"Turkey with all the Schemings"

You know, I think this is the FOURTH time that I've thought I'd covered every Barks Christmas story only to realize, whoa, missed one (UPDATE: fifth, actually.  MY GOODNESS!).  I hadn't read this one in a long time, my memory of it was a little hazy, and I think I just assumed without really thinking about it that that "turkey" in the title meant it was probably a Thanksgiving story.  There's certainly precedent.  More fool me!  Well here we are.  And how about that unofficial title, anyway?  Nobody's finest moment, I'd say.  Getting to "schemings" from "trimmings" is a reeeeeeal stretch.  Gladstone went another direction for their reprint:

That seems better, I'd say.  More distinctive and less strained.

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Scrooge's Last Adventure part four: "The Beginning..."

Unlike parts two and three, this doesn't start exactly where the previous chapter left off.  What a world!

So why do these titles all have ellipses, anyway?  I don't care one way or another--why would I?--but it seems like a moderately odd choice.

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"Christmas Album"

 So finally we get to the marquee story in this book.  It's still only eight pages, nothing huge, but it's obvious that more effort was put into it than anything else here.  Does that work out?  Well, reading it is what inspired me to write about this issue, before I'd even looked at any of the others, but beyond that...we shall see.  Western often did this in their  themed books: clearly, "Christmas Album" is the name of the issue, not the story itself, which is essentially unnamed.  It's kind of annoying: sure, I could make up a name for it, but the point of there being a title is so that if people google it they may find this blog, and that's obviously not happening if it's some all-new title.  IT IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD AT THIS TIME.

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"The Gift Guard"

 Please, somebody tell me why I didn't do this one first!  This is very clearly the least interesting duck story in the book, and now I'm stuck with it!  Ack!  Well, I suppose in its defense, it IS more Christmasy than the previous entries.  Still, expect a short blog entry here.

Laaast Christmas I guarded our gifts, the very next day...please complete this couplet to win a free t-shirt.  Disclaimer: t-shirt may not exist on prime material plane.

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Scrooge's Last Adventure part three: "The Quest..."

Well, here we go again.  Let's get right into it.

You know how I'd react if I were a creature beyond mortal comprehension and I was just chilling, when some loudmouth duck came pounding at my door?  I'll tell you: I wouldn't.  Let them just open up the door and find themselves in a featureless, empty room.  It's meaningless to talk about me "wasting" my time, since time isn't a factor for me, but there's just no reason to bother messing around with this guy.

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"Much Ado about Daisy"

 April! May! And let's not forget: June. I suppose if there were a niece-equivalent of Phooey, she could be named July. They first appeared, unnamed, in Barks' "Flipism" story in 1953. Their first-ever dialogue?

That's auspicious for sure. Then, they disappeared for six years. Then, in 1959, they had a brief, non-speaking appearance in the Barks-drawn "Double Date." They still were unnamed at this point; it's not clear whether the writer of "Double Date" was even aware of the early story or if he just wanted three female nephew-counterparts so Barks brushed off the old design. Progress: one of them appears in 1960 in a story called "The Course in Confusion," named April. And on that same day--so says inducks--a Duck Album was published with a story called "Easy Does It," in which they are all named. At what point did they start being written as Chickadees, the distaff Junior Woodchucks? Possibly in this story, but it's a Studio Program thing I haven't read. But if so, it wasn't an enduring idea, and the first story I HAVE read where it's definitely a thing is this one, from 1970. It seems like the obvious thing to do, but I feel like some of the early writers were a bit hobbled by implicit sexist assumptions.

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"The Mischief Mystery"

 Okay, here's this--finally we're getting to the actual Duck-Album-style stories.

Before we get to the story itself, let's take a moment to think about what the purpose is of using this format. Maybe it's obvious, but I don't think it's a bad idea to articulate it. So basically, if not for the introductory panels, these would be indistinguishable from other stories. But they give us contextless images from the stories, along with a small (very small) bit of commentary from the characters. Ideally, this would get us excited to read the story and find out what the deal is with the image. "Why would Grandma possibly, er, spank her piggie?!? I must know!"

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Scrooge's Last Adventure part two: "The Depths..."

Gotta pick up the pace a tiny bit if we're going to fit everything in here, so...

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Christmas Album One-Pagers

 And now, as is the custom of the country, we shall look at the one-pagers in this volume.  Usually with these seasonal things, you can see Western sort of rummaging around in their junk drawer to find whatever extra stuff to fill in the blanks.  This can go either way, interest-wise. We shall see!

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"The Dedicated Decorator"

Yeah. So just as Uncle Scrooge had the Gyro Gearloose shorts to subvert shipping regulations, so too did Donald Duck have these Goofy four-pagers. I think we can safely say that Donald Duck got the short end of the stick, in this regard as in so many others. These things are really brutally uninteresting, not that that comes as any great surprise. But it's particularly notable that one is included even here, in this alleged Duck Album. Most of the Duck Albums that Western put out were, at least, sufficiently committed to the concept that they featured only duck stories. But here, the Goofy short is shoved in without the slightest effort made to fit it into the album format. This combined with the fact that, unlike others in the series, there's no opening or framing sequence--Donald and HDL are just looking at pictures and that's all there is to it--and you can tell that nobody's heart was really in this.

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Scrooge's Last Adventure part one: "The End..."

 Well, here we go.  Let's do this.  I actually had this story in French some years before the English version came out--all four parts were published in a single Super Picsou Geant.  But at that time, I didn't really get into it.  I read the first part but then did not have the motivation to continue.  Why?  Well, we shall get to that.

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