Daisy Duck and Uncle Scrooge Show Boat

 Merry Christmas.  This year I got you nine Western stories.  Hope you like 'em.

This initially stands out because Daisy and Scrooge are kind of an unusual pairing, but then it stands out for the contents.  Well, kind of.  We'll see if that actually holds true.  But anyway, this a themed issue where all the stories take place on a nineteenth-century riverboat (I'm going to call it a "showboat," even though there's a space in the original, because that sounds better to me), where various of our heroes are working and performing (and to be specific, it's an Antebellum Riverboat, which, yes, adds a somewhat uncomfortable subtext to the whole affair).  Not "ancestors" of the characters of anything like that--just them themselves.  In our mania for continuity, we sometimes perhaps forget that apart from (optionally, depending on how they're depicted) Scrooge and a few secondary characters, the entire cast exists outside of time.

DAMN do I wish I could read the minutes from the meeting where this concept was introduced!  They must've had a meeting, because there are quite a lot of artists and writers credited here, and they would've all had to get on the same page (to an extent, at least--it's noticable that different artists give the characters different costumes.

So I thought it would be a good idea to cover the entire thing, right here, right now.  This will make this by far the longest entry on this blog.   Is there any compelling reason to do it like this?  Well...iss a larf, innit?  Do I need any other reason?  And maybe it'll  more convenient for people who may come across it in the future and want to read all of it (hello, future people!) without having to navigate through a bunch of different entries.  Anyway.  We are, is all.

Obviously, we're not going to ignore the activities, though whether this is easy OR fun may be open to debate.  The interesting thing here, though, is that picture of Gladstone.  They gave him a specific, new look for this book--only he doesn't actually appear in any of the stories.  You only see him a few times on pages like this.  As I said, I'd LOVE to know how this all came together.

See?  1852!  Good...times.  Maybe.  For certain people, and distinctly not for others.  Anyway.  I dunno; I'm not feeling "showy glowly yo-ho-boat time."  I AM interested in the "melodrama," though.  By coincidence, Uncle Tom's Cabin was likewise published in 1852.  Which had more lasting impact, that or this comic?  Depends how events play out.  But my point is, they could and probably would do "Eliza crossing the ice."  We'll never know for sure, though. Or, let's be honest, care all that much.

While that...expression of Donald's does kind of amuse me, and I like his plan, I do also have to say, that's some pretty iffy Strobl art!  I don't think it's supposed to look like that!

Oh hey, "Master of the Mississippi."  This looks like a piece of evidence, maybe, that our author was a little familiar with Barks, but then again, maybe not--it's not like it's so distinctive a phrase that two people couldn't think of it independently.  Interestingly, googling the phrase gets you a fairly even mixture of Barks and Florence Dorsey hits.

This seems so pointed--"yay, I'll lose my job!"--that it almost seems like it's meant to be some sort of commentary on capitalism.  At any rate, the author is both dead and unknown, so we can read it that way if we like. 

In any case, enough of this malarkey: here be the Beagles!  On the one hand, it DOES seem pretty fuckin' harsh that they can't even go to see a fun show without the police indiscriminately blasting at them on sight.  On the other hand, at least two of them are themselves brandishing guns, which might make us question who exactly the aggressors are here.

"We're wanted so much we're not wanted!"  This story includes a number of little minor wordplay things like that, which makes me think this is a Vic Lockman joint.

Yeah, here's this.  These guys are just here to pass on needed information to the Beagles.  Why not?  There's no reason Western writers can't mix whatever characters they wanted (except for whatever restrictions existed in various titles), but somehow, it still always feels like a novelty when they do.  Just me?  Was that a thing any ol' writer would do, or was it primarily a Lockman thing?  I realize that these are trivial questions, but man, they must have answers that one could determine, were one determined enough.  Dammit!

Either way, I want to point out "we're the smartest crooks dead or alive" evinces a quite remarkable degree of unearned confidence.  Somehow, I blame participation trophies.

Anyway, I'm sure you can imagine how this goes, more or less, and I don't need to go over every beat.  Scrooge's Second Amendment Rights™ prove insufficient in this case, alas.

Well, that ended up being...somewhat disquieting in a way you can't quite articulate.  Nice expression on Daisy's face in the bottom left, though.  Please note: that top left image is Grandma's ONLY actual appearance here.  Gladstone might be around and we just never see him.

Sure, "Eek! Let's faint!" is good, but that "we might get tramped by the men" thing seems like gilding the lily; the sort of thing that's there solely because it would look a bit weird if there wasn't SOMETHING.

