"This Is Your Life, Donald Duck"

Well, so most people are at least aware of "From Egg to Duck," but how many people have THIS little number, from 1960, on their radar?

Maybe my perspective is distorted, but it seems like the answer is: not many.  This may have something to do with the fact that Marco Rota has exponentially more talent than Tony Strobl and Vic Lockman put together (sorry, guys, you know know I love you, but it's time to face hard truths); STILL--it's a biography of Donald, and therefore surely of some significance.  Let's take a look, shall we?

Man, the title just instantly dates the hell out of the story, doesn't it?  How many people who weren't there at the time are more than vaguely aware of This Is Your Life?  I only know about it to the extent that I do because it was featured on, I believe, an episode of This American Life some years back.  Still, at the time it must've seemed like an ideal format for the story to piggyback off of.  Indeed, the story gives you a good idea of what the original was like: there was a guest, and the host would go through their life with them, with the help of surprise guest appearances.  So, now we get this with Donald.  Fair enough, though my distaste for Jiminy Flippin' Cricket remains firmly in place.  It's interesting that both Lockman and Rota felt the need to include framing devices in their stories.

But first, we have to get Donald to the station, for which we need this bizarre Zorro shit.  Apparently.  This comic was published at the same time that Disney was doing their Zorro TV show and associated comics, so that's why this, I guess.  Hard to say whether Lockman was asked to include it, or did it of his own accord, however.

HA HA HA GRANDMA IS NEARSIGHTED.  Well…it's Lockman.  Fine characterization was never his strong suit.  

Also, "you looked more lifelike on TV"=something something simulacra.

Anyway, as in Rota's story, Grandma is raising him.  Also as in Rota's story, we see that he came from an egg.  Some find it unsatisfying that Rota's story elides the question of Donald's parentage, but at least it acknowledges that there's a question.  Lockman, for better or worse, just ignores it entirely.

The bit about Donald's infancy isn't that good, and there's a recurring motif of him smashing his head against things that's on the unappealing side.

On the other hand, if you don't mind the presence of Goofy and Mickey, this childhood part isn't bad.  One is actually strongly reminded here of how you'd expect Donald to behave in your old Taliaferro strips.

"Hee hee at the tree...it's not for me."  Yup--that's Lockman all right.

And then we get to the high school section, which is easily the best thing in the story, even if the characters feel somewhat jarringly out-of-place in the milieu.

And then the take on phone-booth stuffing firmly dates the comic even further than it already was, but in a kind of entertaining way.

Strictly from Nothingville!  That cracks me up.

But what's good about this part is that you have Donald actually working and making progress and getting better.  We want to see him not just be a total failure all the time.

...although if anyone wants to tell me how this task wouldn't involve "luck," I'm all ears.  I'm sure we can all think of jillions of ways Gladstone could've won out here.

Still, it's an amusingly silly finale.  I'm tempted to say that this story would've been better off if it were just the high school stuff.  It stands alone fine, and the rest kind of pales in comparison.

Was I recently talking about artistic "borrowing" in Disney comics of the time, or what?  The next section features Gyro, and the whole thing, as you can see, is lifted straight from Barks' think-box ten-pager (the story glides over the question of how and when Donald obtained his nephews).  This somehow doesn't strike me as being quite as egregious as the "Seven Cities of Cibola" affair, just because the story doesn't seem like it's trying to be sneaky; it just grabs this stuff, and that's all there is to it.  Still pretty darned lame, though.  You feel like a biography of Donald ought to be something special, and here you're pissing away a substantial chunk of it on old material that doesn't shed any light on anything.  When Gladstone chose to reprint this story, they just replaced this segment with Barks' original, which, as much as I'm not a big fan of the borrowing, seems lamer to me.  Okay, obviously Barks' art is better, but A) the juxtaposition is jarring; and B) come on--if you're reprinting a rare story, reprint it--don't just replace bits of it with common material we can find any ol' place.  Hmph.

And again, like Rota, Lockman includes a Stardom segment, though there's not much to it.  That expression on Donald's face in the second panel there…

Followed by an ending that might remind one of "70th Heaven."  Look at all them characters--including the weirdly ubiquitous Bongo and Lumpjaw.  Seriously, does anyone these days ever think of Fun and Fancy Free, apart from (possibly) "Say it with a Slap?"  I have my doubts.  So they get to be here, but poor ol' Horace Horsecollar?  Nowhere to be seen.

I do give this story credit for actually featuring some "Donald's childhood material" (albeit of variable quality) where Rota just skips from infancy to adulthood.  Still, it really could've been so much more.  Get rid of the lame Barks swipe, maybe actually include a coherent narrative through-line, and you'd have something.  As it is, this is basically just a novelty, a few ups, not too many precipitous downs, but ultimately not much to remember.