"Bird-Bothered Hero"

In comments on Ducktales 3, Joe cited this 1969 story--by the dream team of Kay Wright and Vic Lockman--as a candidate for previous Worst Disney Comic Ever. Joe tends to be way more positive than I am about these things, so his "endorsement" really carried a lot of weight with me, and it was necessary to immediately figure out what was what.
Of course, this is by necessity a fairly arbitrary judgment--and you really have to define what qualities you're weighing most heavily, which will necessarily differ from those that others choose--but…well, it's certainly not good, though it does dramatically demonstrate the essential rudderlessness of American Disney comics post-Barks. Not that there wasn't plenty of dreck published during Barks' tenure as well, but after his retirement, it sort of became de rigueur, even if today's offering is worse than most.

"Bird-Bothered Hero." I actually quite like that title. Sounds kind of Homeric, doesn't it? Ox-Eyed Hera, Wine-Dark Sea, Bird-Bothered Hero. But...that's about as far as the "praise" portion of this entry goes.



So the idea is the kids are doing some kind of Junior Woodchucks bird-calling thing, but Donald is unhappy with this, and really, how strange is that first panel? I mean, for all his weaknesses, Lockman had worked with these characters enough that he had a pretty reasonable idea of how--basically--they could be expected to behave. So what's with all the wak-ing? Why is he sounding like cartoon-Donald? I suppose we could posit that the ending 'wak's are there for wordplay purposes--to resonate not only with the initial 'wak' but also the one in 'waking.' I think that's giving the story more benefit-of-the-doubt than it deserves, however. Alternatively, we could suggest--and I find this substantially more plausible--that they're there because the balloon had been placed, there was a screw-up that resulted in there being an extra line, and new text was needed to fill it. Hence, wak! wak! wak!

There's more evidence that such tomfoolery might have been going on:



Note the way HDL have suddenly reverted to caveman-speak. If you REALLY wanted to defend this story (um…could I ask why?), you could note that dropping the article doesn't necessarily make it improper; that's something that you would do also for Cub/Boy Scouts, never mind the fact that you simply don't for "Junior Woodchucks." But I think the more likely solution is that adding a "the" would've pushed "junior" onto the fourth line, and there wouldn't have been quite enough room for the entire name to fit. So, once again, we get the elegant solution of just mutilating the dialogue as a whole. This thing just screams "effort," doesn't it?



It is hardly unprecedented for Gyro to come up with convenient inventions just as they're needed, but I feel like this one might set some sort of land speed record for that particular contrivance. I mean jeez, the nephew is barely able to finish vocalizing the desire before--mirabile dictu!--it is at hand! Not even a panel break. Really, now.

As a side note, I think Gyro is a hard character to write well: sure, he was sort of gimmicky from the start; an inventor because that provided a wide range of possibilities for Barks to crank out four-page stories, but in his hands, they often ended up possessing much more weight than you would expect from such things. Whereas, lacking Barks' gifts, other artists avail themselves of the same gimmickry, but rarely turn it into anything especially arresting.



Anyway, so, uh, Donald accidentally half-swallows the whistle. Can you imagine how much momentum there would have to have been for it to get lodged in his throat? Forget about choking; the impact alone would probably have serious, if not actually fatal, consequences.



…but no, he just gets "a funny feeling in [his] throat," to be remedied with soda. Yeah, okay. Fine.



And, of course, now breathing causes him to summon birds, including this carrier pigeon! Can't you almost just hear Lockman here? Oh man, gotta get this done, need a plot, bird! Message! Map! Okay! I suppose the idea is to introduce all this in such a rush that the reader doesn't even have time to ask: what? No dice on that, I'm afraid.



Actually, I like that image, if only it weren't connected to its story's ungainly, whipsawing plot. It helps that Wright only has to draw the ducks in silhouette.



Then, uh, this. You may be reminded of the ducks getting lost in a fog and falling down a hill in "Lost in the Andes." Then, you may feel shame at comparing "Bird-Bothered Hero" to a Barks classic. Hopefully, you won't wonder how it could possibly have been necessary to send the agent a map to the boat via carrier pigeon. Or why Donald's reaction at having fallen like this appears to be a sudden bout of clinical depression.



Bonk! Scrape! Bash! That is one intense impact! But wait: how 'bout Donald in the second panel? Can we have a close-up?



RAAAAAARR! As you can see, in his rageful glee he has grown a second pair of eyebrows. That's some goooood art-workin' right there.



Oh, yeah, and he coughs up the whistle at the end, as Gyro pounds him on the back hard enough to dislocate his shoulder. And here we are.

Bad, yes, but it's actually easy to envision how this same basic plot could've been good. Just imagine if Van Horn had done a story like this in the early nineties. The differences between that and this, however, are that A) it would've had better art; and B) Van Horn would've gleefully played up the absurdity of the scenario. Whereas the version that exists only plays up the "we need seven pages by five o'clock" of the scenario.

Actually, I think I'm gonna still give my personal favorite, "The Tommy Moccasin Trail," the nod over this one in the Disney badness contest. But really, it all comes down to what you're looking for. One is forced to concede that that story actually tries to make a point--it's a dumb point, incompetently made, but at least there's artistic intent, of a sort. In "Bird-Bothered Hero," there's only "oh shit--deadline's coming" intent. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the Daan Jippes re-draw.