"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 »

"Light-Fingered Genie"

 So I'm not gonna lie to you: I was a little preoccupied this week, realized on Tuesday evening that I didn't have anything planned for the ol' blog, and so randomly reached into my digital collection.  And...dammit I don't know how to say this, but I came away with a Kay Wright story from 1972.  Ouch.  Look, I'm sorry that this happened, but I'll do my best to make it at least a little bit interesting.

Still: I've emphasized the bad in this sort of story quite a lot.  And look, is this a great story?  No.  Good?  No.  Fair?  Hmm...let's not exaggerate.  But I genuinely do think it has a certain something, and that maybe with a little extra fiddling (okay, a lot), it could've become something great.  I think our writer is Bob Gregory, and even though seventies Gregory is no one's idea of a great writer, it's possible that he still had a modest amount of residual mojo [UPDATE: on further examination, maybe not. It doesn't matter.).  And it is a little bit of a weird thing for me to be trying to find the good in a not-so-good story, while also acknowledging its not-so-goodness.  But here we go.

The title is a little weird--why doesn't it start with a "the?"  This way it sounds like a Homeric epithet: Grey-eyed Athena, wine-dark sea, light-fingered genie.  Okay.

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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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"The Whole Truth Club"

This week we're going to stare into the abyss. "Don't you do that quite a lot?" you ask. And my unambiguous answer is: no. I don't, actually. I may write about various Western stories of shaky quality, but believe me, most of those are Barks-quality masterpieces compared to the real detritus. It's not like I was even planning this; I just thought, Huey Dewey and Louie Junior Woodchucks (complete with weird lack of punctuation) was a weirdly long-running publication (1966-1984), and I realized I didn't think I'd ever actually read any of it aside from the Barks stuff, so...let's give it a look. I wasn't expecting great things, but I ALSO wasn't expecting it to get under my skin to the extent that it did. And unfortunately for him, the author can't hide behind anonymity, because this is very obviously Vic Lockman. I don't think he hated children, but I DO think he had a pretty dang low opinion of them, is all I'll say. Obviously, that's not all I'll say. Whom am I kidding?

This is from 1978, so not a fantastic time for Disney comics stateside anyway, but...you know, I'm going to stop this preliminary throat-clearing and just GET to it, k? We'll have more reference to this later.

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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 Magnetic Curse"

 I swear, I'm going to try to have something about a Barks classic soon, but I need an easy layup, and for that, we have this story, recommended (or...highlighted, anyway) by Debbie Anne on social media.  This is from Uncle Scrooge 204, in 1983, as Western was entering its death spasms.  But that doesn't mean they couldn't churn out stories like...this!  Drawn by Jack Manning; inducks doesn't specify, but it's definitely written by Vic Lockman.  THERE'S a name I haven't heard in a long time.

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"Christmas Album"

 So finally we get to the marquee story in this book.  It's still only eight pages, nothing huge, but it's obvious that more effort was put into it than anything else here.  Does that work out?  Well, reading it is what inspired me to write about this issue, before I'd even looked at any of the others, but beyond that...we shall see.  Western often did this in their  themed books: clearly, "Christmas Album" is the name of the issue, not the story itself, which is essentially unnamed.  It's kind of annoying: sure, I could make up a name for it, but the point of there being a title is so that if people google it they may find this blog, and that's obviously not happening if it's some all-new title.  IT IS THE BIGGEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD AT THIS TIME.

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"The Gift Guard"

 Please, somebody tell me why I didn't do this one first!  This is very clearly the least interesting duck story in the book, and now I'm stuck with it!  Ack!  Well, I suppose in its defense, it IS more Christmasy than the previous entries.  Still, expect a short blog entry here.

Laaast Christmas I guarded our gifts, the very next day...please complete this couplet to win a free t-shirt.  Disclaimer: t-shirt may not exist on prime material plane.

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"Much Ado about Daisy"

 April! May! And let's not forget: June. I suppose if there were a niece-equivalent of Phooey, she could be named July. They first appeared, unnamed, in Barks' "Flipism" story in 1953. Their first-ever dialogue?

