"The Vat Man"

Ha!  Bet you didn't expect to see me talking about THIS, did you?  Good lord it would be weird if you did.  Well, what happened is that, in the entry on "Family Fun," I made a casual disparaging reference to Daisy and Donald as a metonym for "bad late Western Disney comics" in general.  But then I thought, huh.  I dunno.  Have I ever actual READ anything from that particular line?  The main reason I wouldn't have I think is because I see that title and think, oh gawd, this is going to be NOTHING but regressive gender stereotypes, isn't it?  That sounds hard to take.  But out of curiosity, I dipped into it, and found THIS, from 1979: truly the Götterdämmerung of Disney comics.  Let's take a look, shall we?

'Cause he's a vat man.  Yeah, he's a vat man.  Got some Bob Gregory art for you to enjoy.  Inducks doesn't say, but I'm gonna go ahead and assume that Gregory also wrote this.  It's silly and disposable, of course, but you know what?  It COULD be worse!  We have seen MANY examples of it being worse.

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"Family Fun"

 Well, okay, as long as I'm here, I might as well retreat to my usual remit: weird, bad-ish old Western stories.  Hey, it's SUMMER FUN; you can hardly object.  And having written that, I then realize that it's not "Summer Fun;" it's Family Fun.  And it was first published in October.  There goes MY rationale.  Well, like it or not, here it is.  I will say, though, to whet your appetite, that this actually does have one legit interesting thing in it.  I mean, dumb, too; don't get your hopes up too high.  Still--look forward to it!  

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"The Fabulous Fiddlesticks"

 Is this appropriate for Halloween?  Well...Venice is commonly associated with Carnival, and with disguise more generally.  There are lots of operas in Venice that take that as a theme: Ponchielli's La Gioconda, Korngold's Violanta, J. Strauss's Eine Nacht in Venedig, of course Britten's Death in Venice.  What point am I making?  That I like opera, and, not to brag, but I know the names of several operatic works.  I think that's public knowledge.  But anyway!  Sure, let's go with it.  Why not?

Man, I was hoping that that "Christmas in July" thing would be the start of me blogging here more regularly, but then I almost immediately had to go and get a job that involved relocating and, you know, doing a lot to get situated; it's not like I don't have free time, but you know how it goes.  Well, here we are.  Let's write about another old Western story.  I was thinking a bit about Bob Gregory, and thinking, man, I know I keep saying that he was generally the best of the non-Barks Western crew, but is that true?  What else can we look at?  And I have the impression that this is one of his more famous stories, based on the fact that I think that I've heard upwards of two people mention it, and in a semi-positive sense at that.  That's about as much positive press as you can expect this kind of story to get.  I did read this when I was small, though it never stood out in my mind as being that great.  Still, let's check it out.

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"Mission to Mangomoa"

 And now, the grand finale of the DCRCIJS!  Well, you can judge for yourself how "grand" it is.  But it's DEFINITELY the finale.

The good news, maybe-kinda, is that this is a Bob-Gregory-penned story.   This wasn't written in his egregiously dumb period, so there's a certain modest level of quality guaranteed, but I wouldn't call this one of this best efforts.  And, even knowing nothing about the specifics of the story, "Mangomoa" might give you vague misgivings.  And, spoiler, those are not unjustified.  But we'll get there when we get there.

But before we do that, why not make yourself some beachy snacks to munch on?  "Sprouting apples" is just odd.  I'm sorry, but I'm just not convinced it is a favorite with the gang.  It's not like apples, celery, and peanut butter is a weird or unappealing combination, but somehow cramming all that stuff into a whole apple just seems...excessive.  Do you really want to eat all that?  Well, especially if you're a kid, you probably find it preferable to "carrot and olive dumbbells," which seems to have been created just because it looks like a thing.  Are you really going to find this delicious?  Olives are kind of an acquired taste, and unless you're one of those weird kids who grew up eating healthy food, I have my doubts.  On the other hand, en gee el, that "pickle in a blanket" sounds kinda delicious to me.  Yes, that might make me weird, but I like all the ingredients  (no, I don't eat bologna, but acceptable vegetarian facsimiles are easily obtained).  Maybe I'll try making one of these.

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"Daringly Different"

This one is for Elaine, who has helped me a lot these days, and who has always been a tireless advocate of this story. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I think she was instrumental in getting it reprinted in WDS 668, way back in 2006. I hadn't read it as a child, so that was a nice revelation. Not that the story really needs an advocate--it's effortlessly likable and charming, and the Barks art means that it's not likely to be overlooked. Also, it makes a good contrast with that last story--would you believe that these two are by the same writer? Seriously, Gregory, what happened to you?

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"The Pirates of Ashcanistran"

I was reading "Sheriff of Bullet Valley" in this Gladstone reprint. So do you get an entry on "Sheriff of Bullet Valley? NO. Instead, you're forced to endure one on the backup story, written and illustrated by Bob Gregory in 1974. Sorry about that.

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"The Christmas Cha Cha"

Welcome to day two of A VERY BOB GREGORY CHRISTMAS.  It's time for "The Christmas Cha Cha," which somehow was one of the last (possibly the last?) long Barks (or half-Barks, anyway) stories I ever read.  Possibly for that reason, or possibly because, unlike most Barks Christmas stories, Gemstone never reprinted it (I have to think it would've been the marquee story in a hypothetical Christmas Parade 6), I've always gotten the impression--possible false!--that it's a rather obscure story.

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"Christmas in Duckburg"

The time has come for a little thing I like to call A VERY BOB GREGORY CHRISTMAS, where we look at the Barks/Gregory Christmas stories.  Yeah, okay, so as holiday specials go, it's kind of skimpy.  I was hoping that, in looking through Gregory's substantial output on inducks, I would be able to find that he did some lesser-known, Barks-less Christmas stories that I'd be able to use.  Given the number of stories he did, it almost seemed like a statistical inevitability that there would be a few--and then we could've highlighted some obscure work and compared it to the Barks stuff and noted the way the art influenced the feel of the story.  Woulda been fun.  But, as far as I can tell from some fairly careful sifting through inducks, the Barks stories were IT, as far as Christmas material goes.  If you know otherwise, clue me in and I'll find the story and read it and have an entry about it up on Christmas Day.  That's the Duck Comics Revue Guarantee.

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"Donald and the Treasure of Saturnin Farandoul"

Shortly after I finished my English version of Marco Polo, I determined that my next project would be this story.  I even went so far as to scan it and delete the French text--ie, the mindless, tedious parts.  But then for some reason I just stalled out, and the thing lay fallow for some eight months, until a couple three weeks ago, when I finally roused myself.  If there's one thing I hate, it's leaving things unfinished.  And now…well, here we are.

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