So two things: first, look, I get that burlesque shows aren't necessarily just about titillation, but I dunno, it's certainly an ASPECT, and as such it fits a bit uncomfortably into a Disney comic.  And secondly, I feel like probably if they had come unarmed and sworn on poor, departed* Ma Beagle's soul that all they're looking for is entertainment and also here's some money, this whole thing didn't even have to be criminal.  What are you DOING here?

*She broke out of jail on Tuesday, and she's been on the lam ever since.

But anyway, we do get a bunch of Disney characters performing, and it's honestly kind of cool.  Well...I'm not sure anyone other than me (and me only semi-ironically) would call this story "cool," but I like this aspect of it anyway.  Like that 70th Heaven story, except not nearly as good.

I mean, I guess the reason they had to get on the boat via violence is that they wanted to go to the show just to be violent dicks, which, if it's their normal MO, DOES explain why the shore people were chasing them away.  

I dunno; this is just cute.  Extremely unimpressive act, though.  I can't sugarcoat it.

Yeah, seriously, I'd prefer not to think about horny Beagle Boys if that's all right with Vic Lockman, but alas, it is not.

Well, given that the book's half-named for her, it seems only fair that Daisy should show some resourcefulness, so here you go.  Not bad.

It's just too bad "the girls" are so useless.  Sheesh.

Anyway, they concuss the Beagles by falling on them, and that is all she wrote.  Probably.

Yeah, man, try to be a happy cranker!  What's your DEAL?

I wish I had more to say about this, but it is what it is.  We will DEFINITELY be learning some valuable lessons as we proceed, but first, behold!  THIS!

Is this worth featuring here?  Really?  Well, you CAN learn some solid boats, so there's that.  "Bamboozler."  Argh!  There was SOME GUY OR GAL OR ENBY writing these activity things!  Their fingerprints are all over them!  But who?  We will never know.  Anyway, now this:

I think the first question that comes to all of our minds is GOOD GOD WHY ARE THEY DRESSED LIKE THAT?!?  I mean, clearly they're meant to be, like, easterners.  But those kids dressed like Mini-Donalds?  Ack.  But the REAL question is, how do we fit this in with the timeline of the first story?  It could be a prequel, I guess.  In fact, I'm not too sure what else it could reasonably be.  The story behind the story!  If you're being VERY generous, I suppose.

"Just a little old granny pitted against a monstrous wilderness."  Sheer poetry.  In fairness, the goal was clearly to make them come across as obnoxious chauvanists, and...mission accomplished, I guess.  I'm not in love with the depiction, though.

"It's sure hard to convince old ladies that they're helpless!" is a fun line.  Very Lockmanian, too.  Credit where due.

There needs to be an album or videogame or movie or SOMETHING called "He-Duck Heroes."  Such is my opinion.  Maybe an all-girl punk band, just to fuck with people.

You flaming idiots.  Note that Donald and the kids appear to be equally dull-witted in this one, so if you like that--great!  "Tug-a-Lug" is I don't even know.  You unkind clouts!  Not to get political (ha), but I think the "unkind clout" demographic is severely overrepresented in our government at present.

Buff Duck the wildlife lover I feel like I'm going insane.  Buff Duck (not Buck Duck, to be clear) was ne'r heard from before and n'er will be since, but dammit, Jack Bradbury drew that motherfucker.  Never say that Buff Duck did not exist.  Because HERE he is.  Hold him in your heart.

This goes about how you'd expect.  You'd sort of expect Pete to have a bigger role as a villain in this book, but no, we just have him at several layers of remove from the putative main subject.

Okay, fine, this isn't so bad as these things go; certainly a better-than-average villain-thwarting, even if not quite Barksian.

I'm strangely fixated on Pete's absolutely enormous handgun.  And...let's call it here.  That's the story, and we are still none the wiser as to how this relates to the greater Showboatverse.  Well, perhaps our next story will shed some light on things!

But first, enjoy this harmless but comical critter.  I dunno; obviously, that "harmless" is there by editorial fiat, but do we REALLY think kids would be traumatized if it weren't clarified? 

NOOOO!  It's Paul Murry!  This whole entry was a terrible idea!  Well, we'll do our best.  I do have to concede, at any rate, that the story does take pains to clarify how this relates to the showboat thing, unlike our last one.

Also, I'll bet you didn't think there would be Mark T. McGoof in this story!  And yet, mirabile dictu, there is Mark T. McGoof!  Shazam! But Mark T. McGoof, a darn river pirate?  I'm not falling for that one.

