"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.

Read more »

"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.

Read more »

"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?

Read more »

"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.

Read more »

"Sea Breeze Sailors"

 Here's a "fun" fact: this story has been reprinted twice in the US, more than any of the others we're covering.  Is that justified?  We will see, possibly.

Before we start, take a look at this frontispiece: 

Maybe the fact that these things excite me is a sign I've been doing this too long, but I can't help it; I find this super-interesting.  "A hilarious adventure with Donald and the nephews aboard Uncle Scrooge's yacht."  Now, I'm positive there must be other examples, but this is the first instance I've seen--or at least that I remember--of a Western comic book providing any kind of actual editorial comment regarding the stories.  Is this significant?  Is the story a hilarious adventure with Donald and the nephews aboard Uncle Scrooge's yacht?  Well, somebody's certainly SAYING  it is!  They couldn't print it if it weren't true.  So, you know.

Read more »

"Beach Party"

Our first story, from the first Beach Party in 1954, is the only one that I actually read as a child: it was the only Disney Giant that was part of my dad's old collection.  Go figure.  You know, I criticize these things a lot, but they were clearly doing something right.  I'm sure I've noted on multiple occasions that even though the stories in Duck Albums are rarely any great shakes, the concept, really, really resonated with me.  Same thing here: I just loved the idea of a "beach party," which is what all of these stories, in theory, start with, though predictably, they all kind of veer violently away from that initial conceit.  Still!  Look at that!  It promises Fun in the Sun!  Note that although this one doesn't have a title, the others in the series do, so it's okay to just call this "Beach Party."

Read more »

Can your heart withstand the excitement of the Duck Comics Revue Christmas in July Spectacular?

Seriously, can it? 'Cause if not, I'll call this whole thing off; the last thing I want is to be responsible for your untimely demise. But if you're good to go, then look forward to it. The most enjoyable Christmas special that I've written was in 2018, when I covered a bunch of marquee stories from old Christmas Parades. They may not exactly have been good, but they were interesting! So this is an attempt to recapture faded glories: we're going to be covering the front stories from all six of Dell's Beach Party giants over the course of the month. At any rate, my plan is to finish by the end of July, but if I miss the deadline, well, let's face it, Christmas in July is really just an excuse for sales at car dealerships, so it's not an exact science. It's done when it's done!

"A Spicy Tale"

 Hey, if you want, you can listen to me'n'Mark blathering about "The Twenty-Four Carat Moon."  To commemorate this occasion, I have chosen to write about a wholly unrelated story.  It's been a long time coming, though, as was me appearing on this podcast, so maybe that's a connection?  Well, maybe not.  Don't be mean to me.

Read more »

"The Chickadee Challenge"

 Hey, whaddaya know?  I was on a podcast!  Two, actually, with more to come.  It's Mark Severino's Barks Remarks, and also his spin-off Rosa Remarks, and if you want to know why it took so long for me to do this...well, it was really just a matter of missed communications.  But better late than never; the experience was extremely delightful, so I hope you like them, 'cause you haven't heard the last of me!  Grrr!

We talked about some Junior Woodchucks stories, so I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to write about "Chickadee Challenge"--one that we were contemplating discussing but then didn't.  All things considered, I think that was the right decision, but it's still worth touching on.

Read more »

"Inventor of Anything" and "The Cat Box"

 I think it makes sense to talk about these two stories--Barks' second and third Gyro four-pagers--in tandem.  Actually, it might've made sense to include the first one as well, but that ship has sailed.  

Read more »

"The Flat-Footed Floogle"

 You definitely shouldn't get used to me churning out blog entires at this pace (who knows, maybe there'll be a six-month gap between this and the next one, though I hope not).  But I'm enjoying this, and here's another Dick Moores story that NEEDS ATTENTION.  To be clear, I'm not planning on writing about his entire oeuvre, nor am I lobbying for a Dick Moores Library.  Still, as weird as it sounds to say, this is true: I'm very likely the biggest living fan of his (I mean, of his duck work--he spent most of his career working on the comic strip Gasoline Alley, of which I know nothing).  How about that?  And yet, even I have to concede that a large percentage of his work is both bad and unwriteaboutable.  You're getting a very curated selection here.

(incidentally, the wikipedia page for Gasoline Alley informs us that it features "storylines reflecting traditional American values," and it just goes to show how toxic the right has made that phrase that it can't not sound ominous as hell.)

Read more »

"The Money Bird"

I don't know why I'm so into these old non-Barks Western stories!  Am I like an aging libertine whose palate is so jaded that he has to venture into the realms of the bizarre and possibly illegal to receive any sort of frisson of pleasure?  Maybe!  Was it a good idea for me to make that simile?  Definitely not!  But here we are!

Read more »

"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.

Read more »

"The Rare Coin"

 Right!  This isn't a Christmas story--no references to the holiday in the text or art; all it is is a winter story--but it did appear in a Dell Christmas Parade.  Even though it's untitled, inducks has chosen an extremely generic name for it.  Good job, inducks!  It's not an exciting story, but I do want to briefly comment on it.

