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The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

School of Humanities

THE DREAM OF THREE LIFETIMES:

TRANSLATION AND TRANSNATIONALITY IN COMICS

A Dissertation in

American Studies

by

Peter Cullen Bryan

©2018 Bryan

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

December 2018

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The dissertation of Peter Cullen Bryan was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Charles J. Kupfer Associate Professor of American Studies and History Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee

Simon J. Bronner Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Folklore

Anthony Bak Buccitelli Associate Professor of American Studies and Communication

Samuel P. Winch Associate Professor Emeritus of Communications and Humanities

Roderick Lee Associate Professor of Information Systems, School of Business Administration

John R. Haddad Professor of American Studies and Popular Culture Chair of the Graduate Program in American Studies

*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School.

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ABSTRACT

Disney is one of the major cultural exports of America, with a multimedia empire of , comics and even theme parks. Traditionally, the process has been regarded as one-sided and imperialistic, with Disney (and American culture at large) marching into new territories and asserting control over the native popular culture. This process is in fact more multifaceted, with

American culture creating something entirely new in interactions with other cultures; the meaning is typically reinterpreted by outside audiences. This utilization of American culture also differs from the manner it is consumed domestically; Disney’s comics remain among the best-selling worldwide, instead of the niche products that they are in the American market. The success of Disney is not built on enforcing a march towards homogeneity; rather, the intellectual properties are adapted by translators, writers, artists, and to take on new, relevant meanings within in particular, where the properties have grown beyond their American origins. Three creators in particular stand out: , , and . Barks provides original context in both America and Germany, Fuchs and her translations offer clues into why the comics became popular, and Rosa works towards of an understanding of how the comics continued after the retirements of Barks and Fuchs. These three creators were crucial to the development of the fan communities around the comics, and the is still felt within the larger German society.

American Studies has many blind spots; it is apt to ignore things which have already been

"definitively" examined. I seek to examine , particularly in a transnational context. However, the final word on this scholarship is Dorfman and Mattelart's Marxist reading of the comics How To Read Donald Duck, originally published in 1973 in of

Pinochet's coup in Chile. It is a key work of scholarship on the power of the , yet has

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effectively served as the last word on the Disney comic since. My endeavors to apply new theories to more fully examine the worldwide popularity of Disney's have consistently faced the presumption that I am approaching the works from the same angle, just updated to current theory.

This presumption of the work being couched within the post-colonial theory has created expectations with what the work should be. I believe that Disney's influence is different than is immediately apparent, and that the criticism of How To Read Donald Duck is not entirely unwarranted, but becomes overly simplistic when applied to the broader of Disney media worldwide. There is a tendency in academia to posit Disney as a harbinger of American imperialism and a fixture of neoliberal values, but I contend that their comics are not being read by the populace in the manner put forth. What I would do is in the same vein as Dorfman and

Mattelart: reconsidering how these comics are received by their readers, and how that impacts the culture around them.

Consensus among the fan community places Carl Barks as the most significant creator of

Donald Duck comics, a paragon that enshrined the character and his supporting in the public consciousness the world over. The art and stories of Barks were the foundation upon which fandoms were built, and the subject of opposition from certain intellectual circles, but this view fails to consider the contribution of others in the development of this readership. The editor Erika

Fuchs was single-handedly responsible for the written content of these comics in Germany for several decades, allowing her readers to consume them not as exotic foreign media but as familiar storybooks. Her translations are especially notable for subtly shifting and changing the written words to suit the German audience, and reflects a significant case for the consideration of translation studies. Fuchs's work allowed these comics on a position similar to that of

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comics in America, inspiring a continuous run of comic books, collected volumes, fan conventions, and even a traveling art exhibit. The modern state of Donald Duck fandom in

Germany reflects result of a process of negotiation that reconsiders cultural imports within an existing cultural context.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables Page vii

Acknowledgments Page viii

Chapter 1: Why to Read Donald Duck Page 1

Chapter 2: How to Read How to Read Donald Duck Page 18

Chapter 3: “The Empire-Builder from Calisota”: Donald Duck and the Rise of Disney Page 35

Chapter 4: “”: Donald Duck at War and as Page 55

Chapter 5: “The Good Duck Translator”: Erika Fuchs and the Exporting of Donald Duck Page 78

Chapter 6: “The Buckaroo of the Badlands”: Carl Barks Remembering the Frontier Page 120

Chapter 7: “Guardians of the Lost Library”: The Development of Duck Fan Communities Page 149

Chapter 8: “Always Another Rainbow": Fans, Publishing, and the Return(s) of Donald Duck Page 172

Chapter 9: “The King of the Klondike”: Don Rosa and (Re)envisioning the Frontier Page 198

Chapter 10: “From Duckburg to Lillehammer”: Barks, Rosa, and Duck Artistic Hybridity in Donald Duck Page 212

Chapter 11: “A Duck’s Eye View of ”: Conclusions on the Significance of Donald Duck Comics Page 228

Works Cited Page 234

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Wartime Animated Productions Page 59

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Brittany Clark: Woody to my Buzz, Sundance to my Butch, you saw me through this. Once more unto the breach, dearest friend.

Charles Kupfer: you kept me on task, and on track, and helped me put this together.

Simon Bronner: you took a chance on me, and made this all possible.

Anthony Buccitelli: your unwieldly annotated bibliography assignment was the backbone of this.

Sam Winch: you came back from retirement for one last defense.

Roderick Lee: you provided a new perspective on a few small problems.

Peter Kareithi: you helped me come to terms with how to approach the big bad Disney.

Cindy, Jennie, Tina, Hannah: I would most surely have dropped out of the program from being trapped in paperwork hell; thank you kindly for all that you do.

Peter Lehman, Sarah Wilson, Tiffany Weaver: we had a good run. 602 represent!

Emilia Yang: you introduced me to Jenkins, and put me on this path.

Julia Morrow: your wisdom and kindness kept me on the path.

Lynn Bartholme and the Ray and Pat Browne Library at Bowling Green State University: when I was lost on how to proceed, you showed me a way forward, and gave me hope anew.

Peter Berg and the State Special Collections: you told me I was the only one that explored the collections; thank you for keeping them ready for me.

Joseph Cullen: you always believed in me, and I wish you could see me now.

Chris Cullen: you helped me out when I was just starting, and believed in me entirely.

Collette Cullen: it was a conversation with you that planted this seed; its growth continues.

Papa: you instilled in me a work ethic that remains, even when I don’t want to get up so early.

Mama: you saved my ass a thousand times, and made me promise to write a book about it. This is that book, more or less.

.

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Chapter 1. Why to Read Donald Duck

What does it mean that Donald Duck is more popular today in the rest of the world than in his home country? In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Donald Duck comics were the best- selling comics in the American market, with #1 being by some accounts the best- selling comic in history. Something changed in the 1960s that saw the character displaced in

American newsstands, while his popularity concurrently grew worldwide. Explaining this of Donald Duck into a globally-consumed popular culture icon, while declining in his home country, forms part of this dissertation's rationale. In present day , Donald Duck (there called Paperino) appears on every newsstand, often in the guise of a -style superhero. In

Sweden, Donald Duck (Kalle Anka) is a Christmas tradition watched by half the country annually. In Germany, Donald Duck (Dagobert Duck) has inspired a travelling art exhibit called

Duckomenta. These countries each have considerably different cultures and hail from different regions: in Scandinavia, Italy in the Mediterranean, Germany in Central Europe. Each must be approached as independent settings, and while the emphasis in this dissertation will be on the American and German components, Donald Duck delights readers for reasons that will be identified and analyzed. Americans still recognize Donald Duck: most anyone over the age of three knows the character on sight. He is certainly a cultural icon of some force: his visage appears on orange juice and ice cream, and he has masqueraded as the Duck during various sporting events since 1947. Still, there remains a comparative dearth of Donald Duck-related media in America: a low-selling comic and recent of

Ducktales comprise the current output of the character, his popularity relying more on history and 21st Century Disney intellectual property management for recognition than on contemporary textual output.

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For some forty years, the definitive critical work of all Disney comics has been Ariel

Dorfman and Armand Mattelart's How to Read Donald Duck (1972). Written on the eve of the

Pinochet coup in Chile, which itself served as a focal point for conspiratorial revisionism regarding American foreign policy during the Vietnam era, the pair argued that Disney, and in particular the comics (Donald, Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, Louie, etc.), were the tools of , intended to serve as a beachhead for American cultural values. They theorized that Disney intentionally created a world without strong family connections (there are no mothers, for instance, and few fathers within the world of the Ducks) in order to make children comfortable with a horizontal, capitalistic world order. They find the world scrubbed clean of any sex or violence, except when the rules of violence are broken. They argue that, within this world, wealth is not the result of hard work, but of simple luck, that indigenous tribes are shown as somehow undeserving of their wealth, that the whole enterprise was a tool of indoctrination in the neo-liberal paradise that and his writers envisioned. It is a classic work, and rightfully regarded as a significant milestone in the development of cultural criticism, but it rests on a very narrow view of what these comics are, or perhaps were. There are weaknesses apparent now, both in terms of new theories that have arisen (particularly cultural hybridity), as well as some of the underlying presumptions (particularly who was writing the comics). For example, the leftist critical analysis which attacks and pathologizes the non- traditional family structures (namely, the various uncles and nephews) that do not mesh with modern sensibilities. Moreover, the shape of events that followed, particularly the wars in

Indochina and the at large, makes their undoubtedly sincere foreign policy outlook far from indubitable.

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In the same vein, David Kunzle's "Dispossession by Ducks: The Imperialist Treasure

Hunt in Southeast Asia" from 1990 offers an updated view on imperialism within Disney comics, particularly within the later Barks era. Kunzle, the original English translator of How To Read

Donald Duck, finds that the narratives put forth tended to be both critical of and favorable to imperialist ideologies; there was no singular narrative within these comics when the question of imperialism arose. Barks's work tended to create sympathy with the exploited natives; though

Scrooge was the erstwhile protagonist of the stories, readers were not always called upon to side with his brand of overt , and Scrooge would often act honorable towards the natives out of a similar sense of sympathy. Kunzle explains that these were not simple stories of an

Western imperialist who brings technology to "civilize" the "savages", but rather creates a more nuanced view of the problems of technology and modernization. It is not always perfect; the natives, given the choice, will generally elect to return to a monarchy rather than embrace a new form of government, and there were censorship problems with the Disney corporation in

America (several of Barks's stories served as Vietnam allegories that seemed to raise some concerns during reprints). Ultimately, it seems, Barks is trying to remain even-handed, and is more fair than other writers of the day for the plight of the exploited native, and is not entirely in line with the cultural imperialist ideology often ascribed to his work.

Richard Schickel's The Disney Version (1969) actually predates Dorfman and Mattelart, and might be the ur-example of anti-Disney criticism.1 Schickel approaches Walt Disney as a purveyor of middle-brow entertainment, a master of business, and a defender of nostalgia, but

1 There were a few earlier scholarly efforts examining Disney; Robert D. Felid's The Art of Walt Disney (1942) appears to have been the first such text, though it focused more directly on the advent of as a new art style than the deeper cultural implications of the work.

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not as an artist of any great degree. Disney's work, in Schickel's estimation, is produced for the masses, and posits that these works stand-in for the nostalgic myths of Middle America. This approach set the tone for much Disney scholarship that followed, with the media productions regarded more as mass media entertainment for broad audiences and not worth scholarly examination. Schickel concludes of Walt Disney that "one must, at last, take him seriously, because whatever the literary content of works, however immature his conscious vision of his own motives and achievements was, there was undeniably some almost mystic bond between himself and the moods and styles and attitudes of this people."2 He inexorably equates Disney with low culture, but recognizes his unique position in the creation of the modern mass media, possessing a curious fascination with the man. Schickel is representative of the first wave of serious pop culture scholarship, just as the work of Dorfman, Mattelart, and Kunzle represent

Cold War revisionism.

Henry Giroux and Grace Pollock's The Mouse That Roared (2010) takes Schickel's position to its ultimate conclusion, positing Disney as an unsavory and deeply problematic enterprise, one that seems engineered for bad behavior. Giroux and Pollock offer a sense of his approach: "how audiences interpret Disney's texts may not be as significant as how some ideas, meanings, and messages under certain political conditions become more highly valued as representations of reality than others - and further, how these representations assume the force of ideology by making an appeal to common sense while at the same time shaping political policies and programs that serve very specific interests."3 Everything is framed though this view; all of

2 Richard Schickel, The Disney Version 3 Henry A. Giroux and Grace Pollock, The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (Latham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), 6.

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Disney's actions serve its larger operations, from the days of Walt to the ascendance of Michael

Eisner, and the content itself is secondary to the presumed intentions of the Walt Disney

Company. The actual content being produced is of less interest than what it represents, shifting away from efforts like How to Read Donald Duck. Giroux's view is emblematic of larger anti-

Disney sentiment that developed in the later 20th century that cast Disney as the most destructive of contemporary corporate culture, and I will offer further exploration of the text in Chapter

Two. The title of the work, borrowed Leonard Wibberley's 1955 novel and Peter Sellers-starring adaptation, speaks in part to the position of in the period: a company specializing in theme parks and animation suddenly finding itself positioned as one of the dominant media corporations of the 21st Century.

Janet Wasko's Dazzled by Disney (2001) offers a more research-based reading of

Disney's reach, focusing heavily on audience reception in a variety of countries (including two studies in the , several in Europe, though unfortunately no Germany). The study is wide-ranging in subject matter, exploring attitudes towards Disney's animated , theme parks, television, comics, and other aspects of the Disney empire. Wasko provides a great deal of data in how Disney is perceived abroad, and how that perception changes in multiple spaces.

It is a dense, focused study, emphasizing the growing and the transnational aspects of contemporary American culture, and generally avoids making any moral judgments about

Disney's larger endeavor. Wasko’s Understanding Disney (2001) serves as a companion work, offering a more theory-based approach to the question of Disney, couching the reading of Disney in communication and political theory, approaching the company itself rather than the audiences at large. It offers a grounded approach to what Disney is, with a heavy emphasis on the theme parks within the larger Disney enterprise.

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There is a great deal of discussion on the corporate and studio dealings of the Walt

Disney Company, both before and after Walt's death. Ron Grover's The Disney Touch (1991) discusses the events surrounding the as it was occurring, focusing on the work of , , and Roy Disney.4 This is a fine example of an entire subgenre of books that examines the inner-workings of Disney, particularly from a business perspective. Grover keeps his focus on the facts and figures, relying on interviews with the

Disney leadership to explore the company's resurgence. This is useful in understanding the changes in the corporate culture that would eventually impact the development of Disney's comics in America, particularly with regard to Gladstone Comics in the 1990s, as well as the creation of the borderline-spinoff Ducktales, that informs much of the developments in fandom that occur thereafter.

James Stewart’s Disney War (2005) is an extended account of Michael Eisner’s tenure as

CEO of the Walt Disney Company. It emphasizes the battle between Roy E. Disney and

Michael Eisner that would eventually see Eisner ousted from Disney in 2004, which is outside the purview of this dissertation. It does provide a useful background to Eisner’s takeover of the company in 1984, along with the subsequent reorganization that saw a shift in the larger corporate culture. Furthermore, it offers insight into the financial growth of the company, particular in the late , and the effort to modernize operations. It has the advantage of distance from the events, with a longer perspective than Grover, as mentioned above.

4 Indicative of this timeliness, Grover is writing when The King (1994) is still under its production title King of the Jungle. Ron Grover, The Disney Touch, 133

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Steve Watt's "Walt Disney: Art and Politics in the American Century" (1995) offers some insight of the man at the top. While Disney was largely uninvolved in the comics division of his company (the only time Carl Barks met him was when Barks was an animator in the 1930s), he was ultimately the leader of the corporation, and thus set the course for the larger enterprise.

Watt contains his discussion largely to Disney's stateside actions, but he does offer a great degree of insight into the man's politics and philosophies. Walt Disney is put forth as a populist, who believes that culture belongs to everyone, and should not be constrained by social boundaries.

He posits culture as a choice, a freedom to decide upon which things are worthwhile and which are not. Disney was a political conservative, and vehement anti-Communist, and Watt examines the full meaning of this in the context of Disney's work during the second half of his life. Based on this, we can understand Disney the corporation's efforts not merely as money-making schemes, but a more concerted effort to posit the American exceptionalism to a foreign audience.

Watt elaborates on the "cinematic Marshall Plan" put forth by Walter Wagner, explaining it in the context of the larger efforts of the studio beyond simply selling pre-established animated characters (Davy Crockett, for instance, plays a significant role in the effort). While Watt ultimately does not offer much criticism, he paints a vivid picture of the events that lead Disney to put forth the concerted, worldwide effort that it would in the post-war years.

State Department Henry J. Kellerman authored Cultural Relations - Instruments of

Foreign Policy U.S. German Exchange - 1945-54 (1978), which offers a sense of the underlying decisions of the State Department during the postwar years, with an eye towards the reforming of the educational system. The text is relatively dry and diplomatic, but is a valuable primary account of the administrative approach taken, and some of the reasoning behind. Kellerman illuminates the conditions that allowed Donald Duck to gain a foothold in the culture, with the

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larger U.S. efforts to erase Nazi tendencies among the German population. This was a continuation of policies begun in the 1940s under the Roosevelt administration as part of a larger effort to contain encroachment by Nazi and Communist ideologies into American spheres of influence, particularly South America. Walt Disney himself played a role in the effort, notably with (1943), which featured Donald Duck with new character Jose Carioca.

Disney is quite well covered by American academics, and there is considerable scholarship on the company’s operations, as mentioned here, even during World War II. Still, it is worth exploring the development of Disney and of Donald Duck, particularly Donald’s use as wartime propaganda, to locate why the Duck is eventually positioned as a “World Diplomat,” as

Wanger explains. Donald’s characteristics in the early carry over to the work of Carl

Barks to a degree, though would mellow out some under the pen of the “Good Duck Artist.” My goal in this dissertation is to demonstrate who Donald Duck was to homegrown audiences, what lead to his overall success as a comics character (which went well beyond his association with the Disney brand), and elucidate why the divergence between American and German readerships would occur, as well as the longer-term developments within the fan communities.

The Ducks have not received the same attention that other aspects of the Disney enterprise receive, at least within American scholarship. Disney is typically approached through their animated features, certainly the most accessible aspect of their output for modern audiences, and great deal has been written dissecting the extensive output: Douglas Brode's

Multiculturalism and the Mouse (2005) approaches Disney (both the company and Walt himself) as a vehicle for the furthering of diversity in America, finding the efforts admirable, if imperfect.

Brode often takes a combative approach to overarching academic criticism of Disney at large, positing that "the academic demonization of Disney seems not only wrongheaded but takes on a

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strikingly antipopulist quality."5 Brode's approach positions Disney's output as an ultimately progressive effort, engaging with particular segments of their audience - casting black cowboys in 1960s television Westerns, creating female protagonists with agency - often in a coded or subversive manner. Brode approaches films like (1946) with a new perspective, running against the conventional wisdom to find value in even the more infamous of and disrespected of Disney's ouput.

Russell Belk's "Material Values in the Comics: A Content Analysis of Comic Books

Featuring Themes of Wealth" (1987) deals with portrayals of wealth in various comics. Belk offers a framework for understanding portrayals of conspicuous wealth in comics, particular how they were meant to appeal to readers and frame a given narratives. Belk takes care to distinguish

Scrooge's great wealth from other comics characters (most notably ), examining its portrayal and utility within the comics universe, and offering some clues to why audiences might relate to Scrooge. He is not simply a wish fulfillment fantasy in the manner of Richie Rich (he has great wealth, but rarely enjoys it), but might stand as a symbol of the value of hard work and dedication, and makes a counterpoint to the luckless and short-tempered Donald. He concludes that the Uncle Scrooge stories offer the most nuanced and balanced views of wealth in the comics he examined (wealth was neither inherently good nor bad, and often caused as much trouble as it solved), with Scrooge himself often being portrayed as overtly selfish if not heartless, though things became a little less complicated after Barks's retirement.

5 Douglas Brode, Multiculturalism and the Mouse (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 14.

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Thomas Andrae's Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book (2006) is the first full-length scholarly contemplation of Carl Barks, the man most responsible for the creation and development of Donald Duck and his extended clan, and of the worldwide popularity of the character. Andrae speaks to and translator David Kunzle, using How To Read

Donald Duck as a counterpoint to explore the work of Barks and what set those stories apart.

His book goes on to relate the life of Carl Barks, from his childhood to his work for Disney to his rather active retirement, before delving into the meaning of his works. Andrae finds Barks a conservative nostalgic, a wistful old man who perhaps too fondly remembers his youth, and writes his stories as ruminations on what was. He finds that Barks is distrustful of technology and the modern world, in favor of the preservation of other cultures and historical treasures, and contemplative of the nature of wealth and happiness (specifically that the two are not strongly correlated). Andrae is concerned more with the content and significance of Barks's work in the comics itself than its cultural impact, and approaches the content from a literary and American

Studies standpoint rather than a Communications one. He considers at length what Barks's stories relate about the American myth of success, though does take some consideration of larger issues, particularly with a thinly-veiled story about Vietnam late in his career that raised some serious questions about American involvement there. While Andrae does not provide a great amount of depth on the reception of Barks's work overseas, he does provide a solid picture of the particular qualities of a Carl Barks comic book, and gives us some sense of why these stories seem possessed of some universal power. Further, Andrae does an excellent job of placing

Barks's stories into an American Studies context, and offers considerable insight into where the field of Disney comics studies is at the present, and should prove a useful guide going forward.

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Michael Barrier's work, particularly his recent Funnybooks: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books (2014), has explored the popularity of Disney, both in film and comics. He was one of the first scholars to seriously approach Carl Barks as a subject, and has written the definitive volume on the output of with Funnybooks. Additionally,

Barrier conducted several early interviews with Barks, with an eye towards specificity in the choices Barks made, as well as his role within the larger Disney enterprise. Barrier has access to sources and individuals that I do not, considering my position as a graduate student and the fact that several subjects have since died, and thus forms a crucial supporting component of this work.

Erika Fuchs translated the comics at a dizzying pace, with changes major and minor, inserting jokes, puns and references that appealed to her German-speaking audience, shifting the cultural and historical references to be better understood by a German audience, eventually rising to a reputation on par with Barks in the German community. Her efforts were certainly a contributing factor in the enduring popularity of the character and stories, and might explain why

Donald Duck remained dominant in the German market even as his sales collapsed domestically.

Fuchs has effectively gone un-discussed by American scholars, yet is recognized as one of the most significant forces in the popularization of the comics in Germany. Klaus Bohn’s Das

Erika-Fuchs-Buch (1996) is a fairly standard biography of her life, useful more as background than as a critical source. It offers a few insights into her life, but serves more as a reference point to further research; it seems generally disliked by German scholars. Ernst Horst’s Nur keine

Sentimentalitäten (2010), though intended for a general audience, provides useful insight into her translation work and her motivations. It is approachable and relatively easy to comprehend, while providing a deeper exploration into her work and motivations. Ilaria Meloni’s Erika

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Fuchs´ Übertragung der Comicserie (2013) offers the most scholarly of the major

Fuchs texts, examining the work from the perspective of translation studies. She offers very detailed in its examination of how the original texts were changed in their adaptation, and the cultural significance of the choices that Fuchs made. Meloni ties her discussion quite directly in to translation studies, exploring the very linguistics of the work that she carried out.

Disney comics underwent an evolution divergent from Disney's animation and the rest of the company. While the remained firmly under Walt Disney's control, the comics became increasingly decentralized. Print cartoons were among the first arms of Disney's animated empire to take hold outside of its fledgling film success, with the comics in particular achieving great success in the early success in an open market (Disney comics started up in

1930, eight years before hit the newsstands). There is little indication that Disney himself had much hand in the early productions; he had scripted a few early strips (which were in turn drawn by ), but his involvement effectively ended as the

Disney conglomerate began to grow. The duties of art and writing for the comics were taken up by a number of young animators, including and , who were given some leeway in developing the characters and stories (certainly moreso than producing shorts under Walt Disney's watchful eye at the studio), and who began pulling the characters in other directions than what might have been originally intended by Walt Disney.6 Disney further moved their publishing efforts out of house, handing off their stable of licenses to children's book publishers Publishing, whose comic division Dell Comics had achieved some

6 Carl Barks mentions that "no feedback came from Walt on my comic book work. Don't know if he ever read the comic books." Kivekas, 162

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success with the early comic books. One of the artist/writers that worked for Dell was a former Disney animator, Carl Barks, who explained in a 1971 interview, "I don't think the

Disney studio ever even read my comic book stories. I would turn in my stories to Western, and

Western supposedly sent them over to the Disney studio for checking, but I know that there were times when I was so close to their deadline they didn't have time; they would just have had to shoot the stories right on through to New York."7 While all comics, in theory, traveled through the Disney pipeline, the only connection to the Walt Disney himself seems to have been the man's name on the cover.8

Carl Barks is a name known to few; a figure of some renown in comic book circles, he wrote, largely anonymously, many of the Duck family titles (Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Four

Color Disney Comics) for over twenty years, retiring in 1966, the year Walt Disney died. He was by all accounts a humble man, working for low pay with little complaint, and remained almost awestruck by his post-retirement fame. He had originally come to to work for

Walt Disney Studios, had a hand in writing jokes in several early, mostly Donald Duck cartoons, though he quit shortly after the outbreak of World War II, quickly winding up as a freelance writer of Donald Duck comics.9 His identity was outed by a few resilient American fans, who managed to uncover his name and address though the publishing company of the comics (then

Dell Comics), and went to interview him for a fanzine article in 1962. Barks had been something of a notable figure even before his identity was learned, referred to in fan circles as

7 Barrier, Bray, Foster, and Spicer, 21 8 Barks did work with Disney in the 1930s at the animation studio, and had occasional interactions with him, but they never exchange any further communication after Barks quits the film studio. Andrae 37 9 Svane 170

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"the Good Duck Artist" due to the attention and skill he applied to the scripts and drawings in his stories. He became a minor international celebrity in the ensuing years, though he would not leave the United States until he was in his 90s, when he undertook a something of a farewell tour through Europe. It should be noted that it would have been almost totally impossible for

Dorfman and Mattelart to have been aware of the man; his name and identity were only known in some limited fan circles, and the full scope of his work would not become apparent until well after his retirement. Rather, they assumed that the simple lie (that Walt Disney wrote the stories, as his name was emblazoned across the front of every issue) had some truth, that the writers of these comics had no real agency within the Walt Disney Company, that they were beholden to a strict set of corporate rules that put the expansion of Disney's cultural hegemony above all else.

In this respect, their presumption was incorrect.

Despite this rather humble standing, he crafted the Duck family universe in myriad ways with some 700+ stories representing several thousand pages worth of writing and drawing, all consistent within his created world.10 He was also responsible for the creation (and refinement) of some of the most well-known figures within Disney comics, including perhaps the best known of all: Scrooge McDuck. While many cite Scrooge as a poster boy for the righteousness of unchecked capitalism, Barks posits him as a more complicated, even tragic figure, at various times. His desire for money is insatiable, but his greed often reflects a great personal cost, and his fortunes are often fleeting. The sheer volume of Barks's output looms large in any discussion

10 A note on vocabulary: while most comics are published in individual issues, Disney comics tend to be collected in somewhat longer formats, ranging from the traditional comic book to a digest format running up to several hundred pages. "Stories" are individual sections within those, running somewhere between one and thirty pages, on average, comprising a single narrative (though they might in turn be broken up into multiple parts). Thus, the original source of publication will be referred to herein when possible, rather than citing the story itself.

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of the Duck comics (his closest rival for stories, Italian writer and artist , clocks in with just over 400 works), and his works are consistently among the most reprinted worldwide. By virtue of his reputation and prodigious yield, Barks is almost certainly the most significant author of Donald Duck comics, and has deeper influence upon the genre of Disney

Comics in a manner that few other individuals could hope to wield. He is the singular author that nearly all who followed were inspired by, he is the dominant creator, not just among the

American fandom, but among the fans worldwide, the man whose work inspired the cataloging of Disney comics by the European fans (who sought to determine just how many stories he actually wrote), and who stood at the heights that many of those who followed would aspire to.11

Disney comics are now broken up across linguistic and national lines, with various publishers taking on the duties, and making their own versions of the characters out of the guidelines provided by Disney.12 The goal is to reach each market in receptive spots, perhaps undercutting the concept of American products haphazardly breaching the local cultural milieu.

This does not even consider the role that individual translators might play in how the comics' scripts would change through the language barrier; translators had an even freer rein than the comics creators in the period, and could influence the messages and quality of the comics, for good or ill, at the behest of their publisher or of their own personal beliefs. Previously, when

Dell Comics handled the creative aspect of the comics worldwide, it was Barks who was the most prolific, and who most often stretched the limits of the stories he told and the mediums he

11 One measure of his influence is the internet-based Disney comics database I.N.D.U.C.K.S., which rates the top stories in the Disney canon. Carl Barks occupies 98 of the top 200 spots, giving some sense of the depth of his power within the Duck comics community, even today. (http://coa.inducks.org/recommend.php?top100=1) 12 Disney does own the Italian publications , thus exerting control over the Italian market to some degree.

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worked in. While not all of his stories could be called masterpieces, he often crafted narratives that seem out of sync with the charges levied against Disney comics in general; Barks wrote comics that contemplated the repatriation of native artifacts ( #29), the problems of seasonal charity (Four Color #367), the use of child labor (Uncle Scrooge #22), even multi- faceted ruminations on the nature of wealth itself (Four Color #386). While Barks at times might seem to be presenting a variation on the dominant neo-liberal capitalist ideology often credited to the Disney Corporation, he in fact offers up a more multi-dimensional worldview than some explanation of his worldwide popularity. It is difficult to levy accusations against the

Donald Duck comics as tentacles of the vast Disney when they appear to be unconnected to the center itself. The case could certainly be made for the films, theme parks, and television programs as elements of Disney's imperialist agenda, but it becomes difficult to connect the comics directly to the company, particularly in context of how early the oversight appears to have faded out.13

Don Rosa, the successor to Carl Barks, figures heavily into the narrative as well, essentially creating a cohesive narrative out of Barks's original work and crafting a canon for the comics. Rosa builds on many of the themes of Barks, deepening the character of Scrooge and weaving in threads from other Disney comics traditions. Rosa represents a transnational bridge, relying on digital contacts and in-depth research to explore the significance of Barks within a creative space. Don Rosa is crucially a fan, a reader of the comics who was inspired to work in his right, and who helped revive the stories for American and European readers, becoming

13 In fact, the most direct control of Disney comics production came in the early 1990s, when the company took back the license for their comics following the modest success of Gladstone Comics, and proceeded to run it into the ground. Ash, "Gander," 39.

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Barks's successor in the mind of many. While many of the creators of these Disney comics are popular in their home countries, it is only Barks and Rosa that have a consistent global appeal, even while Disney comics in America linger as a niche product even within a diverse and expansive comics market. Within this, Germany presents a test case, a country where the readership (and fan community) remains very active, despite the lack of homegrown product, which seems owed to the translation efforts of Erika Fuchs. The approach here is not to regard

Donald Duck and Uncle $crooge as one interchangeable product, but several, with the meaning of the stories playing out to diverse audiences in diverse spaces, and recognizing that there is not one way to read Donald Duck. The legacy of Disney is complicated, as I will endeavor to untangle over the next few chapters, before we approach the comics themselves, and seek to locate just why these comics remain popular in certain places and times, while in others they are overlooked and forgotten but for a few collectors and lingering fans.

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Chapter 2. How to Read How To Read Donald Duck

There have been few major scholarly studies of the readership of Disney comics to date.

Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart's How To Read Donald Duck (1973) is the first, serious scholarly examination of Disney comics outside of spaces of like 's

Funny World. It is a seminal work of 1970s Marxist cultural criticism, a precursor to much of the Disney scholarship that would follow in later decades. It is important to explore the book, still a touchstone of Disney criticism (a reprint is due Autumn 2018), though its worldview is a bit narrow.

How To Read Donald Duck arose following the election of Salvador Allende in 1970.

Allende, a socialist, sought to transform the Chilean economy and its society at large, engaging in a series of major products aimed at upending the existing social power structures. Within the administration was Ariel Dorfman, a professor of Spanish literature and cultural advisor to

President Allende. Though young (Dorfman was twenty-eight when he joined the Allende administration), he was a true believer, active in his critical examination of Chilean culture. He was joined by Armand Mattelart, a Belgian professor of sociology who had been sent to Chile at the behest of the Catholic Church, on a project to engage with the most popular children's literature in the country: Donald Duck. What emerged was a satirical/scholarly essay that attempted to ascertain the messages in the comics. Dorfman states in a recent article that the project "was meant to respond to a very practical need: the mass-media stories Chileans had been consuming, that mentally colonized the way they lived and dreamed of their everyday circumstances, didn’t faintly the extraordinary new situation in their country. Largely imported from the United States and available via outlets of every sort (comics, magazines, television, radio), they needed to be critiqued and the models and values they espoused, all the

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hidden messages of greed, domination, and prejudice they contained, exposed."14 The choice of

Disney was based on the cheapness and availability of the comics as much as anything else, and an underlying belief that the comics functioned as pro-capitalist propaganda intended to warp the minds of children.

There are several key problems with the thesis of How to Read Donald Duck that have become apparent in the years since its initial publication. Dorfman and Mattelart took a limited view of Disney comics, framing it as a singular enterprise overseen by Walt Disney Company, their version of the process has little in common with the actual production of Disney comics.

This approach reflects their perspectives as members of the Allende coalition, which viewed the

United States suspiciously, casting the government (and particularly the CIA) as hydra intervening in every revolution worldwide. In their minds, Disney was simply another head of that hydra, essentially a state-run propaganda arm. This viewpoint diminishes the reality that

Allende faced massive domestic opposition from entrenched religious, business, and military interests, further complicated by an economic downturn that arose from his policies and larger global economic trends. The coup that overthrew Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973 was the result of domestic opposition more than foreign intervention, the military junta that arose under Pinochet was in part a reaction to unpopular policies. Dorfman and Mattelart's work was a sincere effort to come to terms with what happened, but has elements of a period piece, written under the shadow of an oppressive regime.

