"The Limber W Guest Ranch"

Okay okay, how many of YOU have comics blogs where you post more than once a month if that?  And if you do, don't tell me about it.  By proving me completely wrong, you're undermining my point, and I don't appreciate that.

The dude ranch!  Or "guest ranch."  When they were retroactively naming these stories, why the heck did they go with "guest?"  A concept that I definitely learned about from Disney comics, and that as a matter of fact I'm not sure I've ever heard anything about that's not related to them.  They seem old-fashioned yet fun.  I want to go to one.  This comic is significant because, although we've sort of seen these things before, this is the first one that really depicts the hubris and overconfidence that would becoming a Donald trope.  So enjoy it!  

Also, enjoy the boots and huge, oversized hats on the nephews.  Those are some of my favorite things.  Note the line in the bottom left: "Unca Donald sure knows his stuff!"  That seems to be sincere admiration, but as we'll see, they rather quickly lose their faith in him.  Can you pinpoint that to a specific moment?  How do you think they feel about that, anyway?

This stuff probably also points the way to the later "mastery" stories.

This isn't a "big" story, obviously.  And yet, the way Barks depicts the landscapes, it feels bigger than it is.  Another, perhaps, precursor to later adventures.

The horses they're riding are named Methuselah and Sugarfoot.  Seems like an odd combination.  Presumably Methuselah is called that on account of being old--nobody has any <i>other</i> assocation with the name!--but what about when he wasn't?  What an unforgivable plot hole that is!

See, it's a little hard to say whether HDL there are asking a real question or if that's deadpan irony.  Either way, we can see that Donald is more internally complicated than many other iterations of the character.

Do you think Donald would be so willing to openly demonstrate his cluelessness like that in later stories?  Hard to say.  But my main point is: that last panel, with HDL discussing the position of the Sun and deducing their orientation from it?  That's TOTES proto-Woodchuck know-how.  Interesting to see it so early.

Just wanted to point this one out because what does a lost gold mine even look like?  Can someone give me some tips in case I'm in the area?  I mean, if there are nuggets just lying there, it's no wonder it's not actually abandoned.  What a great train of thought this is.

I'm not sure whether I first learned about mirages from Disney or from Far Side comics.  Definitely one or the other.  Also: love that "Now thirst is wreaking havoc with his great mind!"  Just a nice little bit of light sarcasm to speed things along.  Not to cavil, but: are there really dialects of English where you would say "wreak havoc with" as opposed to "wreak havoc on?"  Maybe there are, but I don't think I've ever seen it before.

Just look how pissed off Sugarfoot looks there.  Is he sick of these shenanigans as well?  I don't know.  You can look back over the story, and aside from that "the wind has blown sand over them" panel, neither horse looks so enraged elsewhere in the story.  Seems like an odd choice, is how I feel.

A well!  Good thing it's not one of those infamous poison wells, at any rate.  What does it mean that there's gas in it, though?  You'd think that would be because it's carbonated, which does not typically have the effect on people that this one is shown to.

What was that Scrooge story where he inflates himself to weigh, allegedly, less than nothing?  Well, here's the idea again, for the first time!  Please enjoy it.

...do horses do that?  You could've solved the problem all along by just spooking the both of them?  Will wonders never cease?

Slinky K, indeed.  This isn't the first time Donald's tried to take credit for things he had nothing to do with, this seems a much clearer case of that than in "Lifeguard Daze."

So ends our tale, I guess.  I'm afraid I may not have had enough to say about this one.  OH WELL.  Let's check what else was happening in WDC35.

Actually, not much comics-wise, but I do like this one of Donald nailing a woman into a telephone booth.  A real "Cask of Amontillado" situation.

But I would like to look at this: these celebrity gossip columns by Minnie are a regular thing, and I find them SO WEIRD.  Are these really supposed to appeal to kids?  'Cause it seems like it extremely wouldn't.  Did the people mentioned therein have to, like, sign off on appearing here?  I suppose probably, but I'd like to see the legal documents.  THOSE must be strange.

And look at this!  Now we have items about Donald and about a couple of ventriloquist dummies, blurring lines between levels of reality.