"The Dazzling Duck She-Venger"

 See?  I can do non-Western stories.  Just try me!  This, from 1973, seemed like a good story to do.  Right, so, just to make sure we're all on the same page: Guido Martina and Elisa Penna introduced Donald's superhero alter-ego Paperinik (Duck Avenger) in 1969 (I don't know who did what, and Martina seems to have helmed the character solo for quite a while, but I didn't want to forget about Penna).  I say "superhero" advisedly: one of the main things about the character is that, in his original appearances, he doesn't do anything heroic; he just uses his powers to indulge his petty grievances against his relatives.  That IS actually a pretty funny joke--but it's rather limited, and frankly Donald is such a jerk that they can be a little grueling to read, so it's no surprise that eventually he became more of a straightforward good guy (actually, it's possible that as of that third story, he was starting that transformation, as he IS a bit more sympathetic there--though that might just be a non-standard devitation; no later stories have been published in English, so I don't know).  I was never a big fan of these, but on rereading them in preparation for this entry, I realized that taken in moderation, I did find them fairly amusing, in an antisocial sort of way.  Probably best read while a bit drunk.

(This is from the second DA comic, and no, it's not clear why they're both hopping)

I think maybe part of the appeal of the character was that--as many or all of you will know--Martina always depicted Donald as downtrodden, especially by his raging dickhead of an uncle, so seeing him get some payback (he wins out in all of these first three stories, at any rate) might be cathartic.  Fair enough.

So before we get started, I'm going to tell you what I think, because I feel like it would be awkward to try to dance around it.  The question people ask about this story: "is it feminist?"  But I don't think that's the right question.  Don't get me wrong, it's definitely something we're going to talk about, but it's not the central point.  I think we fall into a trap with a story like this: we see some feminist or anti-feminist trappings, and therefore we prime ourselves to think of the story in those terms.  But those are big ol' red herrings.  Presumably Martina perceived that feminism was gaining traction and wanted to include some of its trappings in his story, but fundamentally, this is the same thing as those previous Paperinik stories.  As I wrote above, Donald as DA "just uses his powers to indulge his petty grievances against his relatives."  Well, here's the same thing, only with Daisy.  The story becomes A LOT more coherent when you consider it in those terms.  The very vague feminist trappings are just window dressing, and they don't play out or resolve in any coherent way.  

(I suppose in a more general way, we could see it as feminist purely in a "see? women can abuse their power and be obnoxious JUST as well as men!" which...well, true, but probably not what anyone was looking for.)

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 certainy 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.

Read more »

"Redbeard's Pirate Plunder"

Hey, it can't all be Barks.  But don't worry; we're still going to be fairly positive this week.  I wanted to cover this story because a little bit ago I did a Jack Bradbury ten-pager from 1950, and it was pretty bad (this one ain't too great either).  But I think it's unfair to judge his work entirely from that, because here's an adventure story by Bradbury from 1956, and what a difference six years make!  The marked improvement in every aspect of his craft is very noticeable, and I find it quite satisfying.  Imagine, working hard and getting better!  I'm proud of you, Jack.

(And yes, there's always the caveat that I can't know for sure if Bradbury actually wrote this, or indeed the aforementioned ten-pager.  I can note that the writing doesn't leap out at me as coming from any of the usual suspects, but I still can't say with absolute certainty.  But I really want to, because I like to see people get better, and you can't prove I'm wrong!  Unless you can, in which case, dammit.  Nonetheless.)

It does feel a little weird that a real ship plays a role here, BUT...

Read more »

"The Riddle of the Red Hat"

 Here's a story I should probably have done some time ago.  The reason I didn't was probably because it wasn't clear how much there was to say about it.  Let's face it: it's a Barks story about Mickey.  That right there is the only reason anyone's any more interested in it than ANY old random Mickey story by Dick Moores or whomever.  It is at least a little interesting in terms of Barks' career, just because it's a rather early adventure story (if you want to call it that--it's only eleven pages, but tonally, it's definitely not the equivalent of ten-pager), so you can see his development.  Well, somewhat.  The fact that he was self-consciously using characters he usually wouldn't make it a little hard to place within the context of his work.  Still, at the very least, an interesting footnote.

