Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck: 'The Son of the Sun'- The Don Rosa Library, Vol. 1

I was so enthralled by Don Rosa's epic undertaking of making a cohesive structure of the how of Scrooge McDuck made his fortune. Rosa poured over the countless stories of Uncle Scrooge created by the good duck artist Carl Barks and wrote and illustrated what is considered by many to be one of the greatest comic book miniseries ever made. Needless to say, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck turned me from a Don Rosa admirer into a Don Rosa fanatic.

This past holiday season, I decided to add this book to my Christmas wishlist. I was very fortunate to have my bride get it for me, this beginning my opening foray into Don Rosa's portfolio as the second best good duck artist. 

The Don Rosa Library is a chronological omnibus of Rosa's career as an employee of Gladstone Comics. In this volume roughly covering the years 1986-1987, Rosa has returned to creating comics after having to quit for several years to run his family construction business. A chance encounter with an issue of Gladstone's run of Donald Duck inspired him to take a huge gamble and offer his services as a creator of Uncle Scrooge stories. Having passed his audition, Gladstone hires Rosa to craft a full story. 

Using an old script he wrote years ago, Rosa decides to set his story firmly in the universe established by Barks. 'The Son of the Sun' has a dateline of the 1950s, right around the sweet spot era when Barks was crafting some of his best Uncle Scrooge adventures and when a young Keno Rosa was experiencing those tales his older sister had collected over the years. The main antagonist would be the Scrooge antithesis, Flintheart Glomgold, who challenges McDuck in a race to see who can find a fabled horde of fabled Incan treasure in Peru.

This volume contains about 2 dozen other works starring Scrooge along with nephews Donald, Huey, Dewey, Louie and the uber-lucky Gladstone. Not every story was written by Rosa, but it's all of his handiwork as Gladstone Comics quickly began to rely on Rosa as their go-to artist. 

I love the Complete Carl Barks volumes of Disney Duck stories. But what makes this book superior to them is the commentary. In the Barks volumes, the commentary is by a number of scholars who try to equate a can of soup in the background of a single panel to the artist's opinion on social economics in Communist countries. I don't care for that sort of exposition. But I do love learning about the backstory and history of how and why a story or character was created. By having Don Rosa narrate his personal commentary, it's almost 100% the type of facts and figures I want to learn about. Plus, it's where I learned that Gladstone Comics was named after the character of Gladstone Gander!

Being his earliest Disney works, Rosa is a bit harsh on himself here. Well, they do say that we're our own harshest critic. I just wish Rosa could see his brilliance even in his rawest forms. There's a panel of Glomgold pointing a gun at off panel Scrooge while he's escaping a crashing plane that I kept coming back to again and again. So powerful. So much movement. So full of anger and emotion. Got to be one of my top 10 comic book images all time.

I've long wondered how to classify Don Rosa's art style. He puts so much detail into his work like a George Perez. But he also puts tiny jokes into the background like a Harvey Kurtzman. In the words of the master, he considers himself a student of the school of underground comix. That's fine with me.

I'm looking forward to volume 2! Can't wait to see Rosa's evolution and learn more inside information about one of my favorite characters ever!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.

Snoopy's Thanksgiving

Fantagraphics celebrates Thanksgiving Peanuts style in this hilarious 2014 collection of strips from Charles Schulz. 

First, Snoopy ventures out West to visit his brother Spike who lives in the desert with a bunch of bunny-eating coyotes. Then Charlie Brown tries his luck selling Thanksgiving wreaths before Woodstock has a panic attack that he's going to be the main course at this year's Thanksgiving dinner. 

Silly birdie. Doesn't Woodstock know that his friends eat jelly beans, milkshakes and toast for Turkey Day?

There's a few one page shorts as well as a couple of strips blown up and spread out in separate panels over several pages to give readers just over 60 pages of Thanksgiving fun. I'm surprised that this was published by Fantagraphics. Not that they couldn't produce this or anything about the quality. It's just that the format looked more like a series of books about Snoopy and friends that the greeting card magnate Hallmark used to produce in the 90s and early 00s. I'm now wondering if Fantagraphics was tapped to produce those books for Hallmark much like how Dynamite Entertainment and Dark Horse are publishing Marvel's outsourced material...