That's auspicious for sure. Then, they disappeared for six years. Then, in 1959, they had a brief, non-speaking appearance in the Barks-drawn "Double Date." They still were unnamed at this point; it's not clear whether the writer of "Double Date" was even aware of the early story or if he just wanted three female nephew-counterparts so Barks brushed off the old design. Progress: one of them appears in 1960 in a story called "The Course in Confusion," named April. And on that same day--so says inducks--a Duck Album was published with a story called "Easy Does It," in which they are all named. At what point did they start being written as Chickadees, the distaff Junior Woodchucks? Possibly in this story, but it's a Studio Program thing I haven't read. But if so, it wasn't an enduring idea, and the first story I HAVE read where it's definitely a thing is this one, from 1970. It seems like the obvious thing to do, but I feel like some of the early writers were a bit hobbled by implicit sexist assumptions.

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"The Mischief Mystery"

 Okay, here's this--finally we're getting to the actual Duck-Album-style stories.

Before we get to the story itself, let's take a moment to think about what the purpose is of using this format. Maybe it's obvious, but I don't think it's a bad idea to articulate it. So basically, if not for the introductory panels, these would be indistinguishable from other stories. But they give us contextless images from the stories, along with a small (very small) bit of commentary from the characters. Ideally, this would get us excited to read the story and find out what the deal is with the image. "Why would Grandma possibly, er, spank her piggie?!? I must know!"

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"The Dedicated Decorator"

Yeah. So just as Uncle Scrooge had the Gyro Gearloose shorts to subvert shipping regulations, so too did Donald Duck have these Goofy four-pagers. I think we can safely say that Donald Duck got the short end of the stick, in this regard as in so many others. These things are really brutally uninteresting, not that that comes as any great surprise. But it's particularly notable that one is included even here, in this alleged Duck Album. Most of the Duck Albums that Western put out were, at least, sufficiently committed to the concept that they featured only duck stories. But here, the Goofy short is shoved in without the slightest effort made to fit it into the album format. This combined with the fact that, unlike others in the series, there's no opening or framing sequence--Donald and HDL are just looking at pictures and that's all there is to it--and you can tell that nobody's heart was really in this.

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"Dinner at Grandma's"

And now, this, from 1955's CP 7.  You know, the thing is, I actually wrote this entry as well as the next few before doing those damn Connell stories, and now that I've done them, I'm actually feeling significantly more charitable about these.  Not that I think my criticisms don't hold, but CRIKEY, sure, they were written by people wanting paychecks with no thought of l'art pour l'art, but they at least make an effort, sort of, and the characters, as dumb as they can be, don't generally seem like bizarre space aliens.  They're more or less earning that paycheck.  So good job, Lockman et al!  Please read this entry in that spirit.

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"Matchmaker"

It's time to write about what I can only describe as "some hella dumb shit." This entry is thanks to Debbie Anne, who posted a page from it on one of the Disney comics facebook groups. And now, you get to reap the benefit! Lucky you.

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"The Fountain of Strength"

Well, we recently learned from Mark Evanier that Vic Lockman had died on June 1 of this year, at the age of ninety. I felt that I should write something in...I dunno. Tribute? Recognition? Acknowledgement?

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"Why All the Crabby Ducks?"

WHY?!? TELL ME!! I REALLY WANT TO KNOW!!!

It's really one of the great questions of our time, right up there with "Is there life on Mars?" "Is she really going out with him?" and "What in the world can make a brown-eyed girl turn blue?"

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"The Flying Farm Hand"

So I thought it was high time I read the handful of Carl Barks stories that I never have, and I figured if I was going to do that, I ought also to blog about them, since this will be my last chance to have first-reactions to Barks stories.  I've read all his art and story stuff, but there are some Grandma Duck's Farm Friends art-only material and a few Woodchucks scripts that I've yet to partake of.  Of course, you could question the notion that art-only stories really count as "Barks stories," but what the hell.  As I've noted previously, there's this totally erroneous tendency amongst some to think of art as secondary to writing, more of a side-issue than an intrinsic part of a story, but that is WRONG WRONG WRONG.  If we look, for instance, at the Lockman-penned Gyro stories I wrote about last Summer, we can easily see that, in spite of being Lockman's brain-children, they nonetheless have that unmistakable Barksian stamp.  

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"This Is Your Life, Donald Duck"

Well, so most people are at least aware of "From Egg to Duck," but how many people have THIS little number, from 1960, on their radar?

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Bonus! Gyro One-Pagers!

The completist in me cannot bear to end the coverage of this issue without looking at the one-page gags included therein.  This includes a few rather obscure Barks-drawn pages, so c'mon--let's do this thing!

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