Yeah, so set up the premise quickly, whatever.  Let's have some ice skating fun.  As much as I appreciate Tony Strobl, I have to say, his art here isn't among his best.

Read more »

"A Chip 'n' Dale Christmas"

 And now, we come to...Chip 'n' Dale?  What the HECK?!?

Hey, great things come in humble, unassuming packages.  Yes, that is some sort of Christmas metaphor.  We can't all be wise men from the East come with rich gifts.  Also, "great" might be an exaggeration in the current case.  But...what the hey.  I'm afraid this'll be a light entry, but what can I say?  I'm MAKING MERRY, dammit!

Read more »

Can Chat GPT do my blogging for me?

Sitting in the Tallinn airport, waiting to go home for Christmas...let's have a little fun, shall we?  Do some low-effort blogging.  Feels festive.

As you may know, Chat GPT is the new hotness--an AI that will write you something for almost any prompt you enter (although, as Maciek realized, it's a bit of a goody two-shoes--it won't write stories about committing crimes or how it's cool to do drugs or things like that).  There was an Atlantic essay recently about how it's going to render high school English classes obsolete.  Well, that's as may be (I'm not entirely convinced; if you spend a lot of time using it, you WILL run into some pretty hard limits), but for our purposes, we must ask the question: can it analyze Disney comics as well as a human can?  Is my presence unnecessary here?  Well, let's find out.

Read more »

"The Junior Woodchucks and the Rabbit's Foot"

I briefly considered doing this one in 2018 when I was binging on old Western stuff, but the schedule was already overstuffed and I wasn't able to fit it in.  There you go: a fascinating look behind the scenes at Duck Comics Revue.  Well, anyway, time to fill a much-needed gap, I suppose.

Read more »

"Minnie's Christmas Tree"

 And now, we bring you...another story! But this one's interesting, I promise! Well, kind of. Don't get your hopes too sky-high. But seriously, it is not totally devoid of interest. Feel free to use that as a pull-quote.

Read more »

"Postman's Puzzle"

 Here's THIS.  It's story that may not be the most notable, but that I've nonetheless somehow wanted to write about ever since I first read it.  Is it good?  Well...that remains to be seen, although you probably have some idea of how these things tend to go when I get coy at the start.

Don't have any particular plan in mind for Christmas stories this year.  Just as the spirit (or possibly the glögg) moves me.  If you have any ideas for good stories to cover, feel free to suggest them in comments.

Read more »

"The Wax Museum"

Boo!  Why no entries for a number of months that I can't bear to contemplate?  Well, no real excuses; the summer was pretty rough, and since then I've been fairly busy with my fellowship in Tallinn.  Anyway, I haven't been completely inactive with my blogs; on my main one, I'm almost finished blogging every Freddy the Pig book.  Whaddaya want from me?!?  Blood?!  Well, it IS Halloween, so maybe that's not unreasonable.  Wax museums are scary, right?  I've never been to one, but probably they are.  

These are all dramatically different reasons to fire someone, aren't they?  The first is for doing something specific, the second is for the sake of a pun, and the third because—presumably—they hired him as a barber without having given him any kind of tryout or anything.  It feels like it's not wholly coherent, somehow—that it doesn't really provide a picture of what fundamental thing about Donald causes these serial sackings.  Then again, maybe that's the point—he contains multitudes.  I enjoy the first one in particular—seems like a remarkably forbearing bakery that lets him get away with the first two dough-mixer naps.  I want to work there; I'd only do it ONCE!  I might get my name on an employee of the month plaque.

Read more »

"Trapped in the Shadow Dimension"

Look, I have no excuses to make as to why I don't post for long intervals and then sort of abandon plans I had--or so it seemed--been setting up for series of posts.  Had a lot on my mind lately.  Well...that's only a partial excuse.  But it's true!  Did you know I have a teaching fellowship in Estonia for the 2022-23 academic year?  'Cause I do.  That tends to distract from things.  BE THAT AS IT MAY, let's get into it.

Read more »

"Rip Van Donald"

Man!  Draggin' my feet, and now apparently my plan to look at Gyro stories has been aborted.  Well, maybe not, but I read THIS.  And I wanted to write about it.  So I am.  Any questions?

It's worth dwelling on this opening, I think, because it's very important in that it explains the stakes for the entire story: why HDL are so upset about having to go south and so motivated to get themselves back north.  Whatever you may think of wintry weather, you have to admit that Barks does a good job making it look as appealing as possible.  Any ol' anyone could write a story with the plot "nephews forced to go south; trick their uncle into returning."  But, due to lack of artistic skill or just lack of interest, a lot of these anyones would do a cursory or nonexistent job of showing why they care that much.  You can't just say "they like the winter;" you have to show it.  This is also a good counterexample to bring up to anyone who asserts that writing and art in a comic are completely discrete: here, the art helps to tell the story.

Read more »

"Trapped Lightning"

 We'll get back to early Barks stories one of these days, maybe, but now, I want to write about some Gyro Gearloose shorts.  Such is my mercurial whim.  You have problem?

