The Disney Comics Thread

As the troper who started the pages for Don Rosa and Carl Barks, I feel compelled to test the waters and see how many fans we've got in the forum community.

DISNEY COMICS. Testify your status as a fan by naming your favourite story.

(Mine's A Letter From Home by Rosa.)

edited 20th May '10 5:59:59 PM by Kerrah

Disney comics as in flagship Disney? I love the Life and Times of Scrooge Mc Duck, myself. If we're counting Disney-owned or Disney movies as Disney, though, I gotta give nod to the "Family Matters" mini of Boom! Studios The Incredibles comics.

Hmmm, hard to say. I've read so much Disney comics I can hardly remember half of them. O Ne of my faves has got to be Romano Scarpa's The Last Balaboo. Also fond of Scarpa's (more than 200 page long!) Marco Polo story. I also remember a fairly good duck story about granny telling a story about a cowboy meeting a mermaid in the desert (It Makes Sense in Context)

I actually like Life and T Imes less than many. It's good, but it's not my favourite story, I think.

Hmmm, hard to say. I've read so much Disney comics I can hardly remember half of them. ONe of my faves has got to be Romano Scarpa's The Last Balaboo. Also fond of Scarpa's (more than 200 page long!) Marco Polo story. I also remember a fairly good duck story about granny telling a story about a cowboy meeting a mermaid in the desert (It Makes Sense in Context)

I actually like Life and Times less than many. It's good, but it's not my favourite story, I think.

edited 22nd May '10 6:11:44 AM by Arilou

I'm mostly thinking about stories set in the basic Donald Duck and Mickey the Mouse universes (which are technically one universe, but are really separate as far as stories go).

I've always found Mickey stories really bland, with one or two exceptions that are all detective stories.

Other favourite Disney writers and artists of mine are Marco Rota and Romano Scarpa, but I can't remember any outstanding stories from either.

Mickey stories are occasionally fun when they decide to do fantasy/sci fi stuff. I can't name any in particular, but a few of these were fun.

Disney comics are pretty big in Poland.

They're pretty big everywhere in Europe.

Eight or so years ago, Finland was like inches away from declaring Don Rosa its national saint.

edited 24th May '10 4:00:40 AM by Kerrah

American here, but when I was a kid, a family friend gave me a few old Super Goof comics. The one that really stands out in my memory had a mad scientist give a small-time crook a suit with a hypnotic red arrow on that would compel people to turn in the direction indicated by the arrow. He used it to make truck drivers crash so he could loot the cargo.

Only...I don't remember how it ended.

I have incomplete memories of a few stories from my childhood too. It's really annoying.

Favourite story, eh? Definitely Only a Poor Old Man by Carl Barks. It's still the best Scrooge Mc Duck story out there. The emotion, the art, the plot, the characterization... everything works seamlessly to create a fascinating story.

... going to have to agree with Kossage. 'Only a Poor Old Man' remains (in my mind, at least) one of the most flawlessly-paced pieces of sequential art I've ever seen. It's a great, fun story to begin with, but the sheer craftsmanship behind it (especially considering it's the first Uncle Scrooge-centric story) makes it stand out.

I am never really able to name favorites that well - but some Barks ones I like are Lost In The Andes, that first Magica De Spell story (I cannot remember the name) and yes, Only A Poor Old Man (me too!).

I am startinbg to suffer serious Hype Backlash when it comes to Don Rosa! Hence, I wont name any favorites there, so there!

Most of my favorite Mickey stories as a kid I have as an adult learnt was really drawn by Paul Murry, with the author being unknown since no one at Disney gave a crap and nowadays people have forgotten - no one was allowed to sign their work, infamously.

The rest were Italian work, often by Romano Scarpa. One of my favorites - which I of course know no English title for, but it ought to be something like "The Mystery of White Tusk" - is a spy-detective story with two parallell story lines; in one, Goofy finds an elephant on the run from the circus (called "White Tusk" by Goofy because, well, that's what he has); in the second, Mickey is looking for the secretary of an air force general who have stolen military secrets. The trail eventually leads back, to, no surpries, the owner of the elephant. (Old elephants, and W.T. is a very old male, don't have white tusks, Dear Readers...) Involves elusive film stars and their doubles, Mickey getting beat up and humiliated like the noir P.I. he is sometimes, and potato chucking.

For more Scarpa goodness, I second the Last Babaloo and also The Beans of Babylon, a rather epic Scrooge story involving Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

In another vein, Al Hubbard's original stories of Fethry Duck is excellent sitcom on a theme of obsession and the horror it causes you poor relatives (i.e. Donald). Recommended, as is many of Tony Strobl's later Fethry stories, though they aren't half as fun as Hubbards'! (For those who care, Hubbard also did the Comic Of The Movie for a lot of Disney animated fare. I read his Lady And The Tramp before I saw the movie, for instance...)

Erik

edited 13th Jun '10 10:00:10 AM by ErikS

I've gotta say, as far as Don Rosa goes; at his best, I'd consider him a worthy successor to Unca Carl, maybe even surpassing his predecessor, at least in some areas. My favourite of his tales that I've read, On a Silver Platter, has a frenetic energy and beautiful pacing that stands up well, even to comparisons with the Good Duck Man's work. His Life And Times Of Scrooge Mc Duck is, quite frankly, magnificent.