Also, now I'm doubting myself in regards to these stories' authorship; I really thought the first one was Lockman and this one was Fallberg, and I still kind of think that, but they both feature the word "keelboat," which seems pretty idiosyncratic, and a lot more likely to be in Fallberg's vocabulary than Lockman's.  Or, then again, it's possible that whatever reference material the writers were given featured it.  Also, GOOD LORD, think about it, there HAS to have been some kind of "reference material" for this, even if a lot of the stories sort of ignore it.  Is stuff like this in an archive somewhere, or is it just non-extant?  I'd love to see it more than almost anything.  

That would be interesting.  The story, well...it actually could be a lot worse as Murry joints go, but it's still overly talky in a way that makes my eyes glaze over a bit.  I wonder if there was enough communication between the various creators here that whoever our writer is here knew to avoid using Pete because he'd already been taken.  Or is it just random luck that this whole thing didn't end up weirder than it is?  

Note that our author--I'll just say Fallberg--DOES, again make an effort to connect this with the central premise.  Well done him.  "A steam engine on a keelboat?"  Do you think the eight-year-olds who made up the target audience for this stuff were really going to thrill to this boat classification stuff?  A steam engine on a keelboat?!?  Now I've seen everything!

Also, PENNSYLVANIA REPRESENT.  It would be interesting, maybe, to look at the occurrences of particular US state names in these things.  A lotta Texas and California, some Florida, Hawaii and Alaska for exoticism.  But I dunno; the rest are probably pretty few and far between, I'd say.  Have I ever seen PA before?

The other thing I wanted to note was...are we supposed to believe that Fallberg or Snagg or Mickey or anyone here or elsewhere is under the impression that snapping turtles eat humans?  I cannot put my head in a space that includes that worldview.

I dunno, not that it's that amazing, but I do like "why, like everybody else! The money-making business!"  It's kind of hardboiled-sounding in a fun way.  But I must say, "reasonable facimile" is a REALLY weird-sounding thing to hear from ol' Snagg.

So, yeah, okay, you get it.  Here's my question: is there some rule in Disney comics that criminals aren't allowed to engage in criminal pursuits that aren't...stupid and terrible?  I just feel like that gives them a real handicap; if they'd just stick with normal, non-absurd crime attempts that aren't trying FAR too hard to be clever for their own good, they'd have a lot more success.  

Okay, a year of just, presumably, loafing around, followed by bigger and better things, and I'm not gonna lie: I would LOVE to know what particular sorts of things these particular people would consider to be "bigger and better" than their weird disguise robbery thing.  Where does Snagg see himself in ten years?

So yeah, here's this somewhat clever but still somehow insufferable thing Mickey does where he plays dumb to fuck these guys over.  So it goes.

So, look, to cut a long story short, they ultimately get to point where they get to point a shotgun at the villains.  You love to see it.  And here's how little attention I was paying to this story: the first time I read it, it somehow didn't even register with me that, oh, here's that McGoof guy.  I even wrote a whole dumb paragraph about it.  CUTTING ROOM FLOOR:

Also, please note how they tease us with a Mark T. McGoof appearance, but never follow through.  This story is a SHAMELESS COQUETTE.  And what's more, he never even gets exonerated in the eyes of the townspeople!  Sure, it's at least possible that Mickey and Goofy went back to town and said "here, fellows, these outlaws used a baroque scheme to frame Mark T. McGoof, and if you think we're lying, we have their boat that we stole to prove it!"  That is possible.  But LOOK, we can only go by what's on the page.  And what's on the page is substantially less Mark T. McGoof than one might've wanted!  At this point, all we can do is accept that.

I mean, I still don't know if it's legal to steal boats as long as you're doing it from criminals.  The law is just a LITTLE looosey-goosey here.  But otherwise, bah.

Argh!  Even worse than Murry, it's this...wolf stuff.  What a nightmare!  And yet, the show must go on.  Inside my heart is breaking, my makeup may be flaking, but my smile still stays on.  Or at least my fixed grimace.  YMMV.

Although if I'm being honest, come on: obviously, I'd read the entire book before embarking on this project.  I knew this was coming up.  So why am I feigning shock?  Who is amused here?  But...well, I say that, but also, I think it's fair to say that I'm at least a little shocked anew whenever I have to contemplate some of this stuff again.  That's the ticket.  Oh well; let's do it.  I will say that this story is goofy enough to not be as much of a wash as you might expect.  I mean, ALMOST as much.  But you know.

Look, let's just do this, okay?  Showboat, Jr!  Whee!  Like regular showboat but...junior.  That's all right.  It's fine.  I guess.  It follows the rules, anyway.

That IS a pretty good idea, you know.  Let me gesture in the direction of the story that may or may not be called "Dirty Work at the Crossroads."  That is one of the stories for which I have the most undeserved affection, and a lot of that is because, hey, look, kids!  Like me!  And they're setting up a fuckin' SHOW!  Radass!  So I'm glad that this is going to follow in that direction.

