Walt Disney's Comics Digest #3

My biggest problem with a comic digest is if they are a holiday issue, that they're never 100% full of holiday material. It's not like Gladstone was hurting for Christmas stories. They could have made this whole 96-pager 1987, about Christmas, if they really wanted to.

The cover is obviously Christmas themed. It's a great gag by Walt Kelly. The opener is about Christmas. It's a Carl Barks classic that sees Donald Duck jealously battling his lucky duck cousin, Gladstone Gander, in a competition to see who is going to win the Christmas turkey raffle. Though in all honesty, you could have replaced Thanksgiving with Christmas in this story and you'd never know the difference.

6 stories remain. They star Disney comics mainstays such as Hazel the Witch, Mickey Mouse and the L'il Bad Wolf. And then there's a full length adaptation of Lady and the Tramp and I couldn't be in a more festive mood about it. 

I didn't realize it, but the 1955 animated film is book-ended by Christmas. Lady is gifted to her mistress on a snowy Christmas morning. Then the story ends a couple of years later with Lady having given birth to a litter on Christmas. These 2 scenes do not make Lady & the Tramp a Christmas movie. But I am counting it as part of the holiday cheer that comprises this book. 

(Side note: adding to Lady & the Tramp's connection to Christmas, a stuffed animal version of Lady was all the rage in the Christmas of 1985. Burger joint Hardee's offered versions of the pup along with a plush Pinnochio, Bambi and Dumbo. I remember how myself and all my classmates just had to have the whole set of 4!)

I should have reviewed this book a couple of years ago. I bought it 2 years ago after a trip to the mountains during Spring Break. I read it later that year. But somehow I accidentally filed it in my Christmas read box before giving my rating of the book. Overall, not a bad find for only a buck in a thrift store I had never visited before. And now it can go back into the correct section of my collection.

Worth Consumimg!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Autumn Adventures #1

I could have finished this book earlier. I started in in mid-October. However, once I realized that there was some Thanksgiving themed stories, I decided to wait until now to complete.

Walt Disney's Autumn Adventures #1 doesn't just cover Halloween which is what I thought based on Chip and Dale hauling a gigantic jack-o'-lantern on the cover. Had I been a bit more keen, I would have noticed Gyro Gearloose using one of his new inventions to capture a turkey! No, this really is a book that runs the entire Fall season gambit.

The book is essentially divided into 3 sections: the coming of Autumn, Halloween and Thanksgiving. In the first part, Huey, Dewey and Louie get in trouble playing hooky during the first day of school in a Carl Barks classic while chipmunks Chip and Dale contemplate going south for the winter.

In the middle section, Donald's nephews and the Junior Woodchucks explore a haunted house owned by Uncle Scrooge in a DuckTales themed Halloween romp. Readers get to marvel at the genius of Barks once again when Donald tries out Gyro's latest invention: a jet powered broomstick, to disastrous effect. 

Thanksgiving stories include the Three Little Pigs and Li'l Bad Wolf feeding some turkeys when the Big Bad Wolf decides to use it to his advantage in another attempt to eat the piggies. Meanwhile, Pluto must save Horace Horsecollar's prize winning turkey from poachers after Mickey's dog accidentally lets the bird loose.

From the early 90s when Disney was self publishing it's own comics after the shuttering of Gemstone. It was a very brief affair that later lead to Marvel and then IDW publishing Disney comics for a time. Unfortunately, I can't accurately date this book as there's no copyright inside the book. However I do know that before they went defunct, Disney released another Autumn Adventures the following year. I'm on the lookout for that...

I had no idea that Len Wein was the EIC here. Based on his resume of horror works, heading Disney's comics division seems odd for him. Apparently, Wein brought some DC talent with him as Marv Wolfman among others is listed as one of the writers of a couple of other releases for the month in the back of this book.

A wonderful Fall holiday read that lasts the whole season.

Worth Consuming!

Rating:9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck "Trick Or Treat": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol.13

I ordered this one specifically in time for Halloween. Featuring the complete, unabridged, almost 100% unedited version of Carl Barks' adaptation of the Donald Duck cartoon 'Trick or Treat', this volume is a treasure. Dell, Disney or both felt that Barks' introduction was too scary. Thus, a full page and a half was scrapped and redone in a more friendly time. Tasked with 32-pages to fill based on an about 8 minute long cartoon, Barks padded the middle with the inclusion of a 6-armed ogre named Smorgasbord. Again, someone high up didn't like it and those pages were just removed and the story was trimmed to a 24-page book.

