A Ridiculous Mishmash of Late-Western Nonsense

...Well, late-ish.

This first story is called "Farm Foolery."  It was going to be the main focus here before I added other stuff, so if that's how this reads, that's why.  It's from 1967, but inducks reveals that there are actually THREE separate stories called "Farm Foolery."  Another Western story, from 1971, and what looks to be a Studio Program effort (also by Strobl) from 1963.  No one can resist such awesome wordplay, if you want to call it that.  Apologies to anyone who's heart leapt seeing that title and then had your hopes dashed when it turned out not to be the one you expected.

So, we learn that Donald has a blank, unfurnished room filled with pictures of his relatives that he can stare at, like a non-serial-killer would.  Also, three seemingly empty frames.  And those weird, nipple-looking dots.  And even the one that ARE actual people, yeesh.  Look how fuckin' weird HDL look there.  Man, I LIKE Strobl, but I am not mounting a good case for the defense with these latest entries.  Daisy, I feel, has a right to be upset here, although as you'd probably gather, it's not for any of the most obvious reasons.

Well, okay, these are at least a bit more normal-looking.  I like that Donald thought to snap a picture of Grandma attempting to murder Zeke.

Okay.  I can't figure out whether I ought to be ideologically offended by this.  On the one hand, "yeah!  Grandma's tuff enuff to deal with all this stuff on her own!  Feminism!"  On the other hand, "look at Daisy getting all het up over it, like the whimsical female she is!"  Granted, that sort of confusion is preferable to what you get in SOME late stories by our favorite John Bircher, but still...

Also, forget about the "you'd pick on a defenseless fish" thing, which will not come up again.

Note that two of Daisy's friends seem to have been made up for the use. Still, that DOES leave Daisy with three non-relative friends, which is more than Donald has.  On the other hand, writers COULD use Horace and Gus for that.  If they wanted to.  So.

On the one hand, "irresponsible" COULD be wordplay of some sort.  On the other, it's fairly clearly not; Lockman was looking for "irresistible" (even though "unstoppable" would probably be more normal) and ended up here.  Don't have anything else to say about that.  I do like the way Donald ZIP!ed up to grab the gun like that.  That's a fairly good, cartoony thing.

"Wildcats as well as bargain basement mobs" is a fairly bizarre thing to say, and as such, I'm a fan.  Relatively speaking.

Anyway, we get a few bits of Donald trying to help and having it backfire.

Oh no!  It's The Wolf!  At least Lockman definitely knows his name in this story.  Along with the weird intro, this is the interesting thing about this story.  Well, "interesting" may be overstating it.  But, we take what we can get.  His motives are wholly unclear here.  Is the idea that he wants to help out Grandma to lull her into a false sense of security before yoinking her chickens?

Probably.  And yet...why get Donald involved in this?  And, most importantly, why TELL him about the plan, putting him on his guard?

Br'er WEASEL?!?  Who the heck is THIS?!?  Oh...a recurring character since the forties?  Shows how little I know about the, uh, Wolfiverse.  I wear my ignorance proudly! 

Okay.  Look, they can't all be winners.  I will acknowledge at this point that I chose this story even though it's not what you'd call "interesting" or "thematically rich" or anything like that.  But look, if I'm writing these things at the rate I am, you've gotta expect some dross.  Boy, I'm getting defensive here, amn't I?

Anyway...so it ends.  It's a little weird that that isn't a picture of anything that actually happened in the story, but hey.  Everyone's happy, sort of.

Whatever.  Can I win back your favor with a backup story?

You just never know, do you?  Any number of movie characters COULD become comics regulars, but few do.  But Mim managed to buck the odds, so good on her.  But can she outbid this rabbi for That Ancient Scroll?  And is it somewhat unfortunate or at least notable that I characterized him thus, given that our writer was a member of a notorious anti-Semitic group?

To give Strobl credit, that's an all right Sphinx.  Not a mind-bogglingly great Sphinx, but it could be worse.  Also, to give LOCKMAN credit, dammit, but "sneak a peak at the Sphinx" isn't bad.

Man, can't someone come up with something NEW for the Sphinx to ask?  But in fairness, this is aimed at small children, so I'm sure for a lot of them, this really WAS the first time they'd heard that one.

"I'm trying to see how many legs this bug is using!" has nothing to do with anything, but I do find it pretty funny.

...okay.  There is nothing else to say.

Okay, this was arguably even less substantial than our first story, but it's still probably more fun.  I do enjoy Mim as a character in these things.

I was going to finish this by covering one of the other "Farm Foolery"s, but unfortunately, it was only published in a Gold Key digest that I don't have scans of.  A chink in my armor, I guess.  It's kind of a shame, since it features Gus and Dimwitty, which could be a fun combination.  If you have it, shoot it my way, please.

Seriously, though, I find this entry unacceptable.  But!  I think maybe I can make it at least marginally so with a little thing I like to call "more of the same."  Is that the definition of insanity?  That's as may be.  But here's the deal: last week, when I wrote about "The Siren's Whistle," I considered tacking the backup Donald story in that issue on to the end.  But I didn't find it very interesting, and I had already written an acceptable amount about the marquee feature, so no need.  Well, I have good and bad news: the good news is, I'm writing about "The Night Owl."  Also the bad news.  It's both of them.

And right away, our senses are assaulted by some typically buggly-ass Kay Wright art.  As I've said before, I do feel bad about being so monotonously negative about Wright's work, but man alive when badness is your only distinguishing characteristic, what else can you do?  Um, the numbers on the alarm clock all seem to be in approximately the right places.  Yeah, that's as positive as I can be.

As we can see, this story is traveling the well-trod Barksian path of pets whom Donald rejects but then like when they help him out (uh, spoilers?).  Your Cheltenhams.  Needless to say, this one is one of your dumber takes on the genre.  But there we be.

Speaking of Cheltenham, I feel like it probably would have come off as a little, well, bizarre if he'd had to save the ducks from a witch.  But that's the Extra Valuetainment™Guarantee that you get from your only man Kay Wright.

OF COURSE some random goon can invent a shrink ray.  OF COURSE!  Most hack writers would've at least had the protagonists steal it from Gyro to add a patina of plausibility, but here there's not an ounce of fat!  In terms of coherence or competence, you know.  Things which are here being measured in fat, for some reason.  Let's move on.

Boy.  We've seen plenty of sparsely-furnished Backrooms-esque habitations in poorly-drawn Disney comics, but The Abandoned String Factory may well take the cake.  Why is that nephew on the right looking like he's trying to avoid falling into a pit of crocodiles?  Reasons, probably.

The fact that this is The Abandoned String Factory seems weirdly superfluous; we get these random balls of string, but those are meaningless: yes, maybe we COULD make a rope ladder out of the string, but we absolutely do not.

I mean, sure, they tie them up with, presumably, string from the string factory, but I feel like for narrative purposes, there should be, like, one line acknowledging that, most likely accompanied by a "heh, heh!"

I know that phone is just supposed to look enormous compared to the shrunken ducks, but it ALSO looks enormous compared to normal-sized Scrooge, so I'm not sure about Wright's mastery of perspective, if I'm honest.

So now Oswald is a beloved part of the family, I guess.  He'll always be with you; this rose will never die.  Boy THAT was a weird note on which to end this entry.  But at least now it's a reasonable length!  I'll try for something at least a little more substantial next week.