"Billfold of Bills"
Imagine you subscribe to Walt Disney's Comics and Stories in the 1940s, at the same time that Barks starts his run of ten-pagers. Pretty sweet deal. Obviously you don't know Barks' name, but you know that SOMEONE is writing these, and you're not naive enough to believe that all Disney comics are written by Walt himself (if only because they're so stylistically varied), so you know you're witnessing someone's artistic progression ("You" here is "you" as an adult, by the way. From personal experience, I can say that kids are less discriminating). So how JARRING must it have been when 1950 rolls around and, for reasons unknown to me, Barks takes a semi-hiatus from WDC, and most of the ten-pagers are written (or at least drawn; who knows who was writing them) by Jack Bradbury or Paul Murry. And we can historicize all these stories and appreciate their good aspects as we find them, but at the time--I don't know. I guess it's impossible to really conceptualize. There have to have been a fair few discerning adult and even child readers, and they would have to recognize that the ducks in these Temu ten-pagers are NOT the same as the ones they were used to following. What is HAPPENING?! I imagine them wondering, clutching their brows. Well, time to take a look and see what they saw. Not that I plan on covering ALL of those stories. But this one in particular I'd say is at least worth a look.
(Holy shit, "Temu ten-pager," what an awesome turn of phrase; everyone must pay me homage, and also money.)
(And as for the name I've given this, it was printed titleless and, not surprisingly, never given one retroactively; I don't find any of the foreign-language titles that inspiring, so I'm officially declaring the three-word English description on the inducks page to be the title. That's right, OFFICIALLY! Quail before my might! It kinda sounds like it was written by a non-native speaker, it doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's not actually related to the story in any discernible way. So, you know. But at least it has a bit of character!)
So. This is Bradbury, and there is one notable thing about it, depending on how you define "notable:" it's his first duck story, and possibly his first Disney story period, not counting one-pagers; I can't tell for sure because the other option is a giveaway that doesn't list a month. That's a fact, Jack!
Bradbury's artwork has an appealingly loose style, but this debut is a bit rough, looking more like some kind of outsider art than an official Disney story.
But while I don't love the art here, that's not the main issue. We can see how this is kind of an impossible story right from the opening. Right. So Donald's upset because he feels that HDL are financially constraining him with their constant demands for this and that. He's spoiled them! Okay, next:
Here, I would like to invite the reader to make a prediction. Mull it over for a moment. We don't know exactly where the story's going to go, but we can see that this counters the narrative we saw above. It turns out the kids are being responsible and working to get money for their new clubhouse--seemingly doing what Donald would want them to be doing. So you have to think that the story, in some way and to some extent, is going to deal with this tension between his conception of his nephews and the reality.
But, I'm sorry to say, you would be a BLITHERING IDIOT for thinking this. Here are the very next panels:
Were you expecting this? No, you were not, on account of what an insane reaction it is. Forget them being spoiled; let's get freaked out at the thought of being asked--by people who are for all intents and purposes your children, let's remember--to participate in a charity raffle, to the extent that you are hiding your money, like we're in Silas Marner or something. I mean, come on. I'd say this has more in common with cartoon than comic Donald, and not in a good way.
Look at how he's not just tucking the money into the hole; he's throwing it. Also, "radium dial;" there's a sign of the times. It is just hair-raising, the danger we put ourselves in for no reason. Good thing we've learned from that! Ha. Hahahahaha.
Oh. Yeah. Sure. I DO sorta kinda enjoy this stuff, but let's face it, it's only because of how stupid it is. Yeah, I'm sure the kids'll be fooled into thinking you're suddenly in penury if you rip up your clothes. After all, it's not like they, I don't know, live with you or anything. Kee-rickey.
A RUINED DUCK! Those are some odd-looking nephews. You'd expect them to immediately see through this idiocy on Donald's part, but as it turns out, they don't seem to react to it at all.
I mean, I guess this "fuck you, pay us" attitude is kind of a reaction, but not one that really addresses the main issue. Their angry "You'd better buy it! You might win a piano!" is for my money the funniest thing in the story, though I wouldn't argue much if you went with "Oh-how can you talk of raffles and pianos at a time like this?"
And we're off. What do you think a ticket costs? Ten cents?
Not to keep harping on it, but that there in the first panel is one of the worst drawings of Donald I've ever seen, though admittedly it's from an odd angle that many might struggle with.
Also, look how smug he is, because, oh ho, it turns out that his yard "needs" a bunch of random giant holes to be dug for no reason. What are we doing here?
Yeah, so this nonsense proceeds apace, but I do have to give Bradbury credit for this part, because that's a fairly neat chain of reasoning HDL have going there. And he DID plant the "radium dial" thing in advance, meaning he was, at least to a limited extent, thinking about the story as a whole and not just making it up as he went. Well done. You might have potential, kid, as long as you can keep the egregious dumbness to a minimum, which admittedly is a big if.