14 Ariel Dorfman, "What A 1970s Chilean Can Tell Us About Donald Trump"

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Disney's approaches to their business did not reflect the worst fears of Dorfman and

Mattelart. Nearly from the beginning, Disney comics were licensed out, primarily to Dell

Comics in America, and various local and regional publishers worldwide. By 1973, Dell

Comics, publisher of the original run of Donald Duck comics had effectively been put out of business by corporate in-fighting and a shifting comics market in America. The decline of Dell

(which started a decade earlier) affected a paradigm shift in how the comics were produced, as the process, already largely decentralized, had begun to shift towards local publishers and authors; while Disney set basic guidelines in terms of what was (and was not) allowed content- wise, the local editors gained an increasing degree of control over their production. There were plenty of reprints of the classic stories, but demand for new works was such that the new comics shifted away from whatever homogeneity they had and toward localized content targeted towards specific audiences. Dorfman and Mattelart do note that the publisher of the comics in Chile is

Empresa Editorial Zig-Zag, but simply see as a functionary of the larger Disney enterprise.15

The problem that this creates is that Disney, not to mention many of the writers, had little control of the messages contained in stories published overseas. While Disney does wield centralized control over its animation and theme parks, the comic books were never considered to be a top priority or big earner for the company, and thus were left in the hands of local publishers and writers, with Disney simply collecting large sums of money for the license. Dorfman and

Mattelart assumed that Disney (and Donald Duck in particular) were the face of a larger CIA operation to subvert social justice in Chile and beyond, while in reality the publications and their translation were largely decentralized.

15 Dorfman and Mattelart 28

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Within the canon of the Disney comics, the patriarchy, and particularly the lack of female characters, concerns Dorfman and Mattelart greatly, but they do not consider the larger implications of the comics culture that existed within the 1970s (or, indeed, the industry at large for the decades beforehand). They point out that "the genealogy is tipped decisively in favor of the masculine sector."16 For Dorfman and Mattleart, it seems that Disney comics are pushing an agenda of patriarchy and masculine domination, though they fail to consider the larger picture, namely that the preponderance of male characters is hardly unique to Disney comics (and is perhaps slightly more representative of gender than most superhero comics and their ilk).

Moreover, they overlook the culture of machismo that exists within Latin culture: Donald Duck did not introduce a male-centric worldview south of the border, after all.17 The preponderance of male characters is a notable issue, one that afflicts comics on a large scale, even into modern day, and is not indicative of some conspiracy carried out by Walt Disney and his minions. Presently, modern media producers are wrestling with questions of diversity and representation despite spending decades catering to a heavily-male audience (consider the pushback over the female

Thor in Comics or the female-lead Ghostbusters ). It was the case in the 1970s

16 Dorfman and Mattelart 34. It should be mentioned that Don Rosa's official family tree includes fifteen female characters to thirty males, a disparity that should be noted, though the number of characters appearing regularly in the comics tends much closer to gender parity (depending somewhat on the writer of a given comic). 17 There are some scholars that accuse Disney of contributing to the problems that exist, albeit in a more general sense. Julianne Burton-Carvajal proposes “, though appearing to challenge it, in fact conforms to some theories of machismo (the cult of male superiority) call the ‘colonial compact.’ [The argument is] the reward for male acquiescence to the will of the conqueror was his socially and civilly enforced superiority to and dominance over the female.” (Julianne Burton-Carvajal, “’Surprise Package’: Looking Southward with Disney,” in Disney Discourse: Producing the (Ed. Eric Smoodin, New York: Routledge, 1994), 144.) In her argument, Donald is often feminized compared to the native Jose Carioca and Panchito, who are allowed to maintain their masculinity, ultimately maintaining the long-established social order. Disney is not actively creating a culture of machismo, but rather building upon what already exists.

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that nearly all figures within the production of the comics, from writers, artists, and editors, from printing technicians to managers, and even translators, were male, a fact that held true to Disney comics (although there were exceptions) as much as it did for "mainstream" superhero comics of the era. Furthermore, the readership of comics was generally assumed to be adolescent boys in this period, which further ensured the dominance of male figures, particular younger males in the vein of Huey, Dewey, and Louie, who were presumed to serve as audience surrogates.18 Carl

Barks himself seemed to assume his comics were intended solely for the youthful crowd; The whole masculine culture of the comics industry has been discussed in greater detail elsewhere; it is indicative of larger trends, rather than a Disney conspiracy.19 This is not to say that female characters were not marginalized within the comics, but that Dorfman and Mattelart singled out

Disney for its role in propagating the patriarchy, insofar that he was complacent within the larger culture of comic production. The issues of patriarchy in the entertainment industry loom large, certainly, but it is problematic to single out Disney as the source of this issue. This is an issue that effected the comics industry at large, and might demand a more nuanced approach. This is not to impugn the intent or efforts of Dorfman and Mattelart: the field of comics studies essentially did not exist when they did their work, and lack of full-scale analysis of the reader response and adaptation theory. Utilizing what tools they had at the time, they had a point to make and made it well.

18 Dorfman and Mattelart do discuss Huey, Dewey, and Louie at some length, remarking "it is the adult who produces the comics, and the child who consumes them. The role of the apparent child actor, who reigns over this uncontaminated world, is at once that of audience and dummy for his father's ventriloquism. The father denies his progeny a voice of his own, and as in any authoritarian society, he establishes himself as the other's sole interpreter and spokesman. All the little fellow can do is to let his father represent him." (Dorfman and Mattelart 30) 19 Bradford Wright's Comic Book Nation (2001) and Susan Douglas's Where the Girls Are (1995) discuss the issue in greater length, from other perspectives.

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Dorfman and Mattelart make broad assumptions about the readership and how the readers are consuming the comics. While the comics can be assumed to be aimed as a child audience

(though the Duck fandom hewed much deeper in many in many countries), the authors assume that the audience simply exists as passive observers, consuming the purported messages of the works without any sense of the impact it might have actually had. They offer a critical perspective on the comics themselves, but offer little sense as to how they were being consumed by the readership.20 They make broad statements about how the readers of Donald Duck are receiving the messages (or, at least, the messages as they see them), without much regard for how the reality of the situation or the intention of the authors. Dorfman and Mattelart presume the comics are targeted at children as a form of Western/capitalist propaganda, and that the readers are made to identify with Donald Duck as a method of subverting the traditional social order. They outline the relationship thusly: "Children will not only identify with Donald Duck because Donald's situation relates to their own life, but also because the way they read or the way they are exposed to it, imitates and pre-figures the way Donald Duck lives out his own problems."21 They presume that Donald is the character with which child readers are meant to identify, and that his difficulties (notably a lack of sexual drive) are meant to subvert young readers. They further take aim at Huey, Dewey, and Louie, Donald's three nephews, who would seem to serve as the obvious audience surrogates, characters who are adventurous, capable in their own right, and occasionally smarter than even the adults (though not always). Despite their

20 To their minds, children's literature in general is distracting nonsense. "In juvenile literature, the adult, corroded by the trivia of everyday life blindly defends his image of youth and innocence. Because of this, it is perhaps the best (and least expected) place to study the disguises and truths of contemporary man. For the adult, in protecting his dream image of youth, hides the fear that to penetrate it would destroy his dreams and reveal the reality it conceals. Thus, the imagination of the child is conceived as the past and future of the adult." (Dorfman and Mattelart 31) 21 Dorfman and Mattelart 32

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youth, they enjoy a great deal of freedom, and even a degree of agency, though they are still generally subservient to the adults in their lives. Dorfman and Mattelart believe that the whole process is just a ruse, arguing that the subversions of the power structures serve in fact to reinforce them. "Since the child identifies with his counterpart in the magazine, he contributes to his own colonization. The rebellion of the little folk in the comics is sensed as a model for the child's own real rebellion against injustice; but by rebelling in the name of adult values, the readers are in fact internalizing them."22 They assume that all aspects of the story exist as part of a plot to colonize the minds of children, to pave the way for capitalist brainwashing and the subjugation of a generation.

Dorfman and Mattelart problematize the character relationships in several ways. The first is arguing that the basic power structures within Disney tend to favor the rich and well- connected and utterly permanent, without seeking to understand the author's intent of the situation, who would be Carl Barks in many cases.23 Donald Duck will invariably remain luckless, trapped in a sexless relationship with Daisy, stuck under his rich, skinflint uncle's thumb, bemoaning the cruel twists of fate rather than attempting to gain any purchase in pulling himself out of his of poverty and despair. Uncle Scrooge invariably retains his immense wealth, with most stories seeing his incredible riches continue to grow, constantly seeking more money and suffering (at best) a temporary setback to his acquisition of ever greater wealth in the stories. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are invariably trapped in their positions as the inferior to

Donald and Scrooge; while they might score temporary victories against their parental figures,

22 Dorfman and Mattelart 36 23 Dorfman and Mattelart 35

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the status quo will always reassert itself, and no revolution on their part will have any lasting impact on the power relationships that persist among the main cast. The status remains quo, no one ever ages, and the world never changes, all seemingly reinforcing the inevitability of power structures to the child reader. The problem is that they stories that Barks is telling are not so clear cut; the messages are not meant to reinforce an agenda of hegemony, and in fact were at times utilized to anti-colonialist effect. Dorfman and Mattelart mistake this idyllic, Arcadian stasis for something sinister, a charge that had been lobbed at (and the Disney

Empire at large), but in fact represents a much more complicated relationship with history and

American idealism.

The content of the comics flowed much more directly from Carl Barks than it ever did from Disney; the basic guidelines may have been laid out by the company, but Barks understood that his comics were meant for a younger audience, and was thus more careful in what he wrote.

Barks was not subject to a great deal of editorial control, and only had to edit a few of his works for publications. He explains that "they didn't censor very often...I got in trouble in about the second or third story I wrote for them. I had Donald as being a lifeguard, and I had this lovely duck woman-I sure got told off about that...the art editor at the publisher made me spend a few hours...just flattening the breasts of this gal."24 It seems that there were never any directives for elements he needed to include, only occasional hackles raised at things deemed inappropriate for the youthful audience of the stories. Barks was certainly saw himself as writing for an American audience, largely unaware of the worldwide appeal of the characters. He explains that "my stories were just about every day American life. I don't think that life in , Germany,

24 Heinwein 151

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Italy...was like that. However, they understood; it rang a bell with them. The stories are very popular in those countries because they reflect common human experiences...the human condition was an international thing, but the method of presenting it was American."25 He somehow captured something universal within the human condition that not only brought readers to the comics, but made many of them into life-long fans. The Duck comics were not popular because they were American; if it was the case, that children were reading them simply because of their origin, that it would be Mickey Mouse who better embodied the Walt Disney Company, but it was Donald Duck and his family that captured the imaginations of the readers.26 While certain elements were in line with the larger Disney focus of the period (the comics tended to be pro-capitalism, though not as unabashedly so as Dorfman and Mattelart argue), Barks's style is not hard-line propaganda for America. 27 Barks seems unaware that there even was a larger market for his comics outside of America, or even that his work had reached the audience in had in the United States.28

Examining Barks specific comics offers some further sense of his beliefs and how his characters acted. Scrooge is, nominally, a good character, though Barks finds him far from perfect, explaining that "The and Flintheart Glomgold - they were people I had no

25 Hamilton 138 26 Barks realizes that the characters themselves might have greater depths: "Scrooge is an excessive example of the possibilities of our lifestyle. But Donald and the kids, Gladstone, and Gyro all have their counterparts in the American people. You can read about them just about every day ." (Hamilton 138) 27 Barks explained of his occasional forays into anti-war messaging in an interview that “I get mad like everybody else at the stupid things people are doing in different parts of the world, but what could I do about it? …I realized what people were objecting to in that war…it was something I couldn’t do anything about, and I tried to make fun of those wars in Siambodia and such places. In ‘The Treasure of Marco Polo’ I tried to turn things back, to make people think of the better times people had before they got so damn mad that they were fighting all the time.” (Ault, Hamilton, Ronan, and White, 213-214) 28 Later in life, he did take note, commenting that "I always had the impression that the German readers best understood my humor, in contrast to the Italians, for example, where the spirit of my stories was apparently lost in translation...the Italians, they really butchered my stories." (Heinwein 141)

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sympathy with, and I loved to use them in stories in order to humiliate them, frustrate them...I gave Uncle Scrooge a redeeming personality. He can be mean to a certain point, but then he relents and becomes a good guy."29 Scrooge, like his , is an egotistical capitalist, but he has his moments of redemption, particularly when his younger nephews were imperiled.

Scrooge is imperfect, and borderline villainous at times, but never quite crosses the line into rank immorality. Dorfman and Mattelart are correct that he is a capitalist, and perhaps not an ideal role model, but they do not comprehend that Barks did not write him as an aspirational goal for his audience. Nor do they consider that North American readers might have understood Scrooge in the context of Calvinist/Puritan ethos linking grace and money, rather than a Liberation

Theology conception of racpacity-through-wealth. Scrooge strikes a more nuanced figure than they could understand, and might equally be cited as a symbol of the problems of capitalism.

He is greedy, nearly beyond reason (he is generally ranked as the richest duck in the world within the stories, and yet refuses to spend any more than is strictly necessary), seeking out ever greater treasures, and attempting to permanently secure his wealth within a (mostly) impregnable vault; he seems to be a caricature of capitalist banker, one who would rather possess his money than spend it. And yet, there is a good heart beneath that gruff exterior; Scrooge seems to genuinely care about his family members, and will readily sacrifice any treasure to save their lives. Dorfman and Mattelart argue that "why does Donald look for work? In order to get money for his summer vacation, to pay the final installment on his television set (which he apparently does a thousand times, for he has to do it afresh in each new episode), or to buy a present (generally for Daisy or Scrooge)...Donald doesn't really need to work, and the proof is

29 Naiman 159

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that any money he does manage to make always goes towards buying the superfluous."30 They misunderstand the role of wealth in this world; it is not a means to power, but a symbol of experience shared, at least within the Duck family. The lost relic regained from hidden jungle temples have no worth in themselves; rather, they are the physical manifestation of shared familial memories. Scrooge rarely spends his wealth; rather, it serves as a symbol of a long-lived life, an accounting of experiences and adventures.

There are more direct examples of an anti-capitalist streak running through the stories.

Thomas Andrae, a biographer of Barks, places "The Magic Hourglass" (Full Color #291) as an early example of satire of capitalist themes within Barks's work. He writes that the story "warns of disastrous consequences that follow when our most cherished wish - the desire for unlimited wealth and power - is granted...it satirizes the ironies and contradictions that accompanied

America's most powerful and wealthiest nation in the postwar period."31 The story is a fairly straightforward tale: Scrooge tosses away a seemingly inaccurate (and worthless) hourglass, which his nephews acquire, and learn that it is apparently a relic of luck that ensured Scrooge's fortune. While the story is a fairly typical adventure yarn that sees the plot device exchanged hands between the central characters and a few one-off . What makes it stand out is the ending: Andrae finds it a representation of "Bark's humanistic philosophy, to thrive and be truly happy, we must overcome the egocentric desires and learn to treat others with tolerance and generosity. As Scrooge's punishment for his egoism, the ending inverts the positions of the

[nephews] and Scrooge and invokes a form of class revenge."32 Scrooge, though finally

30 Dorfman and Mattelart 70-71 31 Andrae 144 32 Andrae 149

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reclaiming his hourglass once and for all, is forced not only to sail home in a damaged ship that

Scrooge had earlier given to Donald, but to also pay for his nephews accommodations aboard a luxury cruise. To Dorfman and Mattleart, this would be posited as a temporary shift in power; whatever gains the nephews have made, the status will become quo in the next story. However, this is a crucial story in the development of Scrooge, both within the comics themselves and as a

Barks writes him.33 Scrooges development as a character is not in the fashion of the character of novel, but there are noticeable shifts and changes within the character over time that add up to something; Don Rosa’s The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck stand testament to the evolution of Scrooge’s character, at least within Barks’s stories.34

There is another possible reading of the relationship of Donald and Scrooge that might offer a different, if still perhaps Marxist, perspective on the message of the Donald Duck comics.

It is clear that the power dynamics between Donald and Scrooge are uneven; Dorfman and

Mattelart take this to be a piece of propaganda directed towards convincing youths to obey patriarchal power structures. However, the relationship might be a more direct reflection of

Barks's relationship with Walt Disney, a quasi-autobiographical work that reflects Barks's experiences as a long time employee of Disney (both directly and indirectly). Barks himself, much like his character Donald, has nothing but kind words for Walt Disney, though his fond

33 Barks explained of the story in an interview that “I get mad like everybody else at the stupid things people are doing in different parts of the world, but what could I do about it? …I realized what people were objecting to in that war…it was something I couldn’t do anything about, and I tried to make fun of those wars in Siambodia and such places. In ‘The Treasure of Marco Polo’ I tried to turn things back, to make people think of the better times people had before they got so damn mad that they were fighting all the time.” (Ault, Hamilton, Ronan, and White, 213-214) 34 While there are other examples of Barks taking on more difficult topics, they are somewhat limited in number; he explained in an interview that "I was a little afraid to draw or write any stories that might get publishers in trouble with the government or tread on some politician's toes...anything that gets published under the Disney name in a foreign country is accepted as part of American foreign policy, I imagine, by people who read it." (Willits and Thompson 14)

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words of the man might indicate some relation to Scrooge. “He was the sort of dreamer who came up with these quick and brilliant ideas and who had the aggressiveness to carry them out…Disney’s genius and aggressiveness provided jobs for guys like me. I didn’t have the aggressiveness to ever produce a strip of my own. Disney gave me a stage to perform my little vaudeville act…he was a millionaire for just a few moments until he could find some place to dump it all and get into debt again.”35 For Barks, at least, Walt Disney strikes a figure similar to

Scrooge, a man never content to rest on his laurels, but always seeking out the next big thing.

Barks praises Disney throughout various interviews, constantly explaining that he remains eternally grateful for the opportunities provided by the job Disney hired him to do. Authorial intent is largely ignored within Dorfman and Mattelart’s thesis (beyond crediting Disney the entity with authorship of the comics), and they miss a crucial possibility with this work: that it might be a biographical parable of one man working within the Disney enterprise, loyal to a fault to “Uncle” Walt. There is little indication that Barks ever made these connections himself;

David Kunzle apparently does draw some relation (at least insofar as reading Barks's career in

Marxian terms), though Barks is quick to shoot it down.36 Still, there seems to be some connection between the happy-go-lucky, generally poor Donald, and the workman Barks, who never seems to have put a bad word about his boss to paper, though perhaps harbored some deeper resentments.

How to Read Donald Duck has earned a near-mythical reputation for reasons beyond the content of the book itself. President Allende was overthrown in a military coup lead by Augustin

35 Barks 29-30 36 Barrier 75

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Pinochet in September 1973, forcing Dorfman and Mattelart to eventually flee the country with their lives in real peril. The scale of retributions visited upon Allende's allies extended well beyond the borders of Chile: the assassinations of Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires and Orlando

Letelier in Washington DC would have weighed heavily on the minds of Dorfman and Mattelart.

The response to the book in Chile was deadly serious, and the book itself was burned by the

Pinochet government.37 While no one has yet accused Disney of masterminding the coup, they became a stand-in for accusations of C.I.A. involvement, further proof of an imperialist plot engineered by U.S. corporate interests. The legend only grew with the difficulties of publishing the book in America; Dorfman explains "no publisher in the United States was willing to risk bringing out our book because we had reproduced—obviously without authorization—a series of images from Disney’s comics to prove our points, and Walt’s company was (and still is) notorious for defending its copyright material and characters with an armada of lawyers and threats."38 Disney's litigiousness (which at one point resulted in translated copies of the book being sent back to England) also plays a role in the myth, so much so that the first American printing included "BURNED IN CHILE 1973-BANNED IN THE USA 1975-FINALLY

AVAILABLE!"39

Dorfman and Mattelart's How to Read Donald Duck is a product of its time, much as any scholarship is. The school of Marxism represented by the pair failed to outlast the end of the

37 "A few days after the neo-fascist takeover of Chile’s long-standing , I was in hiding in a clandestine house when I happened to see a live TV transmission of a group of soldiers throwing books onto a pyre—and there was [How To Read Donald Duck]. I wasn’t entirely surprised by this inquisitorial blaze. The book had touched a nerve among Chilean right-wingers. Even in pre-coup times, I had barely avoided being run over by an irate motorist who shouted, '¡Viva el Pato Donald!'" Dorfman, "1970s Satire" 38 Dorfman, "1970s Satire" 39 Dorfman and Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck, cover.

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Cold War. Contemporary academic criticism owes more to figures such as Herbert Marcuse and

Mikhail Bakhtin, who were seen as ancillary by mainstream Marxist-Leninist scholars in the days when the dominated Marxist scholarship. They could not have foreseen these developments, nor could they have anticipated the arrival of critical theory, embodied by figures like Stuart Hall and the Birmingham School. That they lack awareness of certain key elements of the comics' production does not call for dismissing their arguments out of hand, nor does the larger scholarly shift away from cultural imperialism and toward more modern concepts of the spread and exchange of culture. The book is not a relic, and rightfully remains a foundational source of several disciplines. But it is a text that has effectively silenced much critical study on the issues of Disney comics, at least among the American scholarly community.

To offer an example, Henry Giroux and Grace Pollock’s The Mouse That Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (2010) is indicative of much of the present discourse surrounding

Disney, updating the framework of Dorfman and Mattelart to a suit a contemporary moment. In their view, Disney is indicative of the larger corporate media efforts to gain control over the

American political system, to subvert democracy to their own ends (echoing the same accusations found in How to Read Donald Duck). Giroux and Pollock argue that “corporations like Disney use media culture as one of the most important vehicles through which they can express their commitment to middle-class family values, the welfare of children, and expansion into noncommercial sectors such as public schooling. But the public relations rhetoric represents more than the staged authenticity of the corporate swindle…”40 Disney, in this view, is an entirely artificial, dishonest corporation putting forth a media narrative in order to sell products

40 Giroux and Pollock, Mouse That Roared, 25.

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(in this case, the focus is on the theme parks), warping democracy around these efforts. In particular, the creation of products for children mark them as unique dangerous in the view of the authors, beyond the efforts of others: “Disney, unlike other media conglomerates such as Time

Warner or , is uniquely situated as an icon of American culture and middle- class family values. It actively appeals to both parental concerns and children’s fantasies as it works hard to transform every child into a lifetime of Disney products and ideas.”41

This isn’t to say that they are incorrect in their arguments, but that they lack nuance, viewing

Disney as a monolithic enterprise, the marching orders coming from on high as part of a decades-long plan to seize control of America. Disney is a large corporation, and should not be presumed to be inherently benevolent or malevolent (the narratives pushed for by the company itself and its detractors, respectively), but understood in multiple contexts. Statements like

“Disney’s educational practices should be understood as part of a broader assault on public discourse that seeks to dispense with the principles of autonomy, critical self-reflection, and self- determination. Disney’s pedagogy is not about harnessing the imagination to produce counternarratives capable of helping us to see beyond mundane reality” would not sound out of place in How to Read Donald Duck, and represent a fealty to scholarly thought on Disney that has persisted for fifty years.42 The idea that Disney is only one thing, to be read only one way, with one singular message overlooks both the agency of the consumers and the complexities of corporate governance in a company on that scale.43

41 Gioux and Pollock, Mouse That Roared, 27. 42 Ibid., 54-55. 43 Notably, there is a difference of approach depending on politics. Leftist critics tend to assume that Disney’s activities, even progressive efforts like gay-friendly policies at Disney World, are motivated entirely by profit- seeking. Critics on the right frame Disney as a progressive force in the culture war, framing incidents like the firing of Roseanne Barr in 2018 by the Disney-owned television network ABC as a broadside against President Trump.

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The focus here will not be simply on refuting what others have written, but exploring the complicated nature of Disney’s comics publications. Carl Barks himself has experienced a slow building rise in popularity since his retirement, and his work has been recognized as among the major comic art contributions of the 20th century, a figure more nuanced than he might have been given credit for, and his work has a greater depth than might seem readily apparent. There is a further issue of translations that I will approach in greater depth here; Dorfman and Mattelart seem to assume that what is printed in Spanish is a direct translation of what was written in may not universally be the case. I would raise further issue with the fact that Dorfman and Mattelart posit the comics as children's literature, which is largely accurate in this context, but fail to offer much sense of how the children are utilizing it, who they identify with, and what lessons they take from it. Nor does it deal with a key point of modern popular culture studies scholarship: namely that there is no line between juvenile and adult literature, especially where comics are concerned. This is a work of literary criticism, to be sure, but their book offers a much better sense of how a pair of trained academics with a socialist bent would read children's comics, without much attention to how the child audience might relate to the work (perhaps Scrooge is a target of scorn and derision, and not a role model looked up to). This book looms large within the larger project, and a way must be found to deal with its arguments and the scholarship that sprung forth from it. They may have captured a sense of the process at the heart of the larger issue: the role played by Disney's comics in the de-Nazification of Germany, the long-term effects of that process, and the at-times subversive translations carried out by Erika Fuchs.

This isn’t to say that either viewpoint is inaccurate, but that preexisting political beliefs influence how Disney is understood.

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Chapter 3. “The Empire-Builder from Calisota”: Donald Duck and the Rise of Disney

Donald Duck is tied to propaganda in the existing scholarly consciousness, not just through How to Read Donald Duck, but due to moment in time in which he was created. Even beyond Dorfman and Mattelart, Disney is most commonly cast as a tool of American cultural imperialism, and these accusations have roots in the 1940s, a moment when Disney was quite closely aligned to larger American interests (as was essentially all of the American entertainment industry). It is worth understanding where Donald Duck came from, how the character developed, and how these roots affect the reading of these characters in the modern day. It is impossible to deny that the Duck has certainly played a key role in creating that scholarly opinion, but it might be a function as much of the medium of animation itself than something inherent about the character or Walt Disney. Animation seems to naturally lend itself to uses of propaganda, appearing among both sides during World War II. The Axis as well as the Allies made use of animation to express their political points and move their populations, though the output of studios put others to shame.

It is also helpful to understand the circumstances that led to the creation of Donald Duck in the context of animation history, as well as his role in propaganda efforts of World War II. It is difficult to ignore Donald's early evolution, from his role as a minor during the ensemble cartoons of the mid-1930s to a sidekick for Mickey Mouse, to the most popular in his own right, and speaks to how he stands apart from other characters of the period.

Most significant will be how the Duck became the most popular of Disney's characters, and why that popularity transferred across cultures after the end of the war. Of course, Donald's role within the scope of Hollywood's wartime propaganda differs from many other characters, and should be explored in greater detail.

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The distant beginnings, or actual roots of the comic book as a genre, are shrouded in disagreement like as any myth. Different versions of the comic book creation myth have their different defenders. Definitions of what a comic book is, or more significantly where it began, remain subject of considerable disagreement both in the graphic arts and academic communities.

Bradford Wright, for instance, finds the foundation of the comic book in 1938 with Action

Comics #1 and the dawn of the superhero, a form easily recognizable to modern audiences and one that effectively jump-started the industry. puts Maxwell Gaines forth as the originator, as he preceded Superman in 1934, reprinting newspaper strips under the title Famous

Funnies in a magazine-style release. Of course, George Delacorte of , printed

The Funnies in 1929, a collection of newspaper strips intended as a newspaper insert, not as a standalone product. The 1928 adaptation of Tarzan into a newspaper comic heralded the coming of the superheroes, and reflected new possibilities of narrative in the comic format. Even if the definition is restricted to the "comic book" format itself, there are certainly other collections that were published, either as children's books or by early fans, that have been lost to history, particularly outside of the United States. There are also many aspects we associate with comic books (characters, narratives, word balloons) have their origins earlier; Rodolphe Töpffer might be the father of sequential art with The Adventures of Obadiah Olbuck, published in 1837 (1842 in America), but certainly he had influences too. Comics, in whatever their form, should be recognized as a major form of media in the 20th Century, a form of culture unique itself. But whichever starting point one picks, it is incontestable that the tale comic books is long and winding, with multiple sources contributing to its development no matter its precise beginning.

Inexorably linked to the comic book is animation. As with comic books, the first animated short is the subject of some contention. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks often receive

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credit for "" in 1928, at least from the broad public, though it was not even the first Disney Studios cartoon, nor the first Mickey short, with "" being exhibited to test audiences a few months prior. first appeared on film in 1919 from the pen of

Otto Messmer, though John Bray's Col. Heeza Liar first appeared in 1913. The first animated short, according to Howard Beckerman, is Emile Cohl Fantasmagorie (1908), but that ignores something like J. Stuart Blackton Humorous Phases of a Funny Face (1906). Earlier still was

Emile Reynaud, whose praxinoscope could project pictures on to a wall, though that itself was a refinement of the zoetrope. Even still, there are undoubtedly lost experiments that never made it to the public; as Donald Crafton explains, no singular “event signaled the beginning of animation history. No one knows who first discovered that screen motion could be deliberately synthesized by making single-frame exposures. It is likely that many tinkerers had some vague feeling that such a process was possible and may even have made some crude experiments.”44 The development of animation was the result of a number of innovations and technological advancements, playing out a number of contexts that would eventually inform how the medium was understood.

Key within this discussion of the origins of comics and animation is a singular common ancestor: Winsor McCay. While not the first comic artist, nor the first animator, he played a key role in both. His drawing (and writing) Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend and in

Slumberland he codified the basic style of the newspaper comic (including morphic panels). He keenly demonstrated what could be done, and began the process of integrating narratives longer than a single page, particularly in Little Nemo, which saw the stories develop over months and

44 Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928 (: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 5

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years. Popular in their time, the full influence of his comics would only become apparent after his death in 1937, as a new generation (and a new style of comics) took hold. It was through his work in comics that he entered the world of animation; his first short was Winsor McCay, the

Famous of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics (1911), a co-production with experienced director Stuart Blackton, and featured his Little Nemo characters. As with comics,

McCay's work marked one of the first efforts to bring a semblance of narrative to animated films, with his follow-up How the Mosquito Operates (1912) adapted one of his strips into a , and had a conclusive beginning, middle, and end within the film. Although it might seem a bit disjointed and slow to today's audiences, it is nevertheless a major advance as part of its genre..

His pioneering work in animation is best-recognized with 1914's , perhaps the first true cartoon star, solidifying the idea of the cartoon mascot, though John Bray might have beat him to the punch.45 A lost sequel, in which Gertie travels across the United

States, could have been the first attempt to create a cartoon franchise out of an animated character, but it is unclear if the film was ever completed. McCay's later works were lost largely lost, or might have never been completed (let alone exhibited to audiences), and their true impact unknown. He was a consummate performer; his films were as much vaudeville routines as stand-alone products, with McCay presenting and performing within the larger show, which limited his audience, but nevertheless contributed to the development of the art. McCay would, later in life, be employed as an editorial cartoonist by , his political cartoons illustrating the arguments put forth by Hearst's columnists and editors, though McCay's

45 Crafton, Hollywood Cartoons, 12.

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true love seemed to be the animated film. There are many aspects of McCay's work that deserve note, but he serves another significant role in the of comics and animation.

In discussing Winsor McCay, it is necessary to discuss his counterpart, John Randolph

Bray, who would have a significant impact on the development of animation as well, albeit in a different fashion. Bray too was a newspaper cartoonist in the early part of the century, branching into animated films sometime before World War I, as did many other of the day. He strikes a more controversial figure, however, as he apparently posed as journalist to visit McCay, who proudly showed off his techniques and work, which Bray tried to patent as his own.

Whether he made key changes and their extent is the matter of ongoing debate. What followed was a short legal battle, with McCay emerging victorious, though Bray had made some improvements on McCay's techniques (though they were not sufficiently different). Bray's major contribution to the field would be less in terms of the art, but rather in refining the production side of the equation. He was at least partly responsible for the invention of cel animation, a key technology in the development of animation on an industrial scale in coming years. Bray also developed perhaps the first animation studio, which would become the industry standard within a few years, utilizing an assembly-line style technique. Work was split among a myriad of assistants and secondary employees, which freed Bray to handle dozens of projects simultaneously. Barrier explains the system: “his staff included nine cartoonists, as well as four camera operators and thirty assistant artists. Such assistants, at his studio and others, shouldered the more nearly mechanical tasks...an assistant might trace the characters in from the animators' pencil drawings.”46 Bray produced animation on an industrial scale, producing

46 Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons (New York: Oxford University Press. 1999), 17

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hundreds of films over a few decades, and laid the groundwork for the studios that would follow.

Bray was a consummate businessman, and recognized the potential of the form as a money- making machine, but he lacked the artistry of the others, and his impact would be muted over time.

McCay produced, nearly single-handedly as with much of his work, one of the first animated propaganda films: The Sinking of the Lusitania. Released in July 1918, it had been intended of a call to action, beginning production some twenty-two months earlier (the event having occurred in May 1915).47 Donald Crafton notes that "its documentary character called for a more realistic graphic style, so the detailed crosshatching, the washes, and the spatter techniques...were used. The animated sequences were first conceived as alternating shots to simulate the editing style of newsreel subjects typical of the Universal Weekly, in which the film was included."48 It purported to be a factual account of the event, and absent of any live action footage (either from the actual event or produced), it served as the public record. The film was ponderous but dramatic, slowly building tension as the Lusitania departs New York, nearly reaching its destination when a prowling German submarine comes into frame; McCay opines

"Germany, which has already benumbed the world with its wholesale killing, then sent its instrument of crime to perform a more treacherous and cowardly offense."49 McCay builds tension for several minutes, the German submarine slipping through the frame as the cruise ship steams along, striking suddenly and causing a great billowing smoke to obscure the animation. From there, McCay lists the luminaries and public figures who perished in the course

47 John Canemaker, Winsor McCay: His Life and Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 2005), 193 48 Crafton, Before Mickey, 116 49 Winsor McCay, The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918; Image Entertainment, 2004), DVD.

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of the event, before returning to his reenactment of the event, as lifeboats are lowered and the ship slowly lists to its side, spilling lifeboats and passengers into the sea.50 The Lusitania slowly sinks beneath the waves as the title cards reminds the audience "no warning was given - no mercy was shown...AVENGE the most violent cruelty that was ever perpetrated upon an unsuspecting and innocent people.”51 The film concludes with a mother and child sinking through the water, while the German captain apparently looks on through the periscope as they sink to a watery grave. McCay's final message: "The man who fired the shot was decorated for it by the Kaiser! -AND YET THEY TELL US NOT TO HATE THE HUN!"52 The are portrayed as inhumane monsters, a corrupt society founded upon the darkest aspects of human nature, though this was inevitable. Karla Rae Fuller notes that "the animated image can render key elements of artifice and constructedness where the visual shorthand used is most apparent. In this way, the cartoon can explode what the human form can only contain to follow the caricature at its most extreme manifestations."53 The cartoon is perhaps within its very nature apt to pursue the most extreme version of its subject; McCay’s film stands as the ur- propaganda cartoon: not necessarily the first, but the one that is remembered. It is also a valuable reminder to historians of how often themes associated with the Second World War actually had their precursors during the First World War.