Over the years, many of the original lost pages were recovered. Thanks to Fantagaphics and Rich Tommaso, all except for the last panel were recovered, remastered and re-added to present the Good Duck Artist's original vision. (As of now, only the last panel has never been found.)

'Trick or Treat' is a masterpiece; both on celluloid and in print. I'm so glad that I waited and saved some of my Amazon gift cards to get this book. After the main story there's a couple of one-pagers involving Halloween and an 8-pager that isn't really a Halloween tale. But it does involve some strange goings-on to make it a seasonal read for this time of year.

Halloween isn't the only holiday covered in this book. Thanksgiving sees Donald fleeing to Europe to avoid having to host lucky cousin Gladstone Gander for Turkey Day. Christmas sees Donald trying to trick Uncle Scrooge into paying for his holiday feast. There's even some Valentine's Day love in the air when Donald takes a job as a mailman and must deliver a Valentine to his sweetie, Daisy. Only Donald didn't send her the card! Gladstone did!

Daisy makes a couple more appearances in this book, which also sees the introduction of Daisy's nieces, April, May and June. Daffy inventor Gyro Gearloose besieges Duckburg with some of his out-of-control creations. And there's tons of nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie and my favorite, Uncle Scrooge to be found in this cozy little volume.

My love for the stories is unparalleled. However, I'm starting to get a little annoyed with the expert commentary on the stories. They're all so negative and snobby about it. Sure, you're an academic and that's how you are trained. But I want to know more about the backstory. The inspirations for these tales appeal to me. I don't need to know how the position of Donald's wrist in panel #6 of the third story is a commentary on the plight of Nebraskan hog farmers. Just give me the facts, PLEASE!

As jaded as the experts say Carl Barks was, there just isn't substitute for the amount of joy his world has brought me over the past 40 plus years!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Comics and Stories: 75th Anniversary Special

This year is the 90th anniversary of the debut of that rascally Disney character Donald Duck. So when I saw this issue for sale, at a local coffee shop that sells comics, I thought that this was a tribute issue to Donald. Instead, this book from 2015, is an 75th anniversary salute to Walt Disney's Comics and Stories in all of it's various incarnations thanks to the license being passed through several publishers, including IDW, the latest and currently last company to produce the long anthology.

There are a total of 10 stories and shorts in this giant sized collection, split over a dozen segments. While Donald and his nephews kick off things in a story about a war of pranks amongst the ducks, Disney's brightest star Mickey Mouse stars in a 3-part story divided throughout the book. Titled 'Ridin' the Rails' from 1955, whomever did the restoration job on that story should have won an Eisner or other similar award. They made Mickey and Goofy and Grandma Duck look so modern and not from a 60 year old book. 

Some forgotten characters such as Little Hiawatha and Bucky Bug from Silly Symphonies, the Li'l Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs and Walt Kelly's World War II rapscallions, the Gremlins, all make appearances that fall under IDW's editorial trigger warning that some material in this book may be culturally insensitive but kept in the retrospective for historical purposes. Less offensively, there's visits by Scamp, the young son of Lady and the Tramp as well as a lesson on dinosaurs presented by Ludwig Von Drake!

But really this is a Donald Duck book because he appears in 3 stories. Along with the aforementioned opener, Donald is given the runaround by the antics of Chip and Dale before wrapping things up with Huey Dewey and Louie once more. In that story, the fellas take on Magica de Spell in a caper that doesn't even star Uncle Scrooge, even though the enchantress is trying to steal McDuck's singing flea! Even the variant cover stars Donald Duck. But where is Uncle Scrooge in all this? He's a WDCAS icon who made his very first appearance in any form in the pages of this series. He belongs here! At least Scrooge's creator Carl Barks is featured...

Be sure to read David Gerstein's article at the end of this issue. It dives into the history of the long running anthology and has some interesting in-depth info. So good, I'd love to read a book about the history of Disney comic books.

This 75th anniversary collection was a good read. But to not have Uncle Scrooge involved, other than his name in passing, seems a tad unforgivable. So I'm going to knock a couple of stars off of my rating. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge "Maharajah Donald": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 4

I actually finished this book about 2 months ago. However the theft of my goat was heavy on my mind and I was too distracted to review it at the time. Only after doing some organizing of my piles of books to review did I realize that I had overlooked this very fun entry in the Complete Carl Barks Library.

