"Good Canoes and Bad Canoes"

 I must admit, I like that after-the-fact title.  It's pretty solid.

Sometimes it happens that I read a story and zero in on one specific thing I want to talk about, and that's the impetus for a whole entry.  Such is the case today.  In most ways, this is a pro forma Donald vs Gladstone story--perfectly readable, but not among Barks' very best (and yet, probably still better than any story that anyone else ever wrote for Western. Agree? Disagree? Sound off!)  But!  There IS one thing here that I think needs more publicity!  And maybe some other interesting things will happen; who can say?

Yeah, it's a fairly pro forma story of its type--perfectly okay, but not one of Barks' all-time greatest.  You will note how the contours of this rivalry vary according to the needs of individual stories.  Elsewhere, maybe Donald feels despair at the impossibility of ever defeating his cousin.  But HERE, he's feeling good about it!  That could be a harbinger of bad things, but who knows?  Stay tuned.

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"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!

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"Raffle Reversal"

Woof.  Tough week, eh?  It's great that civilization didn't end, but the fact that was apparently on the table, uh...well, that's just what we're stuck with for oh my god HOW long?  Ack.  Under the circumstances, I think more Barks is called for, so let's go with THIS.

We're seeing the contours of Gladstone's luck here, and from some of these stories with luck duels, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Duckburg had an entirely raffle-based economy.  Like Borges' "Lottery in Babylon?"  Sure; why not?  You'd think Gladstone would get himself banned from these things if he's driving off all the weird-looking dogfaces who'd otherwise be participating.

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"The Easter Parade"

 Well, I had something else planned for this week, but then Maciek mentioned Barks' Easter story, and I thought, yeah, oughta do that.  Probably in general, I ought to spend less time harrasing you with Western stories of varying quality.  I mean, I won't, but maybe I should.  Hard to say.  But what's happening today is: this.  I don't think it's a particularly consequential story, but it has some amusing stuff I can point out, so hey, why not?  Happy Easter to those who celebrate, and a pleasant Sunday to those who don't.

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"Spending Money"

Not a very inspiring title, is it? Of course, it has no official status; it's just what people call it.  Presumably someone from Another Rainbow(?) slapped that title on it, and here we are. Makes me wonder what WOULD make if "official." I suppose if it had the official imprimatur of The Walt Disney Company™, that would do it. They should have official contests to name Barks stories. We'd probably end up with something better than this, anyway.

...is that the trouble with being rich? IS it? I try not to bring politics into these entries too much--yes, I DO bring them in, because these stories are inherently political, but believe me, it could be MUCH worse. But damn, man. Personally, I think the worst thing about being rich--certainly being ULTRA-rich--is that it destroys your brain and you're not capable of interacting with the world in a normal way anymore. Yes, as I constantly point out, comparing Scrooge to a "real" (so-called) rich person is pointless, but this story DOES seem to be a better argument for it than most, given that his excess money DOES cause him to act in extremely dumb ways here.

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"Two-Way Luck"

 I have to get my biggest--and, really, only serious--critique of this story out of the way first, which is man, that title.  Totally generic-sounding and not providing even the vaguest hint of the story's content?  Blah!  Still, it feels ungrateful to complain too much.  I'm sure we all just think of it as "the giant emerald story" anyway--or how about "Green with Envy;" would that work?.  It's a back-up  (to "All at Sea"), the sort of thing that you expect to be a little more disposable than the main one, even coming from Barks.  But man, it isn't.  I mean okay maybe it's a little silly in some ways (a Disney comic?  Get the heck outta here, ya nut!), but the artistry is also highly apparent.  So.

I do, however, always get caught up on the "emerald contest" thing.  I mean, I don't think I did when I was small, but NOW I do.  So, in this world, can we assume that nobody really knows what the biggest jewels are, or who has them?  Because if we did, it doesn't seem like this contest would really mean much.  But Scrooge DOES appear to believe it's in some way established that his is the biggest in the world--an apprehension he could only be under if there were some kind of organization that makes these determinations.  And, I mean, he has to be cajoled into entering, and he wouldn't do it at all if his nephews weren't here, so you gotta figure there are a bunch of people with big emeralds not entering them, from ignorance or apathy, so what is being accomplished here?  Tell me!

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"The Snow Princess"

Ah yes, the holiday season!  And if you thought I wasn't going to have some Christmas gifts, then you, sir or madame, are a first-class chump.  Assuming I'm able to get my shit together, I should have something extremely interesting to share with y'all on or about Christmas.  But in the meantime, let's enjoy some vaguely Christmas-ish stories, to keep the momentum going.  And let's start with some Barks, since--as incredible as it may sound--I suspect some of you aren't as obsessed with mediocre Western also-rans as I am. 