Also, it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway: it is in no way Barks' fault that red hats nowadays are associated with American nazis.  I wish they weren't, though!

(Side note: I have this thing where I'm always vaguely surprised to remember that Barks' and Gottfredson's careers weren't exactly concurrent.  Not that he didn't write (or at least draw, thanks to Walsh coming on board) worthwhile stories later in his career, but his most celebrated work comes from the thirties and early forties.  By the fifties, while Barks was still going on all cylinders, most of his career, at least as a crafter of actual stories, was behind him.  This is an early story for Barks, but Gottfredson at the time was doing non-household-name stuff like "Billy the Mouse."  Perhaps this should lead into a longer discussion of inconsistent perceptions of time, but as it happens, all it gets is this parenthetical.)

Read more »

"Good Canoes and Bad Canoes"

 I must admit, I like that after-the-fact title.  It's pretty solid.

Sometimes it happens that I read a story and zero in on one specific thing I want to talk about, and that's the impetus for a whole entry.  Such is the case today.  In most ways, this is a pro forma Donald vs Gladstone story--perfectly readable, but not among Barks' very best (and yet, probably still better than any story that anyone else ever wrote for Western. Agree? Disagree? Sound off!)  But!  There IS one thing here that I think needs more publicity!  And maybe some other interesting things will happen; who can say?

Yeah, it's a fairly pro forma story of its type--perfectly okay, but not one of Barks' all-time greatest.  You will note how the contours of this rivalry vary according to the needs of individual stories.  Elsewhere, maybe Donald feels despair at the impossibility of ever defeating his cousin.  But HERE, he's feeling good about it!  That could be a harbinger of bad things, but who knows?  Stay tuned.

Read more »

"Strike Up the Band"

 So here's one that doesn't really have a good title: the inducks page calls it "The Price of Fame," which I suppose is accurate, but somewhat generic.  So instead, we're using the little alternate title they provide for reasons I don't really understand.

I wanted to do something Hungarian-themed, to congratulate our Magyar friends for getting rid of Orban, but I'm not sure there ARE any Hungarian-themed Disney comics.  I figure at some point SOMEONE must've made a dumb "Hungry" joke, possibly in tandem with  "Turkey," but what else is there?  What does the average American man, woman, or enby on the street know about Hungary?  Probably not that much, and I'm certainly not setting myself up as some sort of expert.  Do the common people know that that's where Béla Lugosi is from?  Do the common people even know Béla Lugosi?  I guess you could write a Disney vampire story, with ducks or mice, of the sort Gemstone used to publish in their Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Digests.  I think paprika is fairly strongly Hungary-coded; it's certainly distinctive-looking, so you could have a slapstick story where it gets everywhere and turns everything red.  Sure.  Or how about a duck version of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle?  Now we're cookin'!

Well you might ask: why am I babbling senselessly about Hungary in an entry that's not going to have anything to do with that?  Look, I don't know.  Maybe living like this makes me a little insane.  Also, iss a larf, innit?  For this week I just chose a silly story that I really love.  Does this indicate that this blog is going into all-positivity mode?  I...really couldn't say.  That's the excitement!  When you stop by, will you encounter a masterpiece...or something that really plumbs the depths?  It is a mystery!  Ooh!

Read more »

"Raffle Reversal"

Woof.  Tough week, eh?  It's great that civilization didn't end, but the fact that was apparently on the table, uh...well, that's just what we're stuck with for oh my god HOW long?  Ack.  Under the circumstances, I think more Barks is called for, so let's go with THIS.