And also, they've got THIS guy helping them!  And this other guy!  Brilliant!  Let's rock this shit!

...and, uh.  Huh.  You did this by yourselves, did you?  I, well, yes, ahem.  

I mean FERCRISSAKE, here I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, and you just ostentatiously suck at me like that.  If "Dirty Work at the Crossroads" taught the children of the world to follow their dreams, this story tells them, sorry, kids, you are too stupid and incompetent ever to accomplish anything meaningful in this world or any other.  That is cold, Murry.

Metatextual!  I suppose.  This is the part where I remind any viewers just tuning in that the premise of this series is that there's this little kid with an insane father who's constantly trying to slaughter and eat his friends.  Good stuff.  I also have to point out how much I fucking HATE the way the pigs' cheeks jut out like that.  I swear, it looks like there's some sort of parasite thrashing around in there.  What a horrible image that was.

And even if Zeke is never going to eat these particular three pigs, he HAS eaten meat in the past.  Very likely their relatives, or at least acquaintances.  I feel like the pigs should have more burning hatred for him and less mild exasperation than they do.  Probably.

To a degree, this reminds me of Walter R Brooks' Freddy the Pig books, which I bing-reread a few years ago, as you would have known had you been following my other blog at that time.  And it's very clear that sometimes Brooks is being deliberately muddying the boundaries between animals and humans, and matter-of-factly suggesting that, yeah, they're sentient and they talk, but we're STILL eating them sometimes, and predators STILL eat prey.  It's all in good fun.  You'd think stories like these would be trying to get a little of that same mojo.  But if they are, everyone involved is pretty bad at it, I'd say.

...okay, I guess that's a little better.  But you're still going to have to pull your weight to avoid summer school!

God, what horrendous fuck-ups these guys are.  They're going to be eaten by a wolf at some point, statistically.  We're merely delaying the inevitable here.

Yipe! The Wolf!

Look, I know there's no point on harping on this stuff: if you're a fan of this stuff, you're at peace with all of it; if not, maybe not.  But.  I mean, COME ON.  The pigs in the net look more indignant than anything.  Their psychology is just impossible to fathom.

I mean, okay, fine, I'll acknowledge that the fact that all of the characters treat this potential porcophagy in a very casual way (like, not eating my little friends is just a little favor you're asking, not a matter of life and death) clearly indicates that we're not meant to take it all seriously.  But I dunno, man: I don't know what we have left in that case.

Regardless, though, I find this panel really interesting.  "I caught 'em fair and square...almost!" sez Zeke.  How do we unpack THAT one?  He's asserting his right to eat these pigs based on the fact that he caught them "fair and square."  But then there's that "...almost!"  It's there so we can see his essential dishonesty: he didn't REALLY catch them honestly!  Which you'd think would be irrelevant as to the question of whether you're allowed to eat someone or not, but there DOES seem to be a level on which the text is suggesting that it's the REAL question: that if Zeke eating them IS prohibited, it's only because he didn't catch them The Right Way.™

Anyway, nature red in tooth and claw is staved off for another day, and to its credit, the ending DOES tie it into the showboat thing.  What exactly is that hand gesture Daisy's making supposed to be?  It looks sort of like devil horns, except that her thumb seems to be out.  Sound off in comments, or something.

Okay, so what's next?

Ha ha, nope.  next?

Okay, fine.  This promises to be inoffensive at worst.  And, if I'm being honest, at best.  I don't know what comes between those two extremes, but we work with what we have.

But I dunno.  We really have to ask: why do Morty and Ferdie always seem so fucking gormless?  It's not just me, is it?  Is it?  Maybe it's just that they always feel like an unconvincing, badly-mimeographed version of Huey, Dewey and Louie--which to an extent isn't fair, as they were actually introduced well before the ducklings.  And yet, to an extent it is fair; as HDL started to substantially eclipsed MF (haha) in popularity, I think efforts were made to make them seem more like those other, better nephews.  It's probably partly that they're pitched younger--you're more likely to see them or imagine you could see them dressed in old-fashioned schoolboy outfits holding enormous rainbow lollipops.  What the hell do those lollipops have to do with anything?  Why are old-fashioned schoolboys always brandishing them?  Truly one to ponder.

But I dunno; maybe it is all in my head.  Maybe they're actually just flippin' great, though I have my doubts.  OH WELL.  It doesn't matter much here, since in spite of being credited to "Pluto, Morty, and Ferdie," really only the dog plays a big role.  Something to be thankful for!