The Sinking of the Lusitania was not the first propaganda cartoon, just as Gertie was not quite the first cartoon character; interestingly, McCay avoided using any of his animated

50 Canemaker, McCay, 196 51 McCay, Lusitania. 52 McCay, Lusitania 53 Karla Rae Fuller, Hollywood Goes Oriental: CauAsian Performance in American Film (: Wayne State University Press, 2010), 125

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characters in Lusitania. McCay’s longtime rival J.R. Bray produced a series of shorts on the subject of the war starting in 1914, with various others completing similar low quality, if timely, efforts, usually featuring his Col. Heeza Liar, one of the first cartoon characters of note.54 It is more difficult to ascertain the meaning of those shorts: they tended to be much more comedic in tone, and did not seem to take a side. The first of the wartime shorts, "Colonel Heeza Liar Foils the Enemy" (1915) utilizes the wartime setting more as slapstick setpiece, as Heeza Liar is rocketed around by explosions, only ineffectually bouncing off of a German officer at the end of the short (though it is possible that there was more; the end of the short was badly damaged).

The animation is stiff and basic, lacking the sense of life that McCay's work did. But it was timely, something that McCay's film was not, and would produce nearly a dozen war-related Heeza Liar shorts by 1917, eventually shifting to creating live-action training shorts for the U.S. Army, a similar route to Walt Disney some thirty years later. Bray's model of production, and his eagerness to work with the U.S. government, would serve as a blueprint in the following decades, when America returned to war. However, his animation studio would not survive the of talent that occurred in the post-war years (Bray had given a start to the

Fleischer Brothers, among others, who departed for greener pastures as animation came of age), and attempts to revive the Col. Heeza Liar series could not compete with a new generation of cartoon characters like Felix the Cat and . The coming of sound found

Bray Productions reduced to a shadow of its former self as the producer of educational filmstrips and documentary shorts, surviving in one form or another until the 1980s, though never quite recapturing the glory of the early days.

54 Michael Shull and David Wilt, Doing Their Bit: Wartime American Animated Short Films, 1939-1945 (McFarland, 2004), 11-20

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The Sinking of The Lusitania is a grim and serious call for a war that had already begun for Europe in 1914 and for the United States in 1917. It served, in essence, as a retrospective interpretation of an event all Americans remembered and could now reinterpret as part of their consciences as citizens of a belligerent power. The war proceeded devoid of McCay's input beyond a few political cartoons, contrasting Bray's more light-hearted Col. Heeza Liar shorts. While the film's actual impact on the war was muted (it was released only a few months before the armistice was signed), it did signal an understanding of the potential of animation as a tool of wartime propaganda. Through animation, real events could be portrayed: there was no film of the Lusitania's sinking, but McCay's animation could fill that space; his choice of style, reflecting contemporary newsreels, spoke to a recognition of what animation could be. The idea of animation as a tool to reflect the real world fell by the wayside, however. As the dawned. animation would remain firmly in the mode of Bray, of bright characters behaving in wacky ways; Shull and Wilt explain, “with the conclusion of [World War I], American cartoons, with the exception of a couple of anti-Bolshevik works released during the Red Scare (1919-

1920), largely divorced themselves from international events and embraced the halcyon years of the 1920s.”55 McCay was always a firm proponent of the power of images, had pioneered the possibilities of propaganda within the new medium of the animated short, though he had few contemporaries who grasped the potential of the medium; "The Sinking of the Lusitania was widely admired not only by the movie-going public but by McCay's contemporaries in the animation industry. Its power as an example of the moving picture art form’s ability to persuade was not lost on these experts. Certainly, war and public opinion were understood to be very

55 Shull and Wilt, Doing Their Bit, 21.

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serious issues, far removed from the alleged frivolity of a child-focused genre, as some observers came to consider animation. But McCay's magnificent achievement could inspire only awe in his peers, for it was far ahead of its time and far beyond the sensibilities of the men turning out simple gag cartoon."56 The film was popular with audiences and industry alike, but it came out so close to the war’s end that it did not immediately produce copycat films, as Gertie the

Dinosaur and some of McCay’s other, earlier works had. The grim tone of the short put it at odds with the peppier propaganda of J.R. Bray, and for a time signaled a dead end for the art, just as McCay's work would be without a successor for a generation to come.

The animation industry, lead by Bray's model, was focused on churning out a quantity of cheap, low quality products; Bray himself boasted about producing a cartoon a week using assembly-line techniques, whereas the high-quality products that McCay produced often took years.57 There are not many records of box office numbers or indications of popularity; McCay often presented his animation as part of a vaudeville road show, whereas Bray's work was rented out to theaters. McCay's work was far beyond what others were putting out in terms of quality, but it was slow work (he animated nearly every frame, with some help from a few assistants), and his output was as much the rest of an incredible work ethic as any technological innovation.

McCay’s influence was not on the state of the art, but rather on the very roots: he proved that animation could be art, in a period when movies were still impugned as entertainment for the masses. There is no historical record of whether Walt Disney or Ub Iwerks encountered

McCay’s work in New York; Disney was certainly aware of Gertie the Dinosaur, featuring

McCay’s son Robert on the television series Disneyland in 1955 to reenact the classic

56 Canemaker, McCay, 197. 57 Crafton, Before Mickey, 142-143.

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routine. Furthermore, there are some thematic similarities between Lusitania and the gloomier

Disney propaganda shorts as I will discuss later in this chapter; John Canemaker argues that "the dark somber mood, the superb draftsmanship, the timing of the actions, the excellent dramatic directorial choices of 'camera' angles and editing - all of these qualities would reappear only with

Disney's mature work in certain sequences of his feature-length cartoons and some of his World

War II propaganda cartoon shorts, such as (1943)."58 McCay’s style essentially skipped a generation, with animation studios slow to grasp the power, and perhaps unconcerned with the capacity for deeper messaging within cartoons; it was not until Disney that there was recognition of cartoons as worth time and effort and having some lasting value. The artform was still young, as was film itself, at McCay’s retirement from animation at the behest of

William Randolph Hearst marked the , a shift away from experimentation and serious subject matter, with a renewed focus on cartoons.

The myriad small studios of the 1920s had coalesced into a proper industry, responding to the pressures of the Great Depression and the nature of Hollywood’s studio system. Talent followed the money; while cartoons become increasingly codified (with talented artists like

McCay no longer able to keep up with the demands of production), but improving in quality.

McCay railed against Bray’s low-quality assembly line productions, but Walt Disney, the

Fleischer brothers, and other pioneers refined the system to improve quality. Technological improvements, both in terms of techniques for filming and drawing as well as the inclusion of synchronized sound, caused animated shorts to evolve from simple novelties to entertainments in their own right. The interwar years saw the evolution of animation from a mere novelty to an

58 Canemaker, McCay, 197.

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artform in its own right. Cartoon icons like and rose and fell in the period, with animation becoming professionalized in the scramble for studio success. Many would be rediscovered by later , often more than once, thanks to their recurrence in syndication as cheap television programming. This capacity to endure as a television property formed a major, of too-often ignored, part of animation’s staying power. Otto Messmer’s Felix the Cat epitomized the era, while and would initially gain fame for expanding the genre beyond the various “funny animal cartoons” into more mainstream, mass entertainment. There are far more animators and studios operating during the silent era than can be properly accounted for; many of the productions of the era have been lost to time and the elements, and animation was not seriously valued as an art form until decades later. During this period the understanding of the power of characters as icons of marketing and branding became much more widespread; Outcault’s Buster Brown had started a trend with newspapers that exploded in the 1920s. Moreover, the advent of movie theaters, and audiences hungry for new content, spurred the creation of new characters.

Walt Disney entered the market with his , a mix of live-action and animation (akin to what McCay had done with Gertie), and found a further degree of success with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit with Universal, though an acrimonious split left Disney without the rights to his creations. Working with Ub Iwerks, the pair created Mickey Mouse, a successor to Oswald, and the mascot of the Disney enterprise going forward. Mickey lacked the fluidity of motion that Oswald (and most other cartoon characters of the period) possessed, but this solidity helped to set him apart from the others. Fortuitously, Mickey appeared at the dawn of sound in movies, with his inaugural cartoon Steamboat Willie (1928) often appearing before The Jazz

Singer. Despite being famous as the first sound cartoon, there was more to his appeal; animator

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Ward Kimball notes that “Mickey didn’t talk for two or three years...it was all done with music and pantomime, which means you could run them in , South America, anyplace. Four years after he was invented Mickey was a household word whether the house was in China, Moscow or Beverly Hills.”59 Mickey could speak, but did not need to: he was less reliant on speech than rival contemporary characters, generally singing simplistic songs or "speaking" with a high- pitched squeak. This allowed Disney's cartoons to be more easily translated, and to wider audiences. John Wills argues that “the early success of the studio in Europe owed much to

Disney selling Europe to itself: the retelling of homegrown folklore aiding translation and popularity. Residents happily consumed Disney Culture. Mickey Mouse had become the new cultural ambassador for the United States.”60 Film was no longer just the entertainment of

America and Europe, but was quickly becoming a global phenomenon.

By the end of the 1920s, 's Betty Boop displaced Felix in the popular imagination, at least in America (and would in turn be displaced by the Sailor Man), though Disney's Mickey Mouse began to carve out a market for the fledgling studio. Film became but a single medium for these characters: radio shows, pictures books, and comic strips became an increasingly significant percentage of income for the studios, even as the country reeled from the Great Depression.61 The potential of animated characters expanded; comic strips became secondary streams of income, and merchandising became a goal of many of these

59 , “The Wonderful World of Walt Disney” (In You Must Remember This, ed. Walter Wanger, New York: G.P. Putnam, 1975), 275. 60 John Wills, Disney Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2017), 57. 61 Douglas Gomery relates “In February 1930 Roy Disney signed the initial contract for merchandising, granting the George Borgfeldt Company the right to manufacture and sell items embodying Minnie and Mickey Mouse…by the depths of the Great Depression the Disney company was generating hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.” Douglas Gomery, “Disney’s Business History: A Reinterpretation.” Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom (Ed. Eric Smoodin, New York: Routledge, 1994), 73.

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creations.62 What had begun with Buster Brown serving as a mascot for a company had expanded into a business that rivaled the exhibition of the cartoons themselves. Disney Studios was no different from the others in this respect, seeking to monetize the popularity of their characters into forms beyond the cartoon shorts. Walt Disney often left the business to his brother Roy, but Michael Barrier found that "[Disney] showed a continuing interest in the

[Mickey Mouse] ," including sending notes on continuity to Floyd Gottredson.63 As his empire grew, his attention would inevitably turn elsewhere; there is no evidence that Walt

Disney affected any direct control over Dell Comics or during the height of the comics popularity, but these early choices helped ensure that the comics were Disney products, that their content and style was in line with the rest of the company, an extension of the brand. Gabler explains that "just as Mickey on film had come to be regarded as the tonic antidote to the Depression, so did Mickey's image on the merchandise. Round, colorful, appealing Mickey Mouse had become the graphic representation of indomitable happiness even in the face of national despair."64 Still, the studio was growing, and while Mickey Mouse remained the mascot of the company, a different character would prove far more adaptable to other media: Donald Duck.

Donald Duck was created in 1934 as another member of the sprawling Disney cast. He was, as with most of the Disney stable, a background addition first, existing as just another anthropomorphic animal within the menagerie. Andi Stein states, “the idea was to create a not- so-perfect character whose personality was the opposite of Mickey’s calm, good-natured manner

62 Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Knopf, 2006), 196-198. 63 Michael Barrier. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007), 83. 64 Gabler, Imagination, 198.

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- someone who was short-tempered, stubborn, a scrappy fighter at heart…Donald was the perfect antidote to Mickey Mouse.”65 A side character for his first few appearances, he soon took on a more antagonistic role within the cartoons, notably in (1935). The cartoon served as Donald’s first major role, casting him as mischievous interloper into Mickey’s attempt at an orchestral performance of the “,” constantly interjecting with the

“Turkey In The Straw” played on a slide whistle. Here we can also see at play the aural power of the genre, which is major, yet usually overlooked compared to the obvious visual impact.

Despite nominally being a Mickey short, Donald is the only character to receive a proper speaking role, though he is overshadowed by an errant tornado during the climax. This marked a turning point for Donald, where he alternated between antagonistic roles (On Ice and Mickey's

Polo Team) while becoming a member of Disney's premiere with Mickey and , beginning with Mickey's Service Station (1935) and Mickey's Fire Brigade (1935). Donald still lacked a full personality; he tended to be the butt of many physical jokes, and even his trademark temper would not appear in every short.

As the Disney bench deepened, it became necessary to imbue the characters with more distinct personalities; Mickey lost his mischievous edge, Goofy became clumsy, and Donald became angry but comically so. His dyspeptic grumpiness was more amusing than off-putting, but it deepened his potential as a character. Richard Schickel quotes Walt Disney explaining

"Mickey couldn't do certain things-they would be out of character. And Mickey was on a pedestal-I would get letters if he did something wrong."66 Many of the early cartoons were

65 Andi Stein, Why We Love Disney: The Power of the Disney Brand (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 52. 66 Richard Schickel. The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney (Chicago: Paperback, 1997), 140.

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simply tagged as Mickey Mouse cartoons (with Mickey's face appearing at the opening) as an effort to brand them as Disney cartoons, but as the roster developed (and other characters eclipsed the mascot in popularity), it became advantageous to label the shorts for the starring character. That said, the shorts often contained the same basic gags, the same comedic timing, the same level of artistry; Disney was growing its stable of players in the mid-1930s, but there was not much to distinguish them beyond superficial traits, at least not yet. Still, Disney remained wary; Michael Barrier explains "[Walt Disney] was concerned not just with personality, but with the danger of making the personality one-dimensional; of Donald Duck, he said 'You are depending too much on the idea of the Duck getting mad."67 It was a feat in itself, finding the right balance, but Donald would successfully navigate those potential pitfalls in coming years. It helped that Donald's design allowed for an incredible range of motion and emotion; Walt in a speech from the 1950s: "Look at Donald Duck. He's got a big mouth, big belligerent eyes, a twistable neck and a substantial backside that's highly flexible. The duck comes near being the animator's ideal subject. He's got plasticity plus."68 These traits would help make him a star of the animated shorts, though his print version would take those same traits to a different conclusion.

Interestingly, Donald seems to have taken the long path towards animated stardom.

Though a supporting player to Mickey and others during his first years, “by 1935 he was being featured in his own series of books...though Donald had yet to star in his own cartoon.”69

Donald was already a property even before becoming a proper character in his own right.

67 Barrier, Animated Man, 137. 68 Schickel, Disney Version, 181. 69 Gabler, Imagination, 203.

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Donald possessed an appeal that the increasingly straight-laced Mickey could not match, embodying a more anarchic, populist spirit. Mickey was invariably restricted by his status as the mascot of the Disney Studios at large, while Donald could more easily adapt to the needs of given writer and audience. Gabler argues that “Donald Duck seemed to offer audiences both a vicarious liberation from the conventional behavior and morality to which they had to subscribe to in their own lives and which the Duck clearly transgressed...at a time when the entire world seemed to be roiling in anger and violence.”70 He was a better symbol of the historical moment, one beset by a slow economic recovery and the rumblings of fascism from abroad, and was easier to identify with than the happy-go-lucky Mouse. Ward Kimball explains that “the critics say we created an unreal world...emasculated and changed and sugarcoated...Walt realized a lot of these fairy tales were pretty grim. He realized you had to have a balance, you had to have gags and laughs to offset the pathos, the heavy stuff. He took the same license everybody takes with a story.”71 Though speaking of the adaptation of various fairy tales, it does also reflect why

Donald was popular to an extent. Mickey was a fine symbol of pluck and perseverance during the darkest days of the Depression, with shorts like Mickey's Orphans (1931) and Mickey's Good

Deed (1932), but as the gloom of the Depression began to lift, audiences sought entertainment that better reflected the changing times. Donald was fresh and exciting, a figure selfish yet put- upon, one that would never be mistaken for a role model, more relatable to the lives of his fans; the same mix of laughs and pathos that Kimball found in the features. Donald, with all of his futile tantrums, was endlessly entertaining.

70 Ibid., 202. 71 Kimball, "Wonderful World," 266-267.

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Donald graduated from being a supporting player to Mickey in 1936's"Donald and "

(a short still featuring the Mickey Mouse headline, though the character fails to appear), which also introduced an updated style for Donald that became the canonical design for the character.

The cartoon also begins to codify Donald as a duck/man (or drake) ill at ease with the modern world. He suffers depredation from an automatic washing machine and a ceiling fan during his work as a plumber, simple gags that nevertheless pointed to the characterization that would develop. Ward Kimball's recollection that “[Walt Disney] was a man who loved nostalgia before it became fashionable. That’s why so many of his pictures were set in the harmless period of American history, the Gay Nineties or the early 1900’s - because that was when he was a kid” offers some sense of who Donald was, a figure unstuck from time in a world he did not create.72

Disney explained, "we got Pluto and the duck. The duck could blow his top...the stupid things

Pluto would do, along with the duck, gave us an outlet for our gags."73 There appears to be some uncertainty as to whether Donald could carry his own cartoon, with 1937 still leaning heavily on ensemble pieces, though he was more a co-star than a supporting player in these shorts.

Don Donald (1937) was an exception, the first Donald solo cartoon, introducing a love interest in Donna (later Daisy) Duck. In addition to reinforcing Donald's difficulties in the face of the modern world (his purchase of a car to impress Donna goes predictably awry, ending with him stranded in the desert alone), it also foreshadows Donald's role as a sort of world , easily at home in the nominally Mexican locale of the short. Additionally, 's voicework - the famous nasally, borderline unintelligible quack - allowed Donald to be more easily adapted to non-English-speaking locales, avoiding the need for translation and often even

72 Kimball, "Wonderful World," 274. 73 Schickel, Disney Version, 140.

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redubbing. This adaptability to foreign locales would become a key component of his popularity in the war years, but would also form the basis for the character's strength in comic stories. The second solo short of the year (1937), which takes Donald's distrust of modern technology to its logical conclusion, featuring a visit to a "Museum of Modern Marvels," including a robotic , an automated hitchhiker, and a mechanized wrapping machine, among others. The conclusion of the short, in which an encounter with a sentient barber's chair. This short reflects a full realization Donald's discomfort with encroaching modernity, and significantly included the first writing work that a young Carl Barks did for Donald Duck, several years before he began producing the comics.

By the time Donald was beginning to be featured in his own cartoons, Disney Studios was shifting focus toward a much more ambitious project: and the Seven Dwarves

(1937). The animation industry at large was becoming crowded with shorts, and Disney's artistry necessitated quality over quantity, with the associated costs. , long-time rivals of Disney, had found great success with Popeye and Betty Boop, with the gritty and lavishly funded Superman shorts. Warner Brothers hired , and resulted in the creation of a stable of rival stars to Disney's bench, including , Daffy

Duck, and . MGM had and Barbera, whose would challenge the ascendency of Warner Brothers. Walt Disney's ambitions were as much economic as they were creative; Snow White was a passion project, certainly, but also reflected a canny attempt to foresee the development of the field. The shorts served to keep the studio afloat through cost overruns on that first feature, but by 1937, the incredible success of Snow White sounded a sort of death knell for the shorts, with the studio’s resources increasingly shifting towards the riskier yet more profitable feature animation. The shift of the creative talent,

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reflected by the Nine Old Men, would have likely sounded a death knell for the shorts, but world events complicated matters.74 Foreign markets in particularly proved receptive to Disney’s features, and would form a crucial component of the business model as the Depression slowly wound down. Unfortunately, the looming clouds of World War II broke before Disney’s follow-up features arrived ( (1940), (1940), (1941), and

(1942)), closing off crucial markets in Europe and Asia; of those four films, only Dumbo would turn a profit in its initial release.75 Disney was forced to seek out new markets, as well as new customers, and to reconfigure the business model once more. South America was one obvious venue, and Joe Carioca, the cigar-chomping parrot from Rio de Janeiro, represented the attempt to develop that market, and mark a major foray of Disney into cultural diplomacy.

74 Disney's own personality also caused issues; Barrier remarks "Disney's personality, so entrepreneurial at its core, made it difficult for him to delegate authority of any kind, particularly where features were concerned. He complained at times that he did not have enough really good animators to go around, but by expanding his studio's output so rapidly, he all but guaranteed he would be short of the help he most needed." Barrier, Animated, 137. 75 Barrier, Hollywood Cartoons, 270.

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Chapter 4. Donald Gets Drafted: Donald Duck at War and as Propaganda

The outbreak of World War II occurred in the midst of this golden age of animation, and complicated the fortunes of Disney Studios. The seeds laid decades earlier by Gertie and Buster

Brown had fully bloomed: (1937) and Bugs Bunny (1938, 1940) represented an alternative to Disney’s high art: Fleischer Studios’ Superman introduced the superhero to a new audience in 1941; while Popeye by 1938 had achieved recognition as the most popular cartoon character. Disney was not the dominant cultural force they would become, but rather one studio among many, though their feature animation (and dominance of the Academy Awards) lent a certain prestige.76 Walt Disney's work ethic found an interesting middle between McCay and

Bray: while he was more a manager in the mode of Bray, not having drawn a frame of animation or a panel of a comic since the late 1920s, he nevertheless was as driven as McCay, a common presence at the studio, often signing off on gags for cartoons, or directing his animators in small ways.77 He remained a perfectionist, and ensured that every Disney production maintained a certain level of quality; Kimball contends that,

The reason for the incredible success of the whole Disney operation was Walt’s demand for high quality. No half efforts were permitted. He would do things over and over until he was satisfied. Pinocchio is a good example. After we’d worked six months on it, Walt thought the story wasn’t right. So he threw out all the animation and started over.78

It is difficult to extract Walt Disney from the larger enterprise that bears his name, as even the distant reaches of his empire bear aspects of his influence.

76 By 1950, Disney had won ten Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film, including the first eight awarded, with a total of twenty-five nominations. 77 According to Michael Barrier, Disney "echoed the work of Fredrick W. Taylor...what happened at Disney's bore no resemblance to what Taylor had in mind, or, probably, to what Disney had in mind at first. Instead, the division of labor was increasingly pursued...as a means of artistic collaboration...the gains were less in increased output than in better-looking cartoons." Barrier, Animated, 81-82. 78 Kimball, "Wonderful World," 267.

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The moment of crisis that faced Disney at the moment of his greatest triumph was more complicated that it first appears. The legend has Disney staving off bankruptcy as foreign markets dry up, single-handedly steering the ship through treacherous waters, but this is a simplistic reading of where the company was in the early 1940s. This might have been true of

Walt Disney Studios, but the enterprise had grown considerably; for instance, Michael Barrier finds that "Western paid Disney royalties on 252,000 copies of the first issue of Walt Disney's

Comics & Stories. As of No. 24, the September 1942 issue...[Western] paid Disney a royalty on a million copies of Walt Disney's Comics & Stories, and sales were continuing to rise."79 The

Disney enterprise had grown beyond animation itself, though Walt Disney's attention remained almost exclusively on the filmmaking. The comics were an afterthought, a side-venture from the real work of animation, but this freedom allowed for the comics to evolve in a different fashion.

Dell in particular found a unique niche, shifting away from various fads (superheroes, horror, romance) to carve out a surprisingly large niche. Barrier explains, "separation from the mainstream bred in the Dell artists and writers a certain detachment that ultimately worked in their favor. They entered the field...because the work was in some way similar to the work they had already been doing. The best of them found challenges in the new industry that they never expected."80 Animators who, for one reason or another, fell short within the studios found use for their skills under Dell's wing, unnoticed by Disney, who had other concerns on his mind.

Disney’s first forays into wartime cartoon filmmaking was not with the U.S. government, but the Canadian. By the time Disney began more conscientiously soliciting work from government, he had already produced several films for the National Film Board of Canada,

79 Barrier, Funnybooks, 24. 80 Barrier, Funnybooks, 55.

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formed just two years earlier. Barrier notes that "Disney had begun seeking defense-related work in March 1941, but not too eagerly, and with only limited success. His most important commissions came from the National Film Board of Canada, which ordered four cartoons...to promote the sale of war bonds, as well as a training film."81 The shorts themselves served as blueprints for future endeavors, utilizing the studio's most popular characters (the Seven

Dwarves, the Little Pigs, Donald Duck) in relatively innocuous roles. The Seven Dwarves, for instance, use the proceeds from their mining to buy war bonds, while Donald lazily makes his way to the post office to buy bonds at the prompting of his angelic conscience. Thus, Donald’s purportedly negative character aspects are shown as merely endearing foibles which do not get in the way of doing his patriotic duty. These cartoons often reused animation and music, adding new footage but the shorts were limited to roughly three minutes in length; this footage lacked much in the way of strong writing or high-quality animation, banking more on recognizability than any high degree of quality. There was a soft touch to Disney's propaganda; though Canada was already at war, there were no portrayals of the Axis powers in these shorts, no racist caricatures or offensive stereotypes. References to the war itself were indirect at best: a mailbox flag spins to approximate a swastika, the wears a German-style cap. As with

Disney's features, these propaganda shorts helped to reinforce a business model that was increasingly reliant on foreign income.

Disney was not the only studio to jump at the opportunity to produce films for the government, though Disney’s prestige and personal history helped to smooth the studio’s entry into the war. Shale notes that “Disney received his first military contract on December 8th

81 Barrier, Animated Man, 183.

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[1941], though the idea that this was completely unexpected or unsolicited is a popular (and frequently quoted) misconception. Certainly, Disney’s defense work for Canada and his dealing with the Coordinator of InterAmerican Affairs had paved the way for a close relationship between the studio and the federal government.”82 Disney Studios found itself in difficult financial straits with the breakout of the war, and there is contention that the studio made use of the opportunity to stabilize itself with assistance from the government. However, Disney’s war effort actually comprised an expansion of production in order to keep up with demand, meaning the studio was often losing money in its work.83 It is a matter of opinion whether Disney was a true-hearted patriot or a cool-headed businessman playing the long game; the answer likely lies somewhere in the middle. Disney maneuvered his studio through the difficult war years by force of will and public goodwill, and positioned his enterprise to take advantage at the new shape of the world that followed the end of the war.

Walt Disney Studios fell behind the other major studios in total output during the war years, owing to both Disney's perfectionist tendencies and the low-boil financial crisis that loomed through the war years. This was a period where anything that did not directly and obviously contribute to the war effort could count on becoming a lower priority. The war had its demands all across American industry and film/animation were no exceptions. The underwhelming performance of various features (Dumbo excepted) pushed the company to the brink of bankruptcy, exacerbated by labor disagreements with the animators. Still, Disney seems

82 Richard Shale, Donald Duck Joins Up: Walt Disney Studio During World War II (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 22. 83 “Prior to the war, the studio’s greatest annual output had been 37,000 feet of film. In the fiscal year from 1942 to 1943 the output jumped to 204,000 feet. This volume and degree of government involvement made the Disney Studio unique in Hollywood, for no other studio even approached this wartime production.” Shale, Joins Up, 24.

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to have seen some profit in appealing to wartime audiences. Shull and Wilt contend that,

"Disney seems to have been one of the few top executives to grasp the idea that cartoons could be used for political as well as entertainment purposes, and he had the power to implement his ideas (unlike the directors and animators at other studios, who were supervised by businessmen chiefly interested in the profit margin)."84 More than any other studio, Disney pursued war- oriented filmmaking: within the larger industry, war-related cartoons comprised 44 percent of all works in released 1942, up to over 65 percent in 1943. Only four of Disney's 19 productions related to the war in 1942 (around 21 percent), but increased dramatically to 11 of 13 in 1943, 85 percent of Disney's output for the year. Other studios might have produced more total films, but

Disney embraced the patriotic ideal, and had the agency to do so.

Table 1: Wartime Animated Productions (based on Shull and Wilt's data) Release Year Disney War Total Disney Non-Disney War Total Animated Cartoons Productions Cartoons Productions 1941 1 18 23 163 1942 4 19 66 158 1943 11 13 67 120 1944 4 12 42 119 1945 1 10 25 80

One of the most significant intersection popular culture and public policy (particularly where Disney was concerned) was the Office of InterAmerican Affairs. Established by President

Roosevelt in August 1940, its stated function to “formulate and execute programs, in cooperation with the Department of State which, by effective use of governmental and private facilities in such fields as the arts and sciences, education and travel, the radio, the press, and the cinema, will further the national defense and strengthen the bonds between the Nations of the Western

84 Shull and Wilt, Doing Their Bit, 69-163

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Hemisphere.”85 Headed by Nelson Rockefeller, its function was to engage in cultural diplomacy with the nations of the Western Hemisphere, with a particular emphasis on reinforcing the bonds of friendship with South American nations, many of whom had been friendly with the government of . Functionally, the Office acted as an intermediary between the federal government and various American organizations that had dealings with other countries, coordinating efforts towards the seemingly inevitable world war. These efforts entailed a variety of undertakings, including hiring of Hollywood studios to create specific works towards these goals and offering guidance on messaging. It was an extension of the Hollywood system, an effort akin to the same process occurring within industry, meant to allow the American industrial apparatus in all its parts to fire on all cylinders. This was a much more organized effort than had occurred during World War I (in part because Hollywood had grown from a novelty sideshow into a national entertainment in the intervening years), reflecting a philosophy of combined arms aimed at uniting America.

The work that was produced under these auspices ran the gamut. The war bond drives that defined the propaganda of the World War I continued with an even greater fervor than previously. The advent of cartoon characters and comic books meant new avenues for selling war bonds, including the targeting of young readers. Comic books would feature war bond ads on the cover, regardless of the actual content of the issue (which typically avoided the war itself), and famous character might appear in print ads as well. There were further efforts as well: the gloom of the Depression had begun to lift before the introduction of rationing, and the various cartoon characters served as helpful ambassadors to their childish audiences, emphasizing the

85 Roosevelt.

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necessity of going without. Children were further prompted to assist in the war effort, organizing drives for rubber and paper.86 The federal government was happy to make use of the preexisting properties to achieve their ends; certainly, these characters were popular for a reason, and Disney was quite happy to lend them to the war effort. Disney's popularity (and Donald's in particular) played out in other ways, as Ron Grover states "Donald Duck made his in 1934. Five years later he eclipsed even Mickey in popularity; in World War II he was the symbol that appeared on more than 200 military insignias."87 Disney's reliance on foreign markets had fostered various relationships that became advantageous to the development of a unilateral diplomatic effort.

Disney’s largest effort during the war were two features produced largely for South

American audiences: Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). The films are significant within Hollywood history: “Saludos Amigos became the first Hollywood film to premiere in all Latin American countries before opening in the United States.”88 It was not the first time in history that a film had been created by Hollywood specifically for consumption outside of the American markets, but it nevertheless marked a change in how Disney produced his cartoons. It was not entirely created of his own volition; the federal government suggested that Disney inject some “South American flavor” into his shorts, prompting a trip by Disney and several of his animators down the Atlantic Coast, Puerto Rico to Rio de Janeiro and Buenos

Aires.89 Julianne Burton-Carvajal notes that “Disney’s South American project was thus built

86 A side effect was the destruction of many early editions of comic books, leading to the relative rarity of many early magazines. 87 Ron Grover, The Disney Touch (Homewood, IL: Business One Irwin, 1991), 6. 88 Shale, Joins Up, 47-48. 89 Barrier, Animated Man, 174.

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upon a self-conscious disposition formulated at high levels of national government to represent

Latin being, culture, and experience with authenticity and respect for intraregional as well as interregional variations.”90 Nelson Rockefeller and John Hay Whitney were emphatic that film should appeal to audiences in South America, especially in light of the often problematic portrayals of the nations in earlier Hollywood films.91

This drive for authenticity appears to have existed on both sides. Walt Disney, who had always taken a tack of American exceptionalism within his life and work, tried to find the best of the South American nations he visited: “Walt, who was a guest to these countries as well as an ambassador of his own, was careful not to embarrass himself or his hosts by pointing his camera at their slums, or by questioning the economic or political structure which kept so many South

American peasants in lifelong poverty.”92 He was no doubt aware of the issues that faced the citizens of these countries, with similar problems impacting America itself, but turned his attention to the positive aspects of the culture. Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros are certainly propaganda, but function to glorify the nations they documented as much as to push

American ideals (the films did equate American traditions to those of South America, in particular emphasizing democracy as a way of life). Saludos Amigos was a considerable success in South America, though its status as a propaganda effort meant that Disney Studios saw little profit from its exhibition (though it would help to ensure a stronger working relationship between Walt Disney and the U.S. government). The Three Caballeros was an extension of the

90 Burton-Carvajal, “Surprise Package,” 133. 91 Burton-Carvajal points out that “they were well aware that the condescending and stereotypical images of Latinness long purveyed by Hollywood – the blood-thirsty bandido, the sexy spitfire, the somnolent peasant, and so on – struck Latin Americans as distorted and demeaning. One regional government after the other had registered protest in response of what they considered offensive representations of their citizenry…” Burton-Carvajal, 133. 92 Shale, Joins Up, 49.

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basic messages of messages of Saludos Amigos, albeit including new and different countries than the initial film, answering a criticism that Disney had taken to heart. Julianne Burton-Carvajal, though critical of many aspects of the film, admits “to its enduring credit, The Three Caballeros does utilize Latin American music, accents, performers, locales, artifacts, and modes of cultural expression more extensively than any previously Hollywood film. Disney’s quest for cultural authenticity was to that extent both sincere and successful.”93

These reflected Walt Disney’s views on propaganda: they were bright, optimistic, and culturally sensitive.94 This was the cartoon equivalent, or perhaps extension, of the Roosevelt administration's "Good Neighbor" policy, which endeavored to project soft power and avoid the military interventions that had embodied U.S.-South American relations to that point.95 The policy focused more on similarities than differences, with a particular emphasis on culture. These projects were part of a larger diplomatic effort with South America, one Disney was well-suited to. His marketing acumen and brand awareness meant that South Americans were an ideal audience for the resurgent studio, but Disney was nevertheless careful not to patronize or talk down to the inhabitants. The effort was intended to reinforce the similarities between North and South America; Shale remarks that, “to ensure that no South American be offended by this humorous portrayal of a gaucho, Goofy is first seen as a Texas cowboy who is then whisked across the Rio Grande to the Argentine pampas. The transferal suggests visually and thematically the similarity in North and South America which is, in fact, the major point of

93 Burton-Carvajal, 147. 94 This is not to say the cartoons were without insensitivities or racist imagery, especially from the perspective of modern standards, but the works nevertheless attempting to show a degree of respect in keeping with the war aim of cultivating good hemispheric ties. 95 Thomas Leonard and John Bratzel, Latin America During World War II (Landham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2007), 2-4.

