"Strike Up the Band"

 So here's one that doesn't really have a good title: the inducks page calls it "The Price of Fame," which I suppose is accurate, but somewhat generic.  So instead, we're using the little alternate title they provide for reasons I don't really understand.

I wanted to do something Hungarian-themed, to congratulate our Magyar friends for getting rid of Orban, but I'm not sure there ARE any Hungarian-themed Disney comics.  I figure at some point SOMEONE must've made a dumb "Hungry" joke, possibly in tandem with  "Turkey," but what else is there?  What does the average American man, woman, or enby on the street know about Hungary?  Probably not that much, and I'm certainly not setting myself up as some sort of expert.  Do the common people know that that's where Béla Lugosi is from?  Do the common people even know Béla Lugosi?  I guess you could write a Disney vampire story, with ducks or mice, of the sort Gemstone used to publish in their Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Digests.  I think paprika is fairly strongly Hungary-coded; it's certainly distinctive-looking, so you could have a slapstick story where it gets everywhere and turns everything red.  Sure.  Or how about a duck version of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle?  Now we're cookin'!

Well you might ask: why am I babbling senselessly about Hungary in an entry that's not going to have anything to do with that?  Look, I don't know.  Maybe living like this makes me a little insane.  Also, iss a larf, innit?  For this week I just chose a silly story that I really love.  Does this indicate that this blog is going into all-positivity mode?  I...really couldn't say.  That's the excitement!  When you stop by, will you encounter a masterpiece...or something that really plumbs the depths?  It is a mystery!  Ooh!

Okay, let's use this as an opportunity to step back and think a little bit about Donald's qualities as a parent--good, bad, and ugly.  I feel like I have the tendency to romanticize him in this regard, but it's fair to say there's room for criticism.  It's PROBABLY not a good idea to get into violent competitions with your children--which you start more often than not--and his occasional tendency to hightail it to Anarctica or the French Foreign Legion after your more horendous fuck-ups isn't great.  Sure, for the kids it presumably just means an unplanned vacation at Grandma's, but I doubt Child Protective Services would be sympathetic.

So that's Donald.  As for HDL...well, they've got a lot of good karma going for them, given the number of times they've saved Donald from himself, or tried to.  So if they occasionally get a little bit dickish...well, fair enough, they're all only human (come to think of it, maybe that's the heart of the matter), and what can I say; we're all just trying to get by and live our least terrible lives.

That said, let's give Donald SOME credit--or quite a bit, actually: he's their primary caretaker, and in spite of his precarious employment situation, they never suffer anything that could be called neglect.  They are completely food-, clothing-, and housing-secure.  That is something of a heroic accomplishment on Donald's part, and in that light, they come across remarkably poorly in this story: he does all this for you, and you're whining that he's not also a famous lounge singer?  Granted, you can't really expect kids to have perspective about things like this, but I'm going to say it anyway: fuck off with that shit!

I mean, he's got them one hundred percent to rights.  Of COURSE they did!  Not a high point for them, I must say.

Really, insulting him isn't an effective way of changing his behavior?  Boy, I guess I better change all of my political beliefs.  Who coulda seen that coming?

This flattery business sounds iffy, but as a linguistics-enjoyer, I very much appreciate Donald's irregular past tense verbs in this story.  I'd be interested to know how the localization into your language handles them.

But can someone with a more in-depth knowledge than I of cartoon minutae tell me why that image of Donald in the bottom left looks so...non-Barksian?  There's just something off about it, somehow.

Stang and flang.  That's some great stuff!

So the thing is, for the first three pages of this story, Donald has it kinda rough.  Until we get to the bottom of the third page, here, because from then on, it is nothing but blue skies for him.

The first part of this entry may have tricked you into thinking that I have big, serious things to say about this story.  But here's the thing: I think it's important for context that a story like this has serious underpinnings.  But also, said underpinnings are there, basically, to create a very silly and delightful tale.  See: every single example of Donald singing.

...but for HDL, I'm afraid, it's kind of a horror story: look at them here, all self-congratulatory--they have NO idea of the monster they've unleashed.

And FUCK, these four panels are, no lie, some of my favorites in all of Barks.  Just look at Donald's enthused expressions there as the kids grow progressively more frazzled.  As a thought experiment, posit that some other among the Western artists wasn't any better a writer than he actually was--but he was an artist on par with Barks.  I do wonder how easily we'd be able to tell their art apart.

I do enjoy seeing HDL get their proper comeuppance for their behavior--but I like it even more because  it's not malicious on Donald's part (you could argue otherwise, but I don't think you have any textual evidence to back you up).  He's just discovered a love for music, and he's having a ball with it!  That's all there is to it!

Yes, okay, this is clearly in large part an excuse for Barks to just draw more and more goofier and goofier pictures of Donald making noise.  But what, you're going to complain about that?

Yeah!  Look at that cross-eyed nephew on the right.  Even though to some extent it's just desserts, I can't help a little sympathy from creeping in here.

This is just a funny gag that I like.  They didn't even TRY to do anything about it; they just got while the getting was good.

Yay!  The gradual escalation in this story is just *chef's kiss*.  You know, even though, obviously, Disney comics are all written in a broadly comic idiom that doesn't mean I laugh out loud at them very often, even Barks stories.  But there are exceptions, of which this is one!

Donald is a pioneer in the field of atonal music!  Hell yeah!  Too bad Schoenberg died a few years before this was written.  And his nephews gain: a healthy sense of perspective!  Truly, a pearl of great price.