"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.


The story opens with Donald working on Scrooge's lawn to prove himself worthy of greater power and responsibility. It's really odd how much difficulty a lot of writers seem to have had wrapping their brains around the nature of Scrooge's fortune. There's this very strong tendency to view him as just this ordinary rich guy with palatial mansions; massive, rolling grounds that need to be kept; and super-luxurious autos. This would have been understandable earlier in the character's existence, but by 1962...?



Anyway, long story short Scrooge goes on his trip and Donald is left to keep the lawn in good shape; unfortunately, he buys defective plant-food, resulting in a crabgrass infestation. Daisy comes along with her helpful anti-crabgrass tip, leading Donald to make his brilliant observation that they are not in fact in Africa. Never fear, though! Ludwig von Drake will take us to Africa to get some sample snails, what with him being all science-y and all!



Cute dialogue from the kids.

I realize I haven't said much about Ludwig on this blog. I like him. He's a polymath with a very healthily-developed sense of self-regard. He had his own short-lived (four issues) comic that was ongoing as this story was published; he was a new character, having been introduced--in animated form--less than six months prior; Disney was apparently very keen to establish him in the duck canon. At this they were somewhat successful, but it's not surprising that his book folded so quickly: it wasn't very good (not that this was any impediment to all the other spin-off books published from the mid-sixties through the early eighties...). I think the character works better in supporting roles than as a star. Unfortunately, European publishers apparently aren't too keen on him, probably because they're dumb. It might also have something to do with a perception that he's too similar to Gyro, but this isn't true at all: they may both be genius-types, but Gyro is mostly oblivious to his genius, whereas Ludwig revels in his. Also, Ludwig doesn't really seem to do much of anything beyond reveling in how great he is.



His relentless self-aggrandizement is pretty funny, especially when--as Christopher notes in comments--his assurance that "when you got me on your side, your worries are over" is made with his eyes shut and hands off the wheel, leading to this:



Whee!



For maximum comic effect, it's essential that you imagine all his dialogue with a thick German accent.

I picture Ludwig as one of those intellectuals--like Adorno, Bloch, the Manns, Brecht, and so on--who emigrated to the US when the Nazis were coming to power. I had this alternate idea where he would instead have been one of those German propulsion engineers (like Wernher von Braun) who came to the US after the war and appeared in Disney TV specials (there would have been a certain appropriateness to this, given that he debuted as a TV presenter), but even if you assume he was totally oblivious to everything going on around him, that seemed just too dark--these are fundamentally light comics for kids, fercrissake.



Anyway, after some slapstick, they get their snail, but it turns out these here snails are illegal to import, on account of they quickly get bigger and move on to eating plants other than crabgrass (the question of why they never did so in Africa is never addressed--not that you couldn't come up with a plausible answer, just that the comic never does.) Also, the army has some sort of insane pest-scanner that was conveniently set to detect THESE VERY SNAILS!



...turns out they took more than one, also. This could have a distinct horror tinge to it, except that the snails are just so gosh-darn cuddly-looking--far more so than you would expect from a gastropod.

Anyway, the snails escape, so they go to Gyro for a snail-call (how 'bout the kids just dig out their Junior Woodchucks animal-calling whistles from "The Mines of King Solomon?"). See? Gyro and Ludwig can peacefully coëxist perfectly well.



The great thing about this here moose-call-turned-snail-call is the specificity--that really sells it. I think I've read that about snails somewhere, too! Someone wanna add it to their wikipedia page?



Worst comes to worst, and they accidentally call some moose as well. The terrified snails in flight are great, and "taking care of your lawn isn't easy, you know!" is a great line--one of those things that sort of makes sense if you look at each step individually, but if you just see the end product? Sheer insanity.



…and Ludwig explaining all this is just fucking great, and shows you why he's a good character. His relentless pomposity and extreme self-regard make it seem quite plausible that he'd be able to successfully bullshit his way through a story like this.

Ludwig's wikipedia page features a comically in-depth discussion of how he could be related to the duck family. The Rosa explanation (as most of you probably know) is that he's married to Scrooge's sister Matilda. I like this idea very much, and I will curse to my dying breath the editors who prevented it from being made official. I think they'd make a completely adorable couple. If'n you buy a duck family tree print from Rosa at a convention, you'll see that (unlike the officially-printed version) it does show him as her husband--unfortunately, it's still the young Matilda that's shown, creating a decidedly creepy vibe.

Anyway, as a result of all this, Donald gets a promotion--his methods may be unorthodox, but they DID work!



…okay, not a GREAT promotion, but still--a pleasingly good-natured ending of the sort that you can't at all rely on with this sort of thing. Now I'm going to have to read some more of these old issues, in search of other hidden gems. Attention, Boom people! I demand you reprint this story! I've seized the radio station, and I'm going to broadcast anti-Boom propaganda day and night until you accede to my demands! And so on.