We can call this "The Snow Princess."  That's fine.  The other title that inducks gives--I think the one that was decided on by whoever at Another Rainbow or whatever--is "Statues of Limitations," which I'd give a C-, maybe.  On the plus side, it IS a pun.  You cannot take that away from it.  On the minus side, "statues" for "statutes?"  In addition to having nothing to do with the story, that is the most boring pun in the world.  I do not approve.  Anyway.  Fifty dollars!  With inflation, that'd be five hundred-some, which is okay, I wouldn't refuse it, but still, it's not as high-stakes as you might think, given what people are willing to do for it.

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"A Spicy Tale"

 Hey, if you want, you can listen to me'n'Mark blathering about "The Twenty-Four Carat Moon."  To commemorate this occasion, I have chosen to write about a wholly unrelated story.  It's been a long time coming, though, as was me appearing on this podcast, so maybe that's a connection?  Well, maybe not.  Don't be mean to me.

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"The Chickadee Challenge"

 Hey, whaddaya know?  I was on a podcast!  Two, actually, with more to come.  It's Mark Severino's Barks Remarks, and also his spin-off Rosa Remarks, and if you want to know why it took so long for me to do this...well, it was really just a matter of missed communications.  But better late than never; the experience was extremely delightful, so I hope you like them, 'cause you haven't heard the last of me!  Grrr!

We talked about some Junior Woodchucks stories, so I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to write about "Chickadee Challenge"--one that we were contemplating discussing but then didn't.  All things considered, I think that was the right decision, but it's still worth touching on.

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"Inventor of Anything" and "The Cat Box"

 I think it makes sense to talk about these two stories--Barks' second and third Gyro four-pagers--in tandem.  Actually, it might've made sense to include the first one as well, but that ship has sailed.  

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"Bottled Battlers"

 So here we have another Barks script given life by others.  There's the usual rigamarole with the art: the story was originally drawn by Tony Strobl, but then Daan Jippes swooped in and redid it.  I'm always a bit skeptical about these redraws, and never more so here: there's no cut art to be restored, and Strobl puts in pretty solid work.  I don't have any real complaint about Jippes's art either, but I dunno: regardless of their relative levels of talent, Barks and Strobl came from the same cultural milieu, so to me, his art just seems to fit the story better than Jippes', even if the latter is a more technically proficient artist.

...okay, actually, since I might have a few non-regular readers, I'll explain for the total layperson: Carl Barks was the best Disney artist, and certainly the most prominent.  He retired in 1967, but after his retirement he was convinced to come back to write scripts for other artists to draw, of which he did several dozen.  The original artwork for most of these was pretty indifferent (although I have a soft spot for some of the artists in question, particularly Tony Strobl), which is why most or all of them were redrawn by the Dutch artist Daan Jippes in the '00s.  There; that probably covers that.

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"The Wax Museum"

Boo!  Why no entries for a number of months that I can't bear to contemplate?  Well, no real excuses; the summer was pretty rough, and since then I've been fairly busy with my fellowship in Tallinn.  Anyway, I haven't been completely inactive with my blogs; on my main one, I'm almost finished blogging every Freddy the Pig book.  Whaddaya want from me?!?  Blood?!  Well, it IS Halloween, so maybe that's not unreasonable.  Wax museums are scary, right?  I've never been to one, but probably they are.  

These are all dramatically different reasons to fire someone, aren't they?  The first is for doing something specific, the second is for the sake of a pun, and the third because—presumably—they hired him as a barber without having given him any kind of tryout or anything.  It feels like it's not wholly coherent, somehow—that it doesn't really provide a picture of what fundamental thing about Donald causes these serial sackings.  Then again, maybe that's the point—he contains multitudes.  I enjoy the first one in particular—seems like a remarkably forbearing bakery that lets him get away with the first two dough-mixer naps.  I want to work there; I'd only do it ONCE!  I might get my name on an employee of the month plaque.

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"Rip Van Donald"

Man!  Draggin' my feet, and now apparently my plan to look at Gyro stories has been aborted.  Well, maybe not, but I read THIS.  And I wanted to write about it.  So I am.  Any questions?

It's worth dwelling on this opening, I think, because it's very important in that it explains the stakes for the entire story: why HDL are so upset about having to go south and so motivated to get themselves back north.  Whatever you may think of wintry weather, you have to admit that Barks does a good job making it look as appealing as possible.  Any ol' anyone could write a story with the plot "nephews forced to go south; trick their uncle into returning."  But, due to lack of artistic skill or just lack of interest, a lot of these anyones would do a cursory or nonexistent job of showing why they care that much.  You can't just say "they like the winter;" you have to show it.  This is also a good counterexample to bring up to anyone who asserts that writing and art in a comic are completely discrete: here, the art helps to tell the story.

