REVIEW: "Voodoo Hoodoo"

Haunted Mansion comics may be nice, but it was time I got back to more traditional Disney comics. Now, I had read Voodoo Hoodoo a couple of times in the past, but in French translations (since, as you may have grasped in the comments of the ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ post, I’m French). For the purpose of doing this review, I got around reading it in its original American printing, and a bunch of things suddenly struck me about it.

So there’s this rumor of a zombie hanging around in Duckburg. Donald hears said rumors and goes ask an… expert on ghost stuff who… I dunno… see for yourself.

Original version.

“Censored” version.

These two panels are, to me, the most puzzling thing in the whole comic. For various reasons.

• First: who IS this guy ? Barks throws him in like he’s some regular friend of Donald’s, which we of course know he isn’t. And where does Donald know him from ?  What kind of a name is Bop Bop anyway ? Why is he riding that ridiculous little  motorcar, with an oversized trumpet under his armpit ? WHY ? Also, if he’s that scared of a mere zombie, how comes he’s an « expert on ghost stuff » ? We need more information !

• Second: the words “done fer“ seem to have been written by someone other than Barks. Did the editor censor the word “dead” ? Seems likely to me, as I know more recent reprints have “dead” written instead, in Barks’s usual lettering font. 

• Third: is Bop Bop supposed to be black ? I mean, the coloring of the first printing seems to be designed to make us think so, but his facial structure is more similar to non-black Gottfredson characters like Joe Piper than to Barks’s depiction of black people later on — first of all, his black people are, well, black (their skin is inked on, Barks didn’t just draw the outlines and wait for the colorist to do the rest). Of course, on the other hand, there’s his accent, which, yeah, it could be an afro-american accent, but it could just be a low-class accent with no ethnic connection. THEN AGAIN, if he’s a low-class, why does he wear this fancy billionaire suit ? The “censored” version has a less ambiguous coloring. And his grammar is slightly better, but not much. It's so weird.

What was bound to happen happens: Donald meets the Zombie, whom apparently the editors in charge of the reprinting also thought was racistly depicted, and they had Barks re-draw his face without the big nose. (Same goes for Foola Zoola later). I’m not sure about this: on one hand, I don’t think it’s particularly offensive in Bombie’s case. A big nose is a cartoon/comic standard (just look at Asterix, for instance). If you look up any Donald story featuring “real” humans (aside from Dangerous Disguise and Ancient Persia, which are really special cases), there’s a good chance they’ll have noses at least as big as Bombie’s. On the other hand, I actually think Bombie and Foola Zoola look better with a smaller, more realistic nose; it makes them look like more “serious” characters. Bombie's misadventures you take more seriously than those of, say, Witch Hazel. And Foola Zoola, with his small, triangular nose, is much more threatening. He also looks more his age with those wrinkled lips. And those pointy teeth look so unspeakably silly. Here is a comparison:

This is silly.

This is eerily chilling.

…

So, you probably know how this goes. The zombie gives Donald a voodoo doll that stings him, and, persuaded that he's under some kind of curse, Donald goes to his Uncle Scrooge's.

So, here are my thoughts about this little part of the story that has turned, in the fans' eyes, into its biggest problem. At the time, Scrooge wasn't established as a “good guy”, and thus apparently, the curse was put on him when he tried to throw a voodoo tribe out of their property to turn it into a rubber plantation. To “justify” it, Don Rosa, in his Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, based a whole story arc on how this was Scrooge's only dishonest deed ever, how he always regretted it and how Bombie the Zombie and his curse are metaphorically an allegory of his remorse. The arc Rosa did is, on its own, wonderful, but… bah. He is missing the point.

You see, this rationalization is all based on the fact that what Scrooge did is evil. And the thing is, Barks's story really doesn't support this interpretation. First, there is the fact that Foola Zoola is this evil witch-doctor who is basically the villain of the story, and for that matter wouldn't look out of place in a line-up of Disney villains also including Jafar, Cruella De Vil, Maleficent and the likes. And then, there's the fact that everyone else in Africa seems to fear and hate this tribe, too; and there are also those rumors that Foola Zoola leads raids and plunders to nearby villages that the Ducks hear at the airport. Had Scrooge succeeded in getting rid of Foola and his men, he would have been seen as a savior by literally everybody else on the planet. 