See, it's just hard to imagine Huey Dewey and Louie being big enough dipshits to declare to Bolivar that he's "captain of the good ship Tubby."  I'm just saying.  But hey, look, the showboat, and a good thing too, because otherwise you might have forgotten what theme we're going for here.  But don't they all, not excluding Pluto, have the dumbest expressions in that bottom right panel there?  Now I'm just being pointlessly disagreeable.  Welcome to the blog!

You live in hope that this is going to be one of those stories that inexplicably narrate Pluto in the second person, but alas, your hopes are dashed.  But beyond that, the narration just doesn't seem to have the zing as some Pluto stories.  Do they have zing?  Maybe.

Hey, here's these guys.  Why not?  It's nice that they want to trade him to a farmer rather than just eat him.  I suppose.  But REALLY now, I dunno.  Br'er Bear is a bear, dangit.  He's an omnivore, and very good at finding food when times are scarce.  He should be tearing through tree stumps for grubs.  That's my considered opinion.  Br'er Fox, that's a bit more iffy.  He SHOULD be a pretty good hunter, but the fact that he always seems kind of tweaked-out may work against him (I know Disney's abandoned these characters, but couldn't they bring him back briefly use him in an anti-meth PSA?).  What am I going on about?  This flippin' story, that's what!  I've gotta vamp here in a desperate attempt to create some interest.  Like and subscribe.

Plop! Smack! Smack! Blub! Glub! Heh, heh!

So who do you think is in that tree?  Any guesses?  Chip and/or Dale, perhaps?

Whoa!  Bet you didn't see THESE guys coming!  The things you find--though this actually was quite unlikely: per inducks, they've featured in all of FOUR stories published in the US (a few more overseas, mainly in the Netherlands, but not THAT many more).  Only not really, because two of those are just adaptations of Dumbo.  Why are there two separate comic adaptations of Dumbo, published at a thirteen-year interval?  I genuinely could not say.  Maybe one of them is actually a sequel?  I don't know WHY Western was so averse to using them, really; they ran Little Hiawatha stories for many years, and those are basically hate crimes, so what gives?

Anyway, this may be a pointless sidepath, but what else is new?  I have all the scans somewhere about, so let's check, shall we?

...and I can now report to you with certainty that these are indeed two separate, distinct, and more or less faithful adaptations of the movie.  Well, that's a thing.  It might be because, while neither of them is great, the earlier one IS notably shittier, in spite of being drawn by Irving Tripp of Little Lulu fame.  Might've thought it unfit for reprint, though that would evince a rare-to-nonexistent awareness of quality control from Western.  Anyway.  We live in a society.

That leaves one more crow story, yeah?  And, miraculous to relate, it's a Christmas story!  I wanted to say "it's also a Christmas story," until I realized, oh, duh--for some inexplicable reason I'm writing about this for Christmas, but that does not force reality to accord itself with me.  More's the pity.  But anyway, don't be too amazed if that one gets covered sometime soon.

So yeah, the crows.  I'm not gonna lie: I like them, and I don't find them problematic or disrespectful.  I mean, yes, they were written by white dudes (though all of them but Jim were voiced by African Americans), but I dunno man, they're good guys, they help out Dumbo, and nothing about their portrayal seems disrespectful.  Yes, it's maybe not great that the leader is named "Jim Crow," and I think that mere fact broke a lot of well-meaning people's brains, but it's not like he's ever referred to as such in the movie (I'm told that nowadays he's named "Dandy"--get it, Jim Dandy?--but I have a hard time imagining when he'd officially be referred to by ANY name these days).

It's like Porgy and Bess: yes, the music was written by a white guy to a libretto by a white guy based on a novel by a white guy.  So I don't doubt you can make legit criticisms.  And yet, it's such a great work of art, and so manifestly obvious that no one involved had other than the best intentions, that...it's fine.  Am I comparing the dang crows in Dumbo to the Great American Opera?  Apparently, I am!  I'm just that cool. 

Fwang! Hah! Oof! Oof! Bonk!

Anyway, at least they get their bone back.  It's The True Spirit Of Christmas, maybe.

Here's a question: we know that Pluto can understand the crows, but can the mice?  Or are they too different?  I'm sure that if they'd appeared in more stories, you'd've seen them interacting with the main cast, but as it stands?  It seems up in the air.  But hey, as promised, this story was indeed inoffensive.  It's a Christmas miracle!

Here's this, which, uh...I'm pretty sure what's inevitably going to happen if you try to play this is that each player's going to take two of the River Rascal squares, and then they'll try to take the ones next to each other only the first player will always win on account of going first.  Am I wrong?  Is there somehow more to this?  I guess they could try to "steal" from one another by finishing squares the other player had started, but that seems like it would just amount to the same thing.  It would be an extremely huge scandal if it were ever revealed that Western released one of these games without properly playtesting it first.  Also, who exactly is that dubious river rascal on the bottom right meant to be?  Or, for that matter, the snake?  And why does said snake appear to be drunk?  So many questions.

