Friday, April 12, 2019

"The Last Voyage of Ringtail Van Dukke"


Okay! Time to talk about a fellow you may know called Ringtail! Or, you may not. But you probably do! What am I even saying? I don't know. I'm starting here because, let's face it, it's easy. Here's an easily-accessible story that I've read a few times before and is also kind of short. This had actually been on my radar to write about for some time, but obviously, I never did. Was that because I couldn't really come up with enough worthwhile to say about it? Well, we'll do our best here and now.


Well, you know. Here's how it starts. The most important thing to note off the bat is that, while this is drawn by Ben Verhagen, it's a Ben Verhagen who had learned how not to make his ducklings look cross-eyed all the time, thankfully. So we can enjoy the good aspects of his art while not having to deal with the worst. Hurrah!

The "omg the money bin is low" thing may not excite you, but the idea that there's an old door to an old room down there is pretty interesting, even if it seems kind of pointless to just stick records down there, as opposed to something REALLY special. But: you DID TOO know there were pirates in the family! "Back to Long Ago!" "Night of the Saracen!" Others that I'm forgetting! Come on, man!


We can probably all agree: the past stuff here is the best part of the story. And not just because of the awesome art, although it is pretty awesome, as you can see from that ship on the bottom right. A lot of this stuff reminds me of the best of Rota, which is definitely saying something.


I also just like how blatantly murderous these pirates are. It's "just" a Disney comic, so it's the sort of thing that one might perceive as less violent than it actually is, but man, Ringtail & Co kill a LOT of people. Go on, then, tell me how that guy walking the plank is not imminently dead. The fact that he has a look of goofy, cartoonish fear does not obviate this. I don't know; it's just fun to see a Disney comic really cut loose every now and then. All due credit to writer Evert Geradts, but probably even more so to Verhagen. It's easy to imagine how this could have significantly less impact in the hands of a less gung-ho artist.


And on that note, clearly, the murdernephews are the best thing here. I feel like it's something that under other circumstances I might complain about--them being so totally egregiously out-of-character as they are--but I can't not love it. They are somehow lovable in their bloodthirstiness. What do you think their body count is? Certainly not trivial, I would say. But racked up with such joie de vivre.


You know, this points to a serious issue of ex-cons unable to find legitimate work, causing the recidivism rate to skyrocket. Though I will say, maybe it would've been a good idea to not wear your pirate costumes to job interviews? That's a useful tip for jobseekers everywhere.

Just re Ringtail's pegleg, here's an interesting thing I read about peglegs--I don't know if it's true, but it certainly sounds logical: why do you think they're associated with sailors and pirates as opposed to soldiers or highwaymen or any land-dwellers? It's because with the preponderance of saltwater to disinfect wounds, the seafarers would be much less likely to die of infections upon amputation. So there you go.


I will definitely talk more about this later, but this "I WILL NEVER REST UNTIL I RESTORE YOUR MONEY" stuff reeeeaally rubs me the wrong way. The story certainly isn't flawless.


Anyway. Beagle pirates. The usual thing. Though granted, as Beagles go, they seem fairly chill.


And I do love the fact that the murdernephews are so keen to torture them. The idea that, sure, they'll be able to overpower the Beagles, why not, is not something you see often, or really ever, but I don't think they're wrong. And, indeed...


Seriously, I love how obvious it is that the Beagles are taking the worst of this. Thump! Biff! Whack!


So...AS I WAS SAYING. It's cool to be a cursed pirate damned to eternally sail the seven seas?  That, I approve of.  Try it, kids!  The idea of being thus cursed because you're obsessed with the idea that you have to be in servitude to some rich fucker? Sorry, Ringtail. Lamest Cursed Pirate Ever.


What happens to the murdernephews? I certainly hope they're not forced to adopt a lifestyle which doesn't allow them to engage in their one true passion, murder. That would just be brutal.


Anyway, that was just the first part of the story, and the shorter one. We go into the present, and I'm sorry to say that I find this part significantly less interesting. I mean, I like to see them having fun here, sure, but...


And, I mean, obviously the art is strong throughout.


Well...did I say "throughout?" Mostly throughout. I feel ungracious complaining after Verhagen took the trouble to get the eyes basically right, but those lamprey-like mouths? Not a good look for anyone.


