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 Donald Duck Adventures #35

 
Not sure why this was published under Donald Duck Adventures and not Gladstone's Uncle Scrooge titles. This Halloween themed story was very much a Scrooge McDuck story. And it was pretty absurd.

Scrooge wages war on Halloween. As a result, he ends up buying all of Duckburg's supply of pumpkins, costumes and candy. By the time it's Halloween, Scrooge is bankrupt; just because the price of candy went up a measly 2 cents per pound and the miser doesn't want to give any handouts to trick-or-treaters.

The story is pretty goofy. And it makes for a funny story especially with the addition of Disney guest-star, Witch Hazel. But this just doesn't seem to be a typical Uncle Scrooge yarn. I find it impossible to believe that the gazillionaire Duck would allow his finances to be misused like this just to save a few pennies. He usually comes up with such harebrained schemes but the thought of spending money to save money seems to bring Uncle Scrooge back to his senses. 

I'm 50/50 on this issue. It's a fun Halloween themed story but it seems atypical of one of my favorite Disney characters of all-time. I'm also on the fence with this 1995 issue's format. For some reason, Gladstone decided to replace the shiny covers with covers that are more similar to the newsprint filler inside. It might have been a cost saving method. As this is only the second issue of such I have ever seen, I don't think this experiment lasted very long.

Rating: 6 out of 10 stars.