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Post by brutalis on Jun 21, 2020 19:34:56 GMT -5
Certainly going to have some fun going back to the start with this thread. Now that I have all the current Barks books from Fantagraphics I can try matching up the stories with the reviews. Will hopefully provide me a bit of edumacation with my reading pleasure! I grew up knowing of the Barks duckworld & reading a few stories & reading about Barks importance but until the last few years the collected books all eluded me due to cost. Ain't it grand as we get older to redistribute our funds & our buying habits for the finer things in life we missed out on or didn't have a taste for? As a teen buying with limited funds it was all super-duper heroics while these days I shift towards so many other great series & stories. The adult reading palate has acquired more depth & sophistication & appreciation which eluded youthful me.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 24, 2020 10:28:18 GMT -5
The Terror of the River (Four Color 108)  A year after Frozen Gold/Mystery of the swamp we get another Donald Duck one-shot. This has one long adventure type story along with a 13-page story and a 10-pager either of which would have fit in to Walt Disney's Comics & Stories. Even the adventure story is unquestionably the least exotic of the long stories we've gotten thus far. Donald is cold and is sneezing so he ducks (ha!) into an auction to warm up. Unfortunately his sneezing is taken for bidding and he ends up buying a house-boat. Unfortunately the boat is in Ohio, over 2500 miles away and though the boys urge him to go get it, he's going to just write the $30 (almost $400 in 2020 money) off.  Ultimately they decide to make the trip to Floodout, Ohio, where they find that the boat is underwater (a flood) and that it will cost them $102.10 (about $1350) for dock fees. Ultimately they get the boat back on the water and begin traveling down the Ohio river, learning funny lessons about boating along the way (apparently Donald's sailor costume is just for show) and having minor domestic squabbles. It's about 1/3 of the way into the story that "the Terror of the River" shows up in the form of a sea monster.  Donald and the boys essentially spend the rest of the story traveling down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers battling the monster and trying to solve its mystery. At first the authorities don't believe them, but eventually most river traffic is stopped by the creature. The Boys learn about half way through that it's a fake when they harpoon it and come up with rubber scales. Donald, in an attempt to take it down, ends up down its gullet and is captured.  {Spoiler}{Spoiler: Click to show}Ultimately the Boys and Donald are able to overcome the Terror, which is actually a guy with a submarine decked out as a sea monster. And really his whole plan is that he gets off on scaring people and wants to make a name for the monster after which he is going to hide the sub and end his reign of terror. An expensive way to scare people for no real benefit. But he's sufficiently ruthless as he is willing to bury Donald alive with in the sub. It's nice to have another adventure story, but this is a decidedly lightweight one. One interesting tidbit here is that it becomes clear that Duckburg is on the west coast and almost certainly in California, as the boys talk about taking the boat to Catalina. I know that later Rosa will make Duckburg and the State of Calisota in our northern California, but this is the first time I can recall that there's a reasonable placement for Duckburg.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Jun 24, 2020 16:10:01 GMT -5
Barks' ducks eating birds, such as turkeys, is pretty damn creepy.
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Post by MDG on Jun 25, 2020 8:12:31 GMT -5
Barks' ducks eating birds, such as turkeys, is pretty damn creepy. It's dog eat dog out there... or something... |
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Post by brutalis on Jun 25, 2020 8:27:34 GMT -5
Yeah, the Disney world is all kinds of messed up in their logic. Poor Pluto remains an atypical dog while Goofy is humanized. Ducks eat turkey and ham/etc. All kinds of wildlife remain animals while others walk around on 2 legs, develop hands and speak? Good ol' Uncle Walt must have been smoking something very special in those cigarettes of his!