All right, Daisy and Minnie!  Fun, maybe!  And we ARE at least making the connection to the showboat concept clear, although it does have to be admitted, there's no real reason for me to keep harping on this.  It's not like there's some sort of overaching story here.  Don't expect Western to be TOO ambitious!  This thing is just going to trail off indeterminately.  What else would you possibly expect it to do?

Well, also, I can't get TOO excited about this story, which is basically a one-joke thing about which there may not be much to say.  It's not noticeably sexist, so it has that going for it, but that may be it.  But, we shall see.

Okay, those kids are pretty fun.  Why not hire them for the showboat, dammit?  Let's be honest: it's not like all the "talent" we've seen there really looked like all that.  "Way Down Upon the Swanee River" is "Old Folks at Home," a somewhat lugubrious song by Stephen Foster.  I think even under the best of circumstances, it wouldn't create much impact in a burlesque show, but eh.

Anyway, if you didn't get the picture from the above, you likely do now: Daisy and Minnie are just trying to have a quiet day out, but insane civilians keep harassing them to try to get a piece of that showboat action.  This guy would look at least a little less demented if his tongue weren't strangely emphasized in the second panel.

I dunno.  Going through the motions here.  If you're unaware, the traditional answer to that question is "to keep his pants up."  It's a "why did the chicken cross the road"-style non-joke, though I don't feel like it's in that wide currency?  At any rate, I hadn't heard it, to my recollection.

Daisy gets hit by an apple!  What slapstick zaniness!  Blam!  Thud!

And if you were wondering what that "blam" was about, it's maniac guy shooting at them.  Why was the apple not reduced to sauce from being shot?  We do not ask burning questions like that.

Anyway, yeah, that's the end of this one; we're done.  A predictable, weak punchlike.  Dang!  I am showing NO MERCY to these stories written for children sixty-five years ago!  But really, even by the standards of this stuff, this one DOES feel like it ends quite abruptly.  I suppose just because you'd kind of expect another page of...something...after the stuff with the gun maniac, and instead, boom, we just instantly transition to the end.  OH WELL.

I'm mainly just presenting this page because it gives us a good picture of the elusive Gladstone, but by all means, treat yourself to some sweet two-frame animation.  I have no doubt but that it'll be GREAT.  

NEXT.

Captain Hook and...hoo boy!  Well, we're not going to pull a Little Hiawatha on this one, you'll be either glad or dispirited to know.  Really, I don't know why I don't appreciate Hook more as a character.  He seems like he SHOULD be the kind of flamboyant, larger-than-life guy I could dig, but...he just kind of sucks.  I don't know what else to say.  I suppose it could be as simple as the fact that Peter Pan is a kind of shitty movie, but I dunno.  Of course, even if he WERE a good character, he would be unlikely to be shown to full advantage in a comic anyway.  Well...onward.

I am unconvinced that you can be both a successful showboat captain AND clothing distributor at once.  I mean, you can own a showboat and a clothing business, but you've gotta have people to run them.  Each of these tasks requires your full attention.  Scrooge would have Guys to run his boats and his distribution networks.  That is my opinion.  My other opinion is, take a good look at this thing with cranberries.  You're probably thinking, that's a weirdly specific detail that is surely going to pay off in some way later on in the story.  And I am here to assure you that you are extremely wrong about that.  The cranberries will disappear entirely after this page.  And actually, I think I have an explanation for that, but let's not rush into anything.

Here's our cameo here.  We got both Dale AND Chip!  We can see them without fail in Walt Disney's Chip and Dale, or so I've been led to believe.

That "it would cost me a billion dollars to buy my freedom line is just SO AWFUL.  It would have been extremely easy to have him say "if they caught me they'd charge a king's ransom for my freedom, I just know they would!"  I cannot believe that would have been outside of our writer's capabilities.  But instead...have this.  Yeesh.

Jeez.  Somehow when you have cameo characters encountering other cameo characters, it feels kind of dizzyingly inception-y..  I'm pretty sure the only reason the damn cricket is here is because "Cricket" is close to "Crockett."

And with that said, brief time out.  We're doing some Zach in Saved by the Bell shit.  Davy Crockett?

This Davy Crockett?  Today I learned that for a hot second, Disney (or Western; or I don't know who exactly was behind these efforts) was trying to make Li'l Davy from Gottfredson's last serial into a thing.  Great stuff for sure.  But I sure hope THIS isn't the guy anyone thinks is going to help anyone.  Also, there are definitely adult versions of Crockett mixed in with Disney comics, which may or may not be the same character as in other Western comics, so...yeah.  Very ontologically difficult.

