"Toyland"

Well, if your goal in reading these Firestone stories is to examine Barks’ progress as a storyteller, it sure isn’t helpful that this fourth one had him just reworking someone else’s script.  Well, apparently—my understanding of just how this worked is a little hazy, but it’s hard not to think that if he’d been working on his own, he’d have felt compelled to come up with a narrative that was at least a little more sophisticated.  Though I suppose it would’ve been a welcome respite for him not to have to, for once. 

If nothing else, it’s interesting for how enthusiastically it throws over any notion of a realistic mimesis.  Sure, Santa may be real in “Letter to Santa,” but at least in that story he’s kind of magical and mysterious.  Whereas here, sure, fine, great, Santa sent us a letter!  Okay!  Why not!  This is the sort of thing that might happen!

As you can see, the story is really the most rudimentary sort of wish fulfillment.  Kids like toys.  What if they got to test a bunch of toys?  Well all right then.  I can certainly see the appeal for someone of a certain age, in spite of the fact that, pace Santa’s assertion here, toy taste has changed rather dramatically between then and now. 

The whole thing is plotless; just a bunch of somewhat anemic toy-based gags that, however, are at least somewhat enlivened by Barks’ visual panache.  I daresay there wouldn’t be much interest in this story as drawn by Dick Moores, say.

I mean…you can’t not like bits like this.  Just lookit that enthusiasm!

And then there’s this part, about which I just have no idea what to say.  Clearly, there’s SOMETHING going on about gender roles and assumptions, and that something could even be quite interesting from a gender-theory perspective, but it remains elusive to me.  Is it really nothing more than “ha ha, you’re a BOY but the GIRL’S toy spoke to you!?  Seems like a remarkably feeble joke.

I do like this li’l denouement, though.  It manages to be silly and somewhat sweet at once.  Makes me think of this Achewood.

And then there’s the ending, which, more than anything else in the story, you can easily imagine Barks having added on himself (I’ve no idea if it’s true—but you can easily imagine it).  The irony in the last panel may be heavy-handed, but the art largely redeems it.  That’s just a funny image, in the way it might not be as drawn by a lesser light.  A trivial story, but, thanks to that Barksian magic, far better than it might’ve been.