



Actually, even though Donald's behavior is meant to be absurd, I can't help but take the above to be representative of Van Horn's general attitude towards contemporary popular culture, which has always struck me as somewhat dyspeptic.



Did I mention that this story is goddamned hilarious? Because it is. Judging by their relative scarcity, it's not too easy to produce an actual, honest-to-god laugh-out-loud duck story, but this is definitely in the top-tier of that rarified group (along with this other Van Horn offering).

Anyway, midway through, Donald gets hit with industrial-strength laughing gas, which precipitates a change in his behavior.



This is where things get really manic. I am vaguely reminded of the slapsticky set-pieces you sometimes see in Pynchon.



I would argue that there's something of the carnivalesque in this. The social order is inverted. Donald can laugh hysterically and with impunity at a cop who's just gotten biffed. Normal rules do not apply.

And then, the climax: a good, old-fashioned pie fight:


Pft. "Sobriety Society." As if they'd have any chance of living up to their name, under the circumstances. Dig Donald as the gleefully anarchistic instigator.

I wouldn't want every story to be like a Van Horn story, but this level of energy is a key element that is severely lacking in a lot of your more enervating duck stories. I don't think it would be a bad idea to mandate that every creator do the occasional balls-to-the-wall, super-high-energy bit of anarchy like this. It might help to keep everyone's priorities balanced. Even Don Rosa occasionally took a break from the meticulously-detailed epics to throw off the odd bit of throwaway comedy (meticulously-detailed throwaway comedy, but still). It's just fun stuff.