The title story sees Donald taking a trip to India. He's supposed to be going alone. Except his nephews Huey Dewey and Louie stowaway. Once in India, Donald is unexpectedly made the ruler of a small kingdom in a caper that combined hijinks, international law and a hint of racist stereotypes.

As I've mentioned before, Barks' works are indeed peppered with cultural stereotypes and prejudices that would make today's youth request the cancellation of the amazing cartoonists career. Thankfully, Disney and Fantagaphics has decided not to cull away these works in hopes of creating dialogue about how much our societal norms have changed as well as point out how much further we've got to go.

There's holiday stories a plenty in this book. The nephews win a turkey for Thanksgiving. Only it's a live bird and the boys are too attached to it to kill it. In a fantastic Christmas set story, Donald is a lighthouse keeper who forgot to buy gifts for the boys. A looming maelstrom prevents Donald from going ashore on Christmas Eve. So any chance of a Christmas to remember rests on an albatross tasked with delivering a letter to Santa.

Now all of these stories come from comics that are quite valuable and really hard to find. But it's the inclusion of the Donald Lighthouse story along with a tale in which involves Donald, an atomic bomb and a sneaky spy are what makes this book really worth it's cover price of $35! Both stories are freebie premiums that mostly found their way into the waste bin. The Christmas story was given away by various toy stores and department stores during the 1946 holiday shopping season. The Atomic Donald adventure was part of a 4-issue set of minis included in a box of Cheerios cereal.

Oh, and how can I forget Donald's houseboat adventure titled 'The Terror of the River'. His experience with a river bound sea monster contains some of the most epic images crafted by Barks! It's breathtaking!

Maharajah Donald contains some of the earliest Donald Duck stories produced not by Disney, but Carl Barks as well. There's only 3 volumes of earlier material out there. There's no sign of a sophomore slump or early development kinks here. Without Uncle Scrooge, who's still a couple of years away from debuting at this point, many of the stories in this volume are about as close to the adventuresome duck epic formula that made me such a fan of the Disney Ducks back in the 1980s!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge "The Seven Cities of Gold": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 14

According to the expert commentary at the end of this book, the time period covered here was a very difficult time creatively for creator Carl Barks. For those of you wondering, we're talking 1955-1960. Apparently, Barks and the editors at Western Publishing butted heads over the contents of several stories. All of a sudden, the editorial staff began nitpicking over every little thing and especially took issue with anything that they deemed to be too violent.

The commentators don't seem to know why the sudden change. How good a comic book historian can these experts be if they can't make the connection that Western Publishing was freaking out over concerns brought about by the Comics Scare of the 1950s and the newly established Comics Code?!

True, I purchase and read the volumes of the Carl Barks collection out of order because I shop for the books based on current affordability and not sequence. Maybe in a previous or later volume, the commentaries will dive into the Comics Code. I just think if you're going to question why about something, you really either need to figure out the reasoning or don't call yourself the authority on something. It just makes for poor research. But that's probably just the history major in me coming out.

Within this difficult time, it's said that Barks' productivity waned and his creativity stagnated. I just don't see evidence of that in this book. In fact, for someone who grew up on DuckTales, this volume seems to align with that classic 80s toon the most out of the several volumes in this set I now own!

Several amazing adventures starring Uncle Scrooge and his nephews Donald, Huey, Dewey and Louie take the ducks across the globe including an epic trek all over planet Earth in search of the fabled Philosopher's Stone. Then there's the sci-fi adventure The Mysterious Stone Ray starring those dastardly Beagle Boys. My favorite was The Golden Fleecing which I believe was adapted for the Disney cartoon series! Plus the origins of Scrooge's steamboat days are explored in action packed story titled The Great Steamboat Race. 

When I reviewed Don Rosa's The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, I commented how much I disliked the talent making Scrooge so ornery. Yet, this volume here confirms that Carl Barks was behind the anger because in reality, he was a very disgruntled man. I'd really like to read a biography about Barks. Though I'm not all that sure if such a thing exists. And if it does, I surely hope it's not written by the 'expert' who neglected to connect the damage Dr. Wertham did to the comic book industry in the 1950s to all the in-fighting between Carl Barks and his editors. For if it is, I might have to take a pass.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck "Balloonatics": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 16

I'm learning that as I read my way through the complete works of Carl Barks, the 'good duck artist' is not one to let a good trope die. In not one but two stories, Donald Duck becomes a part of the hot-air ballooning community. 

