"The McDuck Foundation"

(DID YOU KNOW? this is my first entry, alphabetically, that starts with "McDuck."  A thing like that.)

In our last entry, I was thinking a bit about the idea of Scrooge being secretly generous, which made me think I should revisit this Scarpa story which treats on the same concept (no! Spoilers! Did I spoil this entire entry in the first sentence?).  This is an early Scarpa story, from 1958, and it's even more of a narrative mess than usual.  As always with these stories, it's hard to know to what extent you want to harp on such shortcomings, and to what you just kind of gloss over them because they're not really the point of the story, which is more just goofing around and having fun.  Though I do think there are places where the putative "fun" is submerged in the goofing.  Well, we'll see.

At any rate, we must give credit where it is due, and in this instance, the story definitely hits the ground running with this phantasia of "generous Scrooge in Classical Rome."Read more »

"Spaced-Out Christmas"

Here's a story that I found whilst rummaging around looking for something good to write about!  It was published as part of IDW's much-lamented run.  I'd only read it once before, and hadn't been overly impressed by it, but on rereading...I actually think it's pretty good.  These things happen: I didn't much care for "Being Good for Goodness Sake" when I first read it, and now it's my favorite Italian Christmas story.  This is not on that level, but that's never stopped me.  Let's check it out.

The opening is certainly festive enough to pass muster.  That's so important.  "Spaced-out" may give you pause as to what is to come, but it's all right.  Let us look, by the by, and this inducks scan of the original printing:

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"Money Is the Root of Upheaval!"

So I haven't really been saying anything about the current IDW stuff for a while. It's not that I'm not buying and reading the books; just that, for whatever reason, I haven't felt like I've had much to say about them. They're good; I like them. I might be cool with not quite so many of these damn Donald/Fethry team-ups, and I don't like WDC being reduced to a quarterly (expanded page count or not), but it seems ungracious to complain too much. I also like the Fantagraphics Disney Masters books. Oddly enough, that Jippes/Milton one seems especially good; there's only one previously-unpublished-in-the-US story, but most of them were previously only published in low-quality Gladstone I editions, so it's cool to have them in good quality. I must say, I object on ideological grounds to Paul Murry being referred to as a "Disney master," but aside from that, it's all good.

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"The Delta Dimension"

And now...ladies and gentlemen...boys and girls...tadpoles and pollywogs...terries and fermies...almond joys and mounds...peanut butters and jellies...stalactites and stalagmites...et and cetera...the time has come for: THIS!

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"The Blot's Double Mystery"

JEEZ. Sorry for the lack of posts in May; I was on vacation for half the month (I saw hella wild orangutans, but unfortunately, I forgot about the "reading Disney comics while ignoring the wildlife" photo tradition--alas!), and otherwise I was preoccupied with this and that.

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"The Miner's Granddaughter"

Well, it's been a while, but if you think I'm going to let the fact that my country's president is an angry, evil baby stop me from writing about duck comics--and, furthermore, that I'm going to let him thoroughly ruin the good name of our favorite duck--you have another goddamn think coming. This shit just got PERSONAL.  So LET'S FUCKING DO THIS.

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"The Flying Scot"

Happy Halloween! Is today's story a Halloween story? Well, it involves a GHOST PIRATE, doesn't it?

...okay okay, it's pushing it to call it a "Halloween story" per se. But the thing is, your seasonal options are: some forgettable Egmont thing, or a vintage Scarpa story. WHICH DO YOU CHOOSE?!? Yeah, that's what I thought (also, I'm pretty sure this one has been requested a few times). Am I keen to read IDW's "Halloween Hex" thing? Sure--but NEED I REMIND YOU that I am living thousands of miles away from the nearest IDW comics right now? It's a true fact. So we must endure. And in enduring, grow strong.

Well, you know my conflicted feelings about Scarpa (ambivalence: the SPOOOOOKIEST feeling of all!). He could be really, really good, and his best mouse stories capture the spirit of Gottfredson better than anyone else. And yet...especially in duck stories, he could just be unfathomably bad, and I'm always confused by the fact (I know I'm repeating what I've said, probably several times, before) that Italian people laud ALL of his work to the skies, apparently lacking the critical faculties to differentiate between the good and the bad. So does "The Flying Scot" fall in the good or bad range? Honestly, if you know anything about my sensibilities, that's probably not a hard question to answer. BUT WE WILL TRY TO MAINTAIN SUSPENSE! BECAUSE HALLOWEEN SPOOKY WHOOO!

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"The Seven Dwarfs and the Enchanted Faerie"

"Hey!" you indignantly shout. "I come here for ducks and occasional mice; I don't want this Snow White idiocy! That's it! I'm boycotting your sponsors!"

And I hear you, I really do. But if I can convince you to put aside your righteous rage for just a minute, I think you may be entertained in spite of yourself.

Anyway, it's not like this is without precedent; you may recall that a few years back, I wrote about a Gottfredson-penned Seven Dwarfs story. At that time, I said that I was planning on looking into the world of Italian 7D stories, and if you think that was a mere idle fancy, I'm here to prove you wrong!

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"The Eternal Knot"

I can't--and indeed I think it's fair to say that I won't--stop.

Hey, as long as IDW keeps printing vintage Italian stories, no one gets hurt. That's the long and short of it. The obscurer the better. Today the Super Barosso Bros are back in a li'l 1962 jaunt. Just our thing. It's in the inducks top 1000, so it's doing okay, but several reviewers accuse it of not making sense. But...it's pretty coherent, really, unless a LOT was changed in translation to salvage it. Maybe a few things around the margins are a bit questionable, and yeah, it's a BIT choppy in a wholly typical way, but nothing serious. Also, it's pretty rich for the country awash in Scarpa to accuse other people's stories of not making sense. WELL ANYWAY.

