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Flashmob Fridays-- Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes

Ddlostintheandes

With the rest of the merry mobsters (I want to make that a thing,) I take my turn at tackling Walt Disney's Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes, a collection of Carl Barks' duck stories.  Honestly, I think I've only ever read a small handful of Carl Barks.  I don't even know if I really read any Walt Disney comics before a couple of years ago.  I'm finding it this odd struggle to go back and read comics as a 41 year old that I probably should have been reading and loving as an 8 year old.  I was such a Marvel zombie when I was a kid that anything that didn't feature tights was not something that I wanted to read.  Sure I even picked up the random DC comic here or there but it wasn't until Marv Wolfman and George Perez brought a Marvel storytelling sensibility to The New Teen Titans that I found my gateway into DC comics.  

So as an introduction into Carl Barks' storytelling, here's a snippet of what I wrote over at Flashmob Fridays:

What I enjoy about Barks (and his spiritual descendant Don Rosa) is that he doesn’t tell stories about cartoonish ducks but he tells them about characters who happen to be cartoonish ducks. The stories themselves, from the adventurous and titular “Lost in the Andes” to the screwballish “Plenty of Pets” and even to the one page gag strips, are built around characters. Donald Duck is the loyal but easily flustered hero. He seems to be all about himself and how everything affects him but he’s always doing things for his nephews or his uncle out of a strong love that exists among these characters. Even as characters lose their tempers and get mad at each other, there’s never a sense of spite or selfishness around these characters. Donald Duck is like Ralph Kramden in The Honeymooners. He’s quick to anger but there’s hardly a bigger heart around.

You can read my whole short essay here.