"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.

Here's how we open.  One thing about Lockman, he loved loved LOVED the word "wak."  I don't think anyone else really cared all that much about it, but it's just endless waks, along with permutation such as "wakky."  I dunno; it's endearing, or would be.  Kind of linguistically fun.

Ho ho.  Pretty sure this is the first and only (unless Lockman returned to that well at some point) use of "wak" in a name.  Zak McWak.  That's actually kind of cute, even if the guy is pretty weird-looking.  At least Strobl was trying something different!  The way the nephews are standing in front of that portrait, it looks as though it just sort of exploded into existence in front of them.

But as we kinda-enjoy the weirdness, let's also note that HDL here are acting in a really strange, alien way.  Doesn't matter if you idolize this questionable relative; running in like this to genuflect before his image is weird and not-un-creepy.

What's left?  I don't know?  A functional moral compass?  I don't want to malign Zak McWak, who seems extremely great, but I dunno.  Anyway, forget about him; we'll hear of him no more.  We don't care about that loser!  The question of Donald's competence is something that a Barks story would likely carry on, but we don't have that level of sophistication here.

Oh yeah, did I mention that we've got some Moby Duck here?  Exciting stuff.  

I really do wonder about Moby's creation.  So: he first appeared in March of 1967, in a book whose cover makes it clear that he's supposed to be the new hotness:

He appeared in another story two issues later in July, and then in October, boom, he has his own book.  How to explain this?  I suppose the simplest explanation, which per Occam we should go with, is that he wrote the initial story, Western thought "holy SHIT, this kid is GOING places!" and then we were off to the races.  Still, that's a pretty bizarre thing to happen, innit?  It took four and a half years to go from "Christmas on Bear Mountain" to Scrooge having his own line.  And come on, that was Barks: Western was not otherwise in the habit of putting their weight behind random characters that people invented like that.

In a way, it would be easier for me to believe corporate was just casting around for a new character.  Somebody thought they needed to do more to appeal to the Salty Sea Dog demographic, so they invented Moby by committee, and then told Lockman, here, this  seems like it's in your wheelhouse (this and conspiracy theories about Jewish cabals being behind the Civil Rights Movement), so you write the stories, and we'll print 'em.  Well, that WOULD be easier to believe, except that "Moby Duck" seems like SUCH an obvious Lockmanian invention, so...buh?.  I REALLY wish someone had done a comprehensive oral history of Western Disney comics before everyone involved was dead.  It would be fascinating, and it would solve so many weird little mysteries like this.  A genuine alas.

(And look, if you think the parenthetical in the above paragraph is going too far, I strongly encourage you to learn more about Bircher ideology.  Look, I'm going to try not to let it warp my impressions of the stories too much, but I AM going to be taking gratuitous swipes like this at him moving forward.  Not all the time; that would get tedious.  But here and there.  That's just how it's gonna be.)

He DOES seem to have put at least a bit of thought into giving this a little bit of verisimilitude.  Not terrible.  "Bars of yellow stuff."  Our favorite!  Though I DO have to note that the reason that gold stolen from indigenous people is in the form of bars, and it's that the Spanish shitheads melted it down, destroying god knows how many incredible art treasures.  There's no reason to think they'd have it in that form.

But the thing that I found interesting in this story is the way it treats the morality of this Aztec-gold-taking plan.  And before I say anything else, I should make it clear that whatever ambient racism you may find in Lockman, I don't think it has anything to do with his extracurricular affiliations.  It was just the thing, and everyone did it sometimes.  I don't know what else to say.  It's entirely probable that you would never, ever guess from his Disney work that he was who he was.

BUT, be that as it may, I can't help see something like this and think, boy, you sure do seem, let's say, indifferent to the depredations of colonizers.  "But I thought the conquistadors got all the Aztec gold," like it's just some sort of logistical question.

I'll admit that I haven't read the complete run of Moby Duck (scandal!), but I kind of doubt he actually kills a whale anywhere.  It probably was fairly terrible timing to introduce a whaler character in 1968, just as people were becoming more aware of environmental issues like this.  Also, "lubbery," a classic instance of Lockman only sort of being familiar with words.

Is this a practical way to do anything?  Still, it's a fun thing that kids will like, and it vaguely reminds me of Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, so I'm good.

Also, LOOK HOW COOL THIS LOOKS!  High marks to Strobl for this one.

Moby is really just a more ocean-oriented Fethry, really.  The two overlap quite a lot.  Seems kinda like flooding the market to introduce them in such quick succession (well, 1964 and 67, quick-ish).  At any rate, this seems not-terrible as C-tier treasure hunts go, regardless of whatever colonialist undertones you get from it.

And here's where I go WHOA, what the heck?  Before you were just talking about the conquistadors pillaging the Aztecs like it was nothing, and now quite explictly "whoa!  We can't STEAL from these people!"  I mean, granted, some writers might've had them deplore that original theft so that this doesn't seem to left-field, but I'll take it.  Don't get me wrong.

But then JUST as I was starting to feel good about things, THIS.  Does Lockman think that stories of, say, buying Manhattan for twenty-four dollars' worth of junk are examples of...being FAIR to the native people?  "We don't want to rob them per se, but also, ripping them off is totes cool."  What are you even DOING, dude?  Not thinking much about the implications of what you're writing, is what I'd surmise.

Ha ha trading lousy biscuits for gold.  Dumb natives!  Sigh...but oh no, what's happening behind Moby?

Did I mention that we've got Captain Hook?  Well, we do.  So enjoy that.  Now, my memories of the movie are limited, but were Hook and Smee REALLY a two-man operation?  There MUST have been other crew members, mustn't there?  Well, not here.  Note also "blokes," a word he also likes giving to Moby.  I can't quite tell why; it seems to be some sort of conflating of Britishness with piraticality?  Hard to say.

And then THIS: in spite of everything, the story is still sympathetic with the Aztecs!  I'm going crazy!  Lockman clearly doesn't see trading biscuits for gold as cheating, which, well, it probably DOES bespeak a certain internalized racism, but ("it's PERFECTLY fair to trade crap to the natives for their treasure--THEY don't know the difference")...well, it could be worse?  I suppose?

So how's this gonna turn out?  Yes, they'll overcome Captain Hook and save the Aztecs' treasure, yadda yadda, heh-heh!  But THEN what?

...okay, dangit, Lockman, you win.  In this particular limited case.  I don't think this really makes the behavior of the characters notably more explicable, but it's a good twist that I didn't see coming, and it was even hinted before when Moby referred to it as "bars of yellow stuff."  If you wanted to, you could even interpret this as them laughing ruefully at their oblivious racism: how stupid were they to think they could just essentially steal the gold like that?  No more of this racist shitheadery from us!  Obvious that's reading more than he intended, and fuck him, but just the same...I like it.  It just goes to show: even if your politics are truly monstrous, you can still produce...great art?  Let's not get carried away.  More or less adequate ephemeral entertainment, let's say.