There's an extent to which this is little more than a moderately interesting trivia question, really: Yes! It IS notable as the first long-form Donald Duck comic story created in the US! Not, as Geoffrey Blum's article in DD 250 claims,
the first one period--but hey, who the heck in the US knew anything about Federico Pedrocchi in 1986? I feel like even people in Italy barely do today. Anyway, you can say, with obvious justification, that those prehistoric comics, though fascinating, were kind of an evolutionary dead end.
And yes! It IS the first duck story Carl Barks worked on, although let's not get too excited: sure, he drew about half of it, with Jack Hannah doing the rest. But it's not like it has That Carl Barks Touch: they were just making the storyboards for an abandoned cartoon into comic panels, with no embellishment. And given that you can't tell which are by Barks and which Hannah without checking (well, if YOU can, you've a more sensitive eye than me), it's hard to think that Barks' contribution is exactly vital. Still! He did do it! It IS, in some sense, where it all started! And you can say, at least: well, it was his work here that caused the editors to entrust him with more creative work. So you can't understate its importance in that regard.
Still, you will note that these are extrinsic factors. There are enough of them that anyone wanting to write about this story can do so without really getting into what the thing itself is actually like--and they do. So let's actually think about the story, albeit in a flippant and whimsical way.
Read more »Labels: Carl Barks, Jack Hannah
