"The People Collector"

This appeared in in the next issue of WDC after the one with "Something to Quack About."  It's another Strobl/Gregory thing.  Take that for what you will.

This premise at least is actually pretty interesting.  So...how big do we think Duckburg IS, anyway?  I think we probably think it's pretty big.  I can think of a number of Italian stories where its hugeness is emphasized, and Barks generally portrayed it as something of a metropolis, though I don't think there's anything in his oeuvre that gives it a concrete population or anything.  Am I wrong about that?  Let me know in comments.Read more »

"Something to Quack About"

 Sometimes, whatever interest a story may have is purely exogenous.  Such is the case here, as we have the first post-Barks ten-pager.  In WDC 312, it was "The Not-So-Ancient Mariner"--and in 313, BOOM, "Something to Quack About" (yes, there were also a number of Barksless issues of WDC before then--we're trying to simplify a little here).  How does this work out?  Well, let's GIVE 'em something to quack about, shall we?  If this were Lockman, I feel like that would be "Something to Wak About."

This is a Strobl/Gregory production, which might make you at least tentatively hopeful.  This was, more or less, before Gregory's fall into I-don't-know-what, and Strobl is always Strobl.  That house there may not quite be Barks, but hey, it still doesn't look too bad.  But if, like me, you're intensely curious about what their "collection of Duckburg artifacts" consists of, I am sorry to say you will find no answers here.  Note also that this is a "Donald and Daisy" story, as were "The Beauty Business" and "Mariner" and many subsequent--was Western trying to reach more girls?  I wish I knew more details.  Read more »

"The Secret Safari"

 I kind of think these mid-fifties-early-sixties Strobl joints in Donald Duck may, pound for pound, be the best NBW stories out there.  Whaddaya think?  "Safari from Komba Tomba," "The Mysterious Crewless Ship," "The Charge at Dawn," "Rattled Railroader," "Adventure at Bomb Bird Island"--what is not to like?  Well, obviously, there are SOME things not to like.  But I think both Gregory and Fallberg put in good work, and in general, with Barks and these guys, it was probably about as good as Western was going to get.  So now, "The Secret Safari," from 1959.  Is it likewise a minor classic?  Let's find out, shall we?

The one thing I really appreciate is that the inducks image has the same stamp as this does, meaning the scans I have are the same as theirs.  Hey, is there a super-secret inducks login that only movers and shakers have access to where you can see all the images in full size?  If so, how 'bout you guys let me in on that?  Given my ceaseless toils in the Disney mines, it seems only fair.  I promise to never use my powers for evil.Read more »

"Dinner Date"

 Yeah, okay, now for some low-effort late seventies dross.  I mean...it's okay if I do this occasionally, right?  I'm intentionally not making it a habit so everyone doesn't grab torches and pitchforks and storm Stately Duck Comics Revue Manor, but I dunno.  Well, we're doing it, is the point.  Here's some more Daisy and Donald.

We start like this, with Daisy jealous of the other girls because her boyfriend isn't getting a reservation at Dorsia.  This is some Bob Gregory art, with all that that entails.  I do kind of like the designs of Daisy' coworkers.  It's interesting how there are two ducks and one human (not dognose), and yet they all kinda blend together.Read more »

"The Paper Route Panic"

 Okay!  A li'l NBW for you today.  I remember this one fairly fondly from when I was small, and someone else seems to as well, as "The Paper Route Panic" has the distinction of one of vanishingly few NBW stories to be reprinted in modern times, by Boom in 2010, in their Donald Duck Classics: Quack Up hardcover.

*Non-Barks Western.  Stick it in your head!

So we open with the big thing, which is: HDL's favorite musical act is a novelty cowboy singer!  Why the heck not?  You just wouldn't see something this idiosyncratic in most stories, I think.  That IS one advantage these NBW Western writers had: they didn't (I have to think) see themselves as really part of a "tradition" per se, so they went ahead and did stuff like this.

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"The Terrible Thinking Cap Tussle"

 As long as I'm talking about Lockman, I've gotta mention this conceptually interesting one.  So we're familiar with Disney Studio Program probably?  It was a thing to create extra stories for foreign markets, because apparently Western's furious release rate was not sufficient to satisfy the ravening lust of overseas readers for Disney comics.  Most famously, the Hubbard/Kinney Fethry stories were DSP productions.  I dunno.  I'd like to see a comparison of how many American-made stories other countries were really publishing compared to the US.  Was it THAT many more?  I mean, granted, issues of Topolino were and are 150+ pages, published weekly, so...maybe I answered my own question.  Man, that's NUTS.  As much as I like Disney comics...I feel like that might be too many Disney comics for me.  Not gonna lie.  But it probably would've been the right number when I was small, which is, I suppose, the point.

