"Beach Party"

Our first story, from the first Beach Party in 1954, is the only one that I actually read as a child: it was the only Disney Giant that was part of my dad's old collection.  Go figure.  You know, I criticize these things a lot, but they were clearly doing something right.  I'm sure I've noted on multiple occasions that even though the stories in Duck Albums are rarely any great shakes, the concept, really, really resonated with me.  Same thing here: I just loved the idea of a "beach party," which is what all of these stories, in theory, start with, though predictably, they all kind of veer violently away from that initial conceit.  Still!  Look at that!  It promises Fun in the Sun!  Note that although this one doesn't have a title, the others in the series do, so it's okay to just call this "Beach Party."

Seriously, isn't that nice?  Don't you want to be there?

"Darned plot device!  Let's throw it up onto the beach for no particular reason!  Grrr!"  Yes, well, there was never any chance this was ever going to just be a plotless slice-of-life, alas.

What?!?  Who'da thunk THIS guy would show up?!?  Do you think kids were reading with bated breath muttering "please let Scrooge appear please let Scrooge appear?" Not that it would have any appreciable impact on story quality, but sometimes I think it would've been interesting if these random writers didn't rely on bringing Scrooge into their stories all the time.  Force them to get a little more creative.  Maybe?  Maybe.

Still!  Look, these stories are rarely if ever going to boggle your mind, but you do occasionally have to give them credit for a flash of unexpected quality, and that's what we see here with Scrooge distractedly eating his nephews' food a la "Christmas for Shacktown" and other Barks stories.  Good job, anonymous writer.  Well captured.

Scrooge, at least, knows a plot device when he sees one.  I feel like they're comparatively underused, but messages in bottles definitely seem like one of the more egregiously convenient plot devices.  Possibly because the sheer implausibility of finding one is always really in your face.

...I'm not sure if anyone here has a clear sense of how far twenty miles is.  Also, naming his ship after himself?  I don't want to read too much into these things, but I do think this is an indication of the general lack of thought that our writer put into this story.  So it goes.

Incipient cannibalism?  Probably.  Can you imagine them eating ALL of those goddamn cocoanuts?  The mind reels.  How did they open the shells?  *mutter*

The notable thing here is that at first, Pete doesn't seem to have any particular villainous intent.  He's just trawlin' about, doin' his thing.  What's he doing here?  Was he going to just pick these guys up out of the goodness of his heart?  Somehow, this world feels very small.

A MILLION BUCKS IN G-GOLD BULLION?!?  This story contains A LOT of images of people pointing huge foreboding guns at each other.  Not that you'd probably want to, but you'd have a helluva lot of trouble getting this one reprinted if you did.

Foggy Fox, whom we knew.  The inducks entry doesn't even bother to index this guy.  What an indignity.  This character HAS to have a more common name he goes by, doesn't he?  If you do want to create a one-shot character for these purposes, PLEASE give him a better name than "Foggy Fox."  I mean, come ON, give him a name that refers in some way to his vulpinity or to his villainous role.  "Foggy" makes it super-obvious that you just groped around until you found a word that would alliterate.

(Also, how do you like "vulpinity?"  Pretty sweet word, eh?) 

Smack over a million bucks, see?  Waah!  Somehow I'm imaging Scrooge sounding like Edward G. Robinson there.  "Whale gun!"  Remember when I was commenting on some of these writers not seeming to know the names of common things?  Well, here you are.

JEEZ, just shoving guns in people's mouths like it's nothing.  I have to say, I'm not saying artists shouldn't have been allowed to draw guns, but I also think they sometimes did so in rather poor taste.

This is like in "The Menehune Mystery" when it seems like the ducks have escaped but no, whoops, forget it.  That story is a lot better than this, in spite of being one of Barks' weaker efforts.  Dig the lovingly-rendered revolver, though.

I do like that Donald more or less saves the day, although I might like it more in, I don't know, a story that felt like it had stakes.

"Let's get their guns!"  Really, now.  Priorities.  Belaying pins--I wouldn't know THEY existed if not for duck comics.  They're used for holding down masts, but really, they seem to be exclusively used for  whomping people.

I know I'm harping on this gun thing, but seriously, that image of Scrooge and nephew grinning while pointing these huge weapons at their antagonists just feels fundamentally wrong.

Let's think about this for a moment: they were marooned on this island until Pete captured/rescued them, they know there's some kind of fracas going on with their captors and their boss, and yet...as all this is going on, they're just single-mindedly focused on eating bananas?  For some reason?  Apparently?  Odd, odd stuff, I tell you.

Yes.  It's climactic, I guess, but I find this whale very disturbing looking.  Whales at large should file a class-action suit for defamation.  

"Whale gun" again.  Just in case you thought they might've just been using it interchangeably with "harpoon."  Whale gun!

See?  LOOK how many goddamn bananas they've eaten in the, what, half-hour? that they've been down there.  They have a fixation.  I'm glad we were able to get a little slapstick out of it, anyway.

Hey, hey!  Seriously, now.  How does that HAPPEN?  I know you'd have trouble getting an AI to write a story even this unsophisticated, but it really feels like some sort of sensor didn't quite make the connections it needed to, and as a result, heh, heh! is now hey, hey!  Whee!

Anyway, he beats the whale.  Not really an Ahab-esque arc.  Little purpose to getting mad here on conservationist grounds; nobody involved in this story had any damn clue what a whale was.  Debit where debit is due.

I do have to make one observation/request, though: when I started rereading this story for this project, I had the very, very clear recollection that it ended with Scrooge using an octopus as a claw machine to try to get back his money or whatever.  But that very much does NOT happen here.  So what did I get that from?  Somebody tell me!

Anyway, that's about that.  It ends with HDL messing around in an umbrella and Donald looking kind of stunned.  I suppose all told, this isn't a terrible story, or at least not repulsively terrible.  WOW do I ever praise with faint damns here.  Still, it could be worse.

But wait, there's more!  Sort of.  These Beach Parties all had the conceit that all the other games and stories were happening in the reality of the first story, and so we get splash pages like this.  I like that they kept Jack Bradbury as artist, for continuity reasons.

En gee el, people: I LOVED this concept as a kid.  Regardless of how good the stories in question are, just the idea of the ducks reading them on the beach like that thrilled me.  So...yup.

And a final splash panel, this time NOT by Bradbury (inducks speculates on Tony Strobl, but won't commit), unfortunately.  Still, I dunno this whole outing was still more pleasant that not!  I look forward to seeing how things shape up.