Unfortunately, Keno is at his absolute worst when sequelizing Barks directly. Sequels to Land of the Pygmy Indians, Lost in the Andes, The Lost Crown of Genghis Khan, Tralla La, the Fabulous Philosopher's Stone... well, you get the idea. For whatever reason, Don Rosa just doesn't quite seem to get one of the important facets of Scrooge's character; that is, while Scrooge may put the 'magnificent' in Magnificent Bastard, he's still a bastard. The absolute worst that I've read, War of the Wendigo (a sequel to Land of the Pygmy Indians), was a dull, monotonous plod of environmental preachiness that may as well have been entitled 'War of the Offensive Stereotypes', with the Ducks reduced to mostly being spectators to the battle between the one-with-nature Natives battling the one-dimensional environment-hating clearcutter who appears to have been lifted straight from a Captain Planet episode.

And really, what exactly is the point of an Uncle Scrooge treasure-hunt story where the whole point of it is that... you know, it was so muddled that I'm not sure what the point was. Something about wealth not making you happy, or respecting the cultural traditions of others, or... eh, whatever. Something that ended with Scrooge not getting the treasure. And it happened in a few of his stories. It was kind of this weird mix of Anvilicious and a Broken Aesop.

-*shrug*

This has been bugging me for a while. I'd consider Don Rosa's best Duck stuff to be the equal of most of Barks's, but his worst is just crap.

Well, in Rosa's hands Scrooge tends to become very much a Marty Stu. This is part of a very... lets say just personal, narrow view of Barks, where he wants to keep the things he likes and remove the things he dislikes. One of the reasons I am not always fond of Rosa is that I have completely different rose-coloured glasses to view things through (like mentioned above, I prefer him a bastard), which means his "vision" of How Duck Comics Should Be, which is very methodical and plotted and thoroughly researched and planned, is actually to the detriment of my personal enjoyment of his stories, since he works at opposite goals - and since it is so solid, it gets worse than with a mere casual writer doing it.

One thing is his oft-repeated idea that Scrooge earned his moolah, that he deserves it, that there is no luck or chance involved. Now, to me its bloody obvious that he had chances no one else got, both in the revered Barks' and in Rosa's own stories. It's contrasted especially with Donald - because despite being the Butt-Monkey, Donald can be very determined and work very hard and skillfull for something... and while it is sometimes his own hubris which brings him down it is often just the work of chance. (Check out the Barks story where Donald becomes the World's Best at tearing down houses, for instance. No, do, really, it is a very funny story of utter epical failure after hilarious over-the top feats of using a wrecking ball.)

Now, Rosa made one story like that, where Donald sets up an actually very good plan to see if he can get old coins that don't mean that much to Scrooge from his collection and sell them for cash - as per a deal with his uncle. Scrooge mocks him, the nephews disapprove, but Donald is hard-working and clever and resourceful - and fails horribly and almost dies. Now, as a basic story this is actually quite funny, because you want to see Donald fail epically at things like this. The troubling thing is that with Rosa, who constantly works his moral that the great riches of Scrooge is deserved... well, why would Donald not deserve any wealth, if all it takes is hard work and effort?

In many other Disney comics, there actually isn't that much of a moral. Donald is Donald, and while he now and then is allowed to succeed - oh how much sweeter that is - he is destined to muck things up. Deserve has nothing to do with it, and when it does it is more in a simplified fairy tale way where Donald fail because he is a jerk, than in some simplified lesson in economics. Both he and Scrooge are at best anti-heroes, in their own way. But when contrasted with Rosa's oft-repeated idea of Scrooge as some kind of American Dream solidified - it doesn't fare well.

I have other gripes about Don Rosa, but I have spoken enough ill about an actually very skillfull storyteller and all-around fun and creative guy, so I will shut my trap now.

Erik

Hmm, it's hard to pick ONE favorite, but Rosa's last story, 'The Prisoner of White Agony Creek', is definitely one of his best.

Other than Don Rosa's work, my favorite thing to ever come out of the Donald Duck-universe is probably Paperinik New Adventures. The series created a whole universe of new ideas and characters, and features some of the most awesome AND some of the most heart-wrenching moments, Disney has ever produced.

edited 18th Jun '10 3:15:34 AM by Birch

Anyone besides me reading Wizards of Mickey?

^ I am...well, the comics that have been published in Finland. We've had one book which apparently contains the first story arc. The story was quite interesting at the beginning with nice character development but at some point it felt like it was rushed. I was expecting a lot longer story arc (as in, longer search etc.) but maybe the follow-up stories will rectify that assuming they get published here.

I couldn't agree more with Erik S's thoughts on Rosa's handling of Scrooge. Seriously, you took the words right off my mouth...and improved on them, considering English is not my first language and my vocabulary wouldn't have been as rich, but still.

By the way, Te Chameleon, have you read his sequel to Super Snooper? That's one of my favorite Rosa stories, and I feel it stands pretty well on its own right.