At any rate!  This was a Studio story, published in 1962, under the title "Brainstorm Battle."  And it WAS published in English, in Australia (twice!), so it definitely had an extant English script that IDW could've used when they reprinted it in 2017.  At least...I assume so?  There's no way those Australian comics are "lost," is there?  Surely not.  Well, either they didn't have a script, or they thought the one they did have wasn't good enough, and so they got Joe Torcivia to write a new one.  Or possibly just heavily revise the existing one.  But either way, the result is something quite unusual.  I remember kinda wanting to write about this when it was published, but then...I didn't.  So fiddle dee dee.

(Yes, I've poked around a bit looking for scans of Australian Disney comics, but no luck so farand I'm not convinced they actually exist.  But hey, if you got 'em, hook me up.  I'll let you choose a story for me to write about.)

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"Rough Voyage to Azatlan!"

 So the thing is, I was starting to have almost a parasocial relationship with Vic Lockman.  Yeah, I'm hard on him a lot of the time, but reading a lot of his sixties stories, I was thinking, hey, wow, a lot of these are not bad--way to go, Vic!  It was just a kind of fun thing to explore.  I mean yes sure I knew he was a fundamentalist Christian, with the regressive view that go along with that, but hey, ain't that America?  I was still enjoy celebrating his successes.

Look, I know I said I didn't want to be overtly political here, but in this case I find politics kind of thrust upon me.  I recently discovered something about Lockman.  This isn't a big secret or anything; the only reason it's not more common knowledge is that nobody really cares about him.  But: he wasn't just a generic conservative Christian, as I thought, but almost certainly an actual factual member of the John Birch Society.  Read this hair-curlingly racist pro-Apartheid tract from 1985, originally published in a neo-nazi-adjacent newsletter--or actually, don't, that would be a better idea if you don't need to see to believe--but there it is.  If you know anything about the tenets of Bircherism, this will look extremely familiar, but if you think I'm overextrapolating in making the connection, also note that he wrote this 1972 comic (not available online, but if you know you know) promoting Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy, a central Bircher text and the foundation for the beliefs of people like Alex Jones.  You're not promoting that shit if you're not a truly toxic human being. 

(I'm not gonna lie, I do really like this self-portrait of him as a spider from his website.  It makes him seem kind of adorable.)

Now, in a sense none of this matters; it's not like my posts have been glorifying Lockman personally, and you can still critically analyze the works of bad people.  In fact, it could be a good thing, inasmuch as I now have a new critical lens to view his work, theoretically complicating it in an interesting way.  But, as I said, I was really getting into him, so it's hard not to irrationally view this as a betrayal.  And, you know, there's no avoiding it: no matter what I want to do, his work's going to strikes me differently now.  If I'm being honest, I kinda half-wish I'd never learned this.  But I did, so what can you do?  I briefly thought, well, maybe I can just pretend I don't know it.  It's not like anyone's likely to look it up and bring it to my attention, and if they do I can just feign shock then.  But man, I just can't be that dishonest.  You've gotta take a person you're engaging with critically as they are.  So I suppose what I'll do right now is write about this Lockman story and see how the experience strikes me.

I was actually planning on writing about this story last week, immediately after that "Conquistador" business, but then I learned what I learned and it threw me for a loop, so I punted with some Barks while deciding what to do.  Because, true fact, this story actually surprised me.  It turned out to be way more of a roller coaster ride than I possibly could have expected.  So, here we go.

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"The Ghost of the Conquistador"

I feel a little self-conscious about these entries, given, you know, everything.  I didn't cause it, of course, so I'm not really like Nero acocryphally fiddling while Rome burns, but I dunno; maybe I'm like one of the partygoers in "Masque of the Red Death," carousing during a plague.  But I dunno; if I can provide a small amount of escapist amusement in the grimmest of times, maybe I should.  And whether or not I "should," here I am.  Dammit.

Anyway, because I'm fair and balanced, I wanted to try to find a good, or good-er, Lockman story to counterbalance last week's.  So I hopped on inducks and checked his "top stories."  I was assuming, as one would, that they'd all be Barks-drawn, but to my befuddlement, no!  Only four out of the top ten are currently Barks!  This bears investigation, though I suspect it's just some fluke of certain stories being localized to foreign markets in the right place and the right time to make an impression on a lot of young people.  But it's cool!  Everything's cool!  So, currently, at number three on the list, we have THIS.  First, quick look at the cover, which is pretty funny:

The guy's face is meant to be cloaked in shadows, but the colorist evidently didn't get the message, and as a result, he looks like a lego guy.  Editors?  Pshaw!

