Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,Shoeless Pashley in New Orleans
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 09:06 PM

Got it !
"The City Of Golden Roofs" Uncle Scrooge #20 1957 ~
reprinted in 1987 #213.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,Shoeless Pashley in New Orleans
Date: 23 Apr 13 - 07:05 PM

Still wondering who might know the issue # or title of the Uncle Scrooge McDuck story referred to in the posts above. I'd love to find a copy.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Sep 11 - 01:37 PM

Carl Barks (the artist who drew the best of the Duck comics) evidently detested the new rock n' roll music of Elvis and the other rockers of the 50s. He frequently made fun of it through characters like "Shoeless Pashley" or "Elfish Pestly"...clear references to Elvis. Barks was probably a fan of jazz and swing music...or perhaps classical music. Anyway he sure was no fan of Elvis Presley, and he took little shots at Elvis's style of music here and there in the Duck stories.

Typical reaction of an older person to youth music. ;-D Most of us folkies, who are now older folks, do not like the majority of today's mainstream youth-oriented music one bit. I think of today's commercial radio as a vapid wasteland, and I laugh when I walk into the drugstore and am confronted by a lifesize cardboard Justin Beiber selling some brand of perfume. It would be fun to use that thing as a target on the local shooting range.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Sep 11 - 12:36 PM

Sorry ~ I thought that would post under the post I was responding to. (below)

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: PoppaGator
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 04:07 PM

This thread was resurrected after 6-plus years by "Shoeless in New Orleans," with a question that seems to have nothing to do with Donald Duck or his uncle. What's up?

Are you still there, Shoeless? I'm in New Orleans, too. Do you live here, or are you just visiting (perhaps as a "voluntourist")?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Sep 11 - 12:30 PM

I was am am still here. Moved here in '93 & will never leave.

Shoeless Pashley, King of the Bongo Drums was a character in a Scrooge McDuck comic a friend of mine had a reprint of in Buffalo in the 80s when we formed a band. I played the bongos, don't wear shoes, so got the nickname. I still use that name when I sing around New Orleans with friends now.

I posted because someone in the thread above mentioned it & I search Google from time to time searching for a copy of that comic book, or leads on finding one.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 28 May 10 - 10:51 AM

I remember Gyro Gearloose well. The interplay between him and the little "helper" was really funny. (The "helper" was a little mechanical man about 6 inches tall with a glowing lightbulb for a head. He was usually running around engaged in some subplot...like negotiating with some chipmunks over a nut or something...while Gyro was involved in the main plot, and the 2 plots would get interwoven in some way. Carl Barks was the man who drew those stories and he had a fantastic gift for both the art and for clever storylines.

The funniest Gyro Gearloose story, I think, was the one where he invented a machine that was a mechanical brain. It could presumably answer ANY question accurately. The answers that it gave to the questions, however, turned out to be not what Gyro expected at all, and this led to a whole series of hilarious situations.

My favorite comics in the 50s and 60s were the duck comics, and I considered them way smarter than all those dumb superhero comics which most of my peers were reading. I was already a total outsider anyway, so I didn't give a damn if the other guys thought superhero comics were cooler. Let's face it, the cliched ideas that were being expressed in the superhero comics couldn't even come close to the kind of witty social satire that Carl Barks was doing in his duck stories.

All my comics were lost around college age too. I think my father gave them away to the neighborhood kids. Too bad.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 28 May 10 - 10:10 AM

Yeah, Uncle Scrooge was definitely my favorite comic-book character. At some point I became embarrassed about that fact. That was probably when I realized my friends were reading Superman, Batman, and so on, and comics based on animal characters seemed childish by comparison, or so I thought. (Or so I thought others thought.) Actually, that wasn't true, but I wasn't insightful enough or articulate enough in those days to defend my liking of Uncle Scrooge. So I reluctantly knuckled under to peer pressure and quit buying comic books altogether. (I never had much interest in the superheroes.) Then my mother threw out my comic book collection, probably while I was away at college. I wish I had them today.

