"Ducky Date"

One strange phenomenon resulting from Western's creative flailing around in their latter years is the Crossover Story, featuring ducks (or mice) and characters from completely different comic worlds or, often, from movies. In a way, this is a bit full-circle-y, harkening back to a time early in Disney's history when these distinctions were not at all clearly-defined, as evinced by all the comic-book Merrie Melodies adaptations and whatnot (and, of course, check out David's exhaustive compilation of cartoon adaptations that appeared in Good Housekeeping). Also, remember that those horrible mice from Cinderella were originally meant to be living on Grandma's farm, for some quite unjustifiable reason. Still, the later situation--which produced such signs and wonders as April May June/Scamp, Moby Duck/Big Bad Wolf, and Grandma Duck/Dumbo (would it cause your monocle to pop out in shock if I told you that Vic Lockman was responsible for most of this?)--wasn't really analogous: it was clearly all about novelty, novelty, novelty!

Anyway, the most enduring such paring was the super-bizarre (actually, I suppose pretty much par-for-the-course bizarre as far as these things go, but somehow it always strikes me especially) Beagle Boys/Mad Madam Mim. Well, why not? I suppose--Mim is certainly the most fun thing about The Sword in the Stone, and this pairing actually sorta kinda worked out more often than you'd expect it to.

Today's story doesn't featuring the Beagles, of course, but here's Mim, in an effort that pretty clearly indicates that nobody at Western had any goddamn clue what to do with Fethry, and so just decided to devote themselves to flaking out as intensely as they could. I don't know if the character's speedy disappearance was based on reader input or marketing numbers or the powers that be just not liking him or what, but if this was the best way the character could be supported, it's kinda no wonder that he vanished.

Not to say that this is a terrible story! Not to say that it's a great story, either, or even a particularly good one, and it's pretty darned troubling from an even mildly feminist perspective, but it is amusingly goofy-as-hell, and at three pages it never gets the chance to wear out its welcome.



So we open with Mim being unable to get a date, 'cause she's HIDEOUS no one would EVER want to date her ("date," of course, being a polite euphemism for "fuck") lmao, and I believe I've
previously had occasion to note how much I like this joke (SPOILER: it needs to die in a fire).



Anyway, Fethry is doing his beatnik thing ('cause that's WACKY! and Fethry is WACKY!), annoying Donald. It should be clear where this is going.



Makes sense you'd wanna be a glamour duck. Listen, I know Mim is just a goofy cartoon character, and there's definitely a danger of me getting overbearingly humorless about this, but I just plain don't like the way she's basically used as an object here, to be used in Donald's attempt to fuck with his cousin. Her feelings? Her excitement about going out? Not really relevant. Bugger that for a game of soldiers, as I probably read someone say in a Discworld novel or something.



Another thing you notice reading this is that, apart from the beginning, Fethry himself is wholly incidental to the story. The whole thing would've made a lot more sense with Donald trying to fuck over a down-on-his-luck Gladstone. That would be a context in which his malevolent glee here would actually make sense, and be somewhat forgivable. You can understand why he would want to get rid of Fethry, but his desire for vengeance over something as malice-less as his bongo-playing just seems kind of psychopathic.



Whatever else this story has or doesn't have going for it, there's this image of Fethry and morphed-Mim getting down, which is certainly worth the price of admission.




And, in the end, Donald steals her--which, again would make more sense with Gladstone: he obviously wouldn't acquiesce the way Fethry does, and after Donald had wrested her away, he'd think, dammit, what's wrong with my luck? and then she'd change back into her old self and he'd think HA! My luck HASN'T deserted me. Not that that would be a great story, but it would be more robust and character-grounded than this.

So there you have it: "Ducky Date." In the spirit of the sixties, Western seems to have gotten into some bad acid, of which stories like these provide ample evidence.