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"Let Donald Do It"

This might be the first story I've written about with an imperative title.  Well...probably.  You could also read that title in the same sense as "let there be light"--a subjunctive usage.   Donald; the creator of the universe--who can tell the difference?  Regardless, its sole claim to fame, if you can call it that (spoiler: you can't) is that it was a backup story for Barks' "How Green Was My Lettuce."  

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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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"The Charge at Dawn"

 Look, I'd LIKE to start with an intro, but there just ISN'T TIME! Gotta get going NOW NOW NOW!

I mean, "He's a lonely old guy" is clearly accurate, and it took some unknown Western author to reveal it so artlessly! Little did he know, he was just what was needed. I sometimes wonder if comix should emphasize this aspect of Scrooge's character more often. I suppose it really mostly has to exist as subtext; we can't get TOO angsty in comix for kidz. I'm writing "comix" with an x now. I just decided that. And "kidz" with a z so it's more extreme.

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"Donald in Mathmagic Land"

 You know, in spite of the grim unavoidability (I could've said "inevitability; it's denotatively the same thing, but somehow it doesn't sound right to me) of thinking about President Dumber Azathoth, he hasn't totally colonized my brain: when I hear the name "Donald," my immediate impulse is still to say "Duck," not...that other thing.  So I've got that going for me.

Okay, so for the last few months, this kind of weird thing: I've been getting emails from a woman, all very similarly phrased, instructing me to review various stories (VERY strange array, including Barks classics, stories that have never been released in English, at least one that I've already written about, and a few that I found totally unidentifiable from the given titles).  I mean.  It's not that I've NEVER been known to write about a story on a whim because a stranger wanted me to, but this isn't necessarily the way to win a duckblogger's heart.  Its not that the emails were rude, but...well, I guess it was that a little, but moreso that I just found the presentation baffling.  Also, a little creepy.  She once sent four emails in a three-day span, and I'm concerned I might be about to live out the duck-comics-writer version of Misery.  Still, I thought, I dunno, maybe I should reward this weird, robotic repetitiveness.  What's the worst that can happen (famous last words)?  One of the stories she requested at one point was this one, so, uh, I guess this is for you, Ms. MacGregor.  But in all seriousness, let's be clear: this is the ONLY one.  If I ever happen to cover any of the others, it'll have nothing to do with you. 

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"A Bucket of Scones"

 Look, I know you wanted something for Halloween, but all I have is this half-started entry I'd had sitting around for a while.  Gasp at its spookiness:

Is this blog going to consist exclusively from now on of obscure stories I remember with unearned fondness from my childhood?  Maybe.  Or maybe I just need to decompress as I and everyone else wait for the end of the world.  Blah.

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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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"The Gem Jam"

 "The Gem Jam," eh?  As soon as I saw that title, my Fallberg detector started going like crazy.  What, you've never heard of a Fallberg detector?  Every home should have one.  At any rate, in spite of being better known for writing those abominable Paul Murry mouse stories, he also did a lot of ducks--some of them not too bad.  Still, don't expect too much from this one; I'm pretty confident that this is going to be the shortest entry in this series, just because this story really isn't interesting in any way.  Well, it happens; what can you do?

But MY POINT WAS, two-word alliterative titles were extremely Fallberg's jam.  His...gem jam.  Oh, stop it.

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"The Secret of Saltwater Cove"

You know, the openings of these stories often have these glimpses of a kind of utopian blissfulness that evaporates like the morning mist when the actual plot kicks in, which is always very quickly.  Still, I don't know.  We can maybe appreciate these isolated bright spots for what they are, even if the story itself isn't much.  Not that this one is really bad, by the standards of these things, but...worth thinking about, anyway.  How 'bout someone just printing a book consisting of the fragmentary good parts of these forgettable stories?  I'll be the editor.  Granted, the resulting book probably won't appeal to anyone but me, but, well, it would appeal to ME.  What else do you want?

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"The Giant Pearl"

 Hope ya like Tony Strobl, or at least tolerate him, 'cause he's gonna be bringing you the art for all subsequent stories in the DCRCIJS (as I like to call it).  I feel like I shouldn't have complained about "Sea Breeze Sailors" being lumpy, because this really laps that one in that regard.  I'm almost afraid to write this entry, but press on I must.

Anyway, if nothing else, Strobl turns in pretty good work here.  Fairly dynamic sense of movement.

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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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