If you're stressing about having the relatives over for the holiday, then take a much needed break and enjoy the exploits of a boy named Charlie Brown and his dog.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.

Ghost World (2024 Comic Book & Graphic Novel Reading Challenge)

Now considered one of the greatest Indy graphic novels of all-time, Ghost World was first a serialized segment running throughout  several issues of Daniel Clowes' anthology series Eightball. Ghost World ran from issues #11-17 over the time span of 1993-1997. As with many Indy comics, funding and time can be tough to obtain. Thus, that is why it took nearly 4 years to teach the coming of age story of two best friends, Enid Coleslaw and Becky Doppelmeyer.

Brunette Enid is very cynical and opinionated. She loves to play pranks and to express herself creatively. Blonde Becky on the other hand is very reserved. Considered not as pretty or smart as Enid, at least to herself, Becky is more kindhearted and willing to learn other people's perspectives in order to find her place in the world. Together, Enid and Becky are two young women fresh out of high school, attempting to navigate their looming post-high school future.

(Fun Fact: the name Enid Coleslaw is an anagram for Daniel Clowes, who in many ways saw the young girl as a personification of himself and his views on life.)

In 1997 Ghost World was finally compiled into graphic novel form by Fantagraphics where it began to garnish more mainstream attention. But what sent Ghost World into the stratosphere was a 2001 motion picture adaptation starring Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson. The film was made for a moderate price of $7 million dollars. It co-stars Steve Buscemi, Debra Azar, Bob Balaban and the late Brad Renfro. Directed by Crumb's Terry Zwigoff, who co-wrote the screenplay with Clowes., the film is a rather tight adaptation, though a few characters in the film are composites of those in the comic.

Unfortunately, the movie, released by United Artists, only made about $9 million dollars in theaters. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, Ghost World was a critical hit. It later garnished cult film status and is regarded by many as one of the best comic book movies of all-time. Ghost World was added to the Criterion Collection in 2017.

As for the graphic novel, it too is considered a masterpiece. It reads more as a series of vignettes than as a long-form cohesive story, as many key events in Enid and Becky's final Summer before womanhood are never seen; just mentioned in passing. In 1998 it won an Ignatz Award for Best Graphic Novel. Ghost World now ranks up there with Maus and Watchmen on many experts top lists of greatest graphic novels and comics of all-time. The success of the graphic novel and film adaptation of Ghost World have elevated Daniel Clowes as one of history's greatest Indy comics creators, culminating in a coveted Inkpot Award in 2006.

Completing this review completes Task #45 (A Comic or Graphic Novel Made Into a Movie) of the 2024 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.

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 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.

A Christmas Bestiary by Benni Bodker

A field guide and protection manual in defense of the monsters, ghosts and terrifying magical beings that occupy Europe and Russia during the holidays. I could have finished this book in a couple of nights of reading. However, I learned pretty quickly that this illustrated work by Danish illustrator and filmmaker John Kenn Mortensen and author Benni Bodker, was framed as an Advent. Each day, a different Yuletide terror is featured. I would have thought Krampus would have been selected as the final character of the Advent, considering how popular he's gotten. However, he was fittingly selected for December 5th, as that is Krampusnacht in his native Germany. A few other characters are appropriately highlighted on the days or nights that they are believed to cause their mischief and mayhem.

The beings are rated on a scale of 1-5 pine cones. 1 pine cone means the creature isn't all that dangerous. A 5 pine cone rating means that this is a being not to be trifled with. The level of terror didn't always match how frightening the artwork based on the characters were. However, that splash page of the Yule Goat looking directly into your soul was truly unsettling.

For an Advent, this book only has 24 entries, culminating on Christmas Eve. For many, that might seem weird. But having an Advent calendar at the end on December 25th is actually an American thing. In Europe, where Advent calendars began, most have only 24 days. (As Advent season changes with the calendar, some Advent calendars might be as few as 12 days or they might grow to as many as 28 maximum, depending on the year.)  