Anybody remember Gyro Gearloose?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 27 May 10 - 11:24 PM

Exactly!!! ;-) The story involved a wager between Scrooge McDuck and Donald Duck to see who could sell stuff better on the road, doing the old traveling salesman bit. I forget how the wager came about, but they were both supposed to travel around the world selling some product, and the one who generated the biggest sales would win the contest. Donald choose to sell these little miniature hi-fi players that played nothing but Shoeless Pashley songs REALLY LOUDLY, and it turned out that there were rabid young Shoeless Pashley fans in every corner of the globe, no matter how remote it was. Everywhere they went, Donald sold music like there was no tomorrow.

Scrooge, however, had said that he could sell anything better than Donald, no matter what it was and no matter what Donald was selling......a foolish and arrogant dare which backfired badly, because Scrooge somehow ended up having to sell giant industrial blast furnaces which were each about the size of a small house. He put one of those giant blast furnaces on a raft and was steering it down some river in Southeast Asia while Donald sold Shoeless Pashley music in every village and hamlet they reached.

No one wanted to buy the blast furnace. ;-)

Still Scrooge wouldn't give up. Scrooge's persistence finally paid off when they reached a lost city like Angkor Wat, deep in the Cambodian jungles or somewhere around there. He struck a deal with the blast furnace because the local King hated the very loud Shoeless Pashley music his people were buying. He hated it with a passion and wanted to make the place so hot that his people would be too damn hot to want to dance to any Shoeless Pashley records. And it worked! The palace got so hot that the gold surfacing on the roofs melted and flowed down the drain pipes...Scrooge took a barrel full of gold in payment, and he won the sales contest at the 11th hour.

It was a typical Carl Barks duck story, beautifully drawn and full of satirical humour. What Barks was doing with the Shoeless Pashley stuff was he was making fun of Elvis Presley....he was clearly no fan of 50s Rock n' Roll, having grown up in an earlier era, and he satirized the modern music in many of his stories. In another story, for example, he had posters up on walls advertising a noisy pop singer named "Elfish Pestly", which was another dig at Elvis.

I think that Carl Barks probably liked the earlier music of the jazz age...or maybe even stuff before that...but he certainly detested the Rock n' Roll music that came in the 50s and early 60s, and he often made fun of it in the duck stories.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 May 10 - 11:23 PM

Since it was a rare comic book that made it into our home I know very little about them (I do remember Wonder Woman). This thread has been fun to read though and you might find Wikipedia's entry interesting.

"The Beagle Boys are a group of fictional characters from the Scrooge McDuck universe. They are a gang of criminals who constantly try to rob Scrooge McDuck and were created by Carl Barks. Their introduction and first appearance was in Terror of the Beagle Boys, in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #134, although in this story they only appear in the last frame and have no lines. They appear again in the next issue in a similar fashion, in The Big Bin on Killmotor Hill. They first get a more prominent role in the later story Only a Poor Old Man."

Lots more.

The Beagle Boys

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,shoeless pashley fan
Date: 27 May 10 - 07:12 PM

Shoeless Pashley was a beatnick-style bongo player, and Donald was one of his most devoted fans, in one story (sorry, I don't have a title or date for the comic--I just remember reading it long ago). The members of the fan club had code phrases by which they recognized one another. One would say: "Peel that Banana!" and the other would reply: "Sift that sand!" Then the first would come back with: "Bippity Bip!" and the second would reply: "Boppity Bop", and with their shared fanhood now mutually revealed, both would yell: "Shoeless Pashley!"

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 07:50 PM

Excellent links, Carol. Nice going.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: CarolC
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:27 PM

Disney Comics forum...

http://dcf.outducks.org/viewforum.php?id=2


The Carl Barks Library of Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color...

http://www.wolfstad.com/dcw/united-states/the-carl-barks-library-of-uncle-scrooge-adventures-in-color/


Uncle Scrooge collector resource...

http://www.uncle-scrooge.com/

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:26 PM

Little Hawk
Thank you. I appreciate.
Phil

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 01:06 PM

Hi Phil,

I don't know exactly where to point you on that. I can't recall that specific scene, although I probably had the comic you are referring to, but I don't have most of those comics any more now. What you need to do, I guess, is do a search for serious collectors of the Duck comics. There are such people out there. A comic collector store in a large city might have someone who could help you contact such a person, but the Net would probably be easier.