So I almost don't want to talk about this, given how uninteresting I find it, but there's this whole sitcom-y thing where Donald switches back and forth between being himself and Ringtail upon being bashed on the head. Granted, some of the piratey dialogue is nice (all credit to Dwight Decker), but for the most part...eh.


Somehow, this part where they end up on a cruise ship and everyone thinks they're part of the entertainment just feels so boilerplate to me. Maybe it just comes of reading too many of these stories, but I was just intensely bored by the whole episode.



Okay okay, except for Suspicious Steward here.  He is suspicious.


VERY, VERY SUSPICIOUS.


I know I've beaten this drum a lot, but really, even when the plot isn't super engaging, it really is nice to look at. Another similarity with certain Rota stories.


Just presenting this image because it's nice to look at. That is all.


I mean...just in case you were worried that Scrooge wouldn't get more money for no reason...here you are.


Boilerplate Beagle thing, &c.


Does the logic here work? Not even slightly. We very clearly see him switching between Donald and Ringtail with no absences. The idea that Donald was actually absent and unconscious the whole time Ringtail was around...nope. Not havin' it. Nice try. Not that nice. Whatever.


I like that skeleton, he noted irrelevantly. Anyway, the end. I know it seems kind of abrupt, but that's the end of the story. Honestly, I like it, but what I really like is most of the flashback section and the art. The rest of it is pretty middling. However, it's a testament to how good the good stuff is that that's really what tends to stick in one's mind when one thinks of it.

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20 Comments:

Blogger Achille Talon said...

But: you DID TOO know there were pirates in the family! "Back to Long Ago!" "Night of the Saracen!" Others that I'm forgetting! Come on, man!

Well, Matey McDuck and Bos'n Pintail are actually corsairs, under the authority of Her Majesty — remember? Not technically pirates. And as for Don-al-Din, first, he's hardly a "pirate" in the classic sense of the term the kids surely mean here (wrong place, wrong time), and besides, IIRC we established back in that review's comment section that Don-al-Din wasn't a Duck ancestor before the localization.

April 12, 2019 at 11:27 AM  
Blogger Achille Talon said...

Anyway, this was one of the earliest Duck stories I read, and I love it very much. It's always felt to me like one of the most Barksian non-Barks stories I've ever read, somehow, both in art and plotting. (Note the similarity of Ringtail's pledge to the premise of The Horseradish Story…)

April 12, 2019 at 11:33 AM  
Blogger Joe Torcivia said...

“Ye Van Biegel Lads”? That’s even better than “murdernephews”!

Shows how much a good translation can mean to ANY story!

April 12, 2019 at 12:16 PM  
Blogger GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

Well, Matey McDuck and Bos'n Pintail are actually corsairs, under the authority of Her Majesty — remember? Not technically pirates.

That's pushing it. You'd be hard-pressed to find a definition of "corsair" that doesn't call it a synonym of "pirate." You might say "privateer" instead, but I think you have to be cutting pretty finely to say that privateers aren't pirates.

April 13, 2019 at 4:08 AM  
Blogger Achille Talon said...

Huh, may be an obscure cultural difference, but here in France the difference between the two was always greatly stressed to me as a child. It does seem a significant difference to me, too. In DnD terms, corsairs are Lawful whereas pirates are Chaotic.

Is Malcolm McDuck, with his fancy dress and always-swearing-by-the-Queen patriotism, really anything like what pop culture calls a pirate? (Bos'n Pintail is much more of a pirate, but that goes hand-in-hand with his being more of a scoundrel, who obviously wouldn't mind taking the treasure for himself and to hell with the Queen… for which reason I would say he's a corsair-about-to-turn-pirate.)

April 13, 2019 at 2:44 PM  
Anonymous Elaine said...

This story has been a favorite of mine since I read it when the Gladstone version came out. It was, in fact, the very first story by someone other than Barks or Rosa which I set aside to keep for re-reading. (Most of my comics I enjoy once and then pass on.) Since that day in 1996, I have accumulated a boatload of Duck & Mouse comics worth re-reading by people other than Barks or Rosa, but this one is still in my Top Ten of favorite Donald adventures BPOTBOR.

(1) I love the art. The art in this story made me a Verhagen fan generally. It's expressive and very funny and dramatic. Great facial expressions, great sailing scenes.

(2) I love the murdernephews. Verhagen gives them wonderful facial expressions, gleefully malicious. And as Joe indicates, major props are due throughout to Dwight Decker. The English dialogue has a *lot* to do with why this story works so well for me. One exchange that consistently makes me laugh is: You're still young and have your whole lives before you!/ So what? We want to spend our lives robbing and plundering!

