"Ducktargnan and the Three Musketeers"

So I was messing around on inducks, when I came this British series from 2010, called Disney Literature Classics, which seems to be a chopped-down version of a Brazilian series (to add to the confusion, there seems also to be a differently-numbered Irish version, though this could just be confusion on inducks' part). Most of the issues aren't fully indexed, but from those that are it looks as though it mostly consists of old Italian stories that have otherwise never seen the light of day in English.
As you might imagine, this is relevant to my interests, especially given the current Disney comics drought here in the states (God Bless You, Fantagraphics, but I'd still like to see some NEW stories). So I did some poking around, only to discover, to my bafflement, that you cannot find these things for sale online. Anywhere. Seriously, I did a pretty damned thorough search and…nothin.' This is quite baffling to me; I'm used to being able to find more or less anything online, let alone something of as recent vintage as these books are. Quite frustrating, I must say.

The exception is the first volume, which you can actually find quite easily. Why? Beats me. Maybe they were giving it away for free as a promotion for the series as a whole? Regardless, that's how I came to own a copy of "Ducktargnan and the Three Musketeers" (or the boring-er "Donald and the Three Musketeers," if you prefer to take the title page's word for it).



This features--as you'd expect--a "Three Musketeers" pastiche-ish thing. It's from 1957, written by the prolific-yet-rarely-seen-in-the-US Guido Martina, and drawn by the somewhat-less-prolific-and-never-seen-in-the-US Pier Lorenzo De Vita. I've never read The Three Musketeers, but I kinda don't think a heckuva lot of familiarity with the source material is required (though the book DOES include a fairly pointless summing-up of the original story in its introduction, possibly to give the book an "educational" sheen). For one thing, it's a stretch to even use that title; this is more or less a solo Donald story.

Let's jump in, shall we?



The first thing you notice, unfortunately, is that the translation is...well, it's a translation; it's not a localization by any stretch, and the story really suffers for it. This thing really needs all the help it can get. The sort of script we came to expect from Gemstone and (the tail end of) Boom was a must. Instead, we get incredibly leaden joking around like you see in the second panel above.



It is quite telling that the translators (Alison Marschner and John Janssens, I'm looking at you!) were unaware that "quack" is traditionally rendered as "wak" in English-language duck comics. A lack of familiarity with the characters is all too apparent.

Well, I'll try not to harp on this too much. There are some other things of note here...



For instance, Scrooge has, um, a Native American slave, for no apparent reason. Someone tell me: is this anywhere in Dumas? As I said, I haven't read the source material, but I have my doubts. This is…something that a localization would probably have done its utmost to smooth over, but here…well, it is what it is: totally bizarre and racially tone-deaf in the extreme.

(Also note that you can tell from the vernacular "gob" that this is a British translation--I imagine that would be pretty meaningless to most American kids. Well, even more meaningless than it already is).



The story isn't really sure how much it wants to mess around with anachronisms; mostly it's fairly restrained in that regard, but then something like a traffic light appears.



Oh, and hey, Donald says "damn you." Never tell me I've never shown you anything you haven't seen before! Looks like Disney's censors got a little bit sloppy here. In defense, sort of, of this translation, we never would've gotten to see a novelty like that had more competent people been on the job!



One occasionally-recurring joke that works pretty well is this thing where characters--seemingly forgetting that they're supposed to be living in the seventeenth century--reference future events. Even this translation is unable to render these bits non-amusing.

So anyway, Donald has to go on a secret mission for the queen (Daisy, natch), and yadda yadda. On the way, he stops at a restaurant...



...and the spectacle of him gnawing on a goat carcass is the best thing in the story, by any measure.



...though him getting drunk and seeing triple ain't bad either.



See? Funny. You don't wanna be discovering when you're an inventor--that'll get the union on your back in a hurry.



I really can't tell whether or not this guy is supposed to be Gladstone, but at any rate, Donald gets what he came for.



There's some business with Pete and the Beagles stealing the top secret thing. Pete also leads the Beagle Boys in Wizards of Mickey; apparently, it's an Italian thing. I like the way the one Beagle is trying to eat the box open.

Anyway, they open it with faith, and inside they find...Oscar the Ostrich's ancestor?



In general, the art in this story is pretty underwhelming, but this image of the ostrich giving Pete & Co the business is pretty dynamic.



So Donald gets back, and learns the reason for this mission. Women…so shallow, amirite fellas? Laughed? I nearly exploded. Yup…that's pretty much my favorite kind of joke ever.



Oh ho ho actually NO, my favorite kind of joke ever is the one about hideous, amorous women. IT'S FUNNY BECAUSE NO MAN COULD EVER LOVE HER ROFLMAO. Ugh. In addition to everything else, the translation telegraphs the "joke" by calling her the "Princess of Beards."



But at least after that we get this, which is pretty good. When you're a kid, it never occurs to you that wars are named after the fact so, you can totally see someone going, "yup--now it's time for the Thirty Years' War. Bummer."



This doesn't sit well with the ducks, so they decide to fuck off to America.



And I must say, I find this to be a quite charming--and somewhat inspiring--conclusion, them dashing off like that. Somewhat utopian, really: don't want to fight in a war? Then don't! Just straight-up leave everything behind and run away to a new life! Look how excited they are! Never mind that that last panel might reasonably be construed as somewhat less than canonical...

So that's what that story is all about. In spite of poor translation, questionable art, and a few truly awful jokes, I found myself, on balance, enjoying it. Certainly this is the sort of thing that we rarely if ever have seen in the States (I don't know if you've noticed, but other than Scarpa, virtually no vintage Italian stories have come here), so it's definitely historically interesting.

And hey, in the unlikely event that you're in any position to hook me up with any or all of the other elusive volumes in the series, drop me a message. Let's work something out.

UPDATE: I should acknowledge the possibility (probability?--it would explain a lot) that this is an abortive series; that none of the other volumes were ever actually published, and that inducks jumped the gun. Frustrating, but highly plausible, now that I think about it.