We're seeing the contours of Gladstone's luck here, and from some of these stories with luck duels, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Duckburg had an entirely raffle-based economy.  Like Borges' "Lottery in Babylon?"  Sure; why not?  You'd think Gladstone would get himself banned from these things if he's driving off all the weird-looking dogfaces who'd otherwise be participating.

Read more »

"The Easter Parade"

 Well, I had something else planned for this week, but then Maciek mentioned Barks' Easter story, and I thought, yeah, oughta do that.  Probably in general, I ought to spend less time harrasing you with Western stories of varying quality.  I mean, I won't, but maybe I should.  Hard to say.  But what's happening today is: this.  I don't think it's a particularly consequential story, but it has some amusing stuff I can point out, so hey, why not?  Happy Easter to those who celebrate, and a pleasant Sunday to those who don't.

Read more »

"Billfold of Bills"

 Imagine you subscribe to Walt Disney's Comics and Stories in the 1940s, at the same time that Barks starts his run of ten-pagers.  Pretty sweet deal.  Obviously you don't know Barks' name, but you know that SOMEONE is writing these, and you're not naive enough to believe that all Disney comics are written by Walt himself (if only because they're so stylistically varied), so you know you're witnessing someone's artistic progression ("You" here is "you" as an adult, by the way.  From personal experience, I can say that kids are less discriminating).  So how JARRING must it have been when 1950 rolls around and, for reasons unknown to me, Barks takes a semi-hiatus from WDC, and most of the ten-pagers are written (or at least drawn; who knows who was writing them) by Jack Bradbury or Paul Murry.  And we can historicize all these stories and appreciate their good aspects as we find them, but at the time--I don't know.  I guess it's impossible to really conceptualize.  There have to have been a fair few discerning adult and even child readers, and they would have to recognize that the ducks in these Temu ten-pagers are NOT the same as the ones they were used to following.  What is HAPPENING?! I imagine them wondering, clutching their brows.  Well, time to take a look and see what they saw.  Not that I plan on covering ALL of those stories.  But this one in particular I'd say is at least worth a look.

(Holy shit, "Temu ten-pager," what an awesome turn of phrase; everyone must pay me homage, and also money.)

(And as for the name I've given this, it was printed titleless and, not surprisingly, never given one retroactively; I don't find any of the foreign-language titles that inspiring, so I'm officially declaring the three-word English description on the inducks page to be the title.  That's right, OFFICIALLY!  Quail before my might!  It kinda sounds like it was written by a non-native speaker, it doesn't make a lot of sense, and it's not actually related to the story in any discernible way. So, you know.  But at least it has a bit of character!)

Read more »

"The Wonderful Whizzix"

 Yeah yeah, I know: back-to-back Moores Mickey stories were not what anyone was hoping for, probably. I understand the vox unpopuli! And we weren't going to GET them, except that I just read this, his most famous (not for the first time, I think, but I remembered nothing about it), and realized, dammit, I have to write about this one. Or at least want to. I promise we'll have some ducks next week. But for now, we have this. As Debbie Anne noted in comments last time, this story is allegedly the inspiration for the Herbie the Love Bug series. I have never seen a Herbie media product in my life, but the first two movies WERE written or co-written by none other than Bill Walsh, so there DOES seem to be some Disney-comics DNA there. Interesting.

Read more »

"Goofy's Mechanical Wizard"

 I dunno, people, I'm having vague thoughts about poetry after Auschwitz here.  Not just with this blog, either.  You know, I watch frivolous youtube videos about, you know, videogames and that, and I can't help sort of thinking "argh! What are you doing?!?"  Well, what am *I* doing?  Also, am I REALLY saying that one can't create art (or whatever my blathering counts as), given the circumstances?  Strauss wrote a number of operas during the third reich, including Capriccio in 1942, and he definitely was not a nazi.  I mean, living a completely joyless existence is kind of what they want for us (to say the least), so I'm gonna say fuck you to them, but man.

Am I going to preface every entry like this from now on?  Hopefully not, but man, I'm not a robot.  It just feels odd to be writing stuff in the here and now without some kind of acknowledgement of...this.