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this cartoon.”96 In emphasizing the similarities, Disney marks his audience as equal, reflecting a deeper philosophy that would play out within the Disney Empire at large (, It’s A Small

World), one of multiculturalism intermixed with a humble strain of American Exceptionalism.

Donald, the beleaguered everyman who had faced consistent ridicule and suffered deprivations in his cartoons (just as the nation had suffered in the Depression), had come to increasingly embody the spirit of the American public both at home and abroad. These films embodied a philosophy that was certainly American-centric, but emphasized the similarities between cultures, rather than positing the American system as inherently superior.

The key to both of the films is that they were generic enough to appeal to audiences both abroad and American. Disney’s characters, particularly Donald, were the draw of the films, and the shorts that largely comprised the films could be easily repurposed to audiences with a simple retranslation. This was the prevailing view of Disney towards much of the wartime production, beyond the few educational films; Shale explains that “since most of the Disney-CIAA films were made in the later stages of the war, this ideological shift suggests that as American military strength grew and an Allied victory appeared inevitable the need for propaganda diminished.”97 With a more hopeful morale in America, this meant that the cinematic output could be more optimistic, and Disney shifted production with an eye toward the end of the war.

Disney had produced roughly a sixth of war-related cartoons in 1943, but only a tenth in 1944, and only a single war-related cartoon in 1945. While overall production of war-related cartoons decreased as the conflict wore on, Disney seems to have been a step ahead of competition in terms of overall production (as well as content, which I will explore later in this chapter). To

96 Shale, Joins Up, 46 97 Shale, Joins Up, 61

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that end, Walt Disney remarked in an interview that “we don’t use The Mouse or The Duck in the training films. Occasionally, we put in a bit of humor...but humor is dangerous because the films have to be seen over and over again by the same people - and if a gag has been seen once, it’s gone and becomes dull.”98 There was a division between the comedic work and the education, a clear division of audiences, with an entertainer’s eye towards his perceived audiences. Saludos Amigos could contain documentary information, as Fantasia had before it, but the emphasis was more directly on the cartoons within, towards the larger end of propaganda, albeit with a light touch. It was meant to reinforce the bonds between the American nations, not to denigrate the Germans, and reflected a larger philosophy within the studio.

There was more to Disney's films than their content alone. The brand was inextricably linked to the man himself, and Disney was happy to play the role of showman and cultural diplomat. He recognized that his own persona was part of his brand’s appeal, something that would be made more apparent with his television work a decade later. Latin Americans appreciated having the famous man physically there as much as his films. Reporting during the

South America trip, future ambassador John Hay Whitney wrote, “Walt Disney is far more successful as an enterprise and as a person than we could have dreamed. His public demeanor is flawless. He is unruffled by adulation and pressure-just signs every autograph and keeps smiling.”99 Disney was a consummate businessman, and possessed a personal warmth and friendliness that helped create a public persona that was useful to the cause of the United States.

Walt Disney was inextricably linked to his characters in a way that no other animation studio

98 Mary Braggiotti, “Mickey Mouse’s Dearest Friend.” New York Post Daily Magazine and Comic Section, 30 June 1944. 99 John Hay Whitney, Alstock to Nelson A. Rockefeller, memorandum, “Report of John Hay Whitney from Rio de Janerio, August 29, 1941,” 8 September 1941, RAC.

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was, and could parlay his celebrity into even greater works. Still, Disney was not always comfortable in his role; while he might have held a positive relationship with the government,

Barrier quotes Disney as explaining, a decade later, "some of those people, when they got a uniform on, it was like pinning a badge on somebody...they just couldn't hold it."100 Disney's disinterest in dealing with the bureaucracy of politics and diplomacy might explain why he did not play a larger role in post-war propaganda efforts, though his films and comics would certainly flood foreign shores. Still, he would have other roles to play, and arguably demonstrated the potential of his products, though Walt Disney's attention would turn to other frontiers after the war's conclusion.

Walt Disney was looking ahead to the end of the war. Shale remarks: “Disney simply felt it was not in his best long-term interests to create films whose appeal rested heavily on a war which everyone hoped would not last very long. Therefore, most of the films which did use a military setting kept the plot vague enough so that the situation could apply to postwar military life as well.”101 Disney recognized that World War II was not a permanent state of affairs, and the studio’s work reflected this philosophy in a number of ways. Saludos Amigos and The Three

Caballeros were contracted as propaganda pieces, but were meant to function in a larger context.

There was little mention of fascism, war, or the diplomatic war then unfolding in South America.

Rather, they presented an optimistic view of the , emphasizing cultural similarities, and inviting their viewers to make up their own minds. While the films are simplistic in their cultural perspective, and reliant on stereotypes at times, these were films intended for consumption by a

100 Barrier, Animated Man, 185 101 Shale, Joins Up, 90.

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foreign audience, and the studio made every attempt to make them palatable to those audiences.

While the films would be exhibited in the United States, their box office success was considered secondary to the effects they had on international relations: the films were tools to reaffirm the ideals of the Monroe Doctrine, propaganda under a soft veneer.

This idea was hammered home in a memo written by former Disney animator Robert

Carr in January 1942, that would later appear in Politics in July 1945. Carr argues in support of

Disney’s work in South America, demonstrating a clear understanding of the diplomacy involved, and calls for a more expansive effort. Carr speaks to the power of animation and symbols, explaining that “we need whole glossary of new characters to express today’s new conceptions - characters to take their place alongside such familiar and effective simplifications as ...these anthropomorphic symbols have always been great comfort to the common man, for they create in him a secure feeling that he understands the rather complex values being asked to give his life to defend. Hence the high importance of symbols in morale-building, and the crucial importance of cartooning as a source of symbols.”102 He recognizes the possibility of animation to reach a mass audience, and predicts its potential just as McCay did decades earlier.

Carr further underscores a crucial aspect of Disney’s propaganda efforts, quoting Walt Disney as saying: “it seems to me that whenever possible, the South Americans ought to be asked what they want, and how they would like it made.”103 Carr understood Disney’s soft approach to

South America, one which entailed a process closer to cultural hybridity than imperialism, emphasizing the positive aspects of pan-American friendship. This did serve to obfuscate the

102 Robert Carr, “Ideas for More Walt Disney Films For South American Release” (Politics, July 1945), 211-213. 103 Carr, “Walt Disney Films,” 212.

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generally one-sided position of American power within the hemispheric order, rewriting the relationships that had been often held more by strength of arms that shared values. This reflected an effort to counter German overtures and the possibility that Axis propaganda would portray

America as an imperialist power.104 There are certainly questions whether Disney's first duty was to his country or to his pocketbook; the truth likely never entered the South American equation. The effort was not about selling an American ideal, or even acknowledging past behavior, but finding common ground and reinforcing the shared humanity. He further calls for these aspects to be enacted within domestic propaganda, to “hammer away at the fact that

Germany’s reserves are about gone, that Japan has few left, and Italy none. While essentially a simplified visual lesson in demography, underlying this film would be a warm feeling of inter- racial friendship and solidarity, aimed at counteracting the Axis propaganda about Uncle Sam’s racial prejudices."105 Carr recognized, as Walt Disney did, that the war would end, and perhaps soon. There was certainly value in producing cartoons that could be exhibited outside of the context of war, and more significantly, the markets that would reopen as hostilities ceased.

The propaganda efforts of Hollywood ran the gamut from simple conservation tales to documentaries on the conditions in the military to outright attacks on entire nations or races. Films had certainly played a role as escapist entertainment during the depths of the

Depression, but the existential threat to democracy posed by the war meant that the films being produced were more intensely patriotic. Karla Rae Fuller writes that "the distinction that can be made during the war years is that the purpose and objective of these values appeared to be

104 Bratzel, Latin America, 9-10. 105 Carr, 212.

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simpler and clear-cut as well as strongly essential to the morale and defense of the nation. As a result, many films made during World War II not only provided escapist entertainment but also reflected the national beliefs and expectations of the time, no doubt influenced in part by heightened government involvement."106 While many films did not directly deal with the war effort, there was a sense of patriotism infused into the productions, including the cartoon shorts. This patriotism had a dark side, however, that was well-suited to cartoons. Cartoons became a breeding ground for America’s darkest impulses, particularly the virulent strain of racism directed towards the Japanese. Shull and Wilt write that “the cinematic vilification of the

Japanese...was most egregious in American cartoons...the wickedly smiling, usually craven, buck-toothed, glasses-wearing caricatures were most often simply crude examples of racial stereotyping...neither the German nor the Italian people were so stigmatized in American cartoons.”107 Cartoons allowed for the creation of essentially any image imaginable, and the second World War saw an extension of the work that Winsor McCay had done two decades earlier, though the cartoons tended to respond a basic, visceral level to the war and America’s enemies, just as McCay had.

If McCay’s German submarine crew was depicted as underhanded villains, the portrayal pales in comparison to the treatment of belligerent nations in World War II, particularly the

Japanese. Deep-seeded racial attitudes, especially on the West Coast, singled out Asians

(Japanese, along with several other nationalities, had been banned from immigration to the

United States under the Immigration Act of 1924), and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor

106 Karla Rae Fuller. Hollywood Goes Oriental: CauAsian Performance in American Film. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 2010), 128 107 Shull and Wilt, Doing Their Bit, 33-34

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inspired new depths of racism and unbounded rage. The tentative stabs at mild propaganda like

Saludos Amigos quickly gave way to darker impulses of the American psyche, and would serve to reinforce existing stereotypes and perhaps generate new ones. Nazis in modern popular culture are portrayed as unrepentant monsters (no one would doubt that is doing the right thing when he guns down half a dozen brown-shirted soldiers), but as the war opened, the full scope of the Holocaust was yet obscured, leaving the Japanese as the villains of the war, at least to American eyes. This dovetailed with the American perception of Imperial Japan as the aggressors in the war; public outcry over the invasion of China had halted American exports of crucial war material to the island nation, which was part of what prompted the attack on Pearl

Harbor in the first place (an invasion of the American-held occurred in tandem, an effort to seize the key resources). The deep-seated racism found “justification” with Pearl

Harbor, and the veiled subtext of period films very quickly became text.

The lead-time for cartoons in this period meant that there were very few shorts in production related to the war effort as America entered the war, and there would not be for some months. A quirk of timing meant that Disney would be among the first to release a propaganda film after the start of hostilities, with the Donald Duck-starring (1942) released in

January. It had been commissioned the previous year by the Treasury Department, intended to cushion the blow of a coming tax hike, and did not feature any direct reference to the war itself. More significant was Donald Gets Drafted (1942), released in May, which was Disney’s first proper war-time cartoon. Scripted by Carl Barks, it was a comical tale of Donald Duck joining the service, proving generally ineffective at the endeavor, and ending up worse for wear, much as with any Donald Duck short. The difference here is that the short takes on a much more patriotic tone throughout, with Donald remaining his clumsy but well-meaning self. Barks’s

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anti-war leanings shine through; there is no idealization of the training or service, but rather a comical portrayal of some of the real-life conditions of boot camp. Barks explained "I had seen one generation of young men march off to war — World War I — and I was stupid enough to think that I wanted to get into it, but I was just a little too young...when I saw how little we had accomplished with World War I, I thought, why in the devil kill off another whole generation of young men to accomplish the same result?"108

The Spirit of '43 (1943) works to cajole viewers into paying their income taxes, a spiritual sequel to The New Spirit, which saw Donald's gleefully paying his income taxes. Here, Donald ponders whether to pay his quarterly income tax (with the high tax rate blamed on the Axis), with a zoot-suited young duck promising a good time while a Scottish-accented older duck proposes thrift and paying of the tax. While the short is fairly uninteresting compared to

Disney's other propaganda shorts (it has a lot in common with the Canadian shorts from a year previous), it does feature a character that might be the proto-Uncle Scrooge, in the character of the spendthrift older duck. Additionally, the fun-loving duck embodies certain aspects of

Gladstone Gander, Donald's happy-go-lucky cousin, and the short might be an ur-example of the conflicts of Donald's character in the comics. The writing for the short is occasionally credited to Carl Barks, and though this may be apocryphal, it does sketch out the relationships that will develop during his tenure. Films like this helped secure the idea of Donald as the everyman, a stand-in for the average American, one who is patriotic, but somewhat unwilling to actually follow through on their duty.

108 Michael Barrier. "Carl Barks on His Life and Career" (In Carl Barks Conversation. ed. Donald Ault, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 53.

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Any discussion of Donald Duck during the war must include Der Furher's Face (1943), perhaps the best-known of the wartime shorts (though one left buried in the Disney vaults for decades).109 This is well-remembered precisely because it is potentially combustible, insofar as it deals with dark matters in a comic, which is not to say unserious, vein. The image of Donald

Duck as a Nazi was the subject of myth and rumor in a pre-internet era, though it was well- documented in the historical record due to its Oscar win. It remains one of the more controversial of Disney's wartime work due to its portrayal of Donald as a Nazi (or, rather, as a

German citizen, though the public imagination makes assumptions about its content). Shull and

Wilt note that "this was one of the few cartoons that focused on Hitler's Germany, rather than

Hitler as the invader of Europe and enemy of democracy. Almost all of the humor devolves from Donald Duck's sad life under the Nazi regime...it is somewhat unusual for a propaganda short to concentrate almost entirely on the internal affairs of the enemy nation."110 While the events are played for comedy, it never condemns the citizens of Germany, and perhaps pities them in the same manner that Donald is meant to gain our pity. Donald has no joy as a veritable cog in the machine of German industry, his very energy sapped by life under the regime that demands constant allegiance (forced to "heil" every framed portrait of Hitler that passes by on the assembly line) and constant production (working forty-eight hours a day). This is the same

Donald, a put-upon figure in his normal life, placed among the German people, where he suffers much as he does in any other cartoon. The people of Germany are portrayed as victims of Hitler, the same as the rest of the world: the Nazi officers are the objects of caricature and mockery,

109 The release year of Der Furher's Face is murky; officially, it was released 1 January 1943, though won the Oscar for Animated Short Film in March of the same year, which meant it would have been shown at select theaters earlier, at least in theory. 110 Shull and Wilt, Doing Their Bit, 46

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including an unfortunate rendition of Hirohito, possessing yellow skin, buck teeth, and a stereotypical speech pattern.

In the same vein as Furher's Face of Disney’s efforts was Education for Death (1943), an adaptation of Gregor Zimer’s book of the same name. It stands out among many of the other propaganda films of the time in portraying the life of a German youth as he grows to adulthood, with a sense of empathy. Hans the boy that will grow into a soldier is not portrayed as an unrepentant monster, but as an innocent lead astray over years by the insidious apparatus of the

German state, a process portrayed with a great deal of sympathy. It is a tragedy that the boy will have his youthful spirit slowly crushed, and eventually be sent to his death in war, a process that is no fault of his own. Like Donald, Hans is trapped within an oppressive regime, simply trying to get by; what occurs is a tragedy. The cartoon is bleaker and more serious than most of the other propaganda shorts of the period, emphasizing the tragedy of the situation, though features a few slapstick moments. Outside of a few interludes, the short possessed a documentary quality, creating a grim reality that tried to portray Nazi Germany as a real place, a twisted counterpoint to Der Furher's Face. Other notable shorts of the period include (1943), which follows a similar albeit more comedic route, arguing that the German people were seduced by Hitler through fear and sympathy. Both films put the onus on Hitler and the Nazis as aggressors; while the German citizens are largely faceless (young Hans melts away into a column of soldiers near the film's conclusion), it represents an alternative perspective to other cartoons of the period. This less demonizing treatment could have helped Disney secure a position within the hearts and minds of the occupied populations.

This is not to say that Donald (and Disney at large) was immune to the same racism that was emblematic of much of the wartime animation. The dominant mode of much of the wartime

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animation was naked racism against the Japanese, owing to both the nature of the sneak attack as well as the deep-seated prejudice of Americans against Asians.111 Shull and Wilt find an economic reason for this, arguing that,

no production company would deliberately alienate a potential segment of its

audience by attacking an entire race or religion. Unpleasant as some movie

stereotypes may be, they seem to have been included out of ignorance or laziness,

rather than as part of a master plan to malign a certain group. One of the few

exceptions to this rule, however, is the anti-Japanese bias in the popular media of

1942-43, cartoons very much included.112

Propaganda naturally portrayed the belligerent Axis powers as inhuman monsters to one degree or another, but the Japanese received a greater degree of greater degree of vitriol and outright racism. For instance, Nicole Fuller discusses "Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips demonstrates how caricature in an animated cartoon can facilitate a host of well-worn racial clichés and concepts about the Japanese as well as the Orient as a whole."113 The short features the rabbit overcoming hordes of buck-toothed, yellow-skinned antagonists, violently destroying the racist caricatures. This was hardly an exception: Warner's Tokio Jokio (1943) portrayed a Japanese newsreel with those same caricatures, emphasizing Japanese ineptitude in all things war related;

Famous Studios (formerly Fleischer Studios) produced You're A Sap, Mr. Jap wherein Popeye single-handedly sinks a Japanese battleship, crewed by the usual assortment of stereotypes; even

Disney produced (1943), the only Disney short to prominently feature

111 It seems possible that racial animus towards Asians, formerly projected on the Chinese, shifted towards the Japanese, particularly as the Chinese began to prove valuable allies in the Pacific. 112 Shull and Wilt, Doing Their Bit, 41 113 Fuller 140

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Japanese caricatures, though they perhaps deliberately appeared only as eyes hidden in bushes.114

Disney avoided the same degree of outright racism that other studios engaged in with their cartoons, though after 1943 (the Battle of Midway and the invasion of Italy seemed to signal a turning point) the preponderance of racist propaganda films largely dried-up.

While Disney eschewed the more intense (and racist) propaganda of its rival studios, not all of their propaganda films were lighthearted and optimistic. Steps were taken not to offend allied nations, as Shale notes “Ward Kimball, who worked on [Chicken Little], recalls another late change: the fox used the word ‘fascism,’ but...the word was changed to ‘totalitarianism.’ He objected to this extra work as well as the reasoning behind the compromising change: ‘In other words, if we called him Fascist, we should also kind of make it sound like we’re condemning

Russia too.’”115 Disney understood that his cartoons were not going to be viewed purely by

American audiences: the business relied on foreign audiences as much as domestic, even in wartime, and there was an effort to keep the content even-handed. His motives to this end (as much of his myth is) are unclear, whether it was an ethical or financial decision, but the end result was that the wartime productions were more palatable beyond American boundaries. There does not appear to be any evidence that Disney directly prevented the animators from appealing to the base racism of the American public, but there does appear to have been an effort to appeal to the widest possible audience, perhaps precluding the more racist elements of the other studios. It is conjecture to claim this was for business reasons just as it would be to find a humanitarian motivation, though it's not impossible that Walt Disney had both in mind during the lean war years. Nevertheless, Donald Duck had remained relatively untainted

114 Shale, Joins Up, 94 115 Ibid., 65

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by his role in wartime propaganda. While Der Furher's Face retained some infamy due to its

Oscar win, Commando Duck was almost entirely erased from public consciousness by being thrown into the vault, along with most of the propaganda shorts. Saludos Amigos and The Three

Caballeros became indicative of the Duck's wartime role, and proof of his power as a tool of diplomacy.

Adjacent to the more visible wartime production, Donald Duck had also secured a key pop cultural position. Shale notes that “comic books and comic strips continued right through the war, and approximately 50 Disney children’s books were published between 1941 and

1945.”116 Disney's relatively slow theatrical output was made up for with his prodigious production of printed media. Walt Disney's attention in this period was on the features and simply keeping the studio afloat, with various licensing deals falling into the domain of his brother Roy, who eventually brought in advertiser Herman Kamen to help sell the merchandise.

The merchandising empire had developed quickly, from "the royalty statement for

1930...amounted to only $63" to "$35 million of sales in Disney merchandise the United States and an equal amount overseas" by 1934, though suffered during the war years along with the larger Disney enterprise.117 Despite the credit often given to the government projects of Disney, it seems apparent that merchandise played a key role in keeping the company afloat, and would have loomed large as foreign markets reopened in the postwar years. Disney ended the war with the resources, distribution, and manpower to stage a successful comeback; the lean war years bloomed into relative success, the studio recovering through the exhibition of its growing catalogue, once again able to enter markets the world over. This effort brought merchandise

116 Ibid., 87. 117 Gabler, Triumph, 196-197

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with it, and comics in particular soon became a key component of the empire. These works was linked to the larger Disney enterprise: many of the artists and writers were drawn from the ranks of current and former Disney employees. Significantly, each comic bore the name of Walt

Disney alone, implying him as the sole creator, a stamp of approval for the discerning consumer be they child or adult.118 The production of this material was increasingly contracted out to outside companies, as Walt Disney micromanaging was increasingly focused on film and television.

The invisible hand of Walt Disney was not involved in the hiring of Carl Barks, nor does it appear he was involved in any way in the production of the stories. In Barks's reckoning:

"after I left the studio, I never met Walt face to face again...I don't think the Disney studio ever even read my comic book stories. I would turn my stories into Western, and Western supposedly sent them over to the Disney studio for checking, but I know there were times when I was very close to their deadline they didn't have time."119 While these stories did not contain any objectionable material, there is no indication that any senior level employees were involved in the work that was being produced at Western. The Disney empire was growing quickly, and comics were just one far flung outpost, allowing them to develop in unique ways under the pen of Carl Barks, the Good Duck Artist.

118 This practice was common among comics in general during the period: only major figures like had the clout to sign the comics with their own names. 119 Michael Barrier. "Carl Barks on His Life and Career" (In Carl Barks Conversation. ed. Donald Ault, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 21.

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Chapter 5. The Good Duck Translator: Erika Fuchs and the Exporting of Donald Duck

Donald Duck had served as the figurehead of Disney's war-time propaganda shorts and had been transformed into an ambassador in South America, with his popularity hitting an all- time high. He had firmly eclipsed Mickey Mouse in the minds of audiences, and the newly- reopened markets of Europe and the rest of the world offered fertile ground for Disney's advance with the Duck at the forefront. Stateside, the studio had weathered the lean war years successfully, and was in the process of carving out a larger niche within the comics market. The

Disney kingdom weathered the winds of the Great Depression and World War II, and emerged an empire. Demand for Disney’s products had been high in Europe in the pre-war years, and the studio had increasingly come to rely on foreign box office when the war erupted. The loss of local cultural institutions and efforts by the citizenry of Nazi-occupied countries had left a void that was easily filled by the likes of Disney.

There was a great deal of disagreement among the Allies on how to handle an occupied

Germany even before the end of the war. The disagreements were much deeper than those of the

West and the Soviets, with preferring a permanently weakened Germany for instance, and even some disagreements within the upper echelons of the United States government.

Negotiations eventually resulted in a democratic-capitalist Bundesrepublik, the Republic of

Germany formed out of , while the German People's Republic was created out of

East Germany, each becoming buffers against possible aggression be the Warsaw Pact and

NATO respectively. During the first years, post-war Germany fell under military control, particularly under JCS 1067. The document outlined the occupation that would effectively run

West Germany for the next four years, outlining the structure of the military governance and the limits of German autonomy. Much of the text was focused on control of the economy and

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disarmament, but German culture itself was seen as a significant matter. It outlines the

Denazification protocols as "dissolving the Nazi Party, its formations, affiliated associations and supervised organizations, and all Nazi public institutions which were set up as instruments of

Party domination, and prohibiting their revival in any form."120 The process extends beyond mere politics and toward the erasure of a decade of fascist dominance, to the degree that "you will prohibit the propagation in any form of Nazi, militaristic or pan-German doctrines....no

German parades, military or political, civilian or sports, shall be permitted by you."121 Any reminders of the period were carefully erased, though there were efforts to maintain the culture at large; the first part concludes with a small note: "Arts and Archives: ...you will make all reasonable efforts to preserve historical archives, museums, libraries and works of art."122 Many of those spaces would remained closed for years afterward, as Germans came to terms with the events of World War II. Kellerman sums up the feeling: “JCS 1067 was a stern reminder to

Germans that hey had lost the war, had surrendered unconditionally, and had to bear the consequences.”123

The education system at large was effectively shut down under JCS 1067, as it was viewed as an aspect of state power, exacerbated further by issues with everything from surviving textbooks to trained teachers without ties to the Nazi party.124 There were fears that the younger generations might already be corrupted; Tent sums up the belief that "the older generation had at

120 Joint Chiefs of Staff. Directive to Commander-in-Chief of United States Forces of Occupation Regarding the Military Government of Germany: JCS 1067. 6.a 121 Ibid., 9.b,c. 122 Ibid. 15 123 Kellerman, Cultural Relations, 18. 124 James Tent. Mission on the Rhine: Reeducation and Denazification in American-Occupied Germany, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 42-43.

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least been raised at a time before the Nazis could stifle truth, humanity, and religion. By contrast, the youth had been reared in a national cult of violence, intense nationalism, and hatred in schools, in the organizations..."125 The initial efforts of reeducation focused on undoing the damage of the prior decade, though the efforts were often ham-fisted and uncoordinated.126 The initial efforts at educational reform bordered on anarchy at times, with different organizations seeking different outcomes, often without input from the Germans.

However, the State Department came to increasingly displace the military in control of the occupation; Large explains "concrete directives for cultural and educational exchanges and for extensive aid programs emerged only at the end of 1946...by the end of 1947, when the Cold

War came more sharply into focus, an awareness dawned that cultural assistance and exchange programs were valuable components..."127 The Cold War necessitated a shift in control, though the State Department ensured that it retained a seat at the table.

Film is the most direct use of popular culture in the denazification/anti-Communist efforts, discussed at length by Jennifer Fay in Theaters of Occupation. American films played a significant role in the immediate aftermath of the war, but were increasingly displaced by a resurgent German film industry, which tended to avoid the propagandistic elements of American releases, the dominant genre becoming the Heimatfilm or “homeland film.”128 American films

125Tent, Mission, 55 126 These gaps in education might have allowed for greater penetration of Western popular culture; Stephan explains that "younger readers, looking for alternatives to the depressing German literature set in the of war, and wanting to be different from their conservative and only superficially denazified parents and teachers, were attracted to the easy-to-read style of American literature, its suspensefully told stories, its generally optimistic view of the future, and its freedom from a weighty cultural past." Alexander Stephan. "A Special German Case of Cultural Americanization." In The Americanization of Europe: Culture, Diplomacy, and Anti-Americanism after 1945 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 76. 127 Tent, Mission, 254-255 128 Johannes Von Moltke. No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 82.

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continued to be shown in cinemas, but the nostalgic Heimatfilm, which emphasized the simple, rural life, typically including straightforward romances accentuated with shots of sweeping vistas. These films might be understood as counterparts to American westerns of the same period, albeit with less violent content, and the simple stories appealed to the same feelings that made the western a dominant genre in roughly the same period (the 1940s to the 1970s).

Television would have a similar detrimental effect upon German movie-going as it had on

Americans, with regular television broadcasts beginning in 1952.129

Radio was a more complicated matter. Jeremy Tunstall notes that “the Americans sought also to avoid the centralized radio system under Postal Ministry control that Hitler had so easily taken over in 1933. The Americans (and the French in their zone) had deliberately organized radio at the Land (regional government) level and then embedded it into the power structure.”130

The effect was to create a diffuse media market, akin to the American system, despite occasional efforts of the Adenauer government to gain control. There was also creation of Radio Free

Europe (based in ) in 1949 could also be understood as an extension of the goals of JCS

1067. The broadcasts were targeted at Soviet satellite states, funded semi-secretly by the CIA and State Department, engaging in similar efforts to what had taken place at the close of war in

West Germany.131 The key is that this process was multifaceted and multimedia, though would lack the guiding hand of the United States military and the State Department as the occupation wound down. The continued presence of U.S. military bases on German soil, over two hundred

129 The model for German television more closely resembled the British model of state-run television, compared to more localized newspapers and radio as favored by the Americans. 130 Jeremy Tunstall, The Media Are American (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 158.

131 Tunstall, Media Are American, 226-227.

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bases at the height of the Cold War, would continue to serve as sites of cultural exchange, though this was presumably a secondary intent to the military defense of Western Europe.

The Germans, for their part, began to embrace the West in a number of ways. The process was complicated by the cultural history of Germany, particularly the stratification of culture. Stephan writes that "in the United States, unlike Germany, the boundary between high and popular culture had been blurred since the nineteenth century, making it difficult to define what constituted high culture in America. And since high culture in the United States, like popular culture, is subject to the laws of the marketplace, Americans had a hard time communicating with Germans who were used to a system of state-subsidized culture."132 This process was of course more complicated; American culture still possessed degrees of separation, but they were more a function of the market and the democratic instinct than a grand plan.

Lawrence Levine notes that "since neither paternalistic royalty nor a paternalistic government was available for the support of symphonic music or any aspect of expressive culture, it is hardly surprising, considering the prevailing paradigms and ethos of the turn of the century, that the alternative source of paternalistic capitalism sought not only as a means of funds but as a model of organization as well."133 The efforts in Germany represented a strange sort of subversion of this model, with the U.S. government determining what culture the Germans would be exposed to, though these efforts tended to consist of what would be termed lowbrow: film, music, and comic books.

132 Stephan, "Special Case," 75. 133 Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1988), 132.

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Comics are the exception in Germany. While other German industries – film, radio, print, television – would develop homegrown production, comics did not see the creation of such an industry. There has always been a market for comics in Germany, generally on at newsstands in the same manner that they were distributed in the United States in the mid-century, but there is a dearth of native artists and writers. The vast majority of products released are translations of foreign releases, often through larger European publishers (Egmont, for instance). Even in present day, most of the recent German-created comics releases grew out of the former East

Germany, featuring a style that has more in common with comics from former Soviet bloc countries than those hailing from Western Europe. The occupation set the stage for the development of modern media in Germany, including comic books, and the fact that Germany did not develop a homegrown comics industry is a key point this dissertation will address.

The focus was not in exposing the Germans to all that American culture had to offer, necessarily, but with an eye toward exemplifying American culture. Levine's contention that

"such cultural categories as highbrow and lowbrow were hardly meant to be neutral descriptive terms; they were openly associated with and designed to preserve, nurture, and extend the cultural history and values of a particular group of people in a historical context" is relevant here, but for occupying forces, it entailed an effort to nurture American values on a national scale.134

In this context, the texts themselves mattered less in their meaning; in fact, the more accessible

"lowbrow" texts would perform the necessary work of cultural diplomacy, especially since

American "high" culture tended to be constrained to specific spaces.135 These efforts were broad

134 Levine, Highbrow Lowbrow, 222-223. 135 "This was by no means an absolute monopoly. The symphony hall, opera house, and the museum were never declared off-limits to anyone...these cultural products had to be accepted on the terms proffered by those who

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in scope, but shifts in American domestic politics and efforts to allow the Germans to integrate on their own meant an end to formal efforts of cultural integration. Stephan writes that "the official U.S. operation to control Germany's culture peaked in the early 1950s. A decade later, it became clear that the 'battle for the hearts and minds' of West Germans had for the most part been won despite occasional setbacks, and American cultural policy began to relax its grip."136

Cultural contacts between occupying servicemen and the native population are well- documented, if lacking the officiality of the diplomatic efforts. Large notes that "the famous injunction against 'fraternization' with German civilians, for example, proved difficult to enforce when those civilians...went out of their way to welcome the GIs," and that these relationships went both ways: "one soldier told Stars and Stripes 'Hell, these people are cleaner and a damned sight friendlier than the French. They're our kind of people.'"137 There were certain cultural differences; the influence of the culture of German immigrants was keenly felt throughout the

Midwest and Pennsylvania, and would have remained recognizable to some of the American soldiers. These young men were the first-line of contact for many Germans, and these soldiers little resembled the murderous pillagers promised by Nazi propaganda. These soldiers brought cigarettes, chocolate bars, and comic books, which they readily shared with the populace.

Stephan explains that "young Germans quickly identified with the unauthoritarian behavior of the victors...German youth were the gate of entry for American popular culture, whose triumphal

controlled the cultural institutions...the taste that now prevailed was that one segment of the social and economic spectrum which convinced itself and the nation at large that its way of seeing, understanding, and appreciating music, theater, and art was the only legitimate one. “Levine, 230-231 136 Stephan, "Special Case," 73 137 David Clay Large, Germans To the Front: West German Rearmament in the Adenauer Era (Chapel Hill, NC: University of Press, 1996), 19.

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march into the country has been going on ever since."138 The German youth were the first line of contact between the Americans and the rest of German society, the primary consumers of

American popular culture, the most amenable to the messages contained within those works.

While the French maintained a certain antagonism toward the defeated Germany, the

British view was that "Germany ought to be anchored to the West but only in a nonmilitary way.