First, the nephews are trying out some new miniature dirigibles made by Gyro Gearloose, which wreak havoc on Donald who's trying to get some very much desired R&R. In typical Donald firebrand fashion, the boys' Uncle gets revenge. And by revenge, Donald goes overboard with a hot air balloon in his likeness and about double the size of any inflatable you might see at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Plus, it's armed to the teeth!

Story #2 has Huey, Dewey and Louie find a hunting falcon that's just too timid to be a hunter. As the boys try to help the bird find his confidence, Donald enters a contest by being held by the Duckburg Parachute club in which he hopes to win the prize for most original sky dive. Hopefully that will involve the use of a hot air balloon, some vintage balloonist digs and one nervous bird of prey.

Other adventures starring Donald, his nephews and sometimes their spinster uncle, Scrooge McDuck involve a hunt for a sea monster, searching for precious stones in the desert and an investigation into the mysterious destruction of test rockets. There's a classic Turkey Day story in which Donald and cousin Gladstone Gander compete for a chance to earn Thanksgiving dinner with Daisy. It's a tale I've read before but I don't mind a re-read. It's one of Barks' all-time best tales!

There's a couple of stand-out segments in this volume. The complete reissue of Dell Four Color #1161 'Walt Disney's Grandma Duck's Farm Friends', has Barks' presenting a quartet of stories set at Donald's father's family homestead. First, the farm gains a new resident in the form of a gigantic elephant that Uncle Scrooge was gifted from a dignitary. A new chick on Grandma's farm causes mischief along the country side when he's revealed to be a genius with good intentions but some poorly planned ideas. Gladstone makes a visit with intentions of becoming a matador. Then finally, with the nephews visiting Grandma, disaster hits in the form of both a blizzard and the appearance of the Beagle Boys on the lam from the law!

Lastly, readers get to enjoy a half-dozen Junior Woodchuck stories guest-starring Uncle Scrooge in 4 of them! These tales were from when Barks had officially retired from comics. Gold Key had lured the creator back to script duty, but arthritis and age had made it impossible to carry on his quality of work. At the time these stories were published in the 70s, original readers complained of how uninspired the artwork appeared. With their reprinting, Fantagraphics presents new artwork by Danish artist Daan Jippes. The remastered artwork looks like that of Barks and yet, there's something modern about it. Barks was known to be a minimalist when it came to backgrounds. Jippes crafts a masterful background in every panel! Really jarring stuff- in a good way!

The new tales have an Uncle Scrooge more full of piss and vinegar than many of us are used to. His inclusion in those Junior Woodchuck stories were crafted right as the world was about to celebrate its first Earth Day in 1970. (So in a way those stories are holiday themed!) Scrooge McDuck is more like a robber baron, than a penny-pinching businessman, in these stories to the point of almost unlikability. Thankfully, Huey, Dewey and Louie and their scout troop pals save the day and Scrooge's soul in these very different Duck tales. 

With this volume, I'm not sure of a couple of things. For one, why is this a Donald Duck book and not an Uncle Scrooge edition? Would it have even been so bad to have had this volume starring the nephews instead of Donald or Scrooge? Also, if this is a collection of the complete Carl Barks' works of the residents of Duckburg, why the time jump? The Grandma stories were published in 1961. Barks' ecological stories were published a decade later. This is volume 16 of a 26 volume collection. So why put the Junior Woodchuck stories here and not in volume 25 or 26? I'm not complaining about their inclusion. I just don't understand the thought process of the editing team as to having them here and not later on down the line.

A great read that just confuses me as to why certain stories are published out of order if this was supposed to be a omnibus of Carl Barks works about the Disney ducks.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck "The Black Pearls of Tabu Yama": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 19

Maybe it's just me getting older and my tastes have changed. Maybe now owning nearly 12,000 comics and graphic novels that I realize that I don't have to own every comic book ever made. Or maybe it's just because I really love Scrooge McDuck and his nephew Donald. All I know is when it comes to a book that just warms my soul, I'd much rather read the complete works of the legendary Carl Barks than just about anything new that comes out on comic book shop shelves.

In this delightful volume, readers start off on a Pacific island adventure set during Christmas time with Scrooge Donald and Huey Dewey and Louie looking for the famed black pearls of Tabu Yama. The heartwarming ending is extremely predictable and yet this has immediately become one of my all-time favorite holiday reads to star the Ducks of Disney.