Also, while I'm still not saying anything about the substance of this story, I will note that its appearance in the first panel here is the one and only showboat-related thing it includes.  It is never seen nor alluded to more.  But hey, at least we know it's not just a generic story that they pulled out storage to fill space!  I mean, unless it WAS actually a generic story and they just threw in the boat after the fact to throw us off the scent.  And by "us" I mean weirdos decades in the future analyzing their ephemeral entertainments.  That's a thing they'd do, right?  And I say "weirdos" to obscure the fact it's basically just the one weirdo.  Hello there!

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

HEY.  I seem to recall that the best thing about the real-life Davy Crockett was that he was strongly pro-Native-American rights.  I'm sure he had plenty of issues of his own, but do we really have to make history MORE racist than it was?  I would stipulate that we do not.

Oh no, Captain Hook has been infected by the Woke Mind Virus and he's confusing children about God's perfect plan for their gender!  Or something!  Trying to apply contemporary culture war gibberish to products of a bygone era always results in nonsense, which you'd think might tell people something, but actually, they're trying to ERASE history (even as they babble about "Western Civilization," which they neither understand nor care about), so...my goodness, sorry for getting all political here.  It just happened.

But really, I DO appreciate how into it Hook and Other Guy are getting.  Explore your gender identity!  It's a big world and ever will be, in spite of the efforts of some to shrink it.

Scrooge DOES seem kind of dimwitted here, for sure, but on the other hand, why SHOULDN'T he imagine that Crockett's doing to randomly show up?  I mean, sure, he died at the Alamo fourteen years before this story is supposed to take place, but...you know.

NOBODY'S GOING TO PULL A DAVY CROCKETT WITH A CRICKET ON ME!  Words to live by.  Also, what the hell is up with Scrooge's facial expression in that last panel as he spouts gibberish about "the big decider?"

SPLASH!  This seems a little violent to me, given the source.  But also: I would bet almost anything that those were originally meant to be the cranberries alluded to at the beginning of the story.  The colorist certainly seems to have been under that impression.  I mean, obviously that wouldn't work in real life, but.  Only, I dunno, at some point someone decided that having stuff at the beginning of your story pay off at the end was just a little too narratively complex for the audience.

Cranberries all floatin' around in the water, unacknowledged...instead, we end on this rather feeble gag.  "Piggy-Type Bank?"  Who write like that?  Well, Carl Fallberg, author of "Donald's Trick-Type Trip" certainly does.  J'accuse!

I should preface this by noting that I'm actually pretty good at crosswords.  Not, like, professional-level, but I can normally solve a Saturday NYT puzzle with...well, it varies, but usually not THAT much trouble.  And yet, I found this here a little bit confusing.  It looks like no one proofread it.  Note that the down clues are out of order, as are the numbers on the grid.  Also, there's no 4 across.  I ended up scribbling a little diagram to solve it, and the result isn't super edifying: "SACK TIME?"  A) I don't think that's a "duty" per se; and B) That is a weird phrase to describe going to bed.  Also, how come one of them gets a cozy matchbox bed while the other has to sleep on hard planks?  Unfair.

Crikey!  One more story!  So what do we have here, then?  What is our thrilling climax?  What indeed.

It's...these three!  Sure, why not.  So here's how it is: Huey keeps peanuts under his hat,  Scrooge craves quail, Donald has an eidetic memory, and June is...slow.  Another instance of the thing where writers give characters weird idiosyncrasies for the purpose of the particular story they're writing.

Aaah!  The Wicked Witch!  I feel like this could be A LOT more atmospheric if the colorist had provided any indication whatsoever that it was actually getting dark.  Oh well!

Goddamitit, June.  Would you knock it off with the slowness?

Shit, she's enslaving them?  Surprisingly, this is turning out to be higher-stakes than any other story here.  A fitting climax?  No!

Seriously, the writing is what it is, but to repeat myself, this story could at least look quite dramatic with some better art.  Also, hey April or May: don't brag about how well you can serve your kidnapper!  What IS this?

I mean...I think probably the MOST consequential result of turning the Mississippi to stone would be instantly destroying an entire ecosystem.  A distant second, I suppose, would be destroying all trade along it.  But yes, it would be bad for the showboat too, which I guess you might fixate on if you're a radical solipsist.  

Anyway, no fucking around, JUNE.  

Ha ha.  I know it's kind of mean to harp on these things, but a better artist wouldn't have drawn the three of them falling down in synchronized fashion like that.