Why this is uncomfortable is because it implies that the Voodoo Tribe is unredeemably evil, and that Scrooge's “Those savages were made” line and its next-of-kins are right. And they sound so despicably racist to modern ears ! But what one must understand is that though it's racist from our point of view, in this universe of fiction, all those things are true. You just can't blame characters who appear to us as racist, when through some whim of a racist author, the universe they are in really works like that.

Do bear in mind that I'm not saying Barks was racist, or that this story was especially racist, but it just contains clichés that are racist — namely, the evil voodoo tribe and its evil leader. It's racist from our point of view… but in-story, it's not: the evil voodoo tribe is evil, and making us feel sorry for them is missing the point.

This is one of my favorite bits in the story. At the sight of that second panel, I am filled with an indescribable mix of laughter and empathy. Poor thing. You just want to hug old Bombie.

This whole quiz sequence is as hilarious today as it ever was, since those things certainly didn't improve since 1948. I find this ever-moving presenter pretty hilarious, contrasted with the unmoving Bombie. This is one sequence that would render beautifully in animation.

This is probably unintentional, but I find it worth noting that it is a talking dog making the statement that “clams don't talk” as though it was elementary. 

The panel on the right, with its realistic scenery and shadowing, seems serious; complete with Donald's conqueror pose, if you forgot for a minute that it's a waterfowl you're looking at, this could seem to be from a genuine adventure story/movie.

Isn't this guy strange ? He's got dog ears, but a human nose. He must be a hybrid, I guess. 

Isn't this surreal image pretty funny ? It is to me. Also, notice how Bombie seems to be wearing the quiz presenter's very suit.

Carl Barks was generally a pretty good artist, but there is something weird with the proportions here. Either Donald suddenly grew a foot or two in height, or the native is a pygmy, which is unlikely. 

There is the bit I was talking about earlier -- Foola Zoola and his tribes are definitely villains.

Here's another place where Rosa's version and Barks's just don't add up, not just in terms of symbolism and morality, but in terms of facts. For one, here it is obvious that Zoola and Scrooge were old rivals who knew each other for quite a while. In Rosa's versions, they see each other for, what, thirty minutes maximum. Zoola's “Dear old friend” isn't really logical then. And also, that weird idea of Rosa's that Scrooge looking like Donald was the result of a disguise. Well, it's funny in itself, but the way this dialogue here plays, this is not a possibility that was, actually, left open. In Don Rosa's version, Scrooge only disguises himself after introducing himself to Foola under his regular appearance -- Bombie is tricked by Scrooge's disguise, but not Zoola. Thus, it doesn't make a shred of sense that Zoola would, genuinely, confuse present-day Donald with the Scrooge he knows. No, the way Foola Zoola puts it here, it's very clear that in the days the two knew each other, Scrooge  genuinely did look like Donald.

There's some good tension here, but the stake seems kind of ridiculous in comparison. I mean, you're gonna be shrunk to the size of a mouse. I can see why it would be unpleasant, but there's nothing to be too tragic (for Donald) or sadistic (for Foola) about. It's nothing too deadly or harmful, especially considering that in the Disney Comics world, anthropomorphic mice exist, which means there already are facilities arranged for 10-centimeters-tall people.

This denouement always fell flat for me. I mean, what are  the odds that Bombie somehow only bounces on people ? 

Well, anyway, a good story with not a doubt, with mostly great art, a good story, a good character, and a lot of creativity. There is however some confusing stuff (Bop Bop, I won't forget you!), as well as some vaguely racist stereotypes, but nothing too drastic.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: "The Wreck-hunter of the Carribeans"

Does this title sound familiar to you ? If it does… forget about it, you're mistaken, for this is a story that doesn't exist, even though it should and was supposed to. 

More exactly, it was apparently planned to be the 11B chapter of Don Rosa's The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. I don't know if there were serious plans, but Don Rosa clearly had something in mind. The plot would center around Scrooge looking for treasure maps and sunken treasures in the Caribbean. The idea comes from Barks's Only a poor old man…, where Scrooge briefly remembers this period and we get a panel of flashback of it.

