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Sunday, December 25, 2022

"A Chip 'n' Dale Christmas"

 And now, we come to...Chip 'n' Dale?  What the HECK?!?

Hey, great things come in humble, unassuming packages.  Yes, that is some sort of Christmas metaphor.  We can't all be wise men from the East come with rich gifts.  Also, "great" might be an exaggeration in the current case.  But...what the hey.  I'm afraid this'll be a light entry, but what can I say?  I'm MAKING MERRY, dammit!


I dunno; I feel like I should like Chip 'n' Dale more than I have (also, I always feel weird writing that "'n'" every time).  They're all right, and it's interesting to see sentient creatures in the Disneyverse on this much smaller scale.  The only real problem, I'd say, is that pidgin they speak in.  Admittedly, it IS a pretty big problem.

Somehow this feels more seasonal than a lot of Christmas stories--certainly all the others I've written about this year.  I'm happy to just look at it and chill.I think I like Jack Bradbury's art, too.  That sketchy style is appealing.  Dig that tree there.  It is POPPING.

Why not?  What else...I didn't have a television when I was a child, as I've probably noted, so Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers was a mystery to me.  Obviously it has little to do with these versions of the characters.  I did play the NES game a bunch, at a friend's house.  I have hella solid memories of that.  It's easy enough that it's one of the few NES games I can beat without save states or any kind of cheats, which is satisfying!  It's fun!

Never got into the sequel, though.  Don't know why.  It was probably good too; just not quite the right time and place for me, I guess.

Noel to you, Noel to me...Noel to even your Christmas tree.  That timeless song.  I'm a big fan of Donald's forbearing attitude here.  Donald not complaining seems unusual.  In a good way.

Do they sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks?  Is there some cartoon where we hear them sing?  Maybe I'll check.  If so, check this space later.  By which I mean, now.  Good lord.

UPDATE!  There is!  They're sung by women; I don't love it, but it's much less annoying than Alvin & co.

I feel like maybe staying inside the car would've been a better move than staggering out into the untracked wilderness?  That's my feeling.  Still, it's pretty dramatic!  She could be in mortal danger here!  Even if that IS more down to her dubious survival skills than anything else.  I dunno; it just feels like, small as they are, there are more stakes here than in the average one of its like.

See?  A moral dilemma.  Sort of.  Not really.  But in its small way, I think this does remain fairly heartwarming.  You do have to wonder, though: if Daisy could help she knows such an awful character, would it be acceptable to just leave her to her doom?  

So I praised Bradbury's art, but one has to admit, it's sort of limited.  That picture of Donald expressing his remorse while looking sort of depressed strikes me as incongruous.  Ah well.  

Is it just me or does...Dale, the one with the pink nose, look perpetually stoned with his eyes always half-lidded like that?  Regardless: how generous!  How just what you want to see for Christmas!  Huzzah!

Aw.  Not that I object over-much to Donald having to endure their singing, but this seems like it's making Chip 'n' Dale more dumb that they ought to be, just for the ending.  They know how much they ignore him!  Probably.  Do they?  I'm not actually that down with the ins and outs of Chip 'n' Dale.

Oh well!  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

7 comments:

  1. This story from Dell Christmas Parade 6 is my favorite of the C&D Christmas comic stories. It’s not just slapstick and C&D annoying Donald; there’s character interaction and a satisfying back-and-forth plot. I also like a Christmas story to end with relative good cheer all around, which this one does. As it happens, there’s another story where C&D team up with Daisy in a friendly way; in my headcanon that one follows on this one. Perhaps I will be able to track that one down in a day or so…. But not while creating this post, the way you found C&D singing mid-post!

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  2. The YouTube link doesn't work for me, but I assume the video you found was Pluto's Christmas Tree, which ends with Chip 'n' Dale (and Pluto) joining in with Donald and other carolers singing "Deck the Halls."

    That short has for many years been included in the Disney holiday special From All of Us to All of You, which is a cherished Christmas tradition in Scandinavia. It's not quite Christmas until Chip 'n' Dale sing "don we now our gay apparel" and Jiminy Cricket "When you wish upon a star."

    While this comic has a very different plot (and characters), it still seems to capture some of that yuletide spirit. Merry Christmas!

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  3. ...and I like C&D's pidgin fine, since it is a defining characteristic. Just compare their regularized English in the Disney Interregnum's Holiday Parade 2 ("Christmas Fray") with their original pidgin in the same story as printed in Gemstone's Christmas Parade 1 ("Such a Clatter"). Of course, this one is a comic book story version of an animated short, "Toy Tinkers," so if one has seen the cartoon the proper English is even weirder. Even so, I who only knew C&D from comic books in my childhood came to expect the pidgin. It's part of what makes them distinctive from the human-size characters, so that they're not just diminutive people. The pidgin goes along with the distinctive sound and cadence of their voices, even if one is only imagining that without video evidence. C&D in "Christmas Fray" just didn't *sound* like C&D! Their dialogue sounded stilted and artificial.

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  4. THESE, these panels of Chip n Dale puting their socks and writing leters to Santa...

    When I was little I use to have this cool hardcover Disney book that had all stories with many stories with various Disney characters like Peter Pan, Snow White, there was adaptation of "Christmas for Shacktown" (which was my introduction to the story), Mickey Christams Carol, something about Goofy helping out Santa who broke his leg, a story version of Silly Symphonies Santa Claus short Disney made in the 30's and some others. It had some very nice illustration.

    One story had Chip n Dale and I swear some of the panels here give me flash-back to that book. I honestly don't remeber was this an adaptaition of this story or just had some similiar elements but still it got me in a holiday flashback move...

    MERRY CHRISTMAS GEOX! Don't eat to much Christmas candy (no, just kidding, it's Christmas go all glutton on Christmasy joy)

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  5. P.S. AH! That voice of the "unknown" was me ;)

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  6. The stories of Chip 'n' Dale are a bit ambiguous (at least in the Portuguese/Brazilian translations) if they can communicate verbally with anthropomorphic ducks (they can understand the ducks, but in many stories the ducks seem that they can't understand them); but in this story they clearly talk the same language than the ducks

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  7. Dale is THAT dumb, but not Chip.

    The stoner look is faithful to their original cartoons, where Dale seemed to have, how should we put it... special needs?

    The Chip and Dale in Rescue Rangers are clearly from a parallel universe of sorts where Dale is not that... mentally impotent, since it's populated by humans and not dog faces.

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