Most of the great Uncle Scrooge episodes were written and illustrated by Carl Barks. There are some hardbound collections available of Barks' work. There is also a contemporary cartoonist, I think his name is Don Rosa, who is a huge fan of Barks and who does similar drawings and stories of the ducks. You might try a search for him on the Net, and it could give you some useful contacts.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,Philbob
Date: 18 Jul 08 - 12:53 PM

Hi, I noticed you have an interest in Uncle Scrooge. When I was young, my brother and I were reading a Scrooge McDuck comic and one of the Beagle Boys filled the panel with his laugh. He said, "Har Har Har-de Har Har." My brother and I fell over laughing for about a week. All our lives we cracked each other up with that phrase. My brother died a few years ago and I miss him. I would really like to find that panel so I could frame it and hang it in my study. I think we were about 13 years old, so it would have been around 1960 or so. I understand this might be an absurdly misplaced request, but I thought I would give it a try. If this is not your thing, maybe you could direct me in some way.
Thanks,
Phil Jones

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Aug 07 - 12:37 PM

Maybe so?

There were also some amusing satirical stories parodying the Cold War in various ways. Scrooge ran afoul of the Brutopians a few times. Brutopia was a country clearly intended to resemble the most hardline and vicious form of Stalinism. The Brutopian ambassador was a particularly nasty customer, always going on about "the happy people" back home, and how he was doing everything on their behalf....(ha, ha) He usually got in squabbles with Scrooge because they were both on the trail of some incredibly valuable article that could change the balance of power in the world.

Seems to me that one such article was a mysterious new element or compound with unknown possibilities. When they finally tracked it down, the Brutopian ambassador was infuriated to learn that rather than being the key to a new superweapon...or something else useful like that...it simply allowed the synthesizing of unlimited amounts of ice cream in every flavor known to man!

He was outraged. Why? Because "In Brutopia the happy people do not EAT ice cream!!!"

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: john f weldon
Date: 01 Aug 07 - 12:37 PM

...and if the streets of heaven are paved with gold, doesn't that just make gold cheap?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: RangerSteve
Date: 01 Aug 07 - 10:57 AM

I wonder if the writers of "The Gods Must Be Crazy" read the above comic book before writing their movie?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Aug 07 - 12:16 AM

It's true that ping pong balls would be crushed at lower depths. You would have to use something different, like rubber balls or styrofoam.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Aug 07 - 12:08 AM

Yes, that one was a terrific story with a very telling moral. The village was a lost valley in the Himalayas, similar to Shangri-La. The people there were living lives of purity, simplicity, honesty, and non-violence, and had been doing so since time immemorial.

The ducks end up in the valley through a misadventure, as in Hollywood's Shangri-La story. With them they have brought a case of pop bottles. Six pop bottles. Uncle Scrooge has gotten into the habit of drinking this variety of pop, because it eases the stress of his busy, competitive lifestyle, and guarding his countless bajillions of dollars.

Uncle Scrooge drinks one of the bottles of pop and discards the bottle cap, which is found by a citizen. The citizen is puzzled by the strange object and realizes that it must belong to the ducks, so he returns it. Scrooge, attaching no importance to the bottle cap, says he can have it...thus sowing the seeds of a catastrophe!

The bottle cap soon becomes incredibly valuable in Shangri-La, simply because it is so rare an object in their eyes. Many trades are made for the bottle cap as it becomes fabulously valuable...but finally it ends up in the possession of a villager who won't trade it for anything...he considers it too valuable to trade.

Then one day another villager notices that Scrooge has FIVE bottle caps! (on the remaining bottles, still unopened) This creates a public sensation. A crowd gathers around to look at the incredible wealth that the old duck has...FIVE BOTTLE CAPS!!!

This is very upsetting to Scrooge. He had decided that the simple, non-materialistic nature of Shangri-La was exactly what he needed to calm his nerves...a place where life is simple and no one is richer than anyone else...but now his dream is shattered by the bottle caps.

