"The Waltz King"

All right, it's been kind of a hard week, so you get some Barks.  But to clarify: just because I do Barks doesn't automatically mean it was a hard week.  And I might do something OTHER than Barks on a hard week, too.  Most likely an NBW story.  So while the story I do IS causally related to my stress levels, it's not a perfect correlation and you can't really use it for predictive purposes.  I hope that's clear.

(Did I consider doing a patriotism-themed story this week?  Um...no.  We'll say no more of that.  This story WAS written/released in the summer, though, so enjoy that fact.)

From 1947, this is an early story than we've been looking at lately.  And I have oddly mixed feelings about it.  Because there are real, definite highlights; the plot is fairly adroit--and yet, I sorta-kinda don't like it that much.  Let us try to figure out why.

Few stories get to the point faster, I'll say that for it.  Waltz contest!  Do it!  Not quite sure why Daisy's in charge of the Sub-Teen-Age Debbies Club, but hey, there's a lot we don't know about her.

But, not to tell anyone how to do their job, but I feel like maybe if Daisy's really in this contest to win it, she should, like, practice with Donald, as opposed to just ostentatiously sprawling on her divan like a Victorian opium-eater?  Two to tango, and all that?  Maybe.  Not that it's not pretty funny.

Note also Donald's creepy painting of innumerable ducks staring at you.  Even at this early stage, Barks liked to do weird, fun things like that.

I, who invented pressurized tales for zoot suits!  Very steampunk.  I am really truly wracking my brain trying to figure out what that could possibly mean, and all I can come up with is that maybe it blasts air into the suit to puff it out, like a bird doing a mating display.  But it may in fact purely be sublime nonsense.

I like "Downbeat Joe," but I dunno, I'm far from an expert on this kind of music, but it somehow seems like it would be from musicians named Freddy Jones and His Hot Licks, or like that.  I enjoy that Strauss (Johann fils, presumably) comes up, though.  I enjoy some Strauss (and he was indeed nicknamed "The Waltz King", so very apropos after-the-fact title).

Donald is frequently battered by the vicissitudes of fortune.  It's a fundamental part of who he is.  This we know.  This one just feels sort of, I don't know, excessive to me.  Maybe it's just his screwy eyes that make me feel that way.

Or maybe it's that he appears to actually be suffering from some sort of physical and mental ailment, and it's making me feel slightly sympathetically ill.  I like that HDL are swimming there.  I mean, why not?  It's Summer (this issue of WDC came out September 1).  Just a pleasant touch.

And then this, boy I don't know.  Look, I'm trying to look at this critically, but at a certain point my inner five-year-old just chimes in with IT'S NOT FAIR, which is not the reaction I have to your average Gladstone story.

Jam-nesia!  Terrific pun there!  Really helping the situation out.  Well done.

Anyone ever read Philip K Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly?  Or, presumably, seen the movie, although I haven't?  The main character is a drug enforcement guy, and to infiltrate his targets he has to take large amounts of this fictional drug himself, but it has the effect of splitting a person's mind in two, so at a certain point he's narcing on himself without knowing it.  Inspired by this story?  Maybe!  I do like that; I admire the inventiveness.  It IS classic Donald, I can't deny that, but it's also a little painful to read.

I mean, look.  I'm only human.  I can't deny getting a certain charge out of Donald flying off the handle and beating up people in costumes.  It has its charm.  In this instance, though, I'm not sure it adds up to that much.  I do kinda like the character designs for these guys, though.

Okay, I have to admit, in isolation, I do really like these.

If you ever get in trouble for beating the shit out of some dudes, you should explain that you thought they were some other guy.  That'll work.  Also, I feel like female dogfaces are kind of unusual, no?  Are they?  Or am I just saying that because these ones have distinctive costumes?  Hard to say.

I like their righteous anger, also.  Let's send him to the cleaners!  We don't get to see them exacting their vengeance, though, which is a bit of a shame.

"What ran over me?  A steam calliope?"  See, whatever else you can say, that's a fun line you won't see anywhere else.  But at the same time--I don't know; maybe I just find Donald a little TOO hapless in this story.

Come to think of it, HDL's efforts to help Donald via skullduggery rarely work--if Donald ends up winning out, it's always something related but not directly causally linked.  I think their efforts DO demonstrate the familial bond, though.

Thump them tubs, longhair!  I just wanted to say that.  A "longhair" was a classical music afficianado, like me; I DO have long-ish hair, but I don't think the term has much currency nowadays.

I don't know.  Maybe I'd even go so far as to say that I find Donald's mental contortions here to be a little disturbing.  And in spite of everything, that's probably why I'd put it fairly low as Barks stories go, in spite of having said a lot of nice things about it.  But hey, "Eight-Day Clocks in Your Bobbie Socks."

Okay, I'm aware that this entry is a little anemic, so let's see what else we've got here, shall we?  First: a weirdly epic Bucky Bug story where our heroes are captured by "bad beetles of the underland."  I have no problem with Bucky Bug, but I find it difficult to really engage with it, because it inevitably just boils down to me approving or not approving of the particular rhymes.  I dunno.  Then there's Li'l Bad Wolf, which...nah, man, I just can't.  It's true that I also used to dislike Mickey Mouse, but that's...different.  No wolves for me, please.

Next, a story starring Bongo, the escaped circus bear from one of the segments of Fun and Fancy Free who learns that a bear likes to say it with a slap.  The story here is that his rival in the movie, Lumpjaw, is pretending to be nice so as then to...presumably betray Bongo in some way, but it never gets that far, because the story ends...interestingly.  Seriously, check THIS shit out:

JESUS CHRIST.  I was genuinely taken aback by this, more than I have been by just about anything.  Now, it's true that Lumpjaw DOES appear in a number of subsequent stories, so this may not be canon, but here he is very unambiguously SHOT TO DEATH.  Has that ever happened elsewhere in the form?  As you know, it's typical for Disney villains to die by falling, so it's kinda bloodless and no one specifically is to blame.  I guess Ursula getting impaled on a ship's prow is kinda gruesome, but still.

Also, Bongo comes across as an absolute psychopath here.  At the time of this killing, he is totally convinced that Lumpjaw is now his friend, so he definitely ought to be evincing, oh, I don't know, ANY CONCERN WHATSOEVER.  Screw that guy.

Anyway, what else?  A few MM and DD gag strips, the latter featuring this Socrates character whom I hadn't heard of.  I don't think I was missing TOO much.  A short rhyming Mickey story:

I'm just putting that here because I enjoy the "quick, he/Mickey" rhyme.  Then there's part four of Gottfredson's "The Gleam," here renamed to "The Jewel Robbery," and that's it.  Bish bash bosh.