London saw integration, moreover, not just as means of deterring possible Communist aggression, but also as a safeguard against any independent inclinations on the part of a new

West German state."139 Like the British, the United States became increasingly open to integrating Germany into the West, as President Truman grew wary of the threat of Soviet

Russia. The election of Konrad Adenaeur as Chancellor of Germany granted the United States a useful (if crafty) ally at the opening of the Cold War. Adenauer was dubbed by his opponents

'chancellor of the Allies' due to his distinctly pro-Western leanings.140 Peter Merkl notes that

Adenauer emphasized the integration (West) Germany into the Western democratic/capitalist community during his tenure, through means ranging from religious, economic, and military.141

His political opponents preferred closer relations with , hoping to negotiate some agreement of neutrality from the United States and Soviet Union, but Adenauer believed the best future for Germany lay in aligning more closely with the West. This integration was of course aided by four years of military occupation and the Marshall Plan, but there was a voluntary (if at times grudging) undercurrent to these efforts. Merkl contends that Adenauer Era Germany was

138 Stephan, "Special Case," 79. 139 Ibid,. 74. 140 Ibid., 61. 141 Peter H. Merkl, "The German Search for Identity." In Developments in West German Politics. Ed. Gordon , William E. Paterson, and Peter H. Merkl (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989), p. 9

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unique among similarly developed nations in its willingness to engage with the difficult aspects of its recent past, with Adenauer exemplifying a certain desire to make things right.142 The chancellor's anti-Nazi past (he had been persecuted and imprisoned several times by the Nazis) as well as his deep-rooted Catholicism ensured his acceptability to Western leaders, who might have otherwise left West Germany a pariah state. The path to avoiding a repeat of the horrors of

World War II appeared to lie in an embrace of a larger international community, albeit one that had largely shunned Germany during the prior decades of its existence, and Adenauer focused his energies and political capital to that end. For their part, the German people tended to view the United States favorably; Deutsch and Edinger found that "in June 1952...about three-fifths of

Germans interviewed in polls felt that the United States was well disposed toward cooperation with Germany; in 1952, only 29 per cent made the same assumption about England, and only 12 per cent about France."143 There was a clear willingness to embrace the United States that was reflected in Adenauer's reign, as well as a discomfort with the Soviet Union. Deutsch and

Edinger found that "to questions requiring a decision between 'East' and 'West,' or between cooperation with the United States and cooperation with Russia, more than three-fifths of persons interviewed between 1950 and 1954 answered consistently in favor of cooperation with the United States."144 Even as the United States began to relax its grip and withdraw its occupying forces (although some troops remained stationed at the several hundred military installations thereafter), there was a clear preference for the Americans.

142 Merkl, "Identity," 16-17. 143 Karl W. Deutsch and Lewis J. Edinger, Germany Rejoins the Powers: Mass Opinion, Interest Groups, and Elites in Contemporary German Foreign Policy (Stanford, CA: Press, 1959), 21. 144 Ibid., 21.

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This preference played out in the political policies of the new German Federal Republic under Adenauer's long reign. Patrick Jackson frames the Adenauer policies under the auspices of

Occidentalism and Western civilization. He argues that "Germany—at least, the part of

Germany covered by the western zones of occupation—was determined to be essentially part of

‘the West.’ On this basis, Germany could be closely integrated into Europe as one part of

‘Western Civilization’ and form part of an anti-Soviet civilizational bloc."145 The political maneuverings that comprised the winding-down the occupation ended up being less about whether to align with the Soviet Union or the West, but to what degree Germany would integrate with the Western Europe and the United States. Jackson notes that "Adenauer, who regularly deployed explicitly Occidentalism language in his public statements...as he had been advocating a policy of closely integrating Germany into ‘Western Civilization’ since immediately after the

Second World War."146 Adenauer's election to the chancellorship possessed little mandate;

Konrad Kellen famously recalled "he was chosen by a majority of one vote - his own - by the new German parliament."147 At 73, he was viewed as a placeholder, a figurehead to steady the ship of state before the next generation asserted control, but he remained chancellor for fourteen years, shaping the development of modern Germany in crucial ways. His longevity allowed him to bridge key points of German history: his effective work as mayor of Cologne, his long-time opposition to Communism, even his dismissal as mayor of Cologne by the occupying British served to position him as a staunch defender of the German people.148 His commitment to his

145 Patrick Jackson. Civilizing the Enemy: German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West ( Press, 2006), 157. 146 Jackson, Civilizing, 181. 147 Kellen, Adenauer 148 Schwarz, Hans-Peter. Konrad Adenauer: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution and Reconstruction. Vol. 1: From the German Empire to the Federal Republic, 1876–1952 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), 321-323.

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Catholic faith formed the bulwark under which the Christian Democratic Union was formed, and helped solidify a sense of identity in the turbulent times. Most significant was the development of the idea that Germany was not alone; Jackson remarks: "Adenauer utilized Occidentalism to defuse notions of a separate German path (a Sonderweg)."149 Ideas of either unification with

East Germany (nominally as a neutral buffer between Eastern and Western Europe, although it seems plausible that Stalin might have had designs on expanding his sphere of influence further) were quickly rejected, as was the notion that Germany could return to its imperial glory.

Adenauer, through foreign and domestic policies, brought Germany into alignment with the West in a variety of crucial aspects.150 This openness to the West is often framed within an economic or political equation, but these aspects inform the culture in crucial ways. This is not to say that

Adenauer's Germany was entirely united; Kurt Shumacher's Socialist Party sought a more direct and speedier reunification, sometimes accusing Adenauer of intentionally sabotaging negotiations with the Soviets.151 These ideas grew from the same patriotism and nationalism practiced by Adenauer, who was warier of Stalin's entreaties and saw Germany's economic future outside of its own borders, rather than as a buffer between superpowers. These frictions remain today, with continued debates over Germany's role as de facto leader of the European

Union and questions over whether it should focus efforts inward or to the world at large.

149 Jackson, Civilizing, 182 150 Stephan explains in greater detail that "historians later downplayed the notion of a 'zero hour' because it tended to mask the social and cultural continuity of German life that went on more or less intact after 1945 despite the denazification programs. This view overlooks the fact that Germany (albeit against its will) was given the opportunity to fundamentally change direction, to turn away from its brief and unhappy history as an expanding nation-state, its disastrous project to 'go it alone,' and a social structure that was deeply rooted in the nineteenth century - and what was more important, to move toward integration into Europe as it began coming together, first economically, then politically, and now perhaps culturally as well." Stephan, Special Case, 75. 151 Large, Germans To the Front, 61.

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The process of the German Westernization laid bare many of the frictions between class and culture that were deeply ingrained. Stephan notes that "both in the educated middle class and among German intellectuals, deeply rooted prejudices closed minds to cultural expressions from the United States, on the grounds that they were poor copies of European originals or that they compromised the standards of high culture by their commercialism and the fact that they were geared to appeal to the mass market."152 The cultural elites tended to regard the West with suspicion (those that had remained in the country had, at the very least, been tolerant of Nazi values), and it is certainly the case that many in the country at large was distrustful of a foreign occupation. There was an effort towards locating common ground between the two nations, a process haphazard at times but ultimately improving over time.153 American foreign policy had emphasized a mix of free-market capitalism and liberal democracy since the turn of the century, a process that had been emphasized in foreign policy since the end of World War I, including the

Roosevelt administration's efforts in South America. As with those efforts, the United States sought to emphasize relationships, existing and potential, framing the West at large as a against threats from the outside. The methods in Germany differed from the South American efforts; after all, it was a military occupation, and the locals did not have a great deal of agency in determining which messages they were exposed to, but the effort still reflected a deployment of soft power.

152 Stephan, Special Case, 75. 153 Jackson notes that "even if the American occupying forces wanted to impose their views on German political elites, it is unlikely that policies based on those views would have been socially sustainable in the absence of a common language that occupiers and occupied could speak. That there was such a language - drawing on the commonplace of ‘Western Civilization’ - is an important part of the story, providing the context within which particular details about state/market balances and electoral laws could be worked out." Jackson, Civilizing, 206.

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To this end. the State Department enacted various programs within a cultural diplomacy framework. Henry J. Kellerman, a lawyer who worked for the State Department in the postwar years, authored a monograph entitled Cultural Relations - Instruments of Foreign Policy U.S.

German Exchange - 1945-54, an in-depth examination of the roles of the State Department in reforming German society. Kellerman emphasizes the cultural and educational programs enacted under the aegis of the Department, covering the specific individuals and policies that were debated and put into place. He offers a sense of the broader history departmental operations, explaining that the "Division of Cultural Relations was established in the Department of State in 1938 to initiate the U.S. Government's new venture in cultural relations...it was also emphasized from the beginning that he program was essentially long-range, and nonpolitical in purpose. Its basic goal was to promote mutual understanding."154 These actions functioned as an extension of the Marshall Plan, emphasizing shared culture of the Americans and Germans, particularly as the Cold War began to take shape. Legislation further secured the role of the

State Department at the forefront of cultural diplomacy as well as political diplomacy.

Kellerman explains that "by casting the government itself in the role of sponsor, it was clearly suggested that greater encouragement of private initiative as the major government task was required, and this called for strong government leadership. Cultural relations had to become a permanent, securely funded function of the government."155 The State Department faced a similar moment to the one that arose in the years leading up to World War II when they called upon Disney to assist with South America. The European situation in the post-war years was

154 Henry J. Kellerman. Cultural Relations as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Educational Exchange Program Between the United States and Germany1945-54 (Department of State Publication, 1978), 5. 155 Kellerman, Cultural Relations, 8.

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more dire than the German overtures to South America during the war, and the United States found itself forced to challenge the intensive Soviet propaganda. Kellerman does not provide any direct evidence of Disney's involvement within the diplomatic efforts, as there had been for the State Department's efforts in South America, and Walt Disney himself had become more involved in rebuilding his company in the post-war years. However, Disney's properties were ready to reenter the war-torn markets of Europe, and the State Department's larger efforts created an opportunity for those efforts.

The State Department had already been utilizing Hollywood to suit its ends. Fay explains that “at the state department's request [Nintochka] made its controversial Italian debut during the

1948 national election. In occupied Germany that same year Nintochka was the U.S. government’s antidote to communism and Soviet anti-American propaganda.”156 Whether anyone had read Wanger's call to action in unclear, but it is apparent that the diplomats recognized the power of the American entertainment industry. There had been an effective freezing out of homegrown movie studios from doing work, due to their collaborations with fascist governments, and movie theaters were likewise encouraged to show the films the occupying forces preferred. This process occurred in all aspects of society; even the most innocuous homegrown entertainments inspired suspicion of deep-seeded loyalty to the previous regimes. The incoming media itself was carefully selected for maximum effect: it was meant to sell the very idea of America, particularly as the Cold War threatened to boil over. Jennifer Fay cites a diplomatic that explained: "it has become our task to seek out the points which make the American system appear good, sound, and the best possible of all systems...few things

156 Fay, Theaters, 85.

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are more controversial than the capitalistic system. It is not official policy to ‘sell’ the capitalistic system under which this country prospered, but...it should be our task to emphasize the good points of capitalism wherever possible.”157 The work of the State Department was quickly expanding from the efforts towards stronger cultural engagement (and counteracting any fascist thought that still persisted), becoming an existential threat. There were concerns that the shattered Germany might fall easily to communism: after all, Italy's second largest party after the

1948 elections was the Communist Party, and Eastern Europe had fallen entirely under Soviet domination. There was a marked shift in the tone of propaganda at the end of the American propaganda as the decade closed, while the American entertainment industry sought to reenter the markets of a recovering Germany. It is perhaps no accident that Disney began to carve out footholds in this moment.

The daily struggles of the Disney studio were at an end, and its characters were as popular as ever. Walt Disney turned his attentions towards new animated features, the possibility of a theme park (modeled in part on the 1893 World's Fair), and the emerging technology of television. The scaled down productions of the war years, the cheaply made

"package films" that wove together a few shorts, often with live-action elements, were cheaply produced and served to fund the large-scale animated features of the studio: , Alice in

Wonderland, Peter Pan, and were all released within the first half of the

1950s, and with the exception of Alice, were massive box office successes. Walt Disney parlayed the brand into The Disney brand was powerfully positioned at a moment when

157 Ibid., 87

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America too was reaching its zenith, and the idea that the two should be linked might have appeared almost obvious to some.

There are some direct calls for action written in the period. Many Hollywood luminaries served the war effort in various capacities, ranging from creating propaganda to war bond drives, and there was a strong contingent of Hollywood producers within the Office of War Information.

Disney's work for the federal government was well remembered, particularly within the entertainment industry. Walter Wanger, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

Sciences during the war years, argued that:

“The motion-picture industry has been the nearest thing to Senator Benton's conception of a Marshall Plan for ideas. 1. We have world-wide acceptance. People everywhere like our subjects; they admire our technique; and they certainly like our stars...2. No one has ever been able to say that Hollywood did not want talent because it was English, French, Italian, German or Russian...3. We have large groups of foreign experts who watch our productions in preparation and in production and then check them when completed to see that nothing in them will offend foreign nations...4. We maintain a huge distributing organization throughout the world, manned by experts who watch the reactions to our films daily, who see how the people respond to the features and to the newsreels. They know what the audiences applaud and what they boo...5. We have developed personalities who are received with enthusiasm nearly everywhere...6. We have done a great service in not only selling America but also American products.”158 Wanger’s lengthy call to action summarizes the prevailing view of the power of Hollywood at that moment in history. It was the preeminent source of film entertainment for much of the world, with American exports forming a bulk, or even a majority, of the films exhibited within a variety of countries, particularly countries that were seen as valuable in the context of the coming

Cold War.

158 Walter Wanger, "Donald Duck and Diplomacy," The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Autumn, 1950): 444-446.

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Wanger implies that American private industry can perform the same function it did during the war years, circumventing the need for government control by working in conjunction with the larger efforts of the government. He reckons that Hollywood’s marketing and distribution machine, already humming along in the blossoming post-war boom, could succeed where the State Department might fall short, and the effort would pay for itself handily. His argument is couched in the idea that Hollywood is best left to its own devices, that direct messages would be interpreted by the population as propaganda, and that a softer touch is needed. He concludes with a call to action: “Hollywood will be recognized as the logical capital of the Marshall Plan for ideas - Hollywood, with its array of statesmen and humanitarians like

Walt Disney, John Ford, Ethel Barrymore, Bob Hope, Darryl Zanuck, , Irving Berlin and

Milton Caniff - Donald Duck as World Diplomat!”159 It's unclear whether Wanger's article ever reached the upper echelons of power, either the Secretary of State or Walt Disney himself, though it relates to the larger post-war efforts towards the realignment of German culture.

Disney had additional aid in the personage of the State Department. The work the studio had done as part of the South American diplomatic campaign had saved the company from bankruptcy, while also opening other doors. Disney had played an important role during the war itself, and his company’s efforts (born out of equal parts patriotism and business acumen) could be easily adapted to the post-war period as propaganda tools. Disney’s avoidance of racist caricatures stands out in contrast to many of the other producers of cartoons in the period: with the exception of Commando Duck and incidental caricatures in a few cartoons, the studio had largely avoided the more egregious and offensive material put forth by their rivals. Thus, Disney

159Wanger, "Diplomacy," 452.

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possessed a surplus of material to be exported, despite their wartime production lagging behind other studios. The opening of many markets at once further resulted in Walt Disney's withdrawal from day-to-day concerns; there were no films produced on the scale of Saludos

Amigos or The Three Caballeros because there were too many countries now opening doors to

Disney's output; there was no need to tailor films specifically to German (or French, or Italian, or

Japanese) audiences, because there were receptive audiences just across the border. That did not mean that preexisting works could not be adapted to appeal to specific audiences, however.

The framework of Disney's distribution deals is key to the company's worldwide success. Disney typically works out licensing agreements with local publishers to distribute, translate, even produce original work, with limited corporate oversight.160 Individual publishers are better able to gauge demand, had access to infrastructure and local distribution networks, and had a better grasp on what would and would not sell in a given region. Even in America,

Disney's characters were licensed to third parties, with Dell Comics handling the characters during their mid-20th Century heyday. In Germany, the editor Erika Fuchs was single-handedly responsible for the written content of these comics for several decades, her readers consuming the comics not as exotic foreign media but as familiar storybooks. Her translations are especially notable for subtly shifting and changing the written words to suit the German audience, and this work provides a significant case for the consideration of translation studies.

Fuchs's translations placed the Disney comics in a similar cultural space to that of superhero

160 Barks explains that his comics were published "most always, exactly as I sent them...anything that gets published under the Disney name in a foreign country is accepted as part of the American foreign policy, I imagine, by people who read it..." Malcolm Willits, Don Thompson, and . "The Duck Man." The Duckburg Times, No. 10/11. 27 March 1981.

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comics in America, inspiring a continuous run of comic books, collected volumes, fan conventions, and even a traveling art exhibit. The reception of Donald Duck comics in Germany reflects the end result of a process of negotiation that reconsiders cultural imports within an existing cultural context.

The war years had seen Donald Duck emerge as the worldwide face of Disney. Donald’s characteristic anger and discomfort with the modern world had marked him as a sort of everyman for audiences, and though Mickey Mouse would remain the nominal figurehead of the

Disney enterprise, Donald made for a more relatable character.161 The Disney comic books, introduced to occupied populations by American G.I.s, were more significant than even the films: they were durable, re-readable, and could be traded with others in exchange for new stories. This was a moment ripe for something fresh: Konrad Kellen explains "the Germans seemed finished - materially, morally, philosophically and, shame upon shame, culturally.

Personal living conditions and standards during the immediate postwar years had defied belief: emaciated children stealing a piece of bread or a lump of coal; without food huddled together through long winters in icy rooms with broken windows."162 As cities slowly rebuilt infrastructure, comics were there. Easily shared, full of vibrant colors, easily to read, they offered momentary escape from the drudgery of bleak existence, a hopeful image that looked to future possibilities, and was as far away from the Nazi past as a young reader could get.

161 Neal Gabler argues that “Donald Duck seemed to offer audiences both a vicarious liberation from the conventional behavior and morality to which they had to subscribe to in their own lives and which the Duck clearly transgressed...at a time when the entire world seemed to be roiling in anger and violence." Neal Gabler, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination (New York: Knopf, 2006), 202. 162 Konrad Kellen, "Adenauer at 90" (Foreign Affairs, Vol. 44, No. 2), 275-276.

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Disney’s comics increased in popularity in America at the time, as comic book genres expanded out from the simple superheroes and funny animal stories into science fiction, westerns, horror, romance, and myriad other niche genres. Disney’s comics could be considered in line with the “funny animal” stories of the 1930s: short gag strips that might run for a single page (an outgrowth of newspaper comics), typically bundled together, with multiple characters and jokes, so named for their reliance on animal characters.163 They were advanced, focusing on longer narratives of adventure and fantasy, with occasionally elements of continuity. These comics were written by Americans, and intended to appeal to American audiences, but the elements of adventure meant they would appeal to audiences outside of the United States in a way that Superman or (with all of their patriotic/nationalistic imagery) could not. These comics contained considerably less violent themes than the comic book genre at large, marking them as less objectionable by comparison; even the mildest superhero stories still entailed some element of violence, something that became more pronounced as Marvel came to dominate the marketplace during the 1960s.164 What violence occurred in Disney's comics held little weight: it was slapstick at best, not rough-and-tumble, and thus less likely to run afoul of censorship efforts. Dell had targeted younger audiences with its comics, and this lack of objectionable material made them readily adaptable into a variety of markets regardless of local

163 Michael Barrier's Funnybooks offers an in-depth history of how these comics evolved, from the earliest collected strips, through the rise of licensed characters like Popeye and the Loony Toons, and the heights of 's and Carl Barks's Donald Duck. 164 A moral over the violent and gory images in comic books, culminating a Senate investigation, resulted in an effort to restrict the content of comics under the publisher-supported in 1954. Dell, which produced much of the Disney comics in America, ignored the Comics Code Authority, and did not suffer any consequences, though they were eventually undone by the resurgent superhero comics of the 1960s and 70s. Bradford Wright, Comic Book Nation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

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censorship efforts. Disney’s benign reputation allowed them easy entry into a German publishing industry gutted by the ravages of war.

Disney’s cartoons avoided the ardent patriotism that they had featured in the war years, as well as the use of offensive racial stereotypes that appeared in rival studios cartoons.165

Disney's inoffensiveness was useful to the American occupational policy, providing a useful tool of cultural exchange, even if the man himself was uninvolved with policy and decision-making.

Jennifer Fay explains as “in the first years, its directives were to strip Germans of their war- making capacity by demilitarizing the culture, deindustrializing the economy, and de-Nazifying the population.”166 The military aim of these efforts was soon outstripped by State Department efforts, as they began to emphasize a program of cultural diplomacy that pushed back against the most punitive measures. There was an effort to help the German population come to terms with what had happened, to erase the noxious cultural aspects of . While Disney himself was quiet on the subject, Hollywood producer and wartime diplomat Walter Wanger argues vociferously for American culture to be exported as a bulwark against Soviet propaganda. He cautions against direct government control, pointing out that “the public...is not interested in the messages per se; and if we are to send messages - whose message are we to send? If there is sufficient interest in a controversial subject, or if a book, play, or original story is dramatically presented and appeals to the public, it becomes entertainment; the unsuccessful ones are propaganda.”167 Wanger recognized there was space for American media, especially texts

165 Most of Disney's war-centric work disappeared into the vault, out of public view; even the Oscar-winning "Der Furher's Face" quietly disappeared from the public eye for nearly fifty years. 166 Jennifer Fay, Theaters of Occupation (: University of Press, 2008), 83. 167 Wanger, "Donald Duck and Diplomacy," 448.

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unadulterated by government interference. He concludes with a call to action: “Hollywood will be recognized as the logical capital of the Marshall Plan for ideas - Hollywood, with its array of statesmen and humanitarians like Walt Disney...Donald Duck as World Diplomat!”168 Whether

Disney or the State Department read the article is unclear, though it spoke to the situation in

Germany nevertheless.

The Disney name held a certain cachet of nostalgia for post-war audiences (Snow White was among the last non-German films exhibited there, with famously praising the film lavishly), and putting his name on the comics helped secure a position in the culture.

The Disney name on the comics ensured a degree of continuity: the authorship, a joint effort between Fuchs and Barks by the time it reached German newsstands, was cleanly credited to the man responsible for many beloved cartoons. The publication of the comics coincided with the ascendency of Konrad Adenauer to the Chancellorship of Germany, and a change in policies.

Fay explains the crucial shift: "the initial effort was simply to ensure that Nazism, and its attendant militarization and nationalism, would not return to the country...the German population seemed eager to follow along with the program, where the first years reeducation emphasized

America’s melting pot democracy as the ethical contrast to Nazism, beginning in 1947 the contest was now between American democratic capitalism and Soviet communism.”169 The shift, from broad-based anti-racism and de-Nazification to a more stridently anti-Communist focus, fit nicely into Carl Barks's worldview, reflecting his personal leanings, though he had no knowledge that his work was being reproduced outside of America. Furthermore, Crucially, this

168 Ibid., 452. 169 Fay, Theaters, 83.

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shift in propaganda coincided with the creation of Barks's (and thus Disney's) most potent symbol of American capitalism: Uncle Scrooge McDuck.

Scrooge was created in 1947 by Carl Barks, to fill a role in a story, as a rich uncle for

Donald Duck, a plot device. While it was intended to be a one-off character, Barks further refined the character beyond just a means to an end.170 He continued to be a guest star in

Donald's comics, developing his personality, before finally meriting his own title, starting with

1952's "." Scrooge is certainly greedy and money-hungry, but is a figure out of time, with little interest in the modern business world. He grows his fortune through lost artifacts and mine investments (thus avoiding any difficult questions of worker exploitation). He possesses the same anger issues that popularized his nephew Donald, just grouchier and more tired. Scrooge is an old man, his prime long since passed, but one who never gives up his spirit of adventure, who is eternally optimistic as to the power of hard work and determination.171

Barks's Scrooge speaks to a certain myth of America, an immigrant who made a fortune through grit and hard work, an exemplar of American exceptionalism that possesses a few imperfections

(particularly his blinding greed) that render him just problematic enough to be an interesting character.

170 Barks explained Scrooge's evolution: "I began to think of the great Dickens Christmas story about Scrooge...I was just thief enough to steal some of the idea and have a rich uncle for Donald. I guess the fact that he was rich was the thing that triggered all further developments - as to just how rich and the showing of his wealth. I found that that was quite a fascinating subject - just piles of money would appeal to a lot of people. And I just gradually made him richer and richer, and then I had to develop a place where he could store the money, and all the time there was the Beagle Boys trying to steal it from him. Those things just grew like building brick walls: you just lay one brick on top of another, and finally you've got the whole thing built." Ault, Conversations, 94-95. 171 Thomas Andrae concludes that "Scrooge...negotiated tensions within the American dream in the postwar era. Americans have had a basic, almost spiritual, commitment to the principles of free enterprise, self-reliance, and individualism of the Protestant ethic.” Thomas Andrae, Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 188.

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Uncle Scrooge quickly eclipsed Donald in popularity, both in America and abroad.

There was a sense of wish fulfillment, but Scrooge was different from a figure like Richie Rich: his wealth was a symbol more than an object. Scrooge's wealth served several purposes: a fondness of swimming in his coinage (against all laws of physics), a belief in earning a fortune one piece at a time (he seeks to impart his work ethic on to others, particularly heir apparent

Donald), and perhaps most importantly that each coin tells a story of some adventure he once had (allowing for further globe-trotting adventures, as covered in the pages of his comic book).

Within this, Barks had a simple philosophy: "the thing that is most important about my comics is this: I told it like it is. I told the kids that the bad guys have a little bit of good in them, and the good guys have a lot of bad in them, and that you just couldn't depend on anything much, that nothing was going to always turn out roses...it was the way life goes. I didn't disguise anything or make things look rosy." 172 Barks painted a world in shades of gray, with Scrooge just the right side of good (at times, his tough love of family the only thing that set him apart from his antagonists), but never spoke down to his readers. These comics were being published concurrently with Adenauer's efforts to further Westernize and modernize Germany, entrenching free market capitalism and cooperation as a bulwark against Communism.173 Konrad Kellen goes so far as to explain "[Adenauer] was devoted to free enterprise without being an imperialist. He was an autocrat, yet willing to establish and submit to some controls over the executive branch of the government. He was a believer in European unity without believing in German hegemony, or a socialized Europe."174 In this setting, Scrooge’s positive portrayal as a capitalist figure who

172 Donald Ault, "Carl Barks Telling It Like It Is" (In Carl Barks: Conversations. Ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 44. 173 Jeffery Herf. Divided Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 268-271. 174 Kellen, "Adenauer," 278.

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succeeded through hard work and his own labor would have made potent symbol within the resurgent German Republic. Furthermore, Barks's depictions of the adventures of Scrooge were exciting if generally episodic: expeditions to recover lost treasure (""), wilderness adventures couched in history ("Seven Cities of Cibola"), complicated defenses of

Scrooge's vault ("Only A Poor Old Man").175 A key aspect of the appeal seems to be Barks's couching the exotic locales within reality, drawn from the pages of National Geographic, offering a window to the wider world (in particular, his South America-set stories are well- regarded for their sweeping vistas) An unlikely popular figure, Scrooge McDuck nevertheless proved incredibly popular despite being an irascible old man.

Barks's stories formed the raw materials, but regional variations and editorial decisions influenced the translations of Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. Local editors decided on which stories to translate and how to translate the text, often reaching different end points. Italy, for instance, developed its own voice very early: the popularity of Donald Duck comics outstripped the existing American material, forcing publishers to bring in local talent to satiate demand, including and Romano Scarpa. From there, the Italian artists began to change the characters in small ways, particularly in terms of more overt violence.176 Germany more resistant to the import of American comics; linguist Susan Bernofsky writes that "in the years following World War II, American influence in the newly formed Federal Republic was strong, but German cultural institutions were hesitant to sanction one U.S. import: the comic book. A

175 While the status quo of Scrooge's wealth was maintained with each story, there were hints of history and character, typically short flashbacks and references to prior adventures. These were eventually crafted into Don Rosa's extensive and meticulously researched The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. 176 The were more violent than the American originals, more on the level of American superhero comics of the 1960s than Dell's originals, culminating with Donald Duck becoming the Batman-esque superhero Paperinik.

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law banning comics was proposed, and some American comics were eventually burned by school officials."177 German comics faced a similar moral crisis as American comics did, though it was one more concerned with culture than violence.178 Despite this, the German audiences continued to read comics imported from aboard, and there were few efforts to develop local talent and styles to fill demand.179 Germany did not produce any prodigious creators on the level of Carl Barks or Guido Martina (or Belgium's Hergé and Peyo or France's ) within the German comics industry. German readers seemed quite content with the imported comics, owing to one person: the “rock star” translator of German comics, Dr. Erika Fuchs.

Erika Fuchs was born 7 December 1906 in , Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, though would spend much of her youth in Belgard, Pomerania. She was the first girl admitted to the boy’s Gymnasium (a grammar school) at fourteen, completing her studies five years later. From there, she studied art history at several institutions across Europe, taking her degree in 1932, and completing her dissertation and graduating summa cum laude. She became a translator, owing to her studies in London, and would initially find work translating American magazines like

Reader’s Digest.180 In 1951, she would be hired as the chief editor for the newly created Micky

Maus, and would begin to make her mark on German culture. Her translation work was more significant than a simple English to German effort. Just as Carl Barks put a great deal of artistic effort into his own art and writing, so too did Fuchs produce work that was beyond what was

177 Bernofsky, "Why Donald Duck Is the Jerry Lewis of Germany" (The Wall Street Journal, 23 May 2009). 178 There may also have been elements of opposition to Disney itself. Europeans in general have had occasional issues with Disney, most visible during the opening of Disneyland . John Wills traces this to the idea that “Europeans gradually came to fear the of home and the rewriting of folk stories…Disneyfication seemed much the same as Cocacolanization or McDonaldization: the selling of the American Dream in a can, burger box, or caricature made little practical difference to European consumers.” Wills, Disney Culture, 59. 179 Horst, Sentimentalitäten, 60. 180 Horst, Sentimentalitäten, 29-32.

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strictly necessary. Just as Barks took the simple character of Donald Duck and created a family, adventures, and a whole world around him, Fuchs deepened the characters through her writing, refining the work that Carl Barks had done. She even went so far as to rename characters: Uncle

Scrooge became Onkel Dagobert, while Huey, Dewey, and Louie became Tick, Trick, and

Track. Bernofsky notes that "her interpretations of the comic books often quote (and misquote) from the great classics of German literature, sometimes even inserting political subtexts into the duck tales. Dr. Fuchs both thickens and deepens Mr. Barks’s often sparse dialogues, and the hilariousness of the result may explain why Donald Duck remains the most popular children’s comic in Germany to this day."181 If Bark's great work was making Donald Duck relatable and human (at least as much as a duck can be), Fuchs's great work was making Donald Duck

German.

The linguistic influence of Erika Fuchs went beyond character names and into the very language of sound itself. Onomatopoeia is a crucial element of style in American comics: the

"biffs" and "pows" lend weight and movement to the action and underline the slapstick comedy.

Fuchs developed the use of onomatopoeia further in her translations; her sounds effects were more than just straightforward translations (something like "buzz buzz" in English might become

"summ summ" in German), going so far as to create new terms. This is of significant import: poetry read in a typical English pattern might not translate to the ear of a non-English speaker, even if the words themselves were carefully translated. Even something as minor as rendering the sound effects into aural German allowed the Ducks to more easily penetrate the subconscious minds of their readers. Platthaus elaborates that "Fuchs developed the idea of supplementing the

181 Bernofsky, "Jerry Lewis."

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onomatopoeia typical of comics by giving thought processes legible form with 'think, think,' or a glance of the eye with ', blink.' These examples set precedents...Erika Fuchs’ admirers introduced the term 'Erikativ' to denote this new grammatical form (punning on 'genitive,'

'dative,' etc.)."182 This is one of Fuchs's most significant contributions, influencing language in direct fashion that few others (let alone comic book writers) can claim. Her contribution went beyond inventing sound effects; she worked to include references to German writers and literature, owing perhaps to her advanced education. Eckhard Kuhn-Osius notes in one story that, after a shower, "[Donald Duck] exults, 'How glorious nature shines for me! How cleanly all creatures radiate! Oh, it is a pleasure to be alive!' Donald begins with Johan Wolfgang von

Goethe's poem 'Manifest', continues with an original statement, and ends with a quotation from the aristocratic humanist Ulrich von Hutten."183 Fuchs created humor in the dichotomy between high and low culture, while legitimizing the comics in the eyes of the German public. An offhand reference to German poetry might read as an in-joke by a bored and overqualified translator, but it legitimized the comics in the minds of the adult public. Moreover, these changes meant that the comics more readily appealed to the adult population, and it is no coincidence that Germany became the center of the nascent Donald Duck fandom.

Erika Fuchs recodes the texts to suit a German audience in ways that function both consciously and unconsciously upon readers. Carl Barks provides the art and story, but Fuchs gives everything power and context, translating not simply the original script wholesale, but changing them meaning and placing them within a cultural context that was otherwise missing in

182 183 Kuhn-Ossius, “Before They Were Art,”

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the writing. Ernst Horst finds that "Erika Fuchs is not about translation, but re-creation. This was something different."184 She did not recast characters, but made minor changes to their personalities and tone of the comics, making the events and dialogue more relatable to Germans.

She was working in a time when German culture was viewed warily within the country: anything that echoed nationalism was verboten, a dark reminder of the dangers of pride lurking in the nation’s recent history. Fuchs’s work, then, was subversive in its way, recoding American media to contain references to German culture, celebrating a cultural history in danger of being lost by utilizing the very forces that seemingly threatened to erase it. The Donald Duck comics were introducing a history of art and culture to young audiences who might have otherwise had no inkling of Germany’s rich cultural history.185 These changes served a crucial role in the reception of the comics helping the characters seem more familiar, more German, while keeping the basic language of the original. Young readers would be better able to see themselves in the characters, while adults might be a little more accepting of foreign comics populating their newsstands.

Ilaria Meloni offers an in-depth examination of the comics, echoing functionalist theory in her examination of Fuchs's translations. She contends "Erika Fuchs's concept of translation can be understood from her job as a German translator of the magazine. She draws on a long tradition of translation from Cicero to Umberto Eco...Fuchs considers the translation as an

184 Horst specifically uses the term "Neuschöpfung," which roughly translates to "new creation." In Horst's estimation, these translations build entirely new meanings out of the text. Horst, Sentimentalitäten, 61. 185 Andreas Platthaus explains that "she invented her own German names for many figures, (Dagobert Duck for Scrooge McDuck, Panzerknacker – i.e. safecracker - for Beagle Boys, Daniel Düsentrieb – i.e. jet engine - for , frequently departed entirely from the originals, and included associations and puns that were not to be found in the American texts." Andreas Platthaus, "Comic Translators and Translations" (Deutschesprachige Comics, 2011).