An angry mob gathers, resentful of Scrooge for hoarding FIVE WHOLE BOTTLE CAPS all to himself. He gets disgusted with them and throws one of the bottle caps to the mob, the idea being that the toughest man can have it. This results in a huge riot. The ugly face of violence is seen for the first time in Shangri-La. The concept of wealth has destroyed paradise.

It goes rapidly downhill from there. Scrooge orders his people abroad to deluge the valley with more bottle caps by dropping them from airplanes...until nobody will give a hoot about bottle caps anymore. Flood the market...drive the price down. You could do this with diamonds or with anything else, as is well known. What everyone can easily have, no one wants.

Unfortunately, there is a break in communications (I forget why) and Scrooge's employees continue dropping bottle caps! They drop so many loose bottle caps into the valley that it becomes a plague. The ground is covered with them. The sheep can't find grass to eat. The rivers and wells are getting plugged with bottle caps. Roofs and streets are littered with thousands of them.

The people of Shangri-La soon go from coveting the elusive bottle cap above all else to loathing and detesting the very sight of the cursed things! And they are keen for revenge on the ducks who brought this plague to their valley.

So ends the misadventure. Scrooge is forced to flee paradise because of a lousy bottle cap.

It's a wonderful little parable about human nature, psychology, and greed.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Cluin
Date: 01 Aug 07 - 12:04 AM

Remember the time Huey, Dewey and Louie tricked Frank Burns into thinking that Jack Tripper was gay?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: johnross
Date: 01 Aug 07 - 12:02 AM

Somebody planned to try using ping pong balls to rise a ship when I worked in the North Atlantic Rescue Coordination Center in the late 1960s. It turns out that the high water pressure at the sea bottom would crush your average ping pong ball.

Sounded like a good idea a the time...

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: john f weldon
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 11:48 PM

One clever tale involved a fundamental principle of economics that many people still don't get. DD & S McD drop a pop bottle cap in a small village. It becomes, to the inhabitants, enormously valuable. Later the Ducks use bottlecaps to try buy other stuff, but eventually overplay their hand, and the no-longer rare bottlecaps become worthless.
(I'm simplifying a long, intricate tale).

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 11:33 PM

Yes, you can refloat a sunken ship by filling the hull with small, bouyant obects of any kind.

Carl Barks was a very clever man with a grand imagination and a marvelous sense of adventure.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: RangerSteve
Date: 31 Jul 07 - 09:12 PM

I misssed this thread the first time around. Hers's some useless but interesting trivia: One of the Carl Barks Scrooge stories concerned raising a sunken treasure ship by filling it with ping pong balls. Years later, a ship sunk in Kuwait harbor. It was loaded with sheep. Since the Kuwaitis get there water from the sea (they have a desalinization plant), a shipload of rotting sheep in their drinking water was not a good thing. A lot of attempts were made to raise the ship, but none worked. Eventually, someone who had read the comic when he was a kid decided to try it. They didn't use ping pong balls, but something larger. It worked. Carl Bark's ducks saved the day. Tell this story to anyone who thinks you're wasting your time reading comic books.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Cluin
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 09:58 PM

Shoeless looks a bit Spammish to me.

Damn Spammiards.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Jeri
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 09:30 PM

Clan MacDuck actually has its own tartan.
and
'Ancient' MacDuck

Who knew...

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 09:11 PM

Yeah. Just like ducks do.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 09:10 PM

Humans come in a race....

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Jeri
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 06:40 PM

...and do cartoon ducks even come in races?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Jeri
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 06:38 PM

Are all Scots the same race? No Jewish Scots or Black Scots, etc.?

