"Stranger than Fiction"

 So I thought I oughta become more au fait with the current crop of US Disney comics, and I am!  And I'll write about some of them, fairly soon, probably (yeah, I'm sure THAT list of qualifiers instills one with a great deal of confidence).  But I decided to read the original story entitled..."Earth's Mightiest Duck."  And I've gotta tell you folks: I have read many good Disney comics and many bad ones and many in between.  And I've certainly started reading stories and just sorta stopped reading them due to lack of interest or general intertia (think long-ish Egmont digest stories, for the most part).  But I don't think I've ever had the such a vehement experience of giving up on a comic because I hated the entire premise and aesthetic, it was almost making my physically ill, and it DEFINITELY wasn't going to ever be anything other than what it was.  So, uh, don't expect to see that here.  Sorry, Aaron.  I know I advisedly sorta-kinda liked your "Infinity Dime" story, but this is a bridge too far.  And to be clear, I'm not even saying you're a bad writer!  Just that our visions of Duckdom are fundamentally incompatible.  I'm all for more original American duck stories, but if we're just doing stuff like this...well, make mine vanilla.

So instead, thought I, what's a science-fiction-y story I can do that I LIKE, or at least don't hate with the fury of a thousand suns?  So I hit on THIS, from 1961.   Now, I'm perfectly aware that this is only really "science fiction" to the extent that almost ANY story featuring Gyro is, but I don't know how I planned to end this sentence.  This is from 1961, which no one would probably call the high point of Barks' career; it also produced my single least favorite story by the master, and I'm aware that that link doesn't work currently; apparently inducks is currently down due to some ransomware attack by some real pieces of shit, which makes me more angry than almost anything, but as you could determine if you tried, by looking at the url, it's "That's No Fable," which maybe I should write about some day, but I dunno; that would make for one dispiriting blog entry.

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"Buffo or Bust," "Uncle Scrooge Crawls for Cash," "Wrong Number"

Yeah, we're doing this again.  What can I say?  I enjoy it.  I was out of town on vacation this week, but I had these preprepared for just such an occasion, so...here we are.  

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"Dinner Date"

 Yeah, okay, now for some low-effort late seventies dross.  I mean...it's okay if I do this occasionally, right?  I'm intentionally not making it a habit so everyone doesn't grab torches and pitchforks and storm Stately Duck Comics Revue Manor, but I dunno.  Well, we're doing it, is the point.  Here's some more Daisy and Donald.

We start like this, with Daisy jealous of the other girls because her boyfriend isn't getting a reservation at Dorsia.  This is some Bob Gregory art, with all that that entails.  I do kind of like the designs of Daisy' coworkers.  It's interesting how there are two ducks and one human (not dognose), and yet they all kinda blend together.Read more »

"Rescue Enhancement," "Going to Pieces," "That Sinking Feeling"

Okay, this week we shall vamp about some Barks one-pagers. If you think the fact that our entire subject matter is three pages seems kinda scanty, note that I have written five-hundred-plus words about each, making this a regulation-length entry (wait, there are regulations?). Whether you think those words were worth writing...well, that remains to be seen. It's a fun thing for me to do, though, because what always happens is I look at the comics, think, boy, THIS doesn't seem very promising for saying anything much, and then I dive in and spin things out and realize, hey, yeah, actually, I can do this ("your duck bloggers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should").

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"The Waltz King"

All right, it's been kind of a hard week, so you get some Barks.  But to clarify: just because I do Barks doesn't automatically mean it was a hard week.  And I might do something OTHER than Barks on a hard week, too.  Most likely an NBW story.  So while the story I do IS causally related to my stress levels, it's not a perfect correlation and you can't really use it for predictive purposes.  I hope that's clear.

(Did I consider doing a patriotism-themed story this week?  Um...no.  We'll say no more of that.  This story WAS written/released in the summer, though, so enjoy that fact.)

From 1947, this is an early story than we've been looking at lately.  And I have oddly mixed feelings about it.  Because there are real, definite highlights; the plot is fairly adroit--and yet, I sorta-kinda don't like it that much.  Let us try to figure out why.

Few stories get to the point faster, I'll say that for it.  Waltz contest!  Do it!  Not quite sure why Daisy's in charge of the Sub-Teen-Age Debbies Club, but hey, there's a lot we don't know about her.Read more »