In comments to the last entry, Joe said that Moores' Mickey stories are generally superior to his Donald (also true of Romano Scarpa).  And I thought, have I read any of those?  Probably.  Not really sure.  But I certainly don't know them very well, so here is THIS.

As you may know, Moores did inks for a number of Bill-Walsh-era Gottfredson stories.  So we DEFINITELY know he's at least somewhat familiar with the master, in a way that you sometimes sort of question whether duck writers were with Barks.  So did any of that rub off on him?  Let's find out.

Read more »

"A Big Bust"

 Boy oh boy.  What do you do when your country is cranking up its theme song yet louder and louder?  Well, if you're me, you retreat into your happy place, which it turns out is Dick Moores stories.  That's a bit of a twist, for sure.  Interestingly, or not, this appeared in Donald Duck 33, along with "The Skiing/Clock Bandit" and "The Money Bird," meaning that I've now covered that entire issue!  What an achievement!  It's not just about completionism, however, because I think there really are some interesting things to be said about it.

I suppose they were probably just grocery shopping, but that wagon filled with indistinct things for no reason is still kind of funny.  Also: "the statues and paintings of all the great men."  You know, I hope my affection for Moores is not perceived as condescending, but this observation may not help my case: I find that charmingly naive.  Obviously Moores had zero intention to be at all political here, but people who aren't too self-reflective about these things JUST CAN'T HELP IT, so here we get his endorsement of great man--definitely always "man"--theory.  In the ol' Hall of Fame Museum.  I think before I go there I'll stop at the ATM machine to get some cash. 

Read more »

"What If...? Minnie Became Captain Marvel"

 Okay okay, let's do this, by popular demand (?)--well, I probably DID at some point say I was going to do it, so here you go.  I haven't been following these Disney What If stories, but evidently they've been proliferating.  Woof.  If I'm required to write about all of them, I must've committed some pretty bad sins.  To be clear, I don't think I am.  I haven't even read those others; they sound just too insipid for words, at least given the series' track record.  So are you filled with excitement?  Let's do it.

So when I was first planning to write about this, I actually ended up reading the first dozen or so issues of the original Ms. Marvel (nee Carol Danvers), which kicked off in 1977, to prepare.  I enjoyed them, even if they did become pretty repetitive.  The character's abilities are fairly generic, in spite of her convoluted back story, but she IS notable as a specific feminist archetype.  This is exemplified  as exemplified by the use of "Ms," which was just becoming a big cultural thing in the seventies.  Gloria Steinem co-founded Ms. magazine in 1972, and we're off to the races.  She's an independent, self-reliant working girl making her way in a man's world, and she's in media, even.  What I'm saying is, she's basically Mary Tyler Moore.  J Jonah Jameson would have and no doubt at some point did derisively refer to here as a "women's libber."  So that is interesting and I like it.

Read more »

"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.)

Read more »

"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.

Read more »

"Spending Money"

Not a very inspiring title, is it? Of course, it has no official status; it's just what people call it.  Presumably someone from Another Rainbow(?) slapped that title on it, and here we are. Makes me wonder what WOULD make if "official." I suppose if it had the official imprimatur of The Walt Disney Company™, that would do it. They should have official contests to name Barks stories. We'd probably end up with something better than this, anyway.

...is that the trouble with being rich? IS it? I try not to bring politics into these entries too much--yes, I DO bring them in, because these stories are inherently political, but believe me, it could be MUCH worse. But damn, man. Personally, I think the worst thing about being rich--certainly being ULTRA-rich--is that it destroys your brain and you're not capable of interacting with the world in a normal way anymore. Yes, as I constantly point out, comparing Scrooge to a "real" (so-called) rich person is pointless, but this story DOES seem to be a better argument for it than most, given that his excess money DOES cause him to act in extremely dumb ways here.

Read more »

"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!

Read more »

"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.