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"The Duckburg 100"

And I said let's all meet up in the year 100, won't it be strange when...okay, never mind. I realize that that is unconnected to the story and makes no sense as a parody of ANYTHING. But for whatever reason, my brain just REFUSES to not play it whenever I hear that title. What can I say?

(Okay, jokes aren't funny when you explain them, but A) that wasn't funny to start with; and B) it's not really even a "joke," so, for the perplexed, i.e.

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"Mummy Fearest"

These punny titles will truly be the death of me. In theory, there's nothing wrong with them, but the problem is that they so often seem to privilege the bare existence of the pun over being anything more than very vaguely related to the story in question. Like they're just being mildly clever for their own sake. If someone asked you what this was about, you certainly wouldn't say, “oh, it's about the adventures of this cool, skateboarding mummy. He's wearing sunglasses, and he rocks out to surf music. It's great.” No, you would say “it's a story where Scrooge turns his Money Bin into a pyramid.” No question. Personally, I would've gone with the less-flashy but more to-the-point “The Pyramid Scheme,” and yes, I'm aware that that's the unofficial title of a Barks short, but that doesn't seem like a big problem. Maybe it was considered too obvious? Well, I like it. ANYWAY. Enough complaining.

(Ha—as if there can EVER be enough complaining!)

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"Being Good for Goodness Sake"

One thing about a lot of Christmas stories is: they don't feel all that Christmas-y. This is true with a lot of the non-Barks Western Christmas fare (which you've almost certainly never read because almost none of it's been reprinted, and for good reason) and Italian stuff alike. You start and finish on a Christmas note, but you lose track of it for the bulk of the story, and it doesn't feel, thematically, very festive. “Memoirs of an Invisible Santa” is the perfect example of this, but I am forced to admit that it's true to an extent even in “The Blight Before Christmas.”

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"Memoirs of an Invisible Santa"

So anyone who thinks some of the choices I've made in my localizations are a bit de trop should be advised that a story entitled “Mickey and the Christmas Treats” was officially published in the US as “Memoirs of an Invisible Santa.” Just saying.

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"It's a Wonderful Christmas Story"

This Christmas, we will look at some Italian seasonal stories. The idea was that we were going to cover all Italian Christmas stories that have been published in the US, but given that that number has abruptly, like, quadrupled, it is no longer feasible. Which is a good thing! More cheer for all! Anyway, hopefully I'll get to at least one or two of the newly-published tales, but we will start with some ol' Gemstone material.

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"Shellfish Motives"

“Shellfish Motives!” An historical moment, as Scarpa's first turn in the driver's seat, from 1956, (original title: "Donald Duck and Shrimp Stew”—not too euphonious) is finally to be seen on US shores. I had previously read and enjoyed this story in French, but boy, having it in Jonathan Gray's sparkling English translation was a real joy.

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"Gigabeagle: King of the Robot Robbers"

Hi, ev'rybody! It so happens that I've come into a big ol' stack o' IDW comics, so now we can delve into this material. I'm not going to try to write about EVERY story, because A) that sounds like a lot of work; and B) sometimes I just don't have that much to SAY about a story, and in those circumstances, when I try to force myself to write about it anyway, the results—as we've seen on a number of occasions—are not pretty (unless you don't know what I'm talking about, in which case, ho ho, a bad entry on the almighty Duck Comics Revue? An impossibility!). Still, it should provide a rich vein to work with. I'm trying to space out my reading here to some extent for savoring purposes, but so far I see no reason not to be HAPPY AS HELL with the line. Long may it reign!

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"The Legend of Donald of the Woods"

Okay, at long last, here we go.  I don't know WHY it felt like this took so damn long, but here we are.  Now, this story has long been one of my favorite Scarpa ventures, particularly in the duck realm.  I wanted to translate it for a long time, but I kept holding off, on the theory that it's the kind of thing that would be absolutely perfect for official localization, were a new publisher to emerge.  Certainly more so than anything else I've worked on.  But…I don't see that new publisher exactly looming on the horizon, do you?  Besides, I liked it enough that I wanted to put words in the characters' mouths, dammit.  Anyway, you can download my translation right here.

(If there's one single, small moment in my script that you find seriously WTF?, it's probably because you're not getting my super-geeky China Miéville reference.  Don't worry about it.)

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"Donald Fracas"

It's no joke: I am so excited about this one I can barely breathe. The story is "Donald Fracas." The translation is by me. The place to download it is right the fuck here.
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"The Advertising Giant"

Oh man, people.  Now we come to this story--the one I really want to talk about.  This shit is fucking interesting.  I daresay it treads thematic territory that you won't see in any other Disney comic--or at least, none spring readily to my mind.  On the one hand, I hesitate to give Scarpa too much credit here, since I'm not wholly convinced that he was cognizant of the implications here...but, well, he did it.  That much is undeniable.

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"The Eternal Flame of Kalhoa"

The intro to this French edition tells us that in the thirties, Topolino ran non-Disney stories along with Mickey stuff; one of these was the adventure serial Tim Tyler's Luck.  The backstory here, we're told, is inspired by a story arc in that strip (which in turn comes, allegedly, from an H. Rider Haggard novel, though I'm not able to verify that this is a real thing.  Much later, there was an Umberto Eco novel taking the name, but that, of course, is something entirely different.

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