He's also 'McDuck', Scrooge McDuck, 'Scrooge' being his given name.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 06:33 PM

You're missing the point, Tam. And, no, I am not going to be taken in by your transparent attempt to start a controversy over this utter non-issue. ;-)

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,Tam
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 05:41 PM

Little hawk, If that is not a definition of racism, I don't know what is. Are all Jews hawk noses useres?, all Germans strutting nazies?, sll blacks ....
Who are we laughing at?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 05:19 PM

You and a lot of others. That's all the Beagle Boys really wanted too.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Rapparee
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 04:24 PM

I just wanted about an hour in Uncle Scrooge's vault.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: PoppaGator
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 04:07 PM

This thread was resurrected after 6-plus years by "Shoeless in New Orleans," with a question that seems to have nothing to do with Donald Duck or his uncle. What's up?

Are you still there, Shoeless? I'm in New Orleans, too. Do you live here, or are you just visiting (perhaps as a "voluntourist")?

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: SharonA
Date: 30 Jul 07 - 06:15 AM

Why is this above the line? (I realize that, in 2001 when this thread began, there was no line...*grin*)

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 12:13 PM

The comics were wonderful.

The reason the name "Scrooge" was picked was simply that it fitted the character. The character was supposed to be a mean, grasping, penny-pinching old duck with an incredible amount of money salted away. The fact that they made him Scottish was because of the old stereotypes about Scots being very tight with their money.

If you want to eliminate all such stereotypical culture-based humor from comics on the basis that it is "racist", you might as well just eliminate comics altogether and take up fingerpainting or something.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: john f weldon
Date: 29 Jul 07 - 09:22 AM

D.D. & Uncle Scrooge were a huge early influence.
One favourite: "A Christmas for Shacktown." The layouts are amazing.
I always prefered the comics to the animation...

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,Tam
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 01:25 PM

Why was the character called MacScrooge? Surely a racist insult pandering to the view that Scots are mean when in fact Scrooge was English.

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: GUEST,Shoeless
Date: 28 Jul 07 - 12:07 PM

I've sported the nicname Shoeless Pashley since college, when I was a bongo player in a Buffalo Band, the Sky Cabin Boys. I've not found any online help in getting pics, text, perhaps a copy.

Any help? [e-mail]

~~Shoeless in New Orleans

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Feb 01 - 11:15 PM

Yes! The duck stories (in the comics, that is, if not the cartoons) are full of ruthless satire of both the Communists and the Capitalists of this world, who both richly deserve to be satirized for their respective excesses.

They are also great for making fun of people in many professions, from crooked lawyers to dishonest real estate agents to the local dogcatcher. There was one Donald Duck story in which he WAS the local dogcatcher, and incredibly good at it too...until he came up against the Junior Woodchucks Official Hound...an exceedingly erudite beast. The Hound defeats Donald utterly, of course.

The short Gyro Gearloose stories were also great, specially the one where he invents a machine to read the thoughts of animals, and quizzes a local sparrow as to why it sings on his windowsill. The answer drives him temporarily mad. You have to read the story to find out why, however.

- LH

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Hollowfox
Date: 03 Feb 01 - 05:01 PM

'Spaw, you might want to glange at "Bill Peet: an Autobiography" (Houghton Mifflin, 1989). He's a children's author/illustrator who started his career with Disney Animation as an "in-betweener"; that's the one who doesn't draw the really defining animation cels of a cartoon, but the in-between ones that make the movements smooth. After a while he ran from his desk screaming,"No More Damn Ducks!" over and over. (My lbrary puts this book at about a 4th grade reading level (that's about ten years old, for non USA schools). As far as I know, that's the youngest reading level I've ever seen with the word "damn" in it. And no self-proclaimed censors have complained about it yet, as far as I know.)
And just for grins, some of you out there might enjoy "How to Read Donald Duck" by Ariel Dorfman (International General Press, 1991). I don't know if this is a revised edition, or a reprint of the copy I saw back in the 1970's, but it was written before "deconstruction" was invented as a catch-phrase. It's a fine old, classic (and readable) left-wing polemic on the hidden messages in our beloved comic books. I enjoyed it so much that I went out and read the companion book "The Empire's Old Clothes: what the Lone Ranger, Babar, and Other Innocent Heros Do to our Minds." (Pantheon, 1983)

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 03 Feb 01 - 02:04 AM

Thanks for the contribution, Don.