Lucky duck cousin Gladstone appears in at least 3 stories in this book. First, he'll race Donald around the world in a rocket ship for a pair of dueling scientists. For the last 2 stories, Uncle Scrooge is added to the mix as both Gladstone and Donald attempt to convince the wealthy businessduck to buy their prospective investment properties. Then the trio compete against each other in a series of competitive burro events for the rights to a lucrative uranium mine  For a character absolutely despised by Barks, he sure uses Gladstone Gander an awful lot.

Readers are also introduced to a new rival of Donald Duck in the form of the literal swine, P.L. McBrine. First, McBrine unleashes a pickle shortage in Duckburg by releasing a parasite that feasts on cucumbers. Donald and his nephews head overseas to bring back a wasp that is known to feast on those invasive bugs. However, McBrine is on their trail in hopes of keeping the Ducks from succeeding so he can make a killing by selling pickled rutabagas!

McBrine returns, now using the name McSwine as a customer scheming to take milkman Donald's job by making false complaints to the manager of the Duckburg dairy. Yet in an unexpected twist, Donald kinda snaps and exacts revenge on McBrine by issuing him his just desserts. As satisfying as it is to see Donald get the best of one of his foes with relish, it's no wonder that Disney and Dell passed on this story and was shelved for nearly 2 decades before being published in the Netherlands circa 1974.

Almost 2 dozen tales of various lengths abound in this nearly 200 page collection, along with covers and commentary from noted Disney comic historians on each adventure. 

Such a delight. I don't care if these reproductions show biases and stereotypes. Well, I care, socially. It just doesn't bother me to see how far we've come from those days of yore. It's how we learn from the mistakes of history and with that, I can't wait to get my hands on more books in this oddly published series of Barks' complete Disney Duck works. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck "The Old Castle's Secret": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 6

This Valentine's Day, I stopped by a local independent bookshop for an extra gift for my bride. I got her something. But I also ended up getting myself a treat. As I've mentioned before, I want the entire run of these books. But they are NOT cheap. The store I was at had a small used book section and they had a volume for a price that was just right for me!

Like with all of the other volumes in this series, despite the name of just 1 story, there are several adventures, shorts and one-page gags starring Donald Duck, his nephews and several others. During this period of time, Uncle Scrooge makes his first appearances after the holiday tale 'Christmas on Bear Mountain'. The title story has Scrooge in some financial trouble. So McDuck takes his nephew and his nephew's nephews to the family castle in Scotland to unearth a missing inheritance. With hints of the Hound of the Baskervilles and the William Castle feature 13 Ghosts, this is a classic horror mystery romp that I've read before. But that familiarity, my enjoyment wasn't lacking. Ironically, knowing what I do about the massive money bins owned by Scrooge McDuck, I don't see how the small chest of jewels the guys find would help the old miser out of any sort of money troubles.

This book also featured the debut of Donald Duck's familiar adversary for girlfriend Daisy's hand, Gladstone Gander. In these first couple of stories, Gladstone is that cousin who just gets under your skin. He keeps trying to one up you, so you boast back at him. Thanks to a stupid bet made on a hot July day, Gladstone's holiday appearance at Donald's home could mean that Donald and his nephews might end up homeless this Christmas. That is unless Donald will take a swim in the frozen pond behind his domicile.  

The other main treat of this book is the Western epic 'The Sheriff of Bullet Valley.' This is another work I've read before. But the nostalgia brought about from reading this as a little kid made my re-read all that much more special. Donald and the nephews are going on vacation when they stop in Bullet Valley. The community has been besieged by a dastardly cow rustler that everyone knows is guilty. They just can't figure out how the villain is changing the brands on the other ranch's cattle. Inspired by a slew of Westerns, Donald volunteers to save the day. In an episode that doesn't see Huey, Dewey and Louie coming to Donald's rescue, this is a very unusual and violent Disney story. Especially, since Donald gets shot and left for dead in this one!

Donald's nephews are quite the intrepid Junior Woodchucks who come to Donald's frequent rescue. They're still those mischievous scamps who try to outsmart their uncle for their own gain. Uncle Scrooge isn't yet the world's richest duck who neurotically fears everyone is trying to rob him. Gladstone gets under everyone's skin. But he's not the luckiest duck on earth yet. We get to see the early stories of Carl Barks' comic book career. Perfection hasn't yet been achieved. But, there's definite signs of genius throughout this amazing book!