I might be missing the point if I went on about how insanely dangerous it was for them to cut down the tree and let it just fall like that, uncontrolledly. Still, if I were Donald, I'd suggest that the damage they did to the property obviate the need for me to buy a dang ticket.
The inside of their mouths being all yellow like that is a fairly glaring coloring error, but that's neither here nor there. The question is, what did they expect Donald was going to do with a piano? Well, if we're being realistic, given how concerned he seems to be about money I'd expect him to sell it and come away with a tidy profit. But this works too, I guess. Sort of.
In the end, all I can say is: Jack, you weirdo!
Labels: Jack Bradbury
posted by GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. at
11:56 AM
4 Comments:
While I haven't read the entire story, judging from what you show and describe here, the anonymous writer seems to be attempting to imitate Barks' stories on a surface level, without really understanding the characters' personalities and motivations (which is understandable, as I'm certain few writers threw as much of themselves into licensed character comics as Barks did). Having been an animator himself, Bradbury's art isn't nearly as awful as the likes of Jack Manning or Kay Wright's, but people expecting Barks certainly wouldn't be fooled into thinking this was a Barks story. It wasn't until years later that people like Daan Jippes, Freddy Milton, Vicar, Daniel Branca and others would make careers out of studying and sucessfully mimicking Barks' art and story patterns. Overall, this story comes off as an attempt to appease Barks' fans and hope that the readers of WDC&S didn't notice that his work was missing that issue.
"So how JARRING must it have been when 1950 rolls around and, for reasons unknown to me, Barks takes a semi-hiatus from WDC [...] And we can historicize all these stories and appreciate their good aspects as we find them, but at the time--I don't know."
I know. My dad and uncle, Larry and Stan Gerstein, were diehard WDCS subscribers right at that moment, and were *horrified*.
They perceived the uncredited Bradbury as a Looney Tunes artist given Donald's Daffylike proportions in some panels; they thought the uncredited Paul Murry was the guy drawing the daily strip, i.e. Taliaferro, whose ducks Murry was imitating.
But it wasn't just that the Ducks weren't *drawn* as they knew them; it was that the stories were embarrassingly, humiliatingly childish and condescending, to a point where their internal logic didn't matter—like nothing they'd ever seen in a Disney comic book up to that point.
It was the writers' doggone constant usin' of 1930s street-slangy contractions when th' characters were talkin', which made the Ducks sound like Mickey, not like themselves. (And... my dad and uncle liked Mickey, but knew something was off when Donald sounded like him.)
My dad and uncle desperately bought every Barks one-shot that came out over the months that followed, loving them but sad that it seemed like their favorite artist *and writer* was gone from WDCS permanently.
This may be why I feel differently than most about the Western Publishing... nostalgia? relative appreciation? ...that I see here and in many quarters.
I know that the non-Barks Ducks are loved by many just for how goofball and eccentric they are.
But I also know how damaging they were to readership when they first appeared—and as an editor I'm desperate to keep what survives of our young fandom from being driven away by similar weak tea, even if in its own way it can be charming.
I can even draw a connection to my own childhood experience where I read Gottfredson's Mickey first–in the Abbeville books—and only then moved into the modern Whitman comics, and was so horrified by the idea that I was supposed to accept their condescending 1970s understanding of Mickey as the real thing.
I have never read this story, but as soon as Donald hid his watch with his money, I thought, "Someone's going to find that money with a Geiger counter!"
David--very interesting to hear your family's memories of shock at the first non-Barks WDCS. I was born in 1956 and read a mixture of old and new comics in my 1960's childhood, so I didn't experience a similar "we have fallen off a cliff into the abyss" moment. I will say that of all the non-Barks stories I read in Disney comics in my childhood, I remember only 10 or so: several by Fallberg, two by Ogle, two by Nofziger, a few by authors as yet unidentified. I don't feel any nostalgia for all the forgettable stuff.
Elaine, by the 1960s I'd say the quality of Western's non-Barks Duck stories had improved at least somewhat (I've chatted with Joe, who'll surely show up sooner or later here, and he cites the presence of Bob Ogle and Cecil Beard as having had a ripple effect).
But those early 1950s stories are insanely rough going. And—I'd argue that by the 1970s, with the exception of the great Mark Evanier, stories were once again stuck in a "childish in a bad way" kind of rut.
I think that in general at Western, the Gyros and Beagle Boys were the best non-Barks Duck stories—because the uniqueness of the characters almost forced it. For the same reason, Pluto- and Goofy-starring stories—including Super Goof—were better than those starring Mickey, whom nobody really knew how to make really interesting after the 1940s.
Beyond these, I'd say the Bad Wolf, Scamp, and Chip 'n Dale stories actually have a better track record than either the Ducks or the Mice, at least through the 1960s!
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