Don Rosa, when collecting Barksian facts, based some of his chapters on those one-panel flashbacks in Only a poor old man: his King of the Klondike is as much based on the single panel of Only a poor old man than on the flashback Back to the Klondike, which would only become a more prominent influence on the later Hearts of the Yukon and Prisoner of White Agony Creek, the whole Copper Hill chapter is based on another panel, and a dialogue about Mongolia gave him the impulse to do the 2-3 pages sequence in chapter 11 where Scrooge discovers for the first time his ability to swim in money. The "searching for wrecks" business got mentioned, sure… but in a single panel of the 11th chapter:

And not even an original one at that; he's basically just copying Barks's own flashback panel, so we hardly learn anything about his adventures back then, aside from the fact that this period lasted one whole year (which we learn from the narration box that I cut here because since this is scanned from a French reprint it was in French and you'd have gotten confused for no reason when it's totally besides the point). But then, it's just one of the many events he had to include in the 11th chapter; it's only one of the many potentially chapter-length flashbacks that only managed to get a quick mention. So why am I especially concerned about that one ?

Well, flash forward to the 12th chapter's beautiful conclusion page:

Again ! All the other think bubbles are callbacks to the most glorious moments of each chapter, and Don Rosa just stuck than one around. Sure, you could say it's meant to represent Chapter 11, but it's not especially notable or representative of its plot. The "searching for wrecks" seems to have been its own independent thing the whole time, and Rosa just didn't get the opportunity to write that particular story even though he was wanting to. Why ? Probably a lack of inspiration, because…

…he'd already written a shipwreck-hunting story, and when combined with The Horseradish Story, it probably made Rosa think that there was nothing new to be written about Scrooge hunting sunken treasure without seeming redundant.

REVIEW: "A Hole in One"

Okay, if I ask you, "what is Carl Barks's first Disney comic story ?", I suppose you are either going to answer Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold or, if you consider that he did not take that big a part in Pirate Gold, perhaps The Victory Garden. Some smarties might even remember that 1942 Pluto story to the script of which he contributed. This is all very nice, I suppose, but if you really want to dive in the depths of history, you'll find that neither was really Barks's first. And his first comic was a Donald Duck story !… Kinda. Here, enjoy:

That's right: unbeknownst to you, Carl Barks worked on the Donald Duck Taliaferro strip well before he started to draw on his own. And this, if I.N.D.U.C.K.S. is to be believed, is the first one on which he worked: 1938's A Hole in One. 

Okay, you say, but is it any good on its own, besides the historical value ? Was Barks inspired on that fateful day ?…

Not really.

First, the concept that Donald would refuse to give the kids any money, but stil accept to put some on their bank, is ridiculous. Why ? Because even without the dirty trick the kids play on him (spoiler alert: they've carved a hole in the bottom of the bank and immediately get the coin that Donald puts in it), exactly what was stopping the ducklings from just taking the money from the bank the second Donald had put it in it ? Some might say: yeah, but that's the whole point of the gag, Donald's just being dumb. Well no, it isn't. If that was the point of the gag, there would be no need for the "carved a hole in the bottom of the bank" part: the gag would just go as I said with Huey, Dewey and Louie taking the coin from the bank. 

EDIT: Matilda in the comments defends the gag by pointing out that children's banks in those days were often impossible to open without breaking them, that being actually the whole point of the thing. That's true, of course, but then again the kids seemed to have been able to open the bank quite easily when they removed the base to play their trick. So maybe it isn't outright a mistake, but those things sure aren't as clear as they should be.

Second: I know, slapstick logic, but the kids carved a hole in the table ? The table ? And Donald didn't notice it ?

Third: another logical mistake. The story starts with Donald refusing to give the kids the money. Thing is, the kids did not have any way of predicting that Donald would refuse, while the "carving the table and the bank in advance" implies some sort of premeditation.

Nice dynamism here, though of course it's the artist, Taliaferro, who's to be complimented here, not Barks, the writer. Still, I think it really shows that at the time, Barks was a cartoon writer; the whole thing just looks to be straight out of the same years Donald's Nephews to which Barks contributed, down to the nephews' Tex Avery-esque way to flee.

So… here we have it, fellows; Barks's very first Donald Duck comic. I think there's a reason that it's not remembered as Barks's debut: it's just not special. You take any Donald Duck strip from the same time period, written by somebody else, and it will have the exact same kind of gag, the same flaws and the same qualities. Even if it was not truly the first, Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold is remembered because it was Donald's very first book-length comic story, and an adventurous, exciting one at that — pirates ! Gold ! Humor ! A map ! Pete ! Why this is… just a common comic strip. 

Still, it grieves me that it's not acknowledged anywhere except on the I.N.D.U.C.K.S; it has been reprinted a few times, but always as part of a "vintage Donald Duck comic strip" retrospective, never as "Barks's debut". For all its flaw, it's an important milestone in Duck history… and it's not that bad in spite of what I've nitpicked about it. It's just common.