So natch, we start at the beginning.  Well, not Gyro's beginning, but the Gyro four-pager's beginning.  I think we all know the story by now, but it was the weird thing where you got different postal rates if your comic books featured stories with completely discrete casts, which is also why issues of Donald Duck featured Goofy four-pagers for a while.  How long did this system last?  That's not clear to me.  The Goofy ones didn't start appearing until a few years after the Gyro, when you'd think it would've been a no-brainer to institute them both at the same time.  Also, how specifically did it work?  If Barks had contrived to write a U$ story not featuring Donald, could he have then been used in the Gyro short instead, even if he was going to feature in the main story next time?  Ah, the mysteries of life!

Read more »

"Adventure at Bomb Bird Island"

 Every so often, I say to myself, "hey, self, how about 1959's 'Bomb Bird Island?'  That's a story you fondly remember from your childhood.  You should write an entry about 'Bomb Bird Island!'"  And then I reread it and realize, man, I have basically NOTHING to say about this.  It's not that it's bad--it's certainly in the top half of non-Barks Western stories (and when I have I ever been circumspect about covering bad stories anyway?).  It's just that...somehow it never seems to have much about it to comment on.  But now, I have decided, it's "Bomb Bird Island" come hell or high water, dammit!  Let's do this!  It is how we will ring in the new year!

We start...here.  And the first thing you notice--or the first thing I always did--was the butler using Louie's full name.  Wait, aren't they pronounced the same either way?  Unless he's putting a particularly strong French spin on the pronunciation which Louie disapproves of.  Hard to say (yeah yeah, obviously he's meant to be pronouncing it "Lewis"--but it's sort of hard to imagine this hoity-toity butler using anything other than the French pronunciation).

Read more »

Twice Upon a Christmas: The Ad

Consider this a Saint Stephen's Day celebration: Just as a brief pendant to the Twice Upon a Christmas post, I thought it might be a tiny bit interesting for me to present the ad for the book that ran in Christmas Parade 2 and probably in other issues:

Read more »

"Mickey's Dog-Gone Christmas"

 Well, due to unexpected events, I've sort of had to give up my idea of cramming something else into the Christmas schedule, but we will, at any rate, finish up Twice Upon a Christmas with a story about...Pluto!  Very climactic.  Merry Christmas, by the way.

Read more »

"Donald's Gift"

 For whatever reason, or more probably no reason, this one comes after "Christmas Maximus" in the movie but before it in the comic.  Right.

Read more »

"Christmas Maximus"

 I guess the rule was that the title just had to have "Max" in it?  Okay.  Impressive work, everyone.  Time for coffee and doughnuts!

Actually, I'm slightly boggled: in looking up information about Max, I learned that Goofy had previously had a son, possibly called Goofy Jr, who appeared in a series of fifties shorts.  And my boggling is because I had NEVER seen any of these and so never encountered this version of Goofy before, presented as a kind of everyman with a completely different voice than normal.  Thanks, I hate it.  I had no idea such things existed, which is kind of interesting, but the result...boy.  I forced myself to watch a few of them to get some idea of what they were about, and they did NOT grow on me, I will tell you that much.  This was apparently Walt's own idea.  Well, they can't all be winners--though it does deal a blow to the Dorfman/Mattelart idea that there's nefarious intent behind all the nieces and nephews.

Read more »

"Christmas: Impossible"

 If I don't overly like this story in cartoon form--and I don't--it's at least in part because, out of all the character designs here, the nephews' are unquestionably the most hideous:

BWAHAHA!  Merry Christmas.  Seriously, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?  And if this was the best you could do, why did you go ahead and release it?  Just chalk it up as a learning experience and destroy all hard drives containing this footage.  Come on.

Read more »

"Belles on Ice"

YOU FOOLS!  Little did you know, Christmas had already started!  Except for Pan Miluś.  Somehow, improbably, he knew.  Why can't the rest of you people be maniacs like him?  Boy, I don't know.  So yup.  Having covered the DTV movie known only as Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas or possibly just Once Upon a Christmas or possibly, if you want to get fancy, Disney's Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas.  But why would you?  And now, we are covering the comic-book adaptation of that movie's sequel, where "once" is replaced with "twice."  Actually, that comic book was my introduction to the franchise, if you want to call it that.  I guess I kind of vaguely figured, insofar as I did, that there had to be a "once" out there somewhere, but I never bothered to check it out, and I think I thought that "twice" might be a comics-only thing.  So I've exposed myself to some new media this holiday season, for better or worse.  You decide.  This includes five stories, so we'll cover one every few days.  Also, I cannot absolutely guarantee that there won't also be something or other at the cartoon site.

Read more »

"The Hard Loser"

Beware of this story!  Do not be tricked by its wiles!  You will THINK this is a normal ol' Barks ten-pager, but it has a Dark Secret: it was ACTUALLY published in that same dang "Mummy's Ring" one-shot, NOT in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories!  I cannot tolerate such deceitful behavior!

...or can I?  Well, let's find out.  I really like both the idea and the visual of Donald playing a carnival game, as if that's just a normal thing that people do on a regular basis.  Look his into it he is!

Read more »