Read more »

"Two-Way Luck"

 I have to get my biggest--and, really, only serious--critique of this story out of the way first, which is man, that title.  Totally generic-sounding and not providing even the vaguest hint of the story's content?  Blah!  Still, it feels ungrateful to complain too much.  I'm sure we all just think of it as "the giant emerald story" anyway--or how about "Green with Envy;" would that work?.  It's a back-up  (to "All at Sea"), the sort of thing that you expect to be a little more disposable than the main one, even coming from Barks.  But man, it isn't.  I mean okay maybe it's a little silly in some ways (a Disney comic?  Get the heck outta here, ya nut!), but the artistry is also highly apparent.  So.

I do, however, always get caught up on the "emerald contest" thing.  I mean, I don't think I did when I was small, but NOW I do.  So, in this world, can we assume that nobody really knows what the biggest jewels are, or who has them?  Because if we did, it doesn't seem like this contest would really mean much.  But Scrooge DOES appear to believe it's in some way established that his is the biggest in the world--an apprehension he could only be under if there were some kind of organization that makes these determinations.  And, I mean, he has to be cajoled into entering, and he wouldn't do it at all if his nephews weren't here, so you gotta figure there are a bunch of people with big emeralds not entering them, from ignorance or apathy, so what is being accomplished here?  Tell me!

Read more »

"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."  

Read more »

"The Skiing/Clock Bandit"

Happy New Year! Let's hope 2026 is less horrible! I feel like that's probably gonna require rolling a natural twenty, but it's worth a shot.

Inducks calls this "The Skiing Bandit," but they also claim that the Australian publication was titled "The Clock Bandit."  I can't verify this one way or the other, but either one is fine.  So anyway, here's a New Year story. Absolutely, that's what this is. Is there any evidence of this? Well, there's snow. And it was published in January. That's all the evidence you will get, and, I think, all you need. Some Dick Moores for y'all! Try to imagine ANY other context in which that phrase could get people excited. And yes, I know: you're not excited. That's why I'm writing this and you're not.

Read more »

"The Beagle Boys' Very Merry Christmas"

Hello, all.  Just a quick hit here.  I didn't think I was going to be doing anything else for Christmas, but then, idly flipping through some Christmas comix, I encountered this one.  I'd read it once before, but I didn't even remember that until my reread.  All I recall is that I found it weird and pointless, which is a bit odd, because this came out in 2018, and I would have thought that by that time, I'd have long since come to appreciate the weird and pointless.

Read more »

Daisy Duck and Uncle Scrooge Show Boat

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

Read more »

"A Case of Grumps"

Hello all.  Yeah, yeah, but as I noted in comments to the last entry, I DO have something big-ish and dumb-ish coming for the holidays, or something.  In the meantime, though, I wanted to stick something here so I look less dead.  So I grabbed a story more or less at random from Daisy and Donald.  This one is...whoa!  A late Bob Gregory joint!  How's this going to turn out?  Let's find the truth.

And off the bat, I have to say, I'm grateful that the top panel tells us that Donald is saying things with a "grump!" and that the bottom panel clarifies that he needs a cure for grumpiness--because solely based on the visuals, I would have NO idea what mood Donald was meant to be in there.  Time for Daan Jippes to redraw this, please!  Actually, why doesn't he just devote his career to converting the entire late-Western canon into something more readable?  That would be good.

Read more »

"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.

Read more »

"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. 

Read more »

"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.

Read more »

Good God Y'all

 Yes, I know it looks as if I've abandoned this blog. I know there's normally a lull after Christmas, but this seems excessive. Well what can I say? I DO intend to go back to posting, but when your country is being disassembled by nazis, one DOES tend to get distracted, as some of you, thankfully, don't know (though you could probably guess).  Anyone want to suggest a story to me? 

Other than that, I wanted to pass something along, from an Argentine woman:

When I was a child in Argentina, each time we went on holiday to the beach, my mum bought mcduck series comic books for me to read. One in particular completely blew my mind, but I cannot find it anywhere.