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evolving communication and exchange process and the translated work as an original product of the target culture."186 In Meloni's examination, Fuchs clearly comprehends how the translation is proceeding; there is no accident in how the words are transcribed, but rather a degree of intent and a philosophy aimed towards appealing to her German readers rather than endeavoring for literary fidelity. Meloni divides Fuchs's translations into several different categories: word-for- word translation ("Wort-für-Wort-Übersetzung"), faithful translation ("Treue Übersetzung"), creative translation ("Kreative Übersetzung), partly-creative translation ("Teilkreative

Übersetzung), almost-free translation ("Fast freie Übersetzung"), and free translation ("Freie

Übersetzung").187 Laying it out this way, the translation work is understood on a spectrum, with

Fuchs in ultimate control of the text. The translations tend towards the middle of the spectrum, as would be expected, and it reflects that the comic was put forth not as an American production, but as a German work. Meloni observes that "the relationships of meaning and the pragmatic function of the dialogue could be quite different in the stories. Some of the stories could be not translated literally, thanks to the illustrations, while others had to be rewritten."188 Fuchs's translations had to suit the art more than Barks's text itself, but still needed to maintain a degree of continuity. Meloni continues: "the pictures, which are part of the overall meaning of this text, represent the communication situation (design, gesture, , and physical movement) and allow Erika Fuchs a certain degree of agency with translation."189 There are more than just the spoken words to be considered within translation, with the overarching circumstances of a story

186 Ilaria Meloni, Erika Fuchs´ Übertragung der Comicserie Micky Maus (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2013), 40. 187 Meloni, Übertragung, 44-45. 188 Ibid., 47 189 Ibid., 47

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playing into the effort (Meloni uses the term "Kommunikationssituation").190 The visual nature of the comics necessarily complicates the translation work, adding additional layers that a translator must remain cognizant of.191 Bark's art in particular is richer and deeper than many of his contemporaries (hence his status as "The Good Duck Artist"), and Fuchs worked to pair her words to his fine art.

These translations could change relationships and characters in subtle ways. Barks's

Donald Duck is happy-go-lucky, always happy to help, despite suffering various indignities and

(minor) injury. His Uncle Scrooge takes advantage of him, but he is always willing to help the old man, out of familial loyalty and old-fashioned capitalism (he's usually offered some modest sum for his assistance). Fuchs's follows the same basic characterization, but has at times a harder edge; her Donald is more disillusioned and more direct in his complaints. To American audiences, this might have appeared as a minor editorial choice of little consequence, but it is important to understand what Fuchs was undertaking: the transformation of Donald's "national character" into terms that render him a "non-foreign" figure for German audiences. He ceases to be an American duck, and becomes a German duck, even as his world contains American elements (this is of course the same reason behind translating "Duckburg" to "Entenhausen," or

"The Duck House"). This process, the German adaptation of non-German popular culture, could be referred to as "The Fuchs Effect," though it certainly has significance beyond the comics themselves.

190 Ibid., 51 191 Meloni finds that "some phrases, which are very frequent in the German books, belong to a group of translations in which the meaning of the original dialogues is partially changed. They are not strongly idiomatic terms, with a low visual impact, or terms that occur in a speech bubble as part of a larger sentence. In this case, they replace a fixed sentence of the original." Meloni, Übertragung, 51.

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The Fuchs Effect can be witnessed in nearly every story to one degree or another, although it is not always entirely obvious. The story "Only A Poor Old Man" was the first proper Scrooge McDuck story, published in America as Uncle $crooge #1 (Four Color #386) in

1952. The story was the first of many to feature Scrooge's attempts to protect his fortune from the nefarious Beagle Boys, culminating in a his fortune being temporarily buried under a lake, causing him and his nephews no end of stress. The story concludes with Donald exclaiming

"you may not know it, Uncle Scrooge, but your billions are a pain in the neck! You're only a poor old man!"192 This outburst lends itself to the story's title, a key moment in Scrooge's characterization, and a play on words (that the richest duck in the world is poor if he must spend his free time worrying about his fortune). Fuchs follows the same script (though renamed the

Beagle Boys "die Panzerknacker" or "the Safe-Breakers"), the same events leading to the same moment, with Donald storming off all the same. What differs is his dialogue: "Du kapierst es vielleicht nie, Onkel Dagobert, aber dein vieles Geld ist ein Alptraum fur andere Menshcen. Ich bedaure dich. Du bist ein armer reicher Mann."193 Donald explains that Scrooge will "never get it" ("Du kapierst es vielleicht nie, Onkel Dagobert"), and that his money is a "problem for other men" ("dein vieles Geld ist ein Alptraum fur andere Menshcen"). Fuchs's Donald is more combative and direct, taking issue at having to rescue his uncle's fortune. He concludes explaining "I am sorry for you" ("Ich bedaure dich.") and calls him "a poor rich man" ("Du bist ein armer reicher Mann"), notably different from Barks's original text. The changes were generally subtle like this; a worldlier Donald, a more selfish Scrooge, seemingly minor changes that nevertheless better appealed to the sensibilities of the German audience. Adenauer's

192 Carl Barks, Carl Barks Library Vol. 12 (Seattle: Books, 2012), 31. 193 Erika Fuchs, "Dagobert Duck - Der 'arme alte Mann'" (Micky Maus Sonderheft 10, 1954), 34.

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Germany saw the economy shifting to the free market, and greater alignment with the West

(particularly America), and these comics helped bridge the gap.194

Erika Fuchs's translations held deeper significance still. Fuchs was an adult during

World War II; moreover, she was an intellectual, well-acquainted with the cosmopolitan capitals of Europe. Her comics became a space at times to contextualize the history, for an audience who had not lived through the darkest years of Germany in history. "The Golden Helmet" was a

Barks story that first appeared in Walt Disney Four Color #408, in 1952, an adventure that found

Donald and his nephews pursuing a lost artifact (the titular helmet), that seemed to possess anyone that lays hands on it, though it may simply be the efforts of a shady lawyer.195 Barks treats it as a fairly straightforward Duck adventure, couched in a certain degree of history and geography, the helmet more of a MacGuffin for the characters to fight over. Fuchs frames it differently; Bernofsky explains that in the translation, “each person who comes into contact with the helmet gets a 'cold glitter' in his eyes, infected by the 'bacteria of power,' and soon declares his intention to 'seize power' and exert his 'claim to rule.' Dr. Fuchs uses language that in

German ('die Macht ergreifen'; 'Herrscheranspruch') strongly recalls standard phrases used to describe Hitler’s ascent to power."196 She invests these stories with a punch that the Barks original lacks, echoing Germany's own recent history, speaking truth to power. This was hardly incidental; Bernofsky mentions in the same story that "the helmet itself, which in German

Donald describes as a masterpiece of 'Teutonic goldsmithery,' is anything but nationalistic in

194 Kellen, "Adenauer," 277. 195 Carl Barks, Carl Barks Library Vol. 11 (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2012), 117. 196 Bernofsky, "Jerry Lewis."

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English: 'Boys, isn’t this helmet a beauty?' is all he says."197 Fuchs finds a root of evil lurking at the base of this story, an opportunity to reminder her young readers how easy it is to give into power. Significantly, while it is the adults that fall most easily under the spell of the helmet, even young Dewey feels wistful as the helmet sinks beneath the waves. Barks plotted and drew the story, but Fuchs finds a moral at the heart of the story, one that holds a lot more weight for a

German audience than an American one.

In summer 1994, a long-retired Carl Barks was invited by his fans to take a grand tour of

Europe. Barks was 93 years old, nearly three decades retired from his duties as writer and artist of various Donald Duck comics for Disney, but accepted an offer to fly him to Europe to meet the fans who had made his works into an international phenomenon. By most accounts, he was unprepared for the massive outpouring of affection from his fans as he made his way from country to country, visiting conventions, art exhibits, and cultural sites. Within this tour, he visited Munich, where he met his counterpart, the 87-year-old Erika Fuchs. It was a pleasant visit, coffee followed by dinner, but for German fans it was an incredible moment, the coming together of the two great forces of Disney comics, marking a pivotal meeting of the minds. It has become a mythic moment: Barks would not return to Germany before his death in 2000, and

Fuchs herself died in 2005, lending the meeting a greater significance within the minds of the fans. For many, it was an echo of the work that brought Donald Duck to Germany, combining art and language to create a perfect version of the character able to cross transnational boundaries.

197 Ibid.

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There are no monuments (yet) to Carl Barks in America, but there is small memorial plate that identifies Fuchs's home in Schwarzenbach, commissioned by fans of her work upon her death in 2005. These fans, referring to themselves as The Donaldists, understood that her work has significance effects upon modern Germany during its formative, post-war years. Erika

Fuchs was instrumental in the success of Donald Duck in Germany, shepherding the character through the language barrier into the fertile open fields of postwar German society. Fuchs's work raises a further question: at what point does Donald cease to be a purely American figure and become the hybrid? To his young readers, Donald would have seemed as German as they were, his character and stories echoing their own experiences. Even adults might be hard- pressed to read the comics as American propaganda, considering the pains that Fuchs took to reference German cultural history. The work that she undertook had an impact as deep and wide-ranging as the various directives of the military and the State Department. Within this space, the comics ceased to be productions of Walt Disney, becoming something more German, and it speaks to why Disney has staying power: not because it is a marching force of homogeneity, but because it is adaptable, and allows for meaning to be bent and shifted in order to better reflect the needs of its audience. Carl Barks was a niche figure in America: there were certainly fans of his comics, and the readership handily outdid superhero comics during the

1950s, but he was not a recognizable figure in the way someone like was. The

American fan communities that existed were limited at best, subcultures within a larger comics readership. Erika Fuchs built something with her translations: she made Donald Duck German in the minds of the readers, and created a community that places her as highly (if not higher) than

Carl Barks. In her hands, the comics became something more than their originals, gaining new meaning for a new audience. Fuchs's work speaks to the potential of translations.

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The consumption of American culture with regard to Disney comics differs from the manner they are consumed domestically: Disney comics remain among the best-selling worldwide, while they are niche products in the American market, where present day Uncle

$crooge releases average 300th place in the sales rankings. The success of Disney is not built on homogeneity; rather, the creative properties are adapted by translators, writers, artists, and consumers to take on new meanings, and the properties have grown beyond their American origins. The Donald Duck of that exists in American comics is not quite the same as the one in foreign translations. Carl Barks provides the original content: the pictures and story, based on character designs from Walt Disney Studios. Erika Fuchs, with her translations, popularized in

Germany as much as Barks's original work, reoriented the character for an entirely unintended

(at least by Barks) audience. Postwar Germany was a unique space in history, where a decade of nationalistic culture was carefully overwritten by occupying forces, and Disney's entry into the market offers a sense of the power of adaptability and translation. Fuchs's translations capture the impact of this cultural transformation, while playing a role within the process itself.

The efforts of Erika Fuchs could be approached within the functionalist theory of translation. Susan Bassnett explains that: "a translator is free to reconfigure a text in accordance with the norms of that text type in the target language...translators may make any adjustments to the text that they deem inappropriate, even if this involves deleting or adding information to ensure that the message is clear."198 Fuchs had limited oversight on her work; the Walt Disney

Company was across the Atlantic, and generally had little interest in how their characters were being used by licensees. Her concerns were not in fidelity to Barks words, but in appealing to

198 Susan Bassnett, Translation Studies (London: Routledge, 2014), 84.

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her German audience. Bassnett continues: "highlighting the purpose of a text means that the emphasis is on what that text does in the target culture, so attention is shifted away from the source...a functionalist approach is firmly inclined towards domestication. What counts is how successfully a text can function in the target culture."199 Fuchs succeeds in making the Ducks

German, not only in language, but in naming and in culture itself. She shifts the text in a number of ways, often small (the stories themselves retain the basic framework, but there are shifts in details and interactions). Bassnett concludes: "what happens in translation is that a text is reconfigured in accordance with the demands of the target culture, and there are occasions when that reconfiguration conceals or distorts the source text or culture so as to meet the expectations of the target culture."200 By the time the process is complete, Donald Duck and his relations have become Germanized; the young readers of these comics would accept them as they would any other children's book, with little awareness that it was the product of a different country.

This process of translation and reinterpretation occurred across Europe, with the Ducks taking on different cultural roles in different countries, though the focus here will be on Germany.

An alternate consideration could be to treat the work as adaptation; Linda Hutcheon and

Siobahn 'Flynn offer a path to do so.201 While the comics are adapted within the same medium, with Fuchs utilizing Barks's original, the translation creates something that was not there before.

Hutcheon and O'Flynn posit that "adapting can be a process of appropriation, of taking possession of another's story, and filtering it, in a sense, through one's own sensibility, interests,

199 Bassnett, Translation Studies, 84-85. 200 Ibid., 86. 201 Linda Hutcheon and Siobahn O'Flynn, A Theory of Adaptation (London: Routledge, 2013), 16.

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and talents. Therefore, adapters are first interpreters and then creators."202 Fuchs certainly filters the original stories through her interests, inflecting the stories with cultural and literary references inspired by her own background. Her education and personal background created awareness of a wider world, meaning that her work was intentional. It speaks to Hutcheon and

O'Flynn's argument that "we engage in time and space, within a particular society and a general culture. The contexts of creation and reception are material, public, and economic as much as they are cultural, personal, and aesthetic. This explains why, even in today's globalized world, major shifts in the story's context can change radically how the transposed story is interpreted, ideologically and literally."203 Fuchs's work foresees the modern transnational media environment. Just as Barks's work spoke to the spaces and spirit of America, Fuchs's engaged with the history and culture of Germany. Vandal-Sirois and Bastin offer further argument toward a theory of adaptation: "most professional translators face both cultural and linguistic obstacles in their work, and it would be erroneous to state that those who oppose the domesticating approach stick to word-for-word translations: an adaptation might well be an intrinsic part of a successful translation."204 Fuchs was certainly keenly aware of how the stories would be read, and made decisions to shift the language toward a more German audience. The core meaning is maintained: she was well aware of the original text (though might have overlooked some of Barks's frontier themes), and "improved" upon it, insofar as she appealed to a wider audience than a "straight" translation might have. Sanders defines adaptation as an

"attempt to make text 'relevant' or easily comprehensible to new audiences and readerships via

202 Hutcheon and O'Flynn, A Theory, 18. 203 Ibid., 28. 204 Hugo Vandal-Sirois and Georges L. Bastin, "Adaptation and Appropriation: Is There A Limit?," in Translation, Adaptation and Transformation, ed. Lawrence Raw (London: Continuum, 2012), 23.

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the processes of proximation and updating. This might, for example, be aimed at engaging with youth audiences or, through translation in the broadest sense, linguistic and interpretative, in global intercultural contexts."205 Fuchs's work certainly fits the definition of adaptation in this regard. The narratives are changed in subtle, if crucial, ways, aimed at appealing to the German reader specifically.206

The translations of Erika Fuchs function on a level deeper than text alone. Vandal-Sirois and Bastin note "successful adaptations allow (or even force) the target readers to discover the text in a way that suits its aim, ensures an optimal reception experience, or simply promotes the understanding of a specific message. Adaptations take place on the cultural or pragmatic levels at least as much as on the linguistic or textual level."207 Earlier, I made the point that sound effects translated into German would reach the reader at a subconscious level. This same process is occurring on a larger scale within the adaptation itself, to the same end result: the

Germanization of the Ducks, characterizing them not as foreign others, but as figures whom

German readers can reflexively identify with. The American sounds and characteristics are subtly shifted to appeal to a German audience, a further result of the Fuchs Effect. The messages being relayed are dependent on the adapter, suiting their choices regardless of the original text.

Fuchs's Ducks become emblematic of her German culture, and served as a space to maintain elements of German culture that certainly did not exists in the Barks versions. Moreover, she possessed a unique degree of agency, since the Disney lacked any corporate offices in Europe at

205 Julie Sanders, Appropriation and Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2016), 23. 206 Azenha and Moreira outline the translation process for children's literature specifically, which often tends more toward adaptation than functional translation. Azenha, João and Marcelo Moreira. "Translation and Rewriting: Don't Translators 'Adapt' When They 'Translate'?" In Translation, Adaptation and Transformation, ed. Lawrence Raw (London: Continuum, 2012). 67. 207 Vandal-Sirois and Bastin, "Adaptation and Appropriation," 26.

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the time, leaving the editorial decisions purely in the hands of Egmont Publishing. Azenha and

Moreira explain that "the translator is now one of the links in the extensive chain of agents and acquires the role of an administrator, a manager of variables; moreover, the notion of authorship is diluted as there will be various agents taking part in the process...the agenda of the subject- translator shifts away from the source text (retrospective view), to the conditions of reception

(prospective view)."208 The work is inexorably changed as it passes through many pairs of hands: the same process that created Donald Duck, that had adapted him to the pages of comics, occurred in the translation process. In the case of Fuchs (as well as Barks and Rosa), she was the last stop in the creative process, beholden to the original text, to editorial objectives, to economic necessity.

There is a deeper question in adaptation and translation: that of faithfulness. Azenha and

Moreira locate the answer between two concepts: "content and ideas, but also to the textual surface."209 Translation prompts a loyalty to both, that every attempt must be made to reflect both the underlying concepts of the text as well as the written text itself. If we read Fuchs's translations within a formal framework, her work is a failure. While it captures the general thrust of the adventures, it includes elements and references that not only were not in the source text, but also serve to change its meaning. If we approach the work as adaptation, Azenha and

Moreira offer that "adapting, on the other hand, is to distance oneself from one of these dimensions or both: the semantics of content and ideas (for instance, when the story is transferred to another setting, when names or other topical elements are modified), and the

208 Azenha and Moreira, "Translation and Rewriting," 62. 209 Ibid., 62.

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textual surface (as when additions, suppressions, and reformulations are made)."210 This process will occur more obviously with Don Rosa's work, but approaching the translations as adaptations better suits Fuchs's motivations. Azenha and Moreira continue: "each of these moves is subsequently given a direction: toward a source text, in the case of translation, or, in the case of adaptation, away from the source text so as to intuit other purposes to serve the target text, the conditions of its reception, the projected audience, or the medium into which the story will be transferred."211 Fuchs can be understood to tilt the emphasis away from Barks's original text

(itself tilted away from the construction of the animated Donald Duck in small but crucial ways, to suit the requirements of the printed medium), and towards an audience that might be unfamiliar with the references and in-jokes. The text is adjusted to appeal to the needs of

German readers, to be rendered more familiar to the ones who will actually purchase the comics.

Azenha and Moreira conclude that "translating and adapting are not such mutually exclusive categories, but complementary moments, inherent to the rewriting process, the process of producing sense in language through translation."212 Fuchs's translations are carefully considered and written: her efforts are on par with the work that Don Rosa did with his adaptations of the old Barks stories, and it is best to understand what she attempting through the lens of adaptation as well as translation.

The stories read by German youths as translated by Erika Fuchs in the mid-century were not quite the same as those of their American peers. The stories written by Carl Barks were not the same as those that came out of the Disney animation department. The stories written by Don

210 Ibid., 62. 211 Ibid., 62. 212 Ibid., 77.

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Rosa were not the same as those written by Barks. Each of the creator owed a debt to the work that came before, each built on something that had been done, and each contributed an interpretation of the source material that differed from others. Sanders states that "appropriation frequently affects a more decisive journey away from the informing source into a wholly new cultural product and domain."213 The basic design of the characters remains the same, and the stories follow basic frameworks across translations, but the deeper work changes, both in the act of adaptation itself, and in the readership. The context in which stories are read determines their meaning: Fuchs found a path between high and low culture, created comics that attained incredible success in the midst of the Adenauer Era.

213 Sanders, Adaptation and Appropriation, 26

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Chapter 6: The Buckaroo of the Badlands: Carl Barks Remembering the Frontier

After contributing to numerous shorts, Barks helped to write and draw a Disney comic entitled "Donald Duck Finds Pirate " (1942). Soon thereafter, he left his job at Disney owing to health issues, and planned to take up chicken farming. When financial difficulty loomed, he contacted Western Publishing (who at the time handled the comics publishing for

Disney) looking for additional work he could do from home. He was hired and began to craft a series of comics featuring Donald Duck, slowly creating an expansive world around the character. His individualistic conservatism, a sort of American exceptionalism formed by the frontier that had closed a few short years before Barks’s birth, would inform his comics work considerably, cementing his version of Donald Duck within the popular imagination of the readers of Disney comics. For the next 24 years, Barks continued to work almost exclusively on

Donald Duck comics, usually for low pay and scant recognition. He retired in 1966, at the age of

65. Only later would he finally achieve some financial reward and prestige for his earlier work, once his identity was uncovered by a few enterprising fans. His artistic output during the period, particularly his famed oil portraits of the famous Ducks, ensured financial stability in his twilight years. His glory came during his retirement, but he had ample opportunity to enjoy it, since he lived to 99 years old.

Barks's versions of characters, while drawn from the Disney originals, were rewritten to better suit his needs. Collectively, these characters became more well-rounded and developed individuals in his stories. For Donald, Barks explains that he "broadened his character out very much. Instead of just making him a quarrelsome little guy out of him, I made a sympathetic character. He was sometimes a , and he was often a real good guy and at all times he was

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just a blundering person like the average human being."214 Donald was already eclipsing Mickey as Disney's most popular character, and the comics served to solidify that, making his comical bouts of rage (much rarer in the comics than the cartoons) into a spectrum of human emotion. While they were not purely Barks creations, he expanded Donald's nephews, Huey,

Dewey, and Louie, from "mischievous little guys who were always in conflict with Donald" to

"smart little guys once in a while, and very clumsy little guys at other times", hoping to keep things fresh and reflecting his personal philosophies.215 Barks soon began to add his own creations to the cast: , Donald's lazy yet incredibly lucky cousin, first appeared in 1948, the criminal Beagle Boys in 1951, the absent minded inventor Gyro Gearloose in 1952, and myriad other significant figures introduced over the years. But his most significant contribution would come in 1947, with Uncle Scrooge McDuck, among his first inventions for the comics.

As was the case with the rest of Barks's characters, Scrooge was created to fill a role in a story. That story was "Christmas on Bear Mountain" (1947). Barks decided to incorporate a rich uncle who would drive the tale, as the owner of mountainside cabin where Donald and the nephews could spend the holiday. He further elaborated on this with the uncle deciding to test

Donald's bravery, the plot being filled out by a bear costume, an actual bear, and a bear cub. Barks's writing process often involved creating a scene or writing a few gags, and then forming the story around it. His art was in turn formed by his story; with this story, "I began to think of the great Dickens Christmas story about Scrooge...I just was just thief enough to steal

214 , "Of Ducks and Men: Carl Barks Interviewed" (in Carl Barks: Conversations, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 83. 215 Summer, "Of Ducks and Men," 83.

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some of the idea and have a rich uncle for Donald. I guess the fact that he was rich was the thing that triggered all further developments - as to just how rich and the showing of his wealth.”216 Scrooge was a means to an end, a variation on the classic version of Ebenezer

Scrooge, who would discover the power of love that would redeem him at the end of the story. The character was intended be one-off, but Barks explains “I found that that was quite a fascinating subject - just piles of money would appeal to a lot of people. And I just gradually made him richer and richer...those things just grew like building brick walls: you just lay one brick on top of another, and finally you've got the whole thing built."217 Scrooge’s wealth became a plot device, a means to an end, sending the characters beyond the confines of

Duckburg and its immediate environs. A story like “Lost in the ” required set-up to explain why Donald and his kin might adjourn to South America for an adventure; Scrooge allowed him to bypass these mental hoops and allowed him to expand the world. Barks was fastidious in his planning and emphasized continuity and cohesion in his work: “everything would be carefully planned out by the conclusion; events would be telegraphed, sequences carefully laid out for maximum impact, all leading toward a carefully constructed conclusion when all of the pieces came tumbling together.”218 It would take five years of tinkering from

Scrooge's introduction before he got his own title, starting with "Only A Poor Old Man" (1952).

From his first starring role, Scrooge McDuck possessed more nuance than his early appearances. While he was certainly greedy and money-hungry, he was not defined by his lust

216 Donald Ault, Thomas Andrae, and Stephen Gong "An Interview with Carl Barks, Duckburg's True Founding Father" (in Carl Barks: Conversations, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 94. 217 Ault, et al., "Founding Father," 94-95. 218 Summer, "Of Ducks and Men," 84-85.

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for wealth. In “Only A Poor Old Man,” he explains to Donald that “there is no greater comfort than in having a fortune like mine!”219 The money allows, at least in theory, a sense of security, but the money in question is more an end than a means. Michael Barrier elaborates "Scrooge had the kind of fantastic wealth a child could understand, and he hoarded that money in what amounted to a gigantic piggy bank. A child with a lot of cash might want to spend it on toys, but for Scrooge, his money itself was an enormous toy."220 The money is a plot device, something to be threatened with theft, forcing Scrooge to action, or else his search for ever rarer treasures sending him on adventures. There is something more significant in “Only A Poor Old Man,” that renders Scrooge a somewhat deeper figure than first appearances. Scrooge explains that “all this money means something to me! Every coin in here has a story!”, elaborating on earning his fortune in the Klondike and the west through hard work and perseverance, concluding that “you’d love your money, too, boys, if you got it the way I did-by thinking harder than the other guy-by jumping a little quicker…”221 Scrooge is an incurable nostalgic in many ways, a mix of Barks's conservatism and Walt Disney's Arcadian youth, and this single passage forms the basis of his character. He is an old man out of his time, but one who never gives up his spirit of adventure, who is eternally optimistic as to the power of hard work and determination, and who will live out his winter years carrying on. Thomas Andrae argues that "Scrooge's popularity stemmed from the way the character negotiated tensions within the American dream in the postwar era. Americans have had a basic, almost spiritual, commitment to the principles of free enterprise, self-reliance, and individualism of the Protestant ethic.”222 This individualistic spirit

219 Carl Barks. Uncle Scrooge (New York: Abbeville Press, 1979), 3. 220 Michael Barrier. "The World's Richest Duck." 221 Barks, "Only A Poor Old Man" (Uncle $crooge #1), 8-9. 222 Andrae, 188.

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inspires the roving adventures that Barks will create, a consistent aspect of the character that would be explored more fully by Barks’s successors, particularly Don Rosa.

The introduction of Scrooge McDuck marked a major sea change in the Duck comics. While Donald certainly had his share of adventures, he was largely contained to

Duckburg and its surrounding environs (a rough composite of northern California and

Minnesota). With Uncle Scrooge, there was room for grander adventures, with stories taking place in exotic locales ranging from the Andes to the Klondike to Australia, even into outer space on several occasions. The Scrooge stories shifted away from the broad comedy of the

Donald comics (though they were not devoid of slapstick and other silliness), and became something more in-line with the adventure serials of Barks's youth. Crucially, these globetrotting escapades maintained a strong undercurrent of reality: they often took place in real world locales, albeit with a few fictionalized elements, and Barks strove for a great attention to accuracy. Don Rosa recalls “When I was a kid, I figured Kalgoorlie was just a gag funnybook name...but true to form, Barks didn’t insult his readers, young or old, with made up nonsense. Kalgoorlie was indeed the site of one the late 19th-century gold rushes.”223 This verisimilitude should be recognized as a hallmark of good authorship and artistry. Finding it present in a comic might surprise some, but only if they were new to Barks and the fact that he took his work very seriously. This is not simply cheap child’s fare, but rather the artistic output of a creator who worked carefully. Barks drew inspiration of many sources including, including copying pictures out of National Geographic and similar magazines. Barks explained that "I just sort of built up a background on places like Australia from a few old pulp magazines I had read

223 Don Rosa, "Son of the Sun," Uncle $crooge #291 (1987).

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stories in…most reference material for my scripts came from National Geographic and

Encyclopedia Britannica. Art references from four file drawers of clippings, plus numerous art and drawing books."224 His panoramas, including the one featured in “Lost in the Andes” became a hallmark of his style, and the real-world inspirations lent a depth and richness to the drawings that did not appear in the works of the other Duck artists of the era. Barks's reckoning of nature is not one purely of its beauty and ; he recognizes that it is a place of great danger and misfortune to the unprepared, recalling Jack London and other authors of Barks's youth.

While the stories featured epic journeys, the scale remained constrained; the adventures were episodic, with the same locations rarely being revisited, creating an expansive world that nevertheless lacked development, compared to other comics like Hergé’s Tintin (another comic featuring a Western character traveling to exotic locales, often running afoul of modern post- colonial sensibilities) or the nascent universe of Marvel’s Stan Lee. Barks, while concerned about continuity in a given story, was not seriously concerned with the larger questions of geography or family lineage, occasionally laying contradictions to his own canon. The significant element of Barks’s Scrooge is that he was not always successful, but did well in aggregate, his hard work and consistent effort paying off over time.225 There is a sense that this is the central lesson that Scrooge wishes to pass on to Donald and, by extension, the lesson that

Barks hopes to impart to his readers. Scrooge himself would not always live up to these high ideals, but there was a sense that Barks recognized this as the way the world works. Barks

224 Willits, et al., "The Duck Man," 10. 225 Andrae, 189.

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explained "trhe thing that is most important about my comics is this: I told it like it is. I told the kids that the bad guys have a little bit of good in them, and the good guys have a lot of bad in them, and that you just couldn't depend on anything much, that nothing was going to always turn out roses...it was the way life goes. I didn't disguise anything or make things look rosy.”226 His characters were simple, but had hidden depths that Barks was never particularly interested in exploring, though others were.

Carl Barks Gets Lost in the Andes

A key illustration of Barks's appeal occurs in "Lost in the Andes" (Four Color Comics

#223, 1948). Invited to join a museum expedition to South America in search of square eggs,

Donald Duck and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie wind up as the only members left standing after a bout of food poisoning. After an attempt to purchase the square eggs from the locals, the group heads off into a nearby mist-covered valley following their only lead. As they reach the edge of the valley and crest the ridge, a great expanse opens before them, an ancient city hidden in the mountains, resembling Machu Picchu. It is a sight to behold, offering a full scope of the stone city couched within the mountains of South America, detailed and colorful to a degree that a reader might find surprising in a Disney comic.227 The panorama does not linger long; soon Donald and his nephews make their way into the city, and toward a conclusion to their adventure. But that singular image is a powerful one that would echo through the ages.

226 Donald Ault, "Telling It Like It Is,"(in Carl Barks: Conversations, (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 44. 227 Barks, "Lost in the Andes" (Four Color Comics #223), 18.

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"Lost in the Andes" captures a spirit of exploration, though Barks never traveled outside the United States during his working life. Like Americans (and children worldwide) who were curious about the wider world, he relied on National Geographic to inspire exotic locales that remained true to life, as well as his own Arcadian youth lived on the frontier. In his work, he strove for authenticity in the depiction of historical sites and natural wonders, an attention to detail that entranced audiences, and was a key component in the development of a foreign audience for the Duck comics. In effect, Barks created a series of travelogues in his comics, that allowed readers the world over to visit interesting, real places, achieving the same effect of magazines like National Geographic, albeit with cartoon ducks as tour guides. These stories were a step removed from the larger media empire, the advantage of Walt's disinterest in the far reaches of the aspects of his empire, and provide an interesting counterpoint to many depictions of American history in that era. Significant too are the comics that portrayed an Old West, one more grounded in lived reality than the two-fisted tales of cowboy heroics (or even Walt

Disney's Davy Crockett trilogy from the early 1950s) that portrayed life as more a happy-go- lucky adventure. These stories did not always travel far geographically, exploring the scattered remnants of a once vibrant American frontier, in an age when the West was glorified as a symbol for the American spirit, but these stories took a different tack.

This attention to storytelling and authenticity - verisimilitude - speaks to the reasons for the popularity of Carl Barks. While some of the appeal of Donald Duck can be chalked up to the

Walt Disney Company's marketing acumen, the Ducks seem to have a power all their own, greater than even Disney's erstwhile mascot Mickey Mouse. There is certainly an element of

Donald Duck that is more relatable, and as the 1950s dawned, the character only became more popular. Whereas Mickey was even-tempered and friendly, Donald was prone to bursts of anger,

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powered by pure frustration with the world at large. The Duck is relatable to audiences, and presenting an exciting protagonist in cartoons and comics. Barks’s rendition of Donald and his extended family (generally his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, his Uncle Scrooge McDuck, and cousin Gladstone Gander) are often out of sorts with the pace of modern life; the bustling life of the coastal Duckburg only occasionally stands as the setting for the stories. More often, they head into the wilderness, in pursuit of lost treasure, merit badges, or simply a few moments of peace and quiet (though those are rarely found). These allow for narratives of adventure and exploration, tapping into themes of wish-fulfillment: after all, what kid would not want to take an afternoon off to search for buried gold or investigate a weird old castle? Though presented in a new format (the comic book), the themes, and the format of the adventure-style travel stories, reflecting the evolution of travel literature, albeit written by a man who never left the continental

United States.

Carl Barks's Old West-set work reflects a sort of revisionist history, but one more keenly aware of the rough reality, with swindling bankers and inclement weather a greater threat than bank robbers or Cherokee raiders (indeed, Barks's work possessed a more sympathetic view of

Native Americans than many other publications at the time). The relation between history and authenticity in Don Rosa's work is key to understanding his creative process, and the manner in which it was received by a new generation of readers. Also key is the presentation of an alternative version of the American west to wide and diverse audiences, as posited by myth- symbol with Barks and Rosa playing with the notions of what the West was.228 Both creators

228 Bruce Kuklick's "Myth and Symbol in American Studies" expands on the work of Henry Nash Smith and Leo Marx, arguing that the scholar should endeavor to understand how certain concepts were viewed in order to better contextualize their place within American history, with an eye towards the individual and beyond the view of the

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stood in opposition to prevailing notions of the homogenized West of the mid-century, though they interrogated the myths in different fashions, utilizing images within their comic books to make arguments about the realities within the West.229 Carl Barks and Don Rosa both played upon national myths while nevertheless subverting their weight and meaning, attempting to recreate a true version of the Old West, or at least truer than contemporary pop culture versions.

The Western as a genre dominated post-war American culture, though comics were more diffuse. The superheroes that had been so significant in the invention of the comic book had displaced by other genres: Bradford Wright explains that “the majority of comic books published in the early 1950s were devoted to funny animals, romance, and innocuous adventure stories, but an increasing minority indulged tastes for controversial and provocative subject matter.”230

Western comics were never quite as dominant as the Western was in other media, but still featured in the comic books of the day. These comics were not immune to the larger issues of postwar culture; Tom Engelhardt explains “the western, which in the 1950s achieved a dominant position on the small screen at home as well [as the movie theater] remained a particularly white genre (even though one-quarter or more of nineteenth-century cowboys had been black).”231 The Old

West featured in the comics was often drawn from the cowboys in other media; William Savage locates

intellectual. William Goetzmann's West of the Imagination focuses on the imagery of the Old West, particularly the traditional paintings that helped to solidify the American "understanding" of what the West was. Both emphasis the use of images in the creation of cultural memories about history, relevant here in interpreting the versions put forward by Barks and Rosa. 229 Richard Slotkin states that "for most Americans-to the perpetual dismay of westerners-the West became a landscape known through, and completely identified with, the fictions created about it. Indeed, once that mythic space was well established in the various genres of mass culture, the fictive or mythic West became the scene in which new acts of mythogenesis could occur-in effect displacing both the real contemporary region and historical Frontier as factors in shaping the on-going discourse of cultural history." Richard Slotkin. Gunfighter Nation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998), 61-62. 230 Bradford Wright, Comic Book Nation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 155. 231 Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 34.