A Christmas Bestiary was a fun read. The colder the evening I read these entries, the creepier they felt and that was all the better. One major disappointment I had was that the cover image is nowhere to be found inside. I was really looking forward to find out what this demented, drooling Santa's story was. Alas, it's absent from the book. But maybe his story will soon be told! This book only covers a small fraction of the world. Could a sequel covering the rest of the world be in the works? I know that I wouldn't mind such a follow up. 

Lastly, I don't really know how to classify this book. This English language version was published by Fantagraphics; which is known for releasing a number of comics and graphic novels. Fantagraphics does also publish a small number of regular books of fiction and non-fiction. Technically, this is an Advent calendar in book format. But I bought it from my favorite comic book store which doesn't carry collectible merch. Honestly, if I didn't know about this book from my favorite shop, I wouldn't have picked it up and I have seen it listed on Previews and for sale at other comic book stores. Only, there's no sequential artwork here whatsoever. This book is surely a keeper. I just don't know where I'm going to keep it.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.

Darkwing Duck: Just Us Justice Ducks: Disney Afternoon Adventures, Vol. 1 (Family Comic Friday)

The Disney Afternoon. From 1990-97, Disney ran a 2-hour block of TV shows in the late afternoons after school let out. The event was syndicated, but eventually ran on the Disney Channel. Shows like Ducktales, Tailspin, The Adventures of the Gummi Bears and Darkwing Duck ran in a rotation that was a direct competition to Fox Kids. As part of the Disney Afternoon marketing campaign, Disney's publishing imprint released a monthly magazine called Disney Adventures.

Along with features on upcoming Disney TV shows and films, Disney Adventures contained comics! Stories based on the Disney Afternoon line-up, along with adaptations of long-form Disney films were released on a semi-regular schedule. As many of these stories were multi-parters, this rather irregular schedule meant that part one of a Ducktales story might be released on issue #1 but part two might not appear in print until issue #5!

Disney Afternoon Adventures Volume 1 was released in the summer of 2021. So yes, I am a little late maybe on reviewing something new. But the reason I found out about this book in the first place is because Volume 2 was released just last month and seeing the advertisement for that collection got me rather interested! Plus, I've really been digging some volumes from the Carl Barks Library lately and I've been wanting so more Disney goodness to read.

My kid sister is 12 years younger than me. So I am rather familiar with the stories despite the fact that I was 12-15 when the shows these comics were based on aired. Well, Ducktales actually came out in 1987 and I am a fool for anything with Uncle Scrooge in it! But everything else in this book was stuff that I probably was too old for. Yet, because of her, I'm actually pretty familiar with most of the material in this book. 

There's a lot of short stories in this edition and they are rather fun little reads. But the highlights of this book are the two larger stories that take up much of the real estate of this 200-pager. First up was a comic adaptation of A Goofy Movie. The second tale was a 5-part adventure that crossed-over all the way from Tailspin to Darkwing Duck, with Goof Troop, Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers and Ducktales filling in the gaps! A crossover that wasn't really a crossover, it was an epic romp on par with the works of Carl Barks, Don Rosa and William Van Horn! 

By the way- did you know that Tailspin took place 50 years before Ducktales and the other members of the Disney Afternoon? I didn't either. But now I understand why there weren't any flying pirates in modern day Duckburg!

I really enjoyed this book. I just wished that Fantagraphics did a better job letting fans know where these stories originally appeared. In the Carl Barks books, the level of research and background material on the Donald Duck stories is professional grade stuff. Here, we get a small bit of info on the material of origin on the ISBN info page and it's printed in a font of 3 at best!

A 3rd volume is scheduled for release in July. Hopefully, I can get both volumes for a good price. And hopefully, the amount of background material will get even better. Sure, these volumes are targeted for millenials and their children. But surely, even 30-something comic book lovers will delight in knowing more about the publishing and design history of these stories!

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.