"The Christmas Contest"

 Hey!  Let's get some Christmas going 'round here, shall we?  This year...well, I'm not quite sure.  If you suggest something to me, there's actually at least a semi-decent chance I'll cover it, because we are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.  I suppose at some point I'll stop even trying to find new Christmas stories, and just do some general stuff I like for Christmas.  But for now: well, there's this story that I do not feel super-strongly about.  This originally appeared in IDW's Christmas Parade 5--the one after they decided their scripts had to be Fresh and Modern (boy, I ran THAT one into the ground) and fired everyone who knew what they were doing, as you do.  So the script is not great.  But I will say one thing: I don't blame Erin Brady (the translator); it's not her fault.  Sure, her work isn't particularly inspired or fun to read, but IDW was absolutely NOT looking for inspiration or fun, and if she didn't deliver, they just would've found someone who would.  So no hard feelings, Erin.  Try reading some Barks comics!  You might become a fan!

(I remember a few years back I slightly misspoke and blamed Fantagraphics for something that was Disney's fault, and for some reason this necessitated A LOT of people frantically correcting me on this trivial point.  It felt a little...hectoring, let's say.  Mebbe in the future we could be just a LITTLE less heavy-handed?)

Anyway, as for this Christmas Parade 5: it features an ambitious if not all that interesting Mickey choose-your-own-adventure thing, this, some limp one-page gags, and--the best thing there, and not just because there was no dialogue to translate--is a wordless one where Pete learns the meaning of Christmas and stuff.  I like it!  Though I don't know...I think it would be quite challenging for me to write a blog entry on a silent story (I guess I did for that one Barks one-pager where Scrooge draws an angry cop on his wall to scare away burglars, but that's a bit different).  This one seemed like the most write-about-able out of the bunch, so here we are.

It's certainly not a fantastic Christmas story.  As you can see, it revolves around manipulating a guy to get him to give you a deal.  I mean, that's pretty darned cynical; stories like this can be good, but I just don't know about trying to add the holiday in there.  It's not very heartwarming.

I suspect that anyone reading this could come up with a better name than "Super-Postman Preston."  Just saying.

We do actually see one of these possum-shaped keychains later, so it's not just a LOL random translation thing, but Clerkly's line there is still weird and awkward as heck.  If you wanted to make this a plot point in you story, you could put a LITTLE more work into it?  Possibly?

So okay, blah blah, the usual...

And this, which dammit, I just find gross.  Maybe I have different sensibilities than I used to, but come on, man.

And so, a true Christmas miracle, Scrooge is beaten up by Santa Claus.  Tidings of comfort and joy to all!  If only.

Grrr!  Rockerduck!  It's just, if you're not familiar with the characters and rooting for Scrooge just because it's the default thing to do, there's just nothing to choose from between them.  Or if there is, it's that Rockerduck, in this case, is the more ethical of the two, having gotten the doll through a normal business translation rather than having fought an eight-year-old for it.

The Richmond family is just bizarre.  I can't tell what kind of people they're supposed to be.  About all I can come up with is rodeo clowns, but strange as that is, it doesn't seem to encompass everything we have going on here.  Also, what's that "M" for?  His name is Richmond, yeah?  Humanity may never know!  I guess I have to put weirdness like that in the plus column, at any rate.

"Horrible, horrendous, and..."  Okay, so IDW wants a very conservative, strait-laced translation.  Noted.  But even within that framework you would HAVE to think that a translator would see that, think "this sounds horrible (also, horrendous)" and try to do at least a LITTLE massaging.  Then again, I have no idea what Brady's contract looked like, so maybe I should shut up.

Yeah, so Scrooge wins via random luck.  Very edifying.  I must say, even though the art very clearly marks it as Italian, this story still has a very Seventies Western Dreck feel to it.  "This toy is appealing and all the rage" is a wooden-ass line, but in this case, I do have to concede that Rockerduck despairingly delivering it with that look on this face is almost certainly funnier than a better translation would have been.

Maximum dickishness!  Gloria in excelsis Deo!  

I also want to note that this story has a VERY dubious title; I suppose you can accept it if you're being maximally charitable, but man, it's hard not to wonder what it would have been called with a non-Fresh-and-Modern approach.  Definitely something better.  Anyway, happy holidays, and seriously, DO give me suggestions if you have them.