Why is the mirror helping them?  Does it have a personality?  Is this some sort of canon that's passed me by?  Worth pointing out that "The Beauty Business" also climaxed with AMJ providing a radical makeover.  It might be fair to say that writers did not have any particularly great original ideas of what to do with them.

Oh no, she looks...more or less the same?  Well, in fairness, we DO have to recognize that this probably falls within the ambit of Disney characters being very easily fooled by obvious disguises.  And not just Disney comics; take a look at superheroes and their hidden identities.

It's kind of funny: this is really just a regular ol' story, but the fact that I'm writing about it for Christmas means that on some unconscious level I expect it to be Christmasy, with The Witch learning some sort of lesson about the reason for the season.  But nope, she just get pwn'd.

Finally, June's howling incompetence at being fast pays off!  And that is about all I can say about that.  An extremely predictably anticlimactic conclusion to this thing.

Well, at least we get glamorpuss Daisy!  Did you ever know there were so dang many different bells?  We'd most likely call it a fire alarm, not bell, but other than that--solid bell primer.  Well done.

What, you're still here?  Go!  We're done!  There is no more!  

Well...I dunno.  Remember how I said I should maybe cover that OTHER Dumbo-crows story sometime soon?  Well, what if "sometime soon" was RIGHT FUCKING NOW?  Then what?  We've got MAD holiday cheer up in this bitch!

We are going back in time ten years, to 1948, for this story, by Del Connell and Jack Bradbury.  You'd think maybe you'd be able to see substantially sensibility changes  comparing the earlier story to the later, but...not really.  It's all more or less of a piece.  How dull.

You can perhaps tell from the coloring that this is a Gemstone reprint.  Yes!  Gemstone reprinted the other Dumbo crows story!  But really, even giving the least possible benefit of the doubt, it would require a VERY tenuous series of steps to find anything offensive here. 

I do like that font.  Nice'n'festive.  It's doing a lot of heavy lifting here.  That is all.

I feel like maybe there are a few questions that Connell might have contemplated before writing this.  "Are heating oil and raw petroleum the same thing?" would be one.  "Do people store their heating oil in giant industrial oil drums?" might be another.  It's fun to think about things!

Even though it's not in the second person, these text boxes aren't bad, and as noted, the font gives them a boost.  And that image of him sniffing the tree is goddamn festive.

Well, here they are.  Two of them, anyway.  That's all you get.  Sorry.  You can sort of tell that these are supposed to be the ones known as Fats and Dopey, but for whatever baffling reason, they've been given worse versions of those names for this story.  It's because "Fats" as a name sounds 'ethnic' in a way that either Connell or an editor found disturbing, and because "Dopey" was already in use by the Seven Dwarf.  Are either of those things true?  Doubtful.  It's just me improvising.  And yet, the first one could be seen as libelous, so I would like to issue a formal apology to the estate of Del Connell.  More likely what actually happened is that he only vaguely remembered what they were meant to be called, and his editor, if he had one couldn't be arsed to fix it.  Really inspirational work here, guys.

I do enjoy the kind of sketchy way that Bradbury draws them.

Obviously, it's fun to watch crows fucking around with toys.  I don't even know why Pluto has to be their antagonist here; he could get into the fun, too!

"Cupcakes aren't even in Santa's department!"  Boy, some real Phoenix Wright stuff, there.

But see, the fact is, I don't really like this story, and it's frustrating, because I don't think it would've been outside Connell's abilities to write a much better one.  But it's just so mean to Pluto, you know?  Look how sad he is. :(  And how unrepentant the crows are. :(

And more to the point, what total fucking assholes Grandma and Gus are about this whole thing.  They're dogs!  They make messes sometimes!  And you're a shitty owner if you hold that against them.  Goddamit.  I know Pluto blurs the lines between being fully intelligent and not, but this will not do.

NOT GOOD ENOUGH.  If you can't handle him at his doggiest, you can't handle him at his crow-catching-est.  Or something.

I do like this last bit; the image of the crows with ribbons is good.  It would've been even better, though, if the crows had, you know, demonstrated remorse for their behavior BEFORE being caught.  But you know, the whole comedy is that we're saved even when we don't deserve it, so I guess it's okay.  I'm really not clear about "this is what's called getting trimmed by two crows!"  Is it because they were figuratively 'trimming' Pluto by tricking him, and now they're doing literal trimming?  Something much more obvious?  Much less?  Hard to say.

Anyway, holy shit, we're done here.  Yeah, I could keep tacking on extra stories 'til the moon goes down, but we have to call it SOMEWHERE.  Hope you liked it.  Well, except magats.  If any of them are reading, I wish you the worst and I hope you absolutely hated this entry.  Look, that's the most festive I'm capable of being about now.  But to the rest of you, a sincere happy holidays.