Daisy Duck and Uncle Scrooge Show Boat

 Merry Christmas.  This year I got you nine Western stories.  Hope you like 'em.

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Christmas One-Page Silliness

And now, a Post-Connell Palate-Cleanser. Just for kicks, let's look at some one-page things found in Christmas Parades. Why not? Why not indeed?

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"The Phantom Blot Meets the Beagle Boys"

...or perhaps you'd prefer to call it "Culprits, Inc?"

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"The Saga of Sourdough Sam"

And now, as promised, or at least hinted at, here we have a Paul Murry effort. This is one that a fair few people may be familiar with, as it's one of the rare non-Barks Western stories to have been reprinted in recent years, in this case by Gladstone II in Donald Duck Adventures.

So was this merely drawn by Murry, or was it written by him as well? Sources differ. The inducks entry judiciously lists a question mark as the writer, but the Gladstone reprinting attributes both story and art to Murry. On what evidence? Difficult to say. To me, it sort of feels like it ought to be written by him, but on reflection, I'm not really sure what that means in concrete terms. Just a general Murryish kind of feel. Who can say.

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"The Mysterious Crystal Ball"

Well, I'm sure this would be on the bottom of the list of IDW-published stories you'd expect me to write about, but for whatever reason, I just can't get the damn thing out of my head, so now you have to read about it. Specifically, you have to read about it because you will be bound to a chair with your eyelids propped open à la A Clockwork Orange until you do (and considering the nature of the story, that simile might be more apropos than you'd hope).  Sorry to have to tell you this at such short notice, but it's just the way it is.

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"Westward Whoa"

Okay, no need to spend too much time on this Paul Murry effort from 1953, as it's kind of a nothing story, but I did want to look at it briefly, because has a few moments of (entirely unintentional) hilarity, and because it really crystalizes just how entirely clueless many of Western's writers were about women.
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"To the Moon by Noon"

I thought I would write about this 'cause why not? It's an unusual team-up, and Joe Torcivia is justly proud of his work on it. Plus, it gives me a chance to talk a little bit about Paul Murry.
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