As far as my favorites go...It's hard. Barks' The Trail of The Unicorn is an underrated gem, and a favorite of mine since I was a kid. Then there are A LOT of excellent, hilarious entries whose titles I can't remember, but that are worth a thousand reads. I'll probably update this post later if I can remember them.

Anyone got any love for Barks' 1-pagers? Scrooge's "Sweat Deal" is lovin' hilarious.

I want to take this chance to remind everyone that Donald Duck now has his own page, even having his own Crowning Moment Of Funny page. I'm working on the other two Crowners as well. Wiki Magic needed, guys! Any help is very appreciated.

I have read the Super Snooper sequel (that's a lot of S-es for one sentence >.>), and... hmm.

Just re-read it, in fact. It's a good story, and quite warm and touching, but... I'm not sure. Something about it doesn't sit quite right; I think it's simply too realistic for the Duck's world.

... yes, mountain-lifting and flying included -_-;

More seriously, though- and this is just my gut instinct, understand- it feels like it's looking too closely at aspects of the Duckburg that don't need examining, like how Donald is raising his nephews on his (lack of) income, or the kids being thoughtful about their relationship; it just doesn't feel entirely in-character.

And the heavy-handed 'read Disney comics, they're far more intelligent than the X-Men (or insert-superhero-title-here)' side-moral was a bit obnoxious >.<

That specific point you brought up, focusing on aspects we take for granted on a more serious light, it's typical on Rosa's comics. Perhaps one of his predominant characteristics, even, what with him explaining...

1)The nephews' transition into Woodchucks in "W.H.A.D.A.L.O.T.T.A.J.A.R.G.O.N" 2)Gladstone's source of luck in "The Sign Of The Triple Distelfink", 3)How Donald affects everyone's lives in "The Duck That Never Was"...

Among many others, The Life And Times Of Scrooge Mc Duck included as well, of course. He was fascinated with giving the Duckverse an established timeline with every detail calculated and a strict canon, hence some of the sequels to Barks' stories and all. This can turn out either way.

Do we seriously need explanation on those things? If they make a good story, I say, go for it, but not every single event needs to have a deep backstory. Lifes and Times is considered a Disney masterpiece, but some sequels weren't really necessary. Barks himself disliked Rosa's obsession with Continuity Porn for a reason.

The obvious Take That! at superhero comics never bothered me before, but looking at it from your perspective, it should have been subtler indeed.

Again, I dislike how he can really make Scrooge a Marty Stu in some stories...It's admirable to see him earning his money and all, but in Barks' stories he could be a bastard, and I loved him for that. Lifes and Times describes the Africa incident as "the only dishonest action Scrooge ever did on his life!" or something among those lines...Come on now! He could also establish Donald as a complete born-loser/unrespected-by-all in some stories, something I didn't care for either. It's like sometimes he was trying too hard to make Don sympathetic, when he has natural charisma already.

Maybe this post seems too negative on Rosa's work, but the best stories of his are among my favorites in Disneydom. Just pointing out what I didn't like in the work of that great artist.

Some of the BEST Rosa stories is those where he takes one "impossible" thing and draws the logical conclusion of it in a very funny way. On A Silver Platter, mentioned above, is a very good example, and most of them do indeed involve Magica de Spell. There is one story where she has a wand that very specifically makes the victim forget the next word - the very concept - that he hears. Witness Scrooge and Donald try to hunt down Magica while they are completely unable to understand things like "door", "stairs", "walk" etc... The concept is utterly bonkers, but Rosa's architect-like mind keeps it on track anyway and makes it all the funnier. Other examples involve that solvent that can dissolve anything, intended for diamond mining, which end up burrowing its way down to the Center of The Earth and the ducks have to save the world and follow. Brilliant!

Its those Rosa stories I found the funniest. They are also very very tight, for being comic books about ducks. :0

Erik

I'd have to agree with you there, Erik. The universal solvent stories spun off into some fun stuff, too, with Scrooge battling it out with Arsene Lupin in the quasi-sequels to it.

Boom!'s reviving another Disney Afternoon show, this time, Rescue Rangers

Carl Barks was the conservative type. Did you notice that morale in his stories is always immanent ? It avoids him to teach morale as Don Rosa does.

Barks' genius was to give a real personnality to his characters. From story to story Donald is never the same. He can be either winner or loser, wise or stubborn, childish or adult, protective or punisher. Only bad point: he didn't like Daisy and made her an hysterical shrew (so we don't like her either). I prefer Al Taliaferro's Daisy- much more gentle and lovable but still intelligent, not naive.

Speaking about girls, Floyd Gottfredson revealed year after year his libido. I think never in other Disney stories did I see such a bunch of pretty human-shaped girls arousing the heroes ! He could almost sexualize Mickey himself. It was just as the same moment that the new generation - Bill Walsh, Paul Murry and so on - ruined the character by extirping every trace of soul from him.

Barks considered that the duck artist who was the closest to him is Vicar. Seriously, isn't Vicar some of an invisible institution ? Thirty years and still overproductive- he was everywhere when I was a kid and he still is today- maybe to the saturation point.