"Having a Panic"

While looking through some scans of old DD comics, I came across this one from 1962, written by Don Christensen and drawn by good ol' Strobl, which seemed kind of banal at first but then turned surprisingly awesome. The title itself is kind of a mystery, unless there's an obvious joke that I'm missing--I mean, sure, Donald panics a few times in the story, but really…? Ya got me. The French title, inducks reveals, is "La chasse aux gastéropodes chiendentophages" ("hunt for the crabgrass-eating gastropods"), which seems rather more to the point.
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'Stories'

Walt Disney's Comics & Stories featured, uh, stories, you know. As in, chunks of non-comic-y text. Actually, it's not just WDC; a lot of Western comics included these, apparently for reasons having to do with postal rates. In at least one instance, these arcane rules resulted in something worthwhile. Not the instance of Disney comics, however! It's really hard to express in alphanumeric characters the fundamental worthlessness of these enterprises. Granted, Western didn't have a particularly fantastic batting average with its non-Barks Disney comics, either, but at least you could read those knowing there was at least a chance you were reading something worthwhile. And I'll tell you something else: when I was small, I enjoyed the non-Barks stories most of the time. Looking back, it's really hard to see why, but that was me--dumb kid. Not very discerning. But even back then, I could still recognize the shittastic quality of the "stories." The short-short story is an artform, but there aren't any nascent Updikes or Kafkas here. I guess you probably can't blame the anonymous (for which I'm sure they were grateful!) writers, really; I imagine that the job of cranking them out was foisted onto the janitors or something, and, well, they did what they could. Which wasn't much.
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"Anti-Dollarosis"

Romano Scarpa is the Italian Carl Barks! Or so I have been informed on a number of occasions. And after reading just about every one of his duck stories that's been localized, I have to ask: what exactly do you have against Italy and/or Barks?
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"September Scrimmage"

So, the Eagles' annual tradition of getting fans' hopes up and then dashing them when it matters continues without a hitch. Always the bridesmaid; that's us. You might have thought that the new quarterback situation would have changed this, for better or worse, but you would be wrong. It's clearly some sort of bizarre team pathology.
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Requiem for Ducky Bird; or, The Vagaries of Fortune

It really is inexplicable how things work out sometimes. Look at John D Rockerduck, f'rinstance.
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Lustiges Taschenbuch English Edition

An interesting thing--a series of duck digests for German speakers trying to learn English. Most of the stories have been printed in the US by Gemstone, mostly in their own DD and MM Adventures Digests; not all of them, however--out of a total of thirty-one stories, ten are seeing their first English printing in these volumes, which gives them a certain value for enthusiasts. When I saw that there was a boxed set of all four volumes, I was unable to resist. It took a full month for them to get to me (I don't remember waiting this long when I've ordered things from amazon.fr), but now, here they are. Woohoo.
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New Carl Barks Library forthcoming!

From Fantagraphics. Given their work with Peanuts, there's no reason to believe it will be less than exemplary, though I could do without having the volumes released out of chronological order.
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"Secret Resolutions"

Happy New Year! Let's all make resolutions involving duck comics!
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