(3) I like the present-day story better than you did. The cruise ship scene didn't seem boilerplate to me, possibly because I hadn't seen that kind of thing much before when I first read this. What engaged me was not the tourists' misapprehension but the boys' difficulty in coping with Unca Pirate.

I had no problem with Ringtail's dual forms of appearing. I figured, Ringtail first appeared by "possessing" Donald's concussed body, from the initial hurricane to when Donald comes to on the deck of the cruise ship. Then when Donald gets conked falling from the mast and the boys drag him below, the Ringtail who then comes on deck is the ghost appearing independently of Donald's body, from then through the scene at Scrooge's bin--that's why he can just disappear. No, it's not terribly logical that the ghost would choose first to possess Donald's concussed body if he could just appear on his own, but story-wise it makes for a nice plot twist when the reader has been convinced that Ringtail is just an amnesiac Donald. Who somehow knows how to sail a ship. He's not a real ghost--AACK! He IS a real ghost! In the same vein, I find the ending at the amusement park very satisfying. The perfect Disney ghost: terrifying to the scoffing Donald, a welcome sight to the boys who have adjusted to the ghost's reality (note their facial expressions on seeing him!), and overall friendly and honorable, no matter how many people he fed to the sharks. They probably deserved it.

The silly thing I had to ignore for the story's sake was the idea that Donald could be Ringtail's descendant (at least in the English version, his great-great-etc-nephew), HDL could be the murdernephews' descendant, and Scrooge could be Pinchpenny's descendant, but Donald is not Pinchpenny's descendant even in this sideways nephew-fashion...so that Ringtail still owes the debt to Scrooge and not, say, to Donald. Hmmm. That's a bit specious. It would have made more sense if the present Ducks were reincarnations of the past ones, as in Back to Long Ago.

And oh, you *have* reviewed Dutch stories before! Sheesh, I really have to learn how to use those label thingies.

April 13, 2019 at 3:14 PM  
Blogger Achille Talon said...

I have a slightly different (but also sensical) interpretations of ghost-Ringtail than Matilda — namely, that Donald really was concussed and just raving about Ringtail for the first half of the story, with no supernatural influence; and then the ghost came in, and they assumed it was still crazy-Donald. Possession never occurred to me.

April 13, 2019 at 4:04 PM  
Blogger Achille Talon said...

Update: in honor of the anniversary, I will make a point of creating a Wiki page for all the stories you review as part of this special feature, if they don't have one already. With a link to your review in the infobox in the DCR field, of course. And it begins… now!

https://scrooge-mcduck.fandom.com/wiki/The_Last_Voyage_of_Ringtail_Van_Dukke

April 13, 2019 at 4:32 PM  
Blogger Pan Miluś said...

WOW! You promise something to the people and now you are now fulfilling it! You are like opposite of a politician and thats AWSOME!

April 13, 2019 at 5:42 PM  
Anonymous Elaine said...

Achille Talon: But see page 18: The boys say that half an hour ago, Ringtail/Donald knew exactly how to sail the ship, and now Donald is clueless. How did concussed Donald know how to sail, if Ringtail did not supernaturally play a role?

April 13, 2019 at 10:52 PM  
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April 14, 2019 at 12:13 PM  
Blogger Adamant said...

Elaine, I agree. There's a ton of stories that feature historical ducks that look like Donald and are "Donald's ancestors", with nephews that look like Huey, Dewey and Louie that are "Huey, Dewey and Louie's ancestors" and uncles that look like Scrooge that are "Scrooge's ancestors", and it always bugged me even as a kid. Of course these historical ducks are all the ancestors of all five, that's how families work. Ugh.

April 22, 2019 at 7:35 AM  
Anonymous Elaine said...

Adamant: Interesting, I didn't realize this was A Thing! What makes the silliness of the conceit stand out in this story is the assumption that the ancient debt is now owed solely to Scrooge. If Ringtail needs to return the money to Pinchpenny's heirs, that would presumably include the whole Duck family.

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Blogger IsabellaNajera said...

Why not on the Donald Duck fandom-wiki?
Since this seems to be published under Donald Duck?
or how does clasification works in wiki fandom?


(Im new there, so IDK)

November 26, 2020 at 5:07 PM  

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