- LH

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: DonMeixner
Date: 03 Feb 01 - 01:08 AM

The recent run of Uncle Scrooge adventures are extremely well writen and drawn by Don Rosa. Uncle Scrooge as a young duck Boot Black in England where he earns his A-1 Dime then has it stolen is a treat. Some great history (Seriously) is played with through this saga.

The late Vaughn Bode's Cheech Wizard was fun but for a truly good read in an adult (not X rated) comic book may I suggest Xenozoic Tales by Mark Sxchultz. (He even plays a good guitar) Comics in lush black and white much like Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta's work in EC years back. Classic cars, dinosaurs and Hannah Dundee. Wow.

Don

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Feb 01 - 01:49 PM

Yeah, first impressions tend to stick. I'm sure glad we didn't have a TV when I was young. I loved reading and I loved comics, and still do now.

Speaking of Cheech Wizard, I hated that friggin' "Hat"! What an outrageous and total @$$hole he was! I particularly detested the series of incidents involving his lizard helper, whom he kept kicking in the balls. I wanted to see the Cheech Wizard get fed through a sausage-making machine, slowly, with his hat still on, and then pissed on, and then the remains fed to ravening pitbulls!

At least some of the overendowed females in that lamentable strip rejected his lascivious advances on occasion, which was all to their credit. I recall one of them punting him about 20 feet like a football...that picture, I liked. He then went and boasted to his lizard helper about what a "great time" he'd had ravishing her. He reminded me of various morons I knew back in High School...mostly guys on the football team.

Obviously, I identified with his helper...

- LH

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: catspaw49
Date: 02 Feb 01 - 12:47 AM

Yeah Hawk, and all the comics I mentioned are comics, not cartoons. But you have a good point. I got to know Donald through TV and movies first and hence never read the Donald comics too much. Oh, I'd skim through it as a kid, but I could never get past the image in my mind.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 11:58 PM

But Spaw...you are talking about the friggin cartoon, not the comic!

I grew up in a house with no TV and was spared hearing the soundtrack of those stupid cartoons. You're right! Donald has a horrible voice and he's very hard to understand...in films.

Since I got to know him through the comics, however, I was quite unaware of that horrible voice. In print he is entirely articulate...a whole different duck, in fact. You gotta READ Donald to appreciate him. I always imagined him with a perfectly normal voice.

You see, Disney screwed it up...but Barks (the artist and story writer for the comics) got it right.

As for Daisy...yeah, she was pretty tiresome all right. Can't argue with you there.

- LH

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 11:49 PM

Such good friends on this thread........and I dearly love so many comics.......but I can't stand that friggin' duck. I can't take any of it!!!!!! Scrooge, the brattish little nephews, Daisy....and especially Donald the dumbass. I have never been able to understand a gawddam word the thing says and I have been known to become violent when friends imitate the little focker!!!!

I'm sorry......I must be a total cretin. Just give me Daffy or Opus or Shoe or Pogo or Cheech Wizard........even the simpleass Katzenjammer Kids. Just shoot the little white duck......PLEASE!!!!

Spaw

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 11:34 PM

Lepus Rex - Whaddya mean Disney blows your cat? You must have a very strange cat! I'd get him checked out by a good pet psychiatrist at once!

Bugs Bunny is definitely cool, but the Warner Brothers stories have never shown the scope of sheer imagination in the Duck tales drawn by Barks and Rosa. Forget about Disney! He may have invented the ducks, but Barks and Rosa took them into realms Disney never dreamed of. Disney's Donald was just a squawking, argumentative, hysterical duck, but in the hands of Carl Barks he became a tragicomic everyman with as much character as Jimmy Stewart.

Gary T - As for Mickey Mouse, he became a dreadful bore in the fifties and sixties....a sort of suburban poor man's Dick Tracy with mouse ears....BUT...the earlier Mickey Mouse stuff in the 30's and 40's was wonderful! Great adventures and a really gritty feel to the stories and characters. For Mickey, you gotta go to the REALLY old stuff.

- LH

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Matt_R
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 11:30 PM

Ah, Gladstone Gander, the luckiest duck in the world!