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half a dozen long-running cowboy comics featuring the likes of Tom Mix and Gene Autry, most running from the mid-1940s until the late 1950s, in keeping with the larger cowboy fad of the period.232 These figures had an additional function, however. Savage goes on to explain that

comic-book cowboys could address contemporary social problems because of the anachronistic nature of their existence. They went on horseback and camped out at night and had to do with rather primitive Indians, but there was no historical context. They rode the mid-twentieth-century West, among and trucks and planes and speedboats and all manner of technological wonders, suggesting that the mainstream meandered freely through the outback and that western social issues were merely American social issues writ rural.233

The operative point is that these figures were unstuck from their alleged point of origin, instead dealing with the more salient issues of the day (particularly drug dealing). This is the context in which Carl Barks is writing, offering a different view of the West.

Carl Barks's version of the American West is harder-edged than contemporary comics and Western films (his career in comics ran from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s, coinciding with the dominance of the Western in popular culture). His stories were couched in a sense of reality, which Don Rosa expands into a realistic tale of the difficulties inherent in making a fortune on the frontier. Both writers seem to draw heavily from historical sources; Scrooge's story is more akin to something like William Breckenridge's Helldorado than John Ford's

Stagecoach, and mediates elements of the revision Westerns that became common in the interregnum between Barks and Rosa.234 Both authors placed a heavy emphasis on authenticity.

Barks drew upon National Geographic to represent a verdant and surprisingly realistic

232 William Savage, Commies, Cowboys, and Jungle Queens: Comic Books and America, 1945–1954 (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1990), 67. 233 Savage, Commies, Cowboys, 69. 234 William . Breakenridge, Helldorado: Bringing Law to the Mesquite (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1992). Stagecoach, directed by John Ford (1939; Beverly Hills: , 2010).

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representation of the real world, just with ducks and dogs in place of humans, tying the history of

Scrooge into real historic events when possible. Andrew Lendacky writes "[Barks] actually did research, utilizing a file of old National Geographic magazines to ensure an authentic look for the physical environment he recreated as the backdrop to the Duck's adventures."235 While the physical environments possessed some authenticity, the problems of National Geographic, particularly its portrayal of non-whites as Other, were present in the Barks comics.236 The portrayal of the American West did hew closer to the historical reality, though the issues that occasionally cropped up in the more international Barks stories. Lendacky continues that

"Barks, although a native of the Northwest, apparently had an affinity for the Southwest, if one can judge by the number of stories he has written that have the Southwest or South of the Border physical settings."237 Barks was born in 1901, little more than a generation removed from the reality, and his youth spent on a cattle ranch (with the attendant encounters with actual cowboys) likely influenced the creation of a more grounded vision of the west. Lacking the life experience of his predecessor, Rosa took it a step further, building upon the body of work that Barks had crafted, expanding more deeply into the real world through diligent research and expert opinions.

Fredrick Jackson Turner famously intoned the "closing of a great historic moment" during the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.238 Drawing from census data, Turner contended that the spirit of settlement and progress would no longer spread wide, raising

235 Andrew Lendacky, "The Carl Barks Stories and Racial and Cultural Stereotyping," Barks Collector No. 16, 8. 236 Chris York, discussing the role of Native Americans in , notes “it has been long established that the reduction of cultures into one-dimensional caricatures make their dismissal both ideologically and physically a much easier task for the dominant culture.” Chris York, “Beyond the Frontier: , Son of Stone and the Native American in Cold War America,” in Comic Books and the Cold War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014), 179. 237 Lendacky, 9-10. 238 Fredrick Jackson Turner. The Frontier in American History (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Kreiger Publishing, 1985), 1.

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concerns about the future development of American identity. Lynn Harter contends that "the mythic image that anchors the frontier thesis is that of the frontiersman, a heroic character who ventured forth into uncharted territory, supposedly independent of others’ symbolic and material resources, to win a decisive victory against all odds."239 The loss was more of possibility than of any physical space; 1893 was the same year that introduced the world to the Ferris wheel, spray paint, alternating current, and brownies, and would hardly mark the end of the frontier in popular imagination. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid still roamed, the Klondike gold rush was still a few years away, the Nome and Fairbanks gold rushes in the following years, and the Indian

Wars still saw skirmishes into the new century. The romanticization of the west had begun well before this moment, evidenced by William "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West show, first of which was performed in 1883, and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, wherein the title character's promise "to light out for the territory" at the novel's conclusion, as well as dime novels more generally. Still, Turner's thesis informs how the frontier would come to be understood, and with it, the Old West that was.

The frontier is an amorphous thing, as much a state of being as a physical space. The borders were at best temporary and arbitrary, pushed ever outward by successive generations of traders, miners, farmers, and ranchers that inexorably transformed the landscape and destroyed or drove out the native inhabitants. These migrations occurred at various points in history, and from various directions, be it mountain men traveling south along the Rocky Mountains from

Canada, prospectors taking the long boat ride from New York to , various waves of

239 Lynn Harter. "Masculinity(s), the Agrarian Frontier Myth, and Cooperative Ways of Organizing," in Journal of Applied Communication Research 32 (2004), 91.

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immigration from nearly every continent. Turner's conception of the frontier posits it as a space that has a way of removing the European-ness of its settlers, engendering a unique American character informed by the wide-open spaces, lack of history (at least in the traditional, European sense), harshness of survival, and interactions with Native Americans. Turner posits that this space allowed for the flowering of both capitalism and democracy: "the frontier is productive of individualism...it produces antipathy of control, and particularly to any direct control. The tax- gatherer is viewed as representative of oppression."240 While the worth of an individual and the entitlement to the fruits of one's own labors did not spring forth from the American character

(after all, there are over two dozen mentions of tax collectors in the New Testament alone), it was adopted as an intrinsic aspect of the Western settler.

The nature of the dispersed territorial governments and limited federal oversight reconstituted the myths of the creation of America, that the country's very origin was inexorably linked to the oppressions of Old Europe alone, and that westward expansion constituted an extension of America's founding character. It is a space where men are men, challenging the forces of nature; Harter argues "the masculine subjectivity embodied by the frontiersman is one characterized primarily by isolation and independence. The frontier narrative functions as a textual guide that directs the formation of not only individual identities (e.g., the farmer as the lone ) but also organizational form (e.g., the proclivity for structures that privilege individualism)."241 This myth was refined and simplified over time, bent to a dozen different political causes, whitewashed over the course of generations. Turner's scholarship is a relic, a

240 Turner, Frontier, 30. 241 Harter, "Agrarian Frontier," 93.

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crucial foundation of the study of American culture, but one that reflects the prevailing cultural notions of what the frontier was. Richard Slotkin contends that

"Turner's approach is essentially 'nostalgic.' By dwelling on the naive perfection of the pre-modern frontier past, Turner implies a critique of the corruption of the present. The Frontier of the past appears as a place in which, once upon a time, the political and social life of a European people was transformed, morally regenerated, and given a distinctively democratic direction."242

Thus, Turner's approach understands the West as an end result, as though a switch is flipped with the close of the frontier, and the hierarchy of power that results is almost predestined. Slotkin recognizes the faults of Turner, which would come into play within the character of Uncle

Scrooge, albeit for a very different audience. Similarly, David Nye argues to "ask most

Americans how the first settlers lived and they will talk about log cabins. It was not so, but later generations superimposed this vision on all of the American past."243 These versions of the past have little relation to the reality of life is historical settings, but nevertheless inform perceptions of the country's history and contemporary interactions with that same history. Turner's conception of the West was simplistic, but no more than the westerns and other popular culture texts that followed.

Barks and the Sheriff of Bullet Valley

Carl Barks was born in 1901, a few months before his eventual employer Walt Disney, and like Disney, spent his youth on what remained of the frontier. Disney's youth in small town

Missouri was echoed in Barks's childhood on an Oregon homestead, though the transformation

242 Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation, 34-35. 243 David Nye, America As Second Creation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 46.

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of the American landscape had already reached parts of the Midwest. Whereas Disney had access to basic amenities (electricity, running water), Barks lived a rural life, including riding to school in a wagon for several years, and he did not even attend high school.244 Moreover, the young Barks encountered remnants of the west that was; he recalls that "real cowboys would come in those outfits...my brother and I, we just worshipped those fellows. And oh, what vulgar- talking men they were!"245 Barks contends that they shared few stories of their work, though a few anecdotes slip through in interviews. He came of age in this space, and it was a significant influence on his work; he noted "I have a love for the Old West, the wide-open spaces. I can remember when I myself was a young boy with plenty of room to roam around in, with a gun to shoot and horses to ride. It was part of the formation of my character, I guess."246 Even his home of Merrill, Oregon had a brush with history; Barks remarked "the last of the Indian wars was fought there in 1880s, something like that, which was close to where I'd lived."247 Despite his lack of formal education, Barks was nevertheless intrigued by history, and elements of the

American West filtered into his work in the decades to come.

Barks pursued drawing first, a skill he mostly taught himself (his art education amounted to a total of four correspondence lessons), drifting from Oregon to San Francisco to Minneapolis.

Facing difficulty achieving long-term success in comics, Barks wound up at Walt Disney Studios in , finding work as an in-betweener in 1934, creating the drawings that went between the key animation, giving cartoons their sense of movement. His talents, though,

244 Malcolm Willits, Don Thompson, and Maggie Thompson. "The Duck Man." in The Duckburg Times, No. 10/11 (27 March 1981), 3-4. 245 Barrier, "Life and Career," 55. 246 Ault, et al., "Founding Father," 104. 247 Barrier, "Life and Career," 56.

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seemed better suited to writing, particularly in Donald Duck cartoons, and he transferred to the story department in 1937. Barks remained there until 1942, when he quit for health reasons, taking up work as a chicken farmer, though was soon hired to produce work for the burgeoning

Disney comics on a freelance basis on the recommendation of one of his old writing partners, and was given considerable freedom in the stories he wrote.248 While his initial output was relatively slow, he would soon become the most prodigious writer of Donald Duck comics. By the time he retired in 1966, he had produced some seven hundred stories across his career, including the stories that introduced Uncle Scrooge McDuck.

The West and the frontier always loomed in the Carl Barks canon. His work is the recreation of the frontier of his imagination, a space that still existed within living memory, one that had changed little in spite of Turner's proclamation, one that he had lived.249 Electrification would not occur in the rural areas of Pacific Northwest until after World War I, and life had continued in much the same fashion as it had for several generations. Barks's experience would not have been far removed from someone like Laura Ingalls Wilder, and his vision of the west was couched in that hardscrabble reality.250 This upbringing engendered in Barks a certain distrust of the modern world and technology, as Thomas Andrae explains: "Barks's conservatism and critical stands toward modernity inform many of the cartoons on which he worked...anxieties about a loss of masculine authority and control, a dread of the feminine, and fears of

248 Willits, et al., 12. 249 Barks's parents were both born a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War in , with his father heading to California on the back of a freight train in 1880s, before arriving in Oregon to take advantage of the Homestead Act. 250 Amy Singer’s examination of the portrayal of economic inequality in Little House on the Prairie echoes the discussions of Barks here, and perhaps finds common ground with the two texts. Amy Singer, “Little Girls on the Prairie and the Possibility of Subversive Reading” (Girlhood Studies, New York, Vol. 8, Iss. 2, (Summer 2015): 4- 20).

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technological progress."251 Barks's work naturally hearkened back to frontier mentalities, the same concepts that Turner had posited, though it remained out of step with many of the prevailing notions appearing in Western narratives of the era. Andrae continues "at the same time, Barks was a staunch individualist, and the cartoons also express an antiauthoritarian ethic exemplified in the nephews' struggle for freedom against Donald, and Barks's satire of war propaganda and military discipline."252 Barks's playful sensibilities belied certain deeply-held values that undergirded the comics, though he did not fit clearly into a single category. While his work embodied certain frontier ideals, it was more complicated than simple politics. He created dichotomies between the pastoral ideals of rural life and the rush of urban life, but often underlined the faults of both.253 His conclusions more often indicated that people were alike all over, that small town folks and primitive tribes could be just as greedy as big city capitalists, though with a marked preference for the simple life.254 The excursions in Barks's stories often visited pre-modern spaces, be it lost South American tribes or old ghost towns, but even these spaces were grounded in realism. Inhabitants of these spaces were no more or honest than the city dwellers, reflecting a certain idea that people are alike all over.

251 Thomas Andrae. Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 31. 252 Andrae, 31-32. 253 John Wills explains the rise of Disney’s emphasis on the natural world: “The rise of Disnature is important as it corresponds to the fall of real nature in our lives. Tied to the demographic shift away from farms and toward the metropolis, the demise of daily interaction with the ‘great outdoors’ left an experiential void in the twentieth century.” Wills, Disney Culture, 114. This process plays out in Barks’s work as well as more mainstream Disney fare, though it tends to reflect the philosophy of Carl Barks more than that of Walt Disney. 254 This was a common theme among Barks stories; Peter Schilling Jr. remarks of the Donald Duck story “Lost in the Andes” that “Donald represents that heroic dream – that some happy accident will come along when we least expect it, and send us on a journey. Donald has no illusions that he’s not going to make any money…he presses forward for the thrill of adventure.” Peter Schilling Jr., Carl Barks’ Duck: Average American (Minneapolis: Uncivilized Books, 2014).

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There is also an element of humor to Barks’s Western-themed stories that set them apart from other, more serious Western comics of the period. He keenly understood the sense of boredom found on the frontier, and the Western-themed stories foresaw a stranger sort of West.

Barks was not along in locating a sense of humor in the West, but might have been ahead of his time. Beyond a few scattered comedy duos (Laurel and Hardy with Way Out West (1937) and

Abbott and Costello with Ride ‘Em Cowboy (1942)), there was little in the vein of what Barks was writing in this period.255 There was a bumper crop of Western comedies starting in the mid-

1960s (F-Troop (1965-1967), Cat Ballou (1965), is My Name (1970)) that fit Barks’s comedic sensibilities, produced a decade or more after the height of his work.

"The Sheriff of Bullet Valley" (Four Color #199, 1948) finds Donald Duck taking up the job of sheriff's deputy in a rural town, playing upon the tropes of the western. Donald's adventures in the story are entirely informed by his awareness of the rules and narratives of western films, which naturally drives much of the story's plot. It is self-aware of the tropes of the Western genre, and that those tropes no longer exist within modernity. Barks opens with

"gone now are the outlaws, the stage robbers, the cow thieves! Gone, too, the grim-lipped sheriffs that hunted them down! All that remains of the Old Wild West is its !"256 This story is one couched in reality: Donald's efforts to challenge cattle rustlers entails the use of hand grenades and mobile x- projectors, though he views through the lens of the classic western, naturally playing the role of the hero. Barks takes the opportunity to poke fun at the silliness of

255 The key exception is the Jimmy Stewart Western Destry Rides Again (1939), that had the same mix of slapstick and misunderstanding that Barks often utilized. Consider that Barks mentioned a fondness for Western films on several occasions, it is plausible that this film would have influenced his work in significant ways. 256 Barks, "The Sheriff of Bullet Valley," Four Color #199, 3.

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many of the pop cultural expectations of frontier life, but it is infused with some sense of loss.

Much of the plot is driven by Donald's assumption that the Western films of which he is fond are true to life. Donald's genre savviness is dangerous, as in an early scene when he is tricked out of his horse by the local cattle rustlers (who burn their brand into the animal while he is distracted), and he assumes that the sheriff is the actual villain, thinking "Maybe he wanted me to get killed!

I begin to smell a plot! There was a mix-up like this in the picture 'Fagin's Fangs'! Horace

Mustang jailed hundreds of innocent men before he discovered the leader of the rustlers was his kindly old grandmother!"257 Donald views the events of the story through the lens of genre, assuming that the West resembles his steady diet of cowboy movies. In a later instance, he arrests an innocent rancher after he surmises (incorrectly) a dastardly plot. Donald explains "Old

Diamond has 300 thin steers in the pasture! He hides 'em in a canyon then steal 300 fat steers from the Double X to put in their place...clever old guy! But I saw the same trick in the picture

'Shuddering Saddles'!"258 His popular culture knowledge overrides common sense, which is coupled with his overwhelming stubbornness, creating most of the conflict in the story. Even during the final confrontation with the villainous Blacksnake, Donald laments "all I have to do is put my guns on him and take him in! This is so easy it's not even fun!"259 This leads directly to a moment when Donald drops his guard, when Blacksnake claims "nobody but a coward would do a trick like that! Put your guns back in their holsters and draw even-like a brave man should!"260 Once more, Donald's awareness of genre conventions is nearly the death of him, as

257Barks, 8. 258Barks., 13. 259 Barks, "Bullet Valley," 29. 260 Ibid.

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he responds "I'm no coward! Rimfire Remington always does this in his pictures!"261 Donald is immediately shot several times by the villain.

Barks's West is a dangerous space, and one that does not play by the rules of the Western as a genre. Donald's inability to see Bullet Valley as anything other than a Western causes him no end of difficulty to the innocents in the story, and draws out the conflict much longer than it likely would have taken. Thomas Andrae argues that "Barks's story is not just an elegiac tale about the passing of the West but a moral fable that concerns the redemption of frontier values in the modern era...the way in which Western films inculcate a confusion between myth and reality becomes a central premise of the story."262 Donald's ultimate triumph in the story is the result of his stubbornness and dumb luck, while the functionality of the tropes of the Western are questioned in the modern setting. Andrae continues "Barks satirized the mythic images of

Westerns by showing the gap between fantasy and reality in Donald's continued failure to live out these images...though the media have distorted the images of the cowboy, they can still provide a worthwhile ethic if fans consciously and creatively reinterpret rather than passively consume the images."263 Donald's success occurs when he finally breaks from the Western cinema that informs much of his behavior in the story, as Donald's states, after finally capturing

Blacksnake that "it's not the way Rimfire Remington would do it, but it's way more fun!" 264

Donald Duck becomes a tool to interrogate the myths of the West; after all, Barks had known real cowboys in his day, had grown up on the frontier, and recognized too well the gulf between

261 Ibid. 262 Andrae, 80-81. 263 Andrae 81-82. 264 Barks, "Bullet Valley," 33.

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the shining history and the muddy reality. Geoffrey Blum explains "something of a frontiersman himself, Barks was concerned with the fate of old-timers who had helped build [frontier towns]."265 Donald's many failed efforts to capture the criminal underscores the limits of frontier ideal that had taken hold in the postwar era, but echoed also the loss of the true frontier in favor of a facsimile that little resembled the rough and dangerous life lived on the fringes of civilization. Donald Duck in "Bullet Valley" is presented as a tourist, a day-tripper without any reckoning of the reality of frontier life, to the degree that he disrupts the investigation into the cattle rustlers. He is not equipped to survive in that space, and would likely have died on multiple occasions were it not for his oversized sheriff's badge and intervention of his nephews

(who prove slightly more genre savvy, perhaps better able to recognize the inaccuracies portrayed in Western cinema). Donald is perhaps indicative of others who pine for a West that never truly was; Barks knew the dangers and difficulties of frontier life, and was keenly aware that the people who wished for a return to frontier values likely had no idea of what life on the frontier fully entailed.

Scrooge McDuck as the Frontiersman

Scrooge McDuck might be Barks's most vibrant and well-realized creation. An unrepentant capitalist, he embodies more than just unrestrained greed, reflecting the spirit of

American competitiveness in all endeavors. An unrepentant capitalist in the mold of the nineteenth century Robber Barons, to the degree that fellow Scotsman likely served as an inspiration (it is no accident that one of Scrooge's rivals is named John Rockerduck,

265Geoffrey Blum. "Dawson: Imagination's Doorway." Walt Disney Giant No. 1, September 1995, 29.

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certainly a reference to Carnegie's rival John Rockefeller), though with slightly more humanity than other depictions of the archetype. Scrooge is the very embodiment of the traits that Turner outlined decades earlier: "coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness...that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism...these are the traits of the frontier."266 Scrooge further encompasses the bootstraps myth, infused with image of the lone hero on the frontier, and immigrant who arrives in America only to travel ever westward, though the chronology is a bit skewed; Barks was never concerned with keeping details straight from story to story, and scattered details of Scrooge's backstory across dozens of different issues, usually as a setup for the narrative. Details emerged over time: Scrooge as a prospector, as a rancher, as an explorer; Barks's only full-length story set in Scrooge's youth (detailing his time as a riverboat captain on the Mississippi) was featured a special digest "Uncle Scrooge Goes To

Disneyland" in 1957. These moments were restricted to snatches of dialogue or the occasional splash panel, but a common thread was his role as a frontiersman. The younger Scrooge never tarried in a city for long, instead seeking out wide-open spaces that promised untold riches to the brave and hardy.

While Scrooge's fortune has several origin stories, the most resilient is the acquisition of the wealth during the Alaskan gold rush. Scrooge's success is the result of supreme effort, achieved only by himself, wealth physically produced from the land itself by hard labor. He seeks out a claim deep in the hinterlands, braving hostile weather and menacing loan sharks, producing a fortune from Klondike gold. Scrooge's success reflects a certain frontier ideal of

266 Turner, 37.

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individualism, allowing Scrooge to remain clean of the more negative aspects of nineteenth century wealth acquisition (he is no robber baron, after all). It avoided the sticky problems of the exploitation of labor (though that accusation would be lobbied against him for his treatment of family members, notably in Dorfman and Mattelart’s How to Read Donald Duck), as well as any deeper interrogation of the capitalist system.267 Andrae argues that "[Barks] narrates his stories as if they are real events yet simultaneously deconstructs the premises on which they are based...the contradictions made apparent by these stories invite us to critically examine rather than passively consume the popular formulas, myths, and stereotypes he portrays."268 Scrooge had achieved his wealth by being "tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties," offering a simplistic worldview that replicated the same myths of the American West that had been propagated for decades, albeit with a little more grit and mud. Blum elaborates that "the combination of rugged heroism, ragged lawlessness, and instant riches appeals to our national imagination...for those who came after, it became the portrait of a nation: noble at times, ugly at others, but undoubtedly America."269 Scrooge becomes emblematic of the transformation of

America's frontier into something else, a process that would be more fully explored in the stories of Don Rosa.

The work of Carl Barks was largely bereft of any continuity, though that was hardly uncommon for other comic books of the era. The status quo remained inviolable: even though

Donald ended "The Sheriff of Bullet Valley" as the town's new sheriff, it was never remarked upon or referenced again, and Scrooge's incredible wealth always found its way back to his

267 Dorfman and Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck, 70-71. 268 Andrae, 78. 269 Blum, 26.

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money bin even if it had been sunk to the bottom of a lake. The characters and their personalities were generally consistent (Scrooge softens a bit as the years wore on, a bit less world-weary with age), but there were no attempts to tell larger stories by the time of Barks's retirement in 1966.

The series went into decline, overshadowed by Silver Age superheroes that began to increasingly deal with real world issues as the Bronze Age dawned, and while sparse reprints continued, it was not until the 1980s that new content began to be created once more.270 The most enduring of the new generation of artists was a middle-aged engineer, Don Rosa, who had grown up as a fan of the Barks stories, and found a niche as the successor to Barks legacy.

Carl Barks Goes Back to the Yukon

The themes of the frontier are on full display from the start of Barks's run. The second

Uncle Scrooge story was "Back to the Yukon" (U$ #2), which explored the origins of Scrooge's wealth for the first time.271 Scrooge, suffering from apparent memory loss, heads up north with his nephews in pursuit of a forgotten cache of gold at his old prospecting claim. Immediately upon their arrival, Scrooge laments "my, how this country has gone soft! But I'm not soft!

...certainly not soft enough to buy a ticket when I can walk for free!"272 He plays upon certain ideas of frontier toughness, and laments the softness of the generations that followed, particularly his nephew Donald (a running theme in the Barks stories). Scrooge himself does more than talk

270 According to figures available through ComicChron, in 1960, the Duck comics published by Dell had sales figures averaging just over two million copies a month across two titles (Uncle $crooge and Walt Disney Comics and Stories). By 1969, it had declined to 272,000 per month for Walt Disney Comics and Stories (data for Uncle $crooge is unavailable for that year). “Comic Sales Figures for 1960,” ComicChron, accessed 25 August 2018, http://comichron.com/yearlycomicssales/postaldata/1960.html 271 Due to several cut pages, I utilized the restored Gladstone reprint from 1994, rather than the original story from 1953. The content exists in some printings of the story prior, and plays a key role in Don Rosa's Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. 272 Carl Barks, "Back to the Klondike" (Uncle $crooge Adventures #26, May 1994), 10.

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the talk, recounting of a barroom brawl: "it was a fight to be proud of! I was like a buzzsaw!

Men fell in like rows of dominos!"273 He is strong both spiritually and physically, a perfect vision of the frontier ideal, a capitalist who created his wealth out of the earth itself by his own two hands. Scrooge verges on outright villainy throughout the story, antagonizing his one-time love interest, aged dance hall entertainer/ Glittering Goldie, even threatening to take her last remaining valuables over a long-ago debt. The finale comes down to a race to dig up gold, in the fashion of many of Barks stories, where Goldie proves victorious. However, it quickly becomes apparent to Donald that his Uncle Scrooge "rigged the race so Goldie would find his cache!"274 Moments like this serve to soften Scrooge's character, even as the story itself serves as a sort of elegy for the prospectors of old.

"Back to the Yukon" allowed for Barks to wax poetic about the lost frontier as well.

Barks remarked of the story: "nostalgia about the gold rush country and the old dance-hall girls had a lot to do with my thinking on that story. There were still some dance-hall girls alive and around and they'd get a write-up in the paper once in a while. I had tried to make Goldie a believable person because I thought that people were interested in what became of these girls."275

Barks recalled the West-that-was, had known its inhabitants, and sought to bring life to that reality, honoring those who had lived it. Goldie in "Back to the Yukon" is long past her glory days, living out of a battered shack in the wilderness, carrying on the best she can. While the story sees her better off thanks to the uncommonly generous actions of Scrooge, the story

273 Barks, "Klondike," 16. 274 Barks, 34. 275 Carl Barks, Uncle Scrooge McDuck (Berkeley: Celestial Arts, 1987), 64.

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nevertheless reckons with the remnants of the Old West: broken dreams and broken bodies, the promise of the frontier long closed.

Carl Barks Heads North of the Yukon

The dimensions of Scrooge’s character could be seen in the story "North of the Yukon"

(Uncle $crooge #59). Scrooge is forced to travel back to Alaska to settle a lawsuit over a loan- shark’s debt, only to be forced to retrieve a crucial document from the wilderness, similar to the earlier "Back to the Klondike." Arriving in town, Scrooge decides, in keeping with his general distrust of technology and modernity. When a local explains "nobody uses dog teams these days! Everybody flies!" Scrooge responds "in weather like this, only dogs can take you where you have to go!"276 Scrooge's trust in the dogs (and respect for nature in general) drive much of the story, echoing themes played upon in the stories of Jack London. In particular, Scrooge's respect for the aging sled dog champion Barko informs his character in the story, as Scrooge's respect for the old dog is remarked upon several times in the story: "nobody's spoken so respectfully to the old dog in years!"277 Scrooge finds himself on an ice flow, the loan receipt

(the MacGuffin representing his whole fortune) on one side, and his aging sled dog Barko on the other. Realizing he can only save one, Scrooge helps the dog, leaving the receipt to be captured by the villain, nominally trading the fortune for the life of an anonymous pooch. explaining "I can't let you drown, old boy! That would be welching on my debt to you!"278 Fate intervenes as it must, and the story ends with Scrooge's fortune (relatively) safe once more, but the audience is

276 Carl Barks, "North of the Yukon" (Uncle $crooge #59, Sept. 1965), 13. 277 Barks, "Yukon," 14. 278 Barks, 23.

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given a deeper sense of the old duck's character. This story serves as a reminder that Scrooge is not the heartless capitalist he is often made out to be.

The frontier is a key part of the story as well. Writer Geoffrey Blum explains "Barko, like Scrooge, was a frontiersman, an emblem of the tough but honest way of life with which

Barks had long identified. Scrooge is the artist's reclusive nature, Barko is more outgoing, but when the chips are down, they pull together. 'North of the Yukon' presents us with two faces of an aging champion who still has what it takes to beat modern courts, cons, and media campaigns."279 Scrooge's hidden nature is put on prominent display in this story: given the choice, he would give up his fortunes for the life of another. He is not purely a greedy plutocrat, but a frontier adventurer who values experiences and companionship more than his incredible wealth. The story itself hammers home these points: the impetus for the adventure is an allegedly paid debt coming back to haunt Scrooge through court action, prompting an Alaskan adventure to retrieve some missing evidence to prove Scrooge's side. He must rely on his own abilities in the wilderness, proving to himself (and the audience) that he is still worthy of his vast wealth, while also demonstrating his occasionally muted empathy.

"North of the Yukon" demonstrates Scrooge's morality in returning the aging Barko's loyalty with his own, in spite of the potential costs to himself (though being a Barks story, the fortune is saved by the intervention of a deus ex machina). For as much power as Scrooge possesses in the civilized world, he is a highly moral human being that acts to rescue those in need. Moreover, he demonstrates himself a duck who recognizes (and upholds) the bond of

279 Geoffrey Blum, "The Barko Factor," Uncle $crooge Adventures in Color, No. 50 (July 1998), 27.

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civilization and nature, not forgetting the social contract he had with Barko when he called upon him to pull the sled. This might tap into some deep-seeded human need to protect the animals that serve us, but also marks Scrooge as a man worthy of his command of nature, one who can appreciate its splendor, handle its dangers, and tap its riches without utterly destroying the environment.280 Barks’s interest in Scrooge as a character was limited; he might play the lead in the strip, but his nephews were generally featured just as strongly as he was. “Yukon” was the rare Barks story that focused almost entirely on Scrooge, with the others acting largely as observers in his adventure. On the ice floes, it falls solely to Scrooge alone to make the decision, and suffer the consequences. Notably, this was among the last stories Barks wrote before his retirement (though, to be fair, there were another fifty stories published after this one, due to his talent for staying well ahead of schedule), demonstrating the small ways in which the character had grown under his pen; it would fall to another to grow Scrooge’s character beyond this initial seedling.

280 Andrae, 183-186.

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Chapter 7: “Guardians of the Lost Library”: The Development of the Duck Fan

Communities

The 1980s were a significant era in the development of comics, a moment when the comics industry stood on the verge of transformation. The social commentary of the Bronze Age had served as a battering ram against the restrictions of the Comics Code, and the press seemed to cry daily that comics "weren't just for kids anymore." Grim and gritty street level heroes battled against inhuman serial killers, women were stuffed into refrigerators, and the idea of comics as art entered the zeitgeist in a serious way as an acceptable idea. Within it all, an overlooked group of fans played a crucial role in reviving a significant character from the

Golden Age of Comics.

The fan communities around comics had first developed in the 1960s, organized groups that made appreciation of a given comic a piece of their identities. There were certainly devoted comics readers long before, but a of events - dedicated comics conventions (Jerry

Bails and held the -focused convention in Detroit in 1965), cheap printing techniques that allowed for the creation of fanzines (as well as ), the rise of the comic book store (Gary Arlington founded the San Francisco Comic Book Company in

1968), institutional support of fan clubs (Stan Lee's development of "The Merry Marching

Marvel Society", among his other efforts to build a fandom) - saw the development of assorted communities of comic book readers. While superheroes were ascendant throughout the 1960s

(often dubbed "The Silver Age"), there existed other strains of comics fans: followers of the old

EC Comics, readers of the countercultural underground comix, and Disney comics as well. The experiences of fans in this period are difficult to research; fan interactions occurred on a very local level (fan clubs or perhaps correspondence), and records of these events are limited at best.

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Comic books themselves occasionally provide a forum for readers with a letters column, but this was not present in all spaces, including the various Disney comics productions of the period.

Instead, the social spaces that developed were fanzines.

Pre-dating many of the fanzines was another example of fan production, high school history teacher Jack L. Chalker's An Informal Biography of Scrooge McDuck, published in 1974.

The book purports to be a retelling of Uncle Scrooge's personal history, delivered in a quasi- scholarly format (the footnotes do not actually reference anything, for instance), focusing on the stories of Carl Barks. Chalker divides his sources between "canonical," "noncanonical Barks," and "works by others" in the weight they are given within text.281 He outlines the canonical as

Barksian works published in Uncle $crooge magazine, and posits these as "obviously truth and the only major source used in this study."282 This effort to frame the canon in the context of

Uncle Scrooge's larger publication history speaks to larger concerns in nearly any fandom, but it represents an early, concerted effort to bring order to Disney's comic universe. Moreover, it is meant to be generally accessible, relying more on broad strokes than specific references, and running quite short (just over 40 pages for the biography proper). The print run was limited to

2000 copies, published by The Mirage Press, a small fantasy publisher, and it functions much like a period fan fiction, albeit text heavy due to the absence of images. It echoed similar efforts in the same period of other nascent fandoms. Modern fan fiction began with (1966-

1969), as a handful of viewers sought to expand on a relatively limited media canon (79 episodes across three years) in creating a more fully realized world. The success of (1977)

281 Jack Chalker, The Informal Biography of Scrooge McDuck (Baltimore: Mirage Press, 1974), xi-xii. 282 Chalker, Informal Biography, viii.

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served to further solidify the development of a market not only for secondary texts, but the development of dedicated communities of fans that could not only keep a property alive (as had occurred with Star Trek), but to expand the shared universe at large. The idea of fan authors fleshing out preexisting works has only become more commonplace in our contemporary digital age.