I want more! 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Donald Duck "A Christmas for Shacktown": The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 112023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Despite this book's title, this is not strictly a holiday collection. 'A Christmas For Shacktown' is the 11th volume in Fantagraphics' extensive collection of works by Carl Barks. 

Carl Barks started his career with Disney as part of the animation department. Working as an 'in-betweener', Barks was involved in several early Donald Duck shorts including Donald's Nephews which saw the debut of Huey, Dewey & Louie in 1938.

Unhappy with the way animated films were made 'by committee' and deteriorated war-time work conditions, Barks quit working at Disney Studios in 1942. He then tried his hand at chicken farming. During this time, Barks' supplemented his agricultural income by taking on freelance assignments with Western Publishing. 1943's The Victory Garden would be the first of over 500 works during this period of his life that Barks would create for Western; which Fantagraphics is working to release a 30 plus volume library of. 

Along with A Christmas For Shacktown in which the citizens of Duckburg rally to make it a Merry Christmas for the residents of that city's slums, volume 11 includes several other classics. The Guilded Man sees Donald and his nephews heading to South America, seeking a rare stamp. The Bin on Killmotor Hill introduces readers to the security measures of Uncle Scrooge's fortress-like money bin. But perhaps the most well known story in this collection is 1952's The Golden Helmet which sees the fate of North America in the hands of Donald as he races for a Viking artifact hidden in the Arctic Circle!

As of now, 27 volumes of the Carl Barks Library have been released. While many fans are eagerly awaiting the final 4 volumes of the proposed 30 volume set, readers such as myself, are wondering what happened to volumes 1-4. According to the insert that lists the other books in the series, the Carl Barks Library began at Volume 5. A search of Fantagraphics' website unfortunately yields no answer to this mystery.

With an average cover price of $35, one hoping to collect the entire Carl Barks Library will shell out over $1000 when the entire set is released. Just because these books star funny animals, there's a level of sophistication to them. That's because Carl Barks treated his characters as human beings and on more than one occasion, the characters inside refer to themselves as humans: dogs and ducks alike! While child readers love the wacky characters and mix of zany and swashbuckling adventures, to adult readers, these stories come alive with inside jokes, clever puns and social themes such as the nuclear arms race and capitalism. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Completing this review completes Task #7 (Main Character is an Animal) of the 2023 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics

This is one of those books I remember having from my first collection (that was stolen). This book was published in 1981; meaning I was 3 or 4 when it was released. I don't think that's when my parents bought it for me. I somehow remember seeing this book advertised on TV and wanting it really, really bad. I also remember opening the book from its shipping box on my parents' kitchen table and looking through it and being disappointed...

Over the years, as I read the book again and again, I came to appreciate it a little more each time. When I found this book recently once more at my favorite used book store, I finally understood this book's brilliance!

This book isn't comprehensive. While Superman, Batman and Captain Marvel are examined in this book, other important early superheroes like Captain America and Wonder Woman are noticeably not just absent, I don't think either are mentioned in any of the essays written by comic book historians J. Michael Barrier and Martin T. Williams. 

This book covers comics published up to 1955, right when the industry imposed the self regulated Comics Code Authority. A good stopping point if you were writing a multi-volume look at the history of comic books. EC Comics was the main target of the evils found in comic books from Dr. Wertham and state senators. As a result, no less than 5 stories from that legendary publisher are included in this book. Yet none of them are of the sci-fi or horror titles that ignited the comic book scare of the 1950s!

A number of legendary creators are examined. There are works from Walt Kelly and his critter creation, Pogo, John Stanley's version of Little Lulu and Tubby and Will Eisner's The Spirit. A seasonal story from Carl Barks starring Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge are also included. I would have finished this book a couple of weeks ago. But I wanted to enjoy Barks' 'A Letter to Santa' during the holiday season. Thus I waited. 

To my big surprise, the stories I was the most enamored with were the Scribbly stories, featuring the Ma Hunkel Red Tornado stories. Created by Sheldon Mayer (Golden Age Green Lantern), these stories were clever parodies of the age of mystery men, lively illustrated and just oh-so fun to read. To my knowledge, those stories have never been collected. Thus, other than the 4 stories comprised here, unless I max out my credit cards, I'm probably never going to get to read Ma's further adventures. 