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: DonMeixner
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 11:21 PM

Gary T,

I suggest you run an EBay search. But then the Gladstone reissues are still the same Carl Barks or Don Rosa art and stories. There is nothing quit as pleasing to a comic collector like myself than having that 1957 Four Color in your hands. Or re-reading Tales to Astonish 44 (First appearance of The Wasp in an Ant-man comic) and remembering where you first read it as a kid. In my case it was 'tween innings during a Saturday pickup game of ball.

Go to a comic convention in your area and ask about. There is a con in Ithaca NY this week end which is probably where I'll be for part of the day.

Don

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Gary T
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 10:28 PM

Little Hawk, I could probably have written your post. I still have a number of re-issues of some of those classic comics, and wish I knew where to get more of them. Just thinking of some of those stories brings a glow to me.

I always wondered why so many people seemed so fond of Mickey Mouse, who's as exciting as a limp noodle. Donald et al. have personality! Maybe not always pleasant personality, but there is some gumption there.

I suppose my favorite "genre" of the duck comics were the stories that tied into historical or other-cultural facts and legends. El Dorado, Shangri La, Ali Baba--I can't recall all of them right now, but the tales were very creatively and convincingly woven from threads of things we'd heard and wondered about.

Long live Unca Donald!

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Matt_R
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 10:03 PM

I wouldn't be in art school if it weren't for spending my youth drawing Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Launchpad McQuack, Hewey, Dewey & Louie, The Beagle Boys, etc!

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Lepus Rex
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 09:37 PM

Disney blows my cat:P

---Lepus Rex (Bugs rocks)

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 09:20 PM

I liked the one where Scrooge discovered he'd made too much money, and needed to spend a million or so, or taxes would make it worse, so he sent Donald & the boys on the road....and not knowing where to go, they resorted to 'flippism'.. using a coin to determine their route,...but everywhere choosing the most expensive meal they could find...which turned out to be "Breaded Breast of Caledonian Chickadee"...(smacks a bit of cannibalism..but..)...turned out it was a bit harder to spend money than you'd think...

and I LOVED Scrooge doing swan dives into his money bins!)

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 05:11 PM

Har! Har! Typical Carl Barks touch. I love it when Scrooge shrieks "The Beagle Boys! The terrible Beagle Boys" (Who else would it be???) as the lads remove their false beards and other tacky disguises, revealing those dumb, stubbly, black-masked faces, greed for uncountabajillions of dollars shining in their witless little eyes...and grinning from from ear to ear. Scrooge McDuck was their inspiration, their Everest. His billions were their holy grail.

How about the time Scrooge had to sell a 900 ton blast furnace and he managed to do it during a heat wave in the Siamese jungle?....All to stop the locals from listening to rock music by "Shoeless Pashly"....or was it "Elfish Pestley"? Barks clearly did not like Elvis all that much.

No one could outsell Scrooge McDuck...the ultimate capitalist of all time.

- LH

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Hollowfox
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 04:05 PM

Ohh, yes! I still treasure the Barks panel where donald is in traffic court and there's a sign under the judge that says "you haven't got a chance. The town's broke and the judge wants a raise."

Subject: RE: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Allan C.
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 02:50 PM

Yes. For the same reasons. But I identified more readily with both Bugs and Casper.

Subject: Donald Duck & Uncle Scrooge Fans!
From: Little Hawk
Date: 01 Feb 01 - 02:17 PM

I think that possibly the cleverest comic of all time was Donald Duck/Uncle Scrooge, when the stories were drawn and written by the legendary Carl Barks. They worked great on both a child and an adult level, as they were full of great social satire (crooked lawyers, pompous officials, incompetent people in high places, tinpot dictatorships, and all manner of human foibles, ruthlessly exposed)...plus lots of great slapstick humour for the kids who maybe didn't get the satire.

Remember "The Philosopher's Stone"? Or the one about the "Kigmy's", those little guys that lived in the underground world, or the one where the Beagle Boys and Scrooge had those huge logging machines (the "Paul Bunyan" machine)?

And then there was Magica De Spell.

Plus Donald's epic battles with neighbour Jones.

Did anybody else like those comics?

- LH