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 16, 2021 15:27:46 GMT -5
Donald Duck's Atom Bomb. (Cheerios Giveaway #Y1 1947)  Silly little giveaway that, while ostensibly a thirty page book, is actually the equivalent of a 10-pager. Donald invents an "atom bomb." But instead of going "BOOM!" it goes "FUT!" Professor Mollicule and his foreign associate Prof. Sleezy come over to take a look and appear to think it's a great invention even though it doesn't appear to actually do anything. Prof. Sleezy turns out to be a foreign spy (c'mon look at the name) and steals the A-bomb and the formula. In trying to avoid capture Sleezy sets off the bomb and the "rays" from it make everyone's hair fall out. Mollicule still thinks it's an important find, but Donald has moved on to a bigger invention...hair restorer. A silly little story, but certainly topical in 1947. Again, we see Donald being smarter than we'd usually think and ending the story with a money-making business. We know it won't last. 
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 17, 2021 14:18:28 GMT -5
Maharaja Donald (March of Comics 4, 1947)  It's a little hard to get a bead on exactly when this Barks adventure story hit the streets. I can't say stands because "March of Comics" was a series of giveaways that were predominantly given out by shoe stores to customers. It's slated in here on Wikipedia and we know that it's got a 1947 cover date. Since these were giveaways there were a lot of them...but they were, I think, less likely to be kept and certainly not in good shape. They also weren't reprinted in the way that the Four Color stories were. This one wasn't reprinted in the US until 1978 (in a hardcover) and 1990 in a comic book. At whatever point this came out it had been over a year since there had been a long adventure story for Donald and the boys with the River of Terror in Jan. '46.  The story is precipitated by jerk-ass Donald tricking the boys in to cleaning out the garage and paying them only a stub of a pencil. Through judicious horse-trading the boys trade it for a series of items culminating in a steamer ticket to India. Donald, of course confiscates the ticket and takes the trip himself. The boys are supposed to stay with Grandma Duck, but stow away and end up in India with Donald. Arriving in India, Donald is convinced by the Maharaja of Hoopadoola to come to his palace. This is all part of a convoluted plot that finds Donald as the Maharaja of the neighboring kingdom of Bumpay. Unfortunately, since Donald is so small the Bumpayans have to pay land to Hoopadoola as an interest payment instead of diamonds. This leads to Donald being fed to the famous tigers of Bumpay and having to be rescued by the nephews. It's all very silly and complicated but generally fun.  This is a fairly standard early Barks adventure story. They will become much better with time. It has the exotic locale and some adventure but the adventures are still happening by happenstance rather than being driven by some overarching reason.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 18, 2021 7:40:13 GMT -5
Just curious... are you reading these from an online source? Or a collection? (I'm guessing you don't have the originals, though that would be amazing). I was working on the Don Rosa hardcovers for a while... Someday I'll probably get the Carl Barks ones too  |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 18, 2021 9:33:22 GMT -5
Just curious... are you reading these from an online source? Or a collection? (I'm guessing you don't have the originals, though that would be amazing). I was working on the Don Rosa hardcovers for a while... Someday I'll probably get the Carl Barks ones too Combination of Gladstone/Gemstone comics I got cheap over the years, hardcover collections and online sources. I've gotten most of the Barks and Rosa HCs. |
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,860
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Post by shaxper on Mar 18, 2021 11:55:52 GMT -5
He's baaaa-aaaaack.