I vaguely remember they (either scrooge or donald, most likely with the nephews) went searching for a treasure, with a map, and found a cave with a pirate's spectacular collection of seashells. I believe it was in an island. I remember the drawings very clearly, but might have the details mixed up. I really would love to find it and remember the title etc... I ended up being a maritime archaeologist, so it had quite an impact come think about it.

Super-cool that that would impact someone's career.   The seashell thing didn't ring any bells (am I forgetting something obvious?), but this was the late nineties, she also said, and I THOUGHT that might be specific enough for me to find what she meant on inducks.  Unfortunately, Argentine comics are extremely sparsely indexed, so I'm gonna have to rely on you people.  That is, if there ARE any "you people" after all these months of silence. :/

"The Beast of Bear Mountain"

 Okay, okay, Achille, I yield.  It's time to make some Christmas dreams come true.  Or something.

You know, the reason I was so reluctant to cover this material is because the equation seems to change fairly dramatically depending on whether you're talking about professional or amateur work.  My philosophy generally is, if someone got paid to write this story, and readers were meant to pay for the privilege, it's fair game.  But here, it's like: we're all amateurs!  What right do I have to criticize someone who's writing purely out of love?  Crikey, man!  Also, it's a small internet!  There's a good chance Jolley will see this (actually, unless she intentionally refuses to, she definitely will; it would be rude for me not to email her)!  How am I going to feel about making harsh criticisms?  And even in the even that I don't HAVE any sharp criticisms (and my feelings here are more favorable than not), there's still a sense that this is a performance; that you're kind of on a tightrope.  Who knows!  Maybe I'm overthinking it!  It has happened before.  I'd better get started before I manage to talk myself out of it.  This one, which Achille linked to for fairly obvious reasons.  As usual, I'm not going to try to cover every plot point.  Read it for yourself.

Read more »

Dollicious

This blog is for Disney comics, but we may also use it to celebrate the accomplishments of its readers, yeah? It's what Christmas is all about.

Well, yes. So, as you may know, and if you didn't you do now, our own Pan Milius, aka, Maciek Kur, is a comics creator in his own right. Polish comics may not tend to get a lot of international attention (although, of course, The Witcher is Polish, so it's not like there's no crossover), but he's rocking them. His flagship series, and I think the only one to be localized into English, is Dollicious, which we will discuss today. For context, quite some time ago, he got his publisher to send me complementary copies to review, and DAMN did I ever flake out on him (admit it: you thought I'd never get to it.  So did I, kind of). There are various reasons, but really, there's no dang excuse. So here we are!

Read more »

"The Christmas Contest"

 Hey!  Let's get some Christmas going 'round here, shall we?  This year...well, I'm not quite sure.  If you suggest something to me, there's actually at least a semi-decent chance I'll cover it, because we are scraping the bottom of the barrel here.  I suppose at some point I'll stop even trying to find new Christmas stories, and just do some general stuff I like for Christmas.  But for now: well, there's this story that I do not feel super-strongly about.  This originally appeared in IDW's Christmas Parade 5--the one after they decided their scripts had to be Fresh and Modern (boy, I ran THAT one into the ground) and fired everyone who knew what they were doing, as you do.  So the script is not great.  But I will say one thing: I don't blame Erin Brady (the translator); it's not her fault.  Sure, her work isn't particularly inspired or fun to read, but IDW was absolutely NOT looking for inspiration or fun, and if she didn't deliver, they just would've found someone who would.  So no hard feelings, Erin.  Try reading some Barks comics!  You might become a fan!

(I remember a few years back I slightly misspoke and blamed Fantagraphics for something that was Disney's fault, and for some reason this necessitated A LOT of people frantically correcting me on this trivial point.  It felt a little...hectoring, let's say.  Mebbe in the future we could be just a LITTLE less heavy-handed?)

Read more »