I really enjoyed this collection. The artwork is so starkly different from what I grew up with and primitive compared to modern comics. The scripts are like works of art. They capture the dialect and tone of the times. For a kid born anywhere after 1977, these things are like trying to read Shakespeare. When I was young, everything just looked off and I couldn't really understand the stories. Now I am 45 and I felt like I was in the presence of greatness. and well into that presence I was. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars,

Donald Duck and Friends #332

On the second day of Dia de los Muertos, I closed out my Halloween 2022 reviews with this classic from Disney! 

Gladstone Publishing re-issued this Carl Barks adaptation of the 1952 classic Halloween Disney short called 'Trick or Treat.' It's Halloween night and Donald Duck is playing the Scrooge to his trick-or-treating nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie. The sorceress Witch Hazel observes Donald's dirty tricks. Taking pity on the boys Witch Hazel decides to trick Donald for not giving out any treats. 

I remember watching this cartoon during many a Knightdale public library Halloween party and just about any Halloween themed Disney special from the early 80s through 1998. It's an animated holiday classic up there with It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And no, I didn't feel cheated with having a comic book version of a cartoon I've probably seen two dozens times before.

One reason I'm not hating this issue is that Gladstone actually includes 4 or 5 pages of material that actually never appeared in the cartoon nor the comic book. Comic adaptation creator Barks didn't think this story had enough material to fill a 32-page comic. Thus the reason for the extra stuff. But the editors hated the extras and the extras were omitted. For those of you wondering, the extra scenes include an ogre named Smorgie who Witch Hazel recruits as a partner in her war on Duck!  So this was like reading a director's cut of the adaptation of the Disney classic.

Carl Barks is a comics legend. Just about anything he did with the Disney Ducks was perfection. This was a perfect adaptation, even with the never before seen stuff that was once deemed unworthy of print!

And so I say goodbye to the Halloween season. I can't wait to see what Thanksgiving and Christmas have in store for me this year. I hope it's just as special and fun as this closing read was.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Holiday Parade #1

It's 1991 and with a lineup of Ducktales, Tailspin, Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck, weekday afternoons were dominated by Disney. 

I've long thought that holiday comics weren't for expanding the canon of a character but for a tremendous opportunity to advertise a publisher's characters and comics. From reading this book, I think I was on to something. At the end each of the 7 or 8 stories in this holiday anthology, there's a small blurb (at the page bottom) advertising what regular monthly comics the characters further appear in. 

Those stories are a mix of classic and all-new (to 1991) stories. They include:

• A Carl Barks favorite in which Donald's nephews try really hard to be good for Santa and fail miserably.
• Baloo and his beloved cargo plane are taken hostage in the tiny nation of Thembria, in a story that reflects the miracle of the first Hanukkah!
• Chip and Dale get an unexpected visitor in the form of a flying squirrel that flies in its sleep!
• Uncle Scrooge tries really hard to think of one good deed he's done in order to impress Santa.
• A snow drift threatens to keep Santa from coming to town. That is unless Super Goof can save the day!

Add L'il Bad Wolf and his Pop, Mickey, Minnie and Pluto and a host of other Disney favs and you've got a fantastic assortment of holiday themed stories!

If I had found this when I was a teen, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it. But now that I'm older, I long for simpler things. Walt Disney's Holiday Parade is a time capsule to the early 90s. It wasn't a perfect time. But it sure wasn't as cruddy as 2021 has been.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #568

Great cover- but it's also a bit of a spoiler.

It's time once again for holiday fun with the cast of characters from Disney. This is issue stars my favorite Disney character, Uncle Scrooge. And in the cover story, Scrooge McDuck is in total Scrooge mode!

With just a couple of days until Christmas, Scrooge is singularly focused on one thing- salvaging the lost treasure from a sunken ship. To do this, Uncle Scrooge has drafted Donald and his nephews to captain a submarine. Huey, Dewey & Louie are afraid that Santa won't find them. But they find solace in that Donald mailed a letter to Santa on their behalf. Only Donald forgot to mail it. Uh-oh!

The second story stars a character called Bucky Bug. Based on the appearance of Buck and his friends, this story looks like it might be from the 1930s or 40s. It involves Bucky getting ready for a holiday event for the local children involving a visit from Santa. Unfortunately, the Santa suit is in disrepair and there's not an appropriate substitute suit to be found.