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Post by brutalis on Mar 18, 2021 12:06:36 GMT -5
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 22, 2021 15:33:19 GMT -5
Volcano Valley (Four Color #147, May 1947)  Donald appears in Four Color for the first time in a little over a year. Ultimately, it might have been better if they'd waited longer. This is a story that has not aged well at all...and I suspect it wasn't viewed all that well at the time because it wasn't reprinted for forty years. The boys want a model airplane, but cheap Donald decides to buy one from army surplus. Inexplicably he gets an actual full-size bomber...because...reasons. He almost instantly sells it to a citizen of Volanovia, a pretty bad Mexican stereotype named Pablo Manana, for 300,000 Volcanovian Pezozies, which are, of course, almost worthless. Donald and the boys ask for a ride in the plane and end up in Volcanovia, because Pablo had to take siesta, because everyone in Volcanovia is lazy and sleeps all the time. On the plus side they all speak in very broad "Latin American" accents.  Donald and the boys want to leave and go home. But "veesitors" to Volcanovia can only leave if they become "National Heroes." Because...reasons. Of course this leads to various shenanigans with Donald trying to become a hero and things back-firing as they are want to do. Along the way we get to see that Volcanovians are lazy and siesta all the time and aren't smart enough to figure out how to milk cows.  Donald's shenanigans end up with him being a "national menace" rather than a "national hero" so he's set to be put on trial and sentenced to work in the salt mines. The volcanos of Volcanovia act up more than normally active and Donald and the boys are able to make their escape after "plugging up the volcano with popcorn."  Barks is a master. But even the very best, strike out, fumble the ball, blow a deadline, whatever metaphor you want to use. Leaving aside the ethnic problems (which are bad, but not the worst we will see from Barks) the story just isn't very good. There are funny gags in it. But it's a possibly humorous 10-page story stretched out to a 30-page adventure. And it just doesn't work. Add in the problematic content and it is by far the worst story from Barks so far...including all the 10-pagers. Note: Huey, Dewey & Louie state they are members of the Bear Cub Rangers in this one.
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 22, 2021 16:24:02 GMT -5
Volcano Valley (Four Color #147, May 1947) Donald appears in Four Color for the first time in a little over a year. Ultimately, it might have been better if they'd waited longer. This is a story that has not aged well at all...and I suspect it wasn't viewed all that well at the time because it wasn't reprinted for forty years. (...) Ah, but it was reprinted before that, in the 1970s. Only not as a comic, but rather as an illustrated prose book, to wit: Specifically it was a Whitman Big Little Book, originally published in 1973, but it stayed in print throughout the 1970s, because I only picked it up in a drugstore magazine aisle sometime in late 1977 or 1978 - when I went through a big Archie and funny animal phase in my comics reading. Anyway, your review sums up the story and its crappiness pretty well. As I recall, a very little effort was made to smooth out the horrible ethnic stereotypes in the prose version, but only a little.
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 22, 2021 16:27:25 GMT -5
Volcano Valley (Four Color #147, May 1947) Donald appears in Four Color for the first time in a little over a year. Ultimately, it might have been better if they'd waited longer. This is a story that has not aged well at all...and I suspect it wasn't viewed all that well at the time because it wasn't reprinted for forty years. (...) Ah, but it was reprinted before that, in the 1970s. Only not as a comic, but rather as an illustrated prose book, to wit: Specifically it was a Whitman Big Little Book, originally published in 1973, but it stayed in print throughout the 1970s, because I only picked it up in a drugstore magazine aisle sometime in late 1977 or 1978 - when I went through a big Archie and funny animal phase in my comics reading. Anyway, your review sums up the story and its crappiness pretty well. As I recall, a very little effort was made to smooth out the horrible ethnic stereotypes in the prose version, but only a little.
You're right. I knew it had come out as a Big Little Book but forgot to mention it. I would imagine it might be a bit better in that format, but it would take a lot to make that story anything better than awful. |
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Post by EdoBosnar on Mar 28, 2021 8:17:32 GMT -5
Donald Duck and the Mummy's Ring (Four Color #29) (...) As noted in my post in the " What classic comics have you read lately?" thread, I just re-read this story recently. I definitely agree that this is a prime example of a Barks adventure story, with the fast-moving plot that sees his characters facing all kinds of perils and also traveling to exotic locales. I have to say, though, reading these as an adult, I'm really noticing the casual racism and/or ethnic stereotypes that pepper his stories (as aspect that I largely didn't notice when I first read them as a preteen). In this specific case, there's definitely a dose of Orientalism in the faux-Egyptian settings. I can't say I'm coming to any kind of coherent conclusion with this line of thought, because this aspect isn't a deal-breaker for me - I still enjoy reading a good Barks Duck story. |
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