Barks Christmas One-Pagers

DIDN'T EXPECT THIS, DID YOU?!?  HA!

Hope you're having a swell Christmas. I was readin' some Barks, as you do, and I realized that there are a handful of one-pagers that I ought to look at if I want to be excruciatingly complete in my coverage of his Christmas output, and why wouldn't I? TELL ME?!? So yeah, let's do this. There are actually more of these than I thought; I assumed that they all would've been reprinted at some point in Gemstone's Christmas Parades, but such is far from the case, so I had to do a bit of digging. I think I got them all, though!

Read more »

"Northeaster on Cape Quack"

I hope y'all are ready to feel like a buncha chumps (how's that as the opening to a Christmas posting?), because here's a Barks Christmas story that I totally forgot about and that NO ONE mentioned to me. Well, Elaine did this year. But otherwise, it would've gone under the radar again; I had totally forgotten about it, like you people did. But in spite of that, it's actually a really good one! Well deserving to be recognized! So here we are!

Read more »

"The Hunt for White December"

And now, A VERY UNCLE SCROOGE 348 CHRISTMAS (and I realize now that I kinda forgot I was calling it that for the last three entries) sputters to an unceremonious halt, though there might be another gift in the bottom of Santa's sack for Christmas day. This 1982 story (originally titled "White Christmas Worries" but redubbed "The Hunt for White December" for its US release, which, well, is definitely a movie reference) gets covered last, naturally, because it's the marquee story, on account of being longer than the others and, well, more like how you'd expect an issue of U$ to start. Whether it deserves that honor...is to be determined. Tee. Bee. Dee.

Read more »

"The Christmas that Almost Wasn't"

Okay okay, a day late, but now we're back on track. No need to panic. Before we start, for anyone who hasn't yet had the pleasure, let's just have this great image by Tony Fernández of Greta (Grebe-a?) Thunberg as a duck:

Given that she's Swedish, she probably has at least SOME familiarity with Disney comics, so I hope she sees it and appreciate the honor.

Read more »

"The Christmas Gathering"

Here it is: our first Christmas Christmas story--a Beagle Boys joint by Gorm Transgaard, and boy is it ever not his fault that his name always makes me think "gormless," but it absolutely does. Of course, if being without gorm means being kind of weak and dopey, you'd think it would that gorm would be a good thing, but my brain refuses to work that way. Well...so it goes.

Read more »

"The Duckburg Ice Festival"

Today's story is "The Duckburg Ice Festival," which doesn't have anything explicitly to do with Christmas, but which is certainly more thematically appropriate than that Van Horn story. This is the first of two stories written by Janet Gilbert and drawn by Vicar. I definitely badly undervalued Vicar in the past, probably because his art has often been in the service of stories of questionable value, but he was damned good at what he did. I can't say that much about Gilbert; I've undoubtedly read others of her stories, but I can't say I have any kind of mental catalogue of all these sundry Egmont writers.  I had to create a "Janet Gilbert" tag just for this post.  However, inducks DOES have a picture of her with a fish on her head:

So that's fun.

Read more »

"Out of the Blue"

And now, the start of what I like to call A VERY UNCLE SCROOGE #348 CHRISTMAS. This issue is unusual in that it's a Christmas issue of Uncle Scrooge from Gemstone with no Barks content at all. Were they looking forward to a time when they'd HAVE to do Barksless Christmases? Alas, such a time would never have the chance to arrive. But what would it have been like it if had? Let's take a peek, shall we? Also, there will be at least one other story, and possibly more, depending on how I feel. Obviously, I am not super-concerned with conceptual purity.

As seems logical, we will start with the story that has nothing whatsoever to do with holidays or winter or anything. Well, "out of the blue?" "Blue Christmas?" That's a thing, right? Let's say it is. Sure. 'Tis the season for pushing tenuous ideas well past their breaking point. I like Van Horn reasonably well, but I've never written much about him here; it's never felt like there's that much to say. He has his strengths, and he has his tics that annoy me, but none of them have generally seemed vitally important for me to talk about. I'm disappointed that he gave up on his occasional efforts to write longer adventure stories. I'm sure I've said that before.

Read more »