The last story wasn't Christmas themed. It was the first of a 5 part series involving a wondrous invention made by Mickey and his nephew Morty. This adventure was taken from a series of newspaper strips and was lots of fun. I only hate that I don't have the rest of the story!

The Uncle Scrooge story was great. The Bucky Bug story was heartwarming. But the level of rhyming in this story starting to get nauseating. I'm not kidding. At one point, the flow of the narrative was too fluid and I act felt a wave of vertigo. 

Featuring the talents of Carl Barks and William Van Horn, this was a recent find. Well worth the couple of bucks I spent for it. 

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #567

Day 3 of my Thanksgiving reads stars Donald and Mickey! 

In the first story- 'Turkey Shoot', Donald's nephews win a turkey in a raffle. Only the turkey is alive and they don't want their new pet to become Thanksgiving dinner. So Donald enters a turkey shoot in hopes of winning another bird to feast on. Only the charity sponsoring the event have fixed it so nobody can possibly win! 

Then we visit the woods to spend Thanksgiving with the L'il Bad Wolf and his Pop. The Big Bad Wolf is tired of having beans for Turkey Day. So he does the unthinkable and actually does an honest day's work; attempting to earn his own bird! Only the other residents in the forest seem to think that the Wolf's legitimate feast has been stolen!

Lastly, Mickey is ready for his Turkey Day feast. But this bird has grown big and mean over the year and it's fighting back! Watch as Mickey tries to off a Tom Turkey and get pulverized a being of pure evil!

(Sorry- I have a mortal fear of turkeys... Maybe I got a little bit biased. But I doubt it! Turkeys are mean!)

There's a fourth story in this issue. It wasn't seasonal. But it was funny. Based on Goofy's series of educational videos from the 1940s, the anthropomorphic dog takes readers on a tour of the history of shoes. 

This issue features works from Carl Barks and William Van Horn. Full of classic Disney charm. This is the House of Mouse I remember as a kid. And I loved every panel of it! Though I do think it a little weird that a family of ducks want to eat turkey for Thanksgiving...

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney Uncle Scrooge

I found this 1979 collection of Uncle Scrooge stories at my favorite thrift shop right before the pandemic. I started reading it immediately but it wasn't until yesterday that I finished it. That's because of the inclusion of Uncle Scrooge's very first appearance titled 'Christmas On Bear Mountain.' As a major fan of holiday comics, I just couldn't pass up a chance to read that Christmas themed story during the holiday season. 

All of these stories were crafted by the legendary Carl Barks. With over a dozen stories, this fantastic treasury of Disney Duck stories reinvigorated my childhood love of Uncle Scrooge and the TV series Ducktales. (I was such a fan growing up, I once got to meet the animators for that show and I still have the sketch of McDuck one of them made for me!)

The biggest problem I had with these reprints were how small the panels were. Every one of them is roughly the size of a deluxe postage stamp. It does make for some migraine inducing reading. But I think if the size of the panels were any bigger, you wouldn't get as many tales as you do in this book. Magica de Spell, The Beagle Boys, and Flintheart Glomgold rear their ugly heads in this book. They are inspirations for Ducktales along with some legendary stories that also star Donald, Huey, Dewy and Louie with a return to McDuck's Scottish Highland roots, his Klondike gold mining days and much, much more.

Be sure not to overlook the introductory articles on Carl Barks as well as a near verbatim transcript of Scrooge's very first appearance in animated form. Both are fun looks at the early days of Uncle Scrooge. Though, I am not really sure whats going on with the photos in the Barks interview. There's tons of beautiful pics of a recent vacation of Barks and his wife. But they aren't in any of them. Odd.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge: Hound Of The Whiskervilles (Halloween Theme)

Another Halloween ashcan I got for free- that just happens not to be an ashcan at all. This frightful offering is a reprint of a classic Carl Barks (The definitive Disney duck cartoonist of all-time!) in which Uncle Scrooge goes to Scotland to learn of his family history. In Scotland, Scrooge comes across the Hound of the Whiskervilles, a demon dog that supposedly scared off the McDucks.

 It’s a slightly spooky tale that is very entertaining. It’s very smartly done and while the title of the monster parodies Sherlock Holmes, this isn’t a Holmes themed book by any means. Of course in the end, Scrooge finds a way to profit from the entire deal. But even the way he comes about doing it is very intelligent. How strange that Disney comics tend not to insult the intelligence of the reader! I love that.

Worth Consuming

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Fright Factor: 3 out of 10 stars.