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"Trapped Lightning"

 We'll get back to early Barks stories one of these days, maybe, but now, I want to write about some Gyro Gearloose shorts.  Such is my mercurial whim.  You have problem?

So natch, we start at the beginning.  Well, not Gyro's beginning, but the Gyro four-pager's beginning.  I think we all know the story by now, but it was the weird thing where you got different postal rates if your comic books featured stories with completely discrete casts, which is also why issues of Donald Duck featured Goofy four-pagers for a while.  How long did this system last?  That's not clear to me.  The Goofy ones didn't start appearing until a few years after the Gyro, when you'd think it would've been a no-brainer to institute them both at the same time.  Also, how specifically did it work?  If Barks had contrived to write a U$ story not featuring Donald, could he have then been used in the Gyro short instead, even if he was going to feature in the main story next time?  Ah, the mysteries of life!

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"The Hard Loser"

Beware of this story!  Do not be tricked by its wiles!  You will THINK this is a normal ol' Barks ten-pager, but it has a Dark Secret: it was ACTUALLY published in that same dang "Mummy's Ring" one-shot, NOT in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories!  I cannot tolerate such deceitful behavior!

...or can I?  Well, let's find out.  I really like both the idea and the visual of Donald playing a carnival game, as if that's just a normal thing that people do on a regular basis.  Look his into it he is!

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"The Mummy's Ring"

Hi, I'm back!  Okay, this entry was pretty predictable.  It's actually kind of weird that I never covered this on a previous Halloween--it seems like a natural.  The truth is, I always sort of discounted it.  I shoudn't have!  It's full of interesting firsts!  But rereading it to write this entry was only the second time I'd ever read it period.  The first time I dismissed it as not that good and thought no more about it.  I'm not going to say that it's an all-time classic qua story, but there are still--I hope--interesting things to say about it, and it is historically important if you're talkin' 'bout Barks.

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"The Mighty Trapper"

 Okay, why has it been a month and a half?  It JUST HAS.  No excuses!  Here we are!  Blah!  I talked about this one briefly with regard to that Seventy-Fifth anniversary book, but let us now examine it in more detail.

Here, I feel, we start to see those Barksian dynamics really coming together.  Donald being a blowhard and telling these tall tales--it's good; a lot of specificity, and the Donald-vs-Nephews dynamic is very familiar (also, dig that picture of a weird bearded duck).  Somehow I especially like his face in the first panel.  And yet, in another sense, this story is slightly alienating to me, focusing as it does so heavily on indiscriminately murdering the shit out of all kinds of animals.  We are a long way from Junior Woodchucks territory here.  You know, I occasionally like to read Trollope novels, but good lord, the interminable fox-hunting scenes are both distasteful and very boring to me.  And yet, they don't generally have much bearing on the overall plot, which makes this rather worse.  Or so I believe.

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"The Limber W Guest Ranch"

Okay okay, how many of YOU have comics blogs where you post more than once a month if that?  And if you do, don't tell me about it.  By proving me completely wrong, you're undermining my point, and I don't appreciate that.

The dude ranch!  Or "guest ranch."  When they were retroactively naming these stories, why the heck did they go with "guest?"  A concept that I definitely learned about from Disney comics, and that as a matter of fact I'm not sure I've ever heard anything about that's not related to them.  They seem old-fashioned yet fun.  I want to go to one.  This comic is significant because, although we've sort of seen these things before, this is the first one that really depicts the hubris and overconfidence that would becoming a Donald trope.  So enjoy it!  

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"Good Deeds"

 JEEZ, at this rate, we will never get anywhere with this retrospective!  Can't go more than a month without posting.  It ain't right.  Well, it's because I have a teaching fellowship this summer, and I'm spending a lot of time on class preparation and absurd, unnecessary things like that.  But!  Duckdom will never die!  Although this story sort of almost has, I feel like (nice segue!): for extremely mysterious reasons, it has been reprinted notably less often than others of the time period.  It's never been reprinted in the US in a standard comic book, in fact; just in the two CBLs.  And now, we shall look at it.

The opening is pretty funny, with Donald explicitly being a jerk just to be a jerk.  He is nothing if not focused.  Also: first Jones appearance!  Kind of.

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"Lifeguard Daze"

There are some interesting firsts in this story, and it has a deceptive depth to it--you can see a lot of themes in utero that would be more fully explored in Barks' later work.  So let's jump in.

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