"Good Deeds"

 JEEZ, at this rate, we will never get anywhere with this retrospective!  Can't go more than a month without posting.  It ain't right.  Well, it's because I have a teaching fellowship this summer, and I'm spending a lot of time on class preparation and absurd, unnecessary things like that.  But!  Duckdom will never die!  Although this story sort of almost has, I feel like (nice segue!): for extremely mysterious reasons, it has been reprinted notably less often than others of the time period.  It's never been reprinted in the US in a standard comic book, in fact; just in the two CBLs.  And now, we shall look at it.

The opening is pretty funny, with Donald explicitly being a jerk just to be a jerk.  He is nothing if not focused.  Also: first Jones appearance!  Kind of.

His string of invective is also fun; more evidence that Barks was a cut above.  But here is my serious question: was "why don't you fade?" a widespread idiom at the time?  Google is giving me no knowledge, because there's some metal song with the line "why don't you fade away?" that gets all the hits.

As in our previous entry, we see that sort of grandiose Donald pose that Early Barks liked to do. 

...and here is Jones, albeit obscured by a newspaper smacking him in the face, which somehow seems like an appropriate introduction--although this is clearly not the familiar character design.  That would come with his next appearance, but meanwhile, inducks identifies this guy as "Neighbor Jones from WDC 34."  Is there a shadow-world inhabited by these characters who are clearly precursors to more famous versions of themselves, but whom inducks insists on classifying as something different?

Donald, you FOOL!  Although this does raise the question of exactly why these pies are apparently stored in such flimsy boxes.  Really, this is just asking for trouble.

SIXTY HOURS!  I mean okay, granted, it doesn't specify that he'd actually spent all that time in the air, but it sure seems like the implication.  Sixty hours!  What are you doing?  A google search reveals that a flight around the world via commercial aircraft would put you in the air for about fifty-one, so what was THIS guy doing that was so important?  I ask you!

(Also, this ISN'T a commercial aircraft; one of those wouldn't hold enough fuel to be in the air that long, and this little prop plane DEFINITELY wouldn't.  Harumph, said the camel.

Not much of sense of time in this story, is the point I'm making.  So: they're clearly meant to have flown to Africa.  Assume that there wasn't an established sense of place this early, so maybe they lived on the East Coast.  STILL, a flight that far would take like twelve hours.  Hope they thought to bring along some snacks.  Maybe watched one of those weird Chinese in-flight movies that seem to only ever be shown on airplanes.

...huh.  Yes.  Indeed.  Well, conceivably, there may be reasons for this story's low profile.  But hey, I like that cute piglet running across their path!

That "native" dialogue...yeesh.  It seems like a mixture of a stereotyped southern accent and the Little-Hiawatha-style Native American stuff.  Not a great look for anyone.

One thing I will say for this story is that you can kind of see an in utero version of later Barksian globetrotting adventures.  It's certainly the first real travel in Barks.  Compare, perhaps, with "The Secret of Hondorica."  This seems sort of like a less sophisticated version of that.

Haven't talked much about this whole "good deeds" thing because it's fairly predictable and mostly not that interesting--but check this out.  "You GOTTA keep doin' good deeds!  It's your only hope!"  Where did this religious faith in the power of the Good Deed come from, anyway?  Of course, in the end, the relentless deed-doing DOES work out for Donald.  Seems like a more straightforward moral lesson than one would typically find in later Barks.

"Jazzbo" sounds like a racial slur; it isn't, really, but the failure to differentiate between these "savages" and African Americans who may be jazz musicians or enthusiasts is obviously problematic in itself.

Yup.  So we can make a pretty easy comparison to "Land of the Totem Poles," in which the Indians go crazy for makeup:

Granted, neither of these stories is entirely non-cringe-inducing to a contemporary sensibility, but you can definitely trace an artistic evolution.

So, like, how many consecutive days did he just sleep through?  Again with the sense of time or lack thereof.

Whoo hoo!  He was GOING to beat the hell out of Donald, but then realized that he shouldn't, 'cause it's Tuesday.  Hey!  It's Tuesday NOW, as I write this!  Coincidence?!?  You...must be the judge.

Also, I just want to note that I like the flowers behind the initial "H" in the narrative box.

Anyway, that's about that.  Not exactly an all-time classic, but interesting regardless in the context of Barks career.

Just a couple of Taliaferro strips today:

THAT IS SUCH A CRAZY WAY TO SPELL "BARBECUE!"  And the ad copy there makes it sound as if this is some kind of new invention, though the history of barbecue goes back way earlier than this.  Weird, man.

Nothing really to say about this, except that I unironically think it's funny in just the way it's trying to be.  Well done, folks.