The mock seriousness of the Scrooge McDuck biography echoes the similar tone of the

European Donaldists, treating the work of Barks as essentially factual, with several statements like: "this writer has attempted, using secondary sources such as the bits, snatches, crumbs, and occasional retellings of Mr. Barks together with a professional historian's knowledge of the times in which McDuck player out such a large part of his life, to produce a short informal biography, which a minimum of footnoting and a maximum of factual and interpolative material from the

Sacred Writings."283 There is a scholarly degree of research inherent to the work, a hallmark of much of Duck comics fan writing on both sides of the Atlantic. The work even introduces some interesting fan theories to explain some of the continuity issues, particular the apparent lack of aging among the Ducks. Chalker posits "clearly Scrooge, Donald, and the kids don't look any older at this writing than they did in the late 1940's. The fortunate circumstance has allowed

Scrooge to, who as always kept himself in the peak of physical condition, to be actively in charge of his empire well past his hundredth birthday."284 The book represents a proto-version of Don Rosa's future output (particularly The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck), an effort to make sense out of the extensive Barks catalogue and to locate the history of the characters

283 Chalker vii 284 Chalker, 19-20.

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within. The limited print run speaks to the limitations of fandom in the period, as well as the litigiousness of Disney on the American market; How To Read Donald Duck faced similar issues being published, and was delayed considerably longer in a similar timeframe.285

Fanzines (a portmanteau of "fan" and "zine," itself a contraction of "magazine," have an extensive history as companion pieces to fiction, music, and popular culture at large. Broadly speaking, the term refers to unauthorized productions related to preexisting media, comprising original work produced by fans of the property.286 These efforts varied wildly in quality, from photocopied four-page printings to glossy, magazine quality efforts. The concept arose during the mid-century in reference to science fiction fan publications, particularly those that contained reviews or discussions of other stories, growing popular with the development of cheap and easy printing technology. While these generally the domain of fans, it did occasionally allow creators to have limited interactions with their audience; in the pre-digital era, the fanzine was a space that allowed for the dispersion of related ephemera: author interviews and correspondence, unpublished stories, and notes. These spaces allowed for the exchange of information that might otherwise go unseen, as well as serving as a social space for the fandom at large. Spencer explains "since their beginnings...zines have been traded amongst writers...this enables both parties involved to avoid commercial dealings and idealistically reverts the process back to the time when exchange of goods was more common than monetary exchange."287 Historically,

285 Chalker's book includes a forward to state "Walt Disney productions, the copyright holders on all illustrative matter that should accompany the text, have vigorously denied any permission to use any pictorial representation of any copyrighted Disney character in the preparation of this book, although their legal staff has very grudgingly admitted our right to publish the text, as its form is an established literary genre in and of itself." Chalker. 286 Amy Spencer defines zines as "non-commercial, small-circulation publications which are produced and distributed by their creators. Generally, the zine writer is not a professional writer, nor are they being paid for their work." Spencer, DIY, 15. 287 Ibid. 15.

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zines have existed for nearly any culture of interest, though the emphasis here will be on fanzines, those zines focused on particular media properties. Science fiction fanzines remained the dominant genre, though often allowed for elements of other fandoms; Starling No. 33, for instance, featured an early interview with Carl Barks. The Disney readership lacked a key component that had aided the development of the Silver Age comics fandom: the letter column.

Still, fans found each other (typically at early comic book conventions), located Carl Barks in

1962 (significant in that his name never appeared in the comics during his career proper), and built social connections. Comics fanzines, particularly those emphasizing less mainstream (read: non-superhero) titles grew in this time, concurrent with the underground comix subculture, both having limited distribution channels.288 The Duck comics fandom was sufficient to create at least two ongoing fanzines, as well as occasional one-offs as early as 1970.

The Barks Collector appears to be the most consistently published Duck comics-focused fanzine, beginning publication in 1976, continuing until 1989 with at least 42 issues.289

Published under the auspices of Bear Mountain Enterprises and Oak Tree Press, it emphasized the collecting and sales aspects of the old Disney comics, emphasizing the work of Carl Barks in particular. The earliest issues appear to be largely lists of comics for trade and sale, though the format developed in time, emphasizing a wider array of offerings including interviews. The

Barks Collector appears to have been the first effort to create a public catalog of Carl Barks's

288 Comix and fanzines were generally distributed through direct mailings, though some independent bookstores (particularly on the West Coast) stocked quantities of various books. 289 The numbering is a little unclear; early issues were published as "Vol. 1," though it is unclear if that was a reference to year (there was a "Vol. 3" as well, but I have been unable to locate any "Vol. 2" releases). By 1977, the magazines were numbered numerically, with No. 6 being the earliest I have located. The final release was No. 42, released in either 1989 or 1990, depending on the source.

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publications, a key precursor the I.N.D.U.C.K.S. project.290 There had certainly been prior efforts by individual fans, but this marked a key collective effort by the fans to create a full reckoning of the publications. It represents a fairly typical fanzine of the period, albeit rather long-lived as far as fanzines go.

One major point of significance is that The Barks Collector featured correspondence from

Barks, including occasionally sketches and public statements. One statement credited to Barks is key: "I certainly hate the distortion of the ducks' characters that is being done in the new Italian comics."291 Barks had been vocal about his dislike for the other versions of his characters, while still recognizing that he lacked ownership over the Ducks.292 Barks continues: "it is a repeat of what happened in Chili (sic) years ago when the leftists got control of the Disney licenses and put out comic books that showed Uncle Scrooge robbing the poor and oppressing the proletariat.

The blame for Uncle Scrooge's vile capitalist practices were laid at my door."293 That Barks was aware of Dorfman and Mattelart's arguments, and broadly engages with them, is interesting;

Barks had retired some years before How to Read Donald Duck was published, though his work figured heavily into the opposition to Disney. This would have been a minor coup for The Barks

Collector, and it speaks to the reach of the anti-Disney intellectual movement of the 1980s, sufficient that Carl Barks had been made aware of it, at least in theory.

Additionally, the fanzine held a survey to determine the most popular Carl Barks stories; the response rate was quite limited (49 respondents), but does give a sense of what the fan

290 The Barks Collector No. 15, 12-18. 291 Barks, Barks Collector No. 15, 4 292 Ault, “Those Things Came Along,” 207 293 Barks, Barks Collector No. 15, 4

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community looked like circa 1982. There is a degree of elitism, even in the nominally friendly survey; Ken Bausert, who conducted the survey, emphasizes the specific focus of the Barks

Collector: "Unfortunately, some people's choices for covers and stories were not by Barks - this is where a good check list comes in handy. Luckily, I was able to inform several fans of their occasional mistakes in time for them to send 'revised' surveys."294 This attitude reflects the divisions that existed within the fandom, not merely on the collector/non-collector axis, but in terms of the "Barks fans" and the more general "Disney comics fans." This effort to create a line of demarcation recalls Bodrieu's statement that "it should not be thought that the relationship of distinction (which may or may not imply the conscious intention of distinguishing oneself from common people) is only an incidental component of aesthetic disposition."295 Bausert is quite insistent in drawing lines with the texts; while the content of the fanzine could be expected to favor Barks, the culling of survey results reflects and effort to assign elite status to the work of

Barks. The votes for the Best Carl Barks stories fits with most of the modern conventional wisdom: "A Christmas for Shacktown" tops the list, followed by "Lost in the Andes" and "The

Golden Helmet," each regarded as significant stories within the Barks canon by modern fans.296

Notable as well is the demographic information: the average age of respondents was 25.5, with the oldest being 47.297 It is plausible that the readership of the comics themselves skewed younger, but the slightly older average age speaks to the audience for Gladstone's publications.

Additionally, only roughly half the responses were from American readers; nearly a third came

294 Bausert, Barks Collector No. 21, 23 295 Bourdieu 505-506 296 Bausert, Barks Collector No. 21, 29 297 Ibid. 30

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from Sweden, and a further tenth from West Germany.298 That an American-published, English- language fanzine had such an extensive reach speaks to the interactions occurring between the global fandoms in the pre-digital 1980s, and the strength and reach of the European fan communities.

A further example of these transnational interactions appears in Barks Collector No. 20.

German reader Klaus Spillmann contributed a lengthy article "Mrs. Erika Fuchs and the

Duckburg Citizens," on translation work of Erika Fuchs. It offers a basic outline of her work, noting the liberties taken with the translation (which Spillman refers to as "free translation").299

Spillman explains that "slang terms and catch-wrods are often used in comic books to keep the bubbles short and small and the story floating. Mrs. Fuchs made the best out of it by developing new dialogs and, sometimes, quoting sections from books of Goethe or Schiller which often created much more amusement than the original text."300 This speaks to the reception of these translations within the German readership, as discussed previously, but is notable that the account was written while Fuchs was still actively translating; Spillman notes "today, due to her age, Mrs. Fuchs is working a bit more slowly, but she still translates every Duck story and all the

MICKY MAUS serials (whether it's a Duck story or not)."301 Furthermore, that this account was published in an American fanzine indicates that transnational flows were moving both directions across the Atlantic. European fans might be interested to read the latest Carl Barks interview, or news of limited edition products from American publishers. American fans, members of a

298 Ibid. 30 299 Spillman, Barks Collector No. 20, 10 300 Spillman, Barks Collector No. 20, 10 301 Ibid., 11.

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relatively small and tight-knit community, were exposed to the fact that their hobby was a worldwide phenomenon, and there is a tinge of exoticism in articles like Spillman's that emphasized the unique cultures of the European community.

The publication of articles related to European fans was a common theme in The Barks

Collector. No. 19 featured Herman Ten Kate's "Carl Barks in the ," which discusses the introduction of Donald Duck to the Netherlands, covering the early editorial and sales history of the comics, as well as an effort to chart which Barks stories had been published.302 The article could serve as a primer for development of the Dutch readership, including some information about Dutch fanzines Inkt and Aloha.303 Interestingly, Kate also mentions , an artist that would have a small role in the early stages of Gladstone comics.304 The Barks Collector No.

11 includes Horst Schroder's "Views on the European Disneys," which discusses the publication of Disney comics in Italy, although in much broader terms than Kate's account. Schroder discusses the basic history of the Italian publications, focusing heavily on their relationship to the publications in other countries. As a point of comparison, he complains that "Gutenberghus [the

Danish Disney publisher] has content at an extremely childish level, keen on avoiding any sort of offense and any resemblance to Scandinavian social reality, no matter what the cost...artists are firmly locked into the imitative mold: late Barks for the Ducks."305 His contention is that the Italians are at least doing something different, mentioning several newly created characters, as well as Donald's occasional transformation into the vengeful, Batman-

302 Herman Ten Kate speaks to the issues with a few of these unpublished stories, noting that "this last story, Treasure of Marco Polo, will probably never be published in the Dutch 'Donald Duck' because of its doubtful political background." (Kate 7) 303 Kate 7 304 Kate 5 305 Schroder 9

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esque Paperinik. Schroder discusses the more violent edge of the Italian stories, and surmises that the content results from the state of Italian politics, arguing that "Italy also has done the only sensible thing with the Duck: moved him right into the present with kidnappings, women's lib, multinationals, etc., although on sadly reactionary terms...a conservative mirror image of the violent economic and class struggles which beset Italy."306 Without careening into pernicious stereotyping (Horst’s views are his own), this demonstrates Donald’s adaptability. The character is able to be repurposed by European authors for (often disparate) audiences. This idea echoes the same sentiments, albeit in a simplified fashion, that Dorfman and Mattelart framed in How

To Read Donald Duck, which had not yet been published officially in America by that point.

Fans were exposed to cultures and ideas that they could not have encountered in day-to-day circumstances in the pre-digital era, but spaces like The Barks Collector opened windows into the intellectual and cultural discussions occurring abroad.

The encounters between the American and European fan communities could be more direct still. The Barks Collector No. 17 features Hans von Storch's "In Donaldismo Veritas," an extensive explanation of the tongue-in-cheek Donaldist philosophy that forms a crucial aspect of the European fan community. It parallels the faux-seriousness of the fan community at large; for instance, "the absorption of Donaldism by the brains and hearts of the young was, however, heavily impeded, especially in Germany. In the German Democratic Republic the circulation of

Donaldistic reports on Duckburg and the Duck family was prevented from the outset, and in the

FR Germany mass media and the pillar of public morals, the German housewife, was

306 Schroder 10

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mobilized."307 The discussion of the comics is framed in academic terms, the stories framed as

"reports" on "scientific Donaldism," accounting for both satiric responses to the comics themselves (he mentions a book that posits the Duck comics as a retelling of the New Testament) as well as more serious endeavors (Dorfman and Mattelart are once more briefly mentioned here).308 It goes on to account for the various fanzines on both sides of the Atlantic, locating the first Duck-centric fanzine as Norwegian Pal Jensen's Donaldisten in 1973, as well as the long- running Der Hamburger Donaldist, which is still published. Significantly, von Storch recounts the creation of D.O.N.A.L.D. (Deutche Organisation Nichtkommerzieller Anhanger Des

Lauteren Donaldismus), which he translates as the "German Organization of Non-Commercial

Supporters of Pure Donaldism."309 This group reflects a more organized fan community than what existed in America, and one entirely unmoored from any connection to the media company itself.310 von Storch frames the organization as egalitarian and democratic, citing among the rules that "the membership is open to everybody who can truthfully declare to wholly submit to the Society's statutes, to guarantee the Bill of Donaldistic Rights and to be irreproachable in the

Donaldistic sense. It is, however, not required to be in full possession of one's mental or physical powers or one's civil rights."311 This offers a hint of the dry German humor that pervades D.O.N.A.L.D., which further include various political factions (the Scroogeists are right wing, the Daisyists are feminist, the Barkists are their own segment) and the D.A.D.A.

307 von Storch 7 308 von Storch 9 309 von Storch 10. 310 There certainly were a number of fan clubs and similar organizations in America that operated with authorization from the media producers, notably the Merry Marvel Marching Society, but rarely persisted for long. More recently, Robert Iger's creation of under the auspices of the Walt Disney Company reflects a more top-down, rather than grassroots, effort, though organizations in that vein tend to be broadly portrayed as independent. 311 von Storch 10.

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("Documentation of Anti-Donalistic Agressions"), which might offer a sense of the group's philosophy. There is a degree of scholarship inherent to the group, which von Storch outlines in his sardonic fashion, with a discussion of the various disciplines of Donaldism, though he glosses over his role as the first president of the organization, accusing the various "Presidentes" of being

"flops."312 Of course, the title "Presidente" itself is a pun on the German word for "duck"

("ente"). It is a small glimpse into the organization, accessible to a relatively small American fan audience, but illustrates the deeper interactions that were then occurring.

The divergence between the development of the European fan community and the

American fan community is clarified within the fanzines. Dana and Frank Gabbard mention in an editorial that "[The Europeans] have clubs, fanzines, good relations with the people who do

Disney comics, even a Duck Convention! We have 2 zines, no club, and troubles galore with ol'

Western Printing and Lithograph."313 The American community remained largely disconnected, more scattered collectors than any concerted effort, while the European efforts (anchored in

Hamburg by the Donaldists) had staying power. Efforts were made to develop a more solid community, but rarely possessed a great deal of longevity. The Society of the First Dime, a campus fan group devoted to the collecting of Barks ephemera, was founded at the University of

Wisconsin in the 1960s, though appears to have lasted only a few years.314 While the earliest fanzines made use of official art (The Duckburg Times liberally used traced drawings and even full photocopied pages), the practice ceased as the distribution increased. Old Carl Barks

312 von Storch 12. 313 Dana and Frank Gabbard, "Whither Barksdom: An Editorial," The Duckburg Times 10/11, 26. 314 Danish collector Søren Marsner has attempted to revive the group as recently as 2017, with original founder John Bullis passing on a piece of art that Barks had drawn for the group, though it appears that the group was essentially defunct for nearly fifty years.

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drawings were still included (mostly Calgary Eye-Opener cartoons and contemporary sketches), but anything that might fall under Disney's copyright was studiously avoided. There is no evidence of any legal action actually occurring against either of the fanzines, and it is plausible that Disney was largely unaware of the publications, that topped out at a few hundred subscribers on average, but the sense of fear was real enough for the fans.

European fans appeared to have less issues with copyright. Klaus Spillman notes that "in contrast to the American Disney zines, European Disney fans are allowed to illustrate their mags with all the pics they want."315 It's not entirely clear whether it was the result of looser laws, or being further from the watchful eye of Disney's legal department. What did appear in publications like Der Donaldist was generally limited (the only reprints of previous material were occasional pages that had been cut in the adaptation), though included Donald, Scrooge, and others, particularly on the covers (as mentioned previously, the American covers at times had to resort to silhouettes). Der Donaldist also took a somewhat different tack than the

American publications: while The Barks Collector was heavily focused on the collecting aspects of the fandom, and even The Duckburg Times has some emphasis on the collecting side of things. While Der Donaldist did not impugn collectors outright, the relationship between the fanzine and the collectors was somewhat more complicated; Klaus Spillman notes "the interests of the Donaldists are too multifariously to be called off. But they mainly concentrate on inquiring into the lives of the Duck family, especially with the life of Donald Duck...the native country of Disney comics is the United States, but the heart of Duckburg is to be found in

315 Klaus Spillman, "Barks in Germany & Scandanavia," The Duckburg Times 10/11, 10.

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Europe."316 The European fans expanded the canon of the Duck comics in small, personal ways.

There was a greater emphasis answering questions about the world: the weight of a solid gold meteor, the mapping of Duckburg, the fleshing out of the interior lives of the Ducks. Carl Barks still loomed large in the fan consciousness, but the level of adoration for him appears to be somewhat less than for the characters he created.

Another significant American fanzine was The Duckburg Times, the longest-running

American Duck comics-focused fanzine, published intermittently from 1977 to 1992.317 Paul

Anderson started the fanzine when he was a teenager, though it went on a several years hiatus after issue 8. In contrast to The Barks Collector, The Duckburg Times emphasized more creative pursuits, favoring short articles and traced drawings, though developed into more professionalized publication when Frank and Dana Gabbard revived the magazine as editors. It catered to a slightly different audience beyond the collectors, toward an audience that might be more recognized as modern fans, and tended to include more illustrations and a greater emphasis on the non-Barks elements of Disney. Carl Barks certainly appears often, but there is an emphasis on more obscure creators and works, including a piece on Super Goof (one of Western

Publishing's late period publications, a parody of the ascendant superhero comics) that lamented the loss of the character with the appearance of Gladstone Publishing. The content was not terrifically different from what was published in The Barks Collector, other than having a wider focus on Disney fan culture than Carl Barks specifically, and it appears that the editors were on

316 Spillman, 10. 317 There is some disagreement with which of the fanzines counts as the “longest-running”, even among the fans themselves. The Duckburg Times was published over a longer period, but was inconsistent in its schedule, whereas The Barks Collector was a much more consistent publications, producing more issues over a shorter period. This is further complicated by occasional double-issues, which generally (but not always) were given two numbers in sequence.

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generally friendly terms, with The Barks Collector even printing advertisements for The

Duckburg Times in the early 1980s. The Duckburg Times represents an alternative fan performance, more in line with what fan studies would examine. Readers of the Times seem more inclined to engage with the significance of the stories themselves, locating meaning in the narratives and discussing the meanings intended by Carl Barks. There are some discussions of collecting, but the emphasis is more on how the texts are received, and how things are evolving, including a special issue is devoted to the arrival of the television series Ducktales, which drew heavily from Barks's style and stories.

The fanzines did operate from a position of uncertainty. As mentioned above, Disney's litigiousness was well-known by the American fan community, who took steps to avoid wrangling with the company. This is not to say that Disney necessarily would have pursued legal action, or would have even noticed the use of their images in an obscure fanzine, but the idea that it was a possibility speaks to the at times antagonistic view of the fan community to The

Walt Disney Company. In one instance, The Duckburg Times sought to celebrate Barks's birthday for the March 1981 issue, and found humor within the situation. The cover itself features a massive birthday cake, to accommodate the 80 candles in honor of Barks's 80th birthday, the massive conflagration of candle flames casting the gathered celebrants within shadow. This choice was intentional; the interior page explains that "we wanted all of Carl

Barks' friends to father around the gigantic birthday cakes on the cover, but because of WDP's position on reproducing any of their copyrighted characters, we were forced to recruit other ducks to pose for the picture."318 The characters featured here (and nominally the ones appearing

318 Dana and Frank Gabbard, Duckburg Times #10/11, 1.

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in shadow on the cover) are not Barks's famous ducks, but rather are costumed pretenders, the

Mallard family, who differ quite distinctly from Disney's Ducks in appearance; one even appears to be a reference to , christened "Howard du Mallard." It concludes with a tongue-in-cheek "we are sorry for this bit of deception but we thought the cover would be remiss without at least some semblance of Carl Barks' most famous characters."319 This speaks to the ways in which the fan community skirted the question of copyright, but it captures something deeper. The idea that Ducks were the creation of Barks, and not truly the property of Disney, informs the understanding of the characters and comics by American fans. Barks was more than just a good artist to these readers, but functioned as a creator in his own right perhaps even eclipsing the work of Walt Disney.

These were not the only fanzines devoted to the Ducks; Bruce Hamilton had involvement with a group called "The Society of the First Dime" in mid-1960s at University of Wisconsin, apparently producing pamphlets, although it does not appear that any have been archived yet.320

Another early fanzine, Vacation in Duckburg, edited by Dan Lewonczyk and Dave Gulliksen, lasted two issues in 1971, serving as an in-depth examination of Barks's work and another early effort to catalogue early publications. It did feature a surprising long list of contributors of ten, and contained an in-depth exploration of the development of the Barksian style. Similarly, Pat

Hanifin's The Duck Hunter lasted two issues in the mid-1990s, emphasizing the collecting aspects of the fandom, particularly figurines and other memorabilia. Dan McIntyre's Barksburg

319 Dana and Frank Gabbard, Duckburg Times #10/11, 1. 320 There are few references to the group itself; Danish collector Søren Marsner wrote a short piece discussing a drawing that Barks had gifted to the group in 1968, and film historian David Bordewell mentions the group as counting cult director Terry Zwigoff among its members in the context of the late-1960s counterculture of Madison. (http://www.carlbarkscomicbookart.dk/index.asp?loadContent=231137) (http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2018/02/12/did-the-60s-ever-really-end-mad-city-keeps-the-faith/)

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appears to have only had a single issue in 1982, though references in other publications indicate that there may have been additional issues. There were other publications that focused more broadly on Disney (E-Ticket and Disneyana were both long-lived fan publications) that occasionally featured interviews or other relevant material for fans of the comics. However, the

American fan communities around the Donald Duck comics were typically tight-knit and limited in scope, focused on the work of Carl Barks (and to a lesser extent Floyd Gottfredson), divided into two distinct subgroups: more traditional fans and the collectors.

This is not to say the categories are mutually exclusive, but there are distinctions between the two types of fans. Fan studies as a field is primarily concerned with the interactions and behaviors of fans at large: what do they read? What do they write (fan fiction and theorycrafting, for instance)? Who determines the larger discussions of how fans interact with each other and the media that they consume. Collecting is often understood as an expression of fan behavior, but it is somewhat more complicated than being a facet. A collector might not consider themselves a fan in the traditional sense, treating the act of collecting as a hobby or even a financial investment, rather than more purely an expression of enjoying a particular property.321

Comics by their nature are easy to collect: they are disparate products, relatively cheap, easy to access, and nominally disposable. For many, a given issue speaks to a moment in time for the life of a fan, as well as the characters featured therein. This aspect is a key to their appeal to collectors; comics are typically quite cheaply produced, not meant to survive in the long term as

321 "it is necessary to preserve the distinction between collector and fan. Collecting is only one activity, certainly a widespread one, among numerous behaviors of the fan. Practically all fans are collectors, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Personal forms of investment that exceed simple accumulation can be observed among fans." Gabillet 256.

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many other forms of media are, which creates a value for the objects that survive. For fan collectors, the comics function as status symbols, with rare issues prized objects to be shown off to fellow collectors in the fashion of a piece of art.322 Collected comics are not meant for reading, generally speaking, but for possessing; there echoes Uncle Scrooge's militant skin- flintedness in this sort of fan behavior. This seems indicative of the American Duck fandom, and the first wave of comic fans, that tends to be more focused on the collecting aspects than the works themselves. Even Hamilton and Cochran work within this space, with the most of the publications being pitched as collector's items (The Fine Art of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and

The Carl Barks Library were both intended as limited edition works, aimed at a relatively niche audience). Notably, the European Donaldists stood in general opposition to the making a profit off the comics.323

There are fissures within comics fandom that should be understood. Broadly speaking, any major publisher (DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse) has its share of diehard fans, who favor that company's offerings over others. Furthermore, there are fans who only consume specific characters (Batman or the ), or even favor specific authors (, Grant

Morrison) to the exclusion of many others. In discussing the various Donald Duck comics here, it is best to understand the readership through a different lens (although there are many readers who prefer Carl Barks to Don Rosa, or Uncle Scrooge to Donald Duck), and approach the issue

322 It should be kept in mind that there are individuals who see comic collecting as an investment regardless of any interest in the characters or stories; the focus here is firmly on the fans in the more traditional sense, though the possible modes of fannish behavior are quite expansive. 323 The "Non-Commercial of the "German Organization of Non-Commercial Supporters of Pure Donaldism" is a key descriptor of the organization and its focus, though there are certainly German collectors as well.

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through the perspective of how fan behaviors manifest. Richard Reynolds seminal work on the development of comics fandom stated that

adult superhero readership (a sub-section of adult comic readership as a whole) has come

to identity itself with a small and very cohesive subculture. Specialist comic book

retailers, 'marts' and full-scale conventions are the outward signs of this cohesion, as is

the highly-organized marketplace for buying, selling and collecting old comics. If

connoisseurship and value to the collector alone gave access to the privileged world of

high culture, superhero comics would have been there long ago.324

The frictions between high and low culture were always on display within comics fandom, particularly with the advent of collecting. While essentially anyone can read comics, collecting is an elite activity. It implies a degree of either longevity or wealth, and often both. You are either a reader who got in on the ground floor, acquiring the comics before they were popular, and protecting your collection in the years since, or you possess sufficient wealth to build your collection later. It is a warped form of conspicuous consumption: a comic book collection is most often meant to be shown off (particularly to other collectors), rather than actually read (and thus consumed). These fans are not necessarily opposed to one another, though some philosophical frictions can occur. It does speak to one of the key issues of the readership of the

Disney comics in the mid-century, however: the accessibility of old stories, and the effect that had on growing the readership.

324 Richard Reynolds, Superheroes: A Modern Mythology (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1992), 7.

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Readers of Disney Comics were increasingly restricted to reprints of old stories; some welcomed a chance to read classic Barks stories that might have been out of print, but it served to blunt the entry of new readers in a moment when comics were taking off in America. In a moment when Marvel and DC were developing new styles of storytelling and building upon the shared universes of their characters, Western Publishing was winding down production.

Whereas Marvel and DC made celebrities out of their writers and artists, Western continued policies that kept their employees from receiving proper credit for the work that was done.

While the Batman television series and an animated Spider-Man brought new fans to the comics, Disney was winding down its production of the animated shorts that had made

Donald a star, with the studio facing extended doldrums after the death of Walt Disney in 1965.

The financial troubles of Disney Studios in the period seem largely unrelated to the issues faced by Western, beyond each organization failing to adapt to a changing market, but the lack of fresh content, of new fans entering the community, meant that such a community would only shrink with time.

Of course, this comparison is not flawless. EC Comics, publisher of titles like Tales

From The Crypt and , had been the focal point of the outrage that created the

Comics Code, yet retained (and perhaps even grew) a readership though the publication of collections and trade paperbacks, as well as growing a new audience through Mad Magazine.

The old stories were continuously introduced to new generations, first through the Ballantine

Books black-and-white paperback collections starting in 1964 (variously titled Tales of the

Incredible, Tales From The Crypt, The Vault of Horror, The Autumn People, and Tomorrow

Midnight), a Nostalgia Press collection (The EC Horror Library) in 1971, and even a dozen

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reprints of the originals in comic book format from East Coast Comix from 1973 to 1975.325 The restrictions of the Comics Code did not apply to these reprints, and they served to make the comics more accessible than they would have been otherwise. Comics collecting had begun in the period, as hobbyists sought to complete collections of comics they recalled from their youths, which meant that incoming readers might have a harder time finding the originals (at least the ones that survived). Marvel and DC also engaged in similar efforts, focused on "classic" stories over reprinting complete runs of their characters. Crucially, Western Publishing did not, instead mixing in reprints of old stories within their newer works, typically without labeling them as such. The choice to not develop a large-scale reprint effort meant that readers would have a difficult time locating back issues; comic publishers often justified the practice of reprints with the idea that readers naturally aged out of comics, reprinting the same stories (sometimes in altered format) over the course of several years. The Duck Comics lacked much in the way of continuity during the Western/Dell years, so the lack of reprints might have been less of an issue going in, but it nevertheless meant that specific stories would be inaccessible to new audiences.

Many letters to the Gladstone Comics editors would request specific stories, lamenting that they had been inaccessible for decades, and the collections appearing starting in the 1970s tended to be more arbitrarily chosen, since there was little in the way of sales figures or even collective consensus on what the important stories were.

Further fan behaviors can be charted from the fanzines. The Disney fandom in the early

1980s was robust enough to support at least two conventions. The first was Barks Con '82, held

325 Fred von Bernewitz and Grant Geissman. Tales of Terror!: The EC Companion (Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2001), 208-211.

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in Norfolk, in June 1982, run by The Barks Collector editor John Nichols. It appears to have been collector and dealer-centric: the ad mentions that "admission is $10 for all events

Saturday and Sunday. Tables are $30 for Saturday or $40 for both Saturday and Sunday...there will be Barks art, comics, slide shows, and special presentations galore."326 The cost of the tables (nominally for the dealers to demonstrate their wares) is relatively low for a convention, especially since the tables typically include a free pass or two for the vendor, and reflects an emphasis on the sale and trade of comics, much like many other early comics conventions.

There are no guests of honor (Carl Barks had only recently entered the convention circuit, and even then, primarily on the West Coast) or specific panels mentioned in the ads, "a truly national convention, with Barks fans from all around the country gathering to talk Ducks!"327

Information on attendance is a bit sparse, but it did inspire second convention with Barks Con

West, held in Oakland, California in March 1983. There is no evidence of further Barks-centric conventions; it is likely that these were singular events that simply did not have the support, financial or otherwise, and faded away like many other period conventions. There were certainly meet-ups in other comics conventions and similar events, but the fandom in America simply was not large enough to support even a relatively small-scale annual convention.

The fan community that existed around the Duck comics were relatively small and insular by the mid-1980s.328 The Barks Collector and The Duckburg Times, along with other fanzines, became sites for social interactions between fans, to converse in a public fashion.

326 Nichol 33. 327 Nichol, The Barks Collector No 19, 8. 328 Bausert claims that Duckburg Times had a circulation of roughly 1,000, and that John Nichols had a similar number of subscribers for The Barks Collector, in 1982. (Bausert, No. 21, 22)

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Significantly, these were spaces of transnational social interactions, and it created awareness of events on both sides of the Atlantic for both fan communities. These exchanges would largely be subsumed by the arrival of the internet, which effectively brought an end to the golden age of fanzines, though sporadic efforts continued to produce Ducks-centric fan publications. The

1980s represents the height of the Ducks fandom in America, at least after the collapse of the comics readership in the 1960s, and it seemed poised to achieve lasting success. The fandom, while relatively small, remained connected through the fanzines, Carl Barks remained a surprisingly active octogenarian, even as the comics (or at least their reprints) began to dry up with the ultimate departure of Western Publishing from the comics industry.

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Chapter 8. “Always Another Rainbow": Fans, Publishing, and the Return(s) of Donald

Duck

Bruce Hamilton and entered the comics publishing world at the end of an era. Western Publishing, once the best-selling comics producer in America, was fading into obscurity, reduced to reprinting old stories from their glory days when they had been partnered with Dell Comics. Best known for licensed work and funny animal stories, the comics were a key point of comics history, increasingly obscured by the rise of superheroes, those same licensed characters lapsed in the face of encroaching financial woes. Among these works were the various Disney comics, most notably the works of Carl Barks, which soon become collector's items, with many stories not having been reprinted since their initial publication. There was a demand for the original stories, especially as prices began to rise on the old comics due to the rise of comics speculation in the 1980s.

Hamilton and Cochran formed Another Rainbow as a venture to preserve the work of

Carl Barks, to reprint his one-of-kind paintings and out of print back issues for fans and collectors. Russ Cochran presents a unique case within the world of fans, having been personally responsible for the reprints of EC Comics during the 1970s. He was a tenured professor of physics at Drake University who had begun visiting conventions during academic conferences, eventually making the acquaintance of William Gaines, the long-time publisher of

EC.329 Cochran offers a sense of what drives a fan; he gave up his university post to become a full-time publisher, continuing to work in the field to present day. The turning point seems to

329 Von Bernewitz and Geissman, Tales of Terror!, 284.

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have been a visit to the EC offices, where he was given access to the vault of old art (Gaines was quite fastidious in holding on to the original art for the comics). Cochran remarks “this was the first original EC art I had ever seen. I was immediately struck by how big it was…so I thought

‘Boy, wouldn’t other EC fans love to see it this size?’”330 This instinct speaks to the power of fandom, the desire to share that is common across groups and cultures. Cochran, like Don Rosa a few years later, choose to pursue a life of doing what he most enjoyed, and his work on EC would eventually lead to the working on the Duck comics.

These comics began to include letters columns, something common to many superhero titles, but new to the Duck comics readers.331 What developed was something more: a nascent fandom, largely existing in the back tables of conventions and a handful of academics, blossomed over the next several years. Fanzines (The Barks Collector, The Duckburg Times) began to be produced, first as spaces for the trading of collections and publication information, but soon became spaces of social interaction, including the first transnational ties to the much more established German Donald Duck fan community. A small but vibrant community arose in the years before the internet made such a thing commonplace, and it had a greater effect still: the creation of new Duck stories (under the Gladstone Comics imprint), written and drawn by fans, notably Don Rosa, whose work formalized the Barks canon. Another Rainbow reflected a larger

330 Ibid., 279. 331 Dan Cunningham explains the origin of the names "So devoted to the work of Carl Barks were [Hamilton and Cochran], that their company name was based on the title of an early Barks oil painting of a young Scrooge McDuck: Always Another Rainbow. The imprint for their Walt Disney comic book license would bear a similar tribute: Gladstone Comics was named after the Barks-created cousin of Donald Duck with perpetual good luck: Gladstone Gander." Cunningham, "The Disney Comics Story (1990-1993): Prologue"

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shift in the boundaries between fan and creator, and informed the development of such relationships in the decades to come.

The decline of Disney comics in America was precipitous and unexpected. It puts doubt on the narrative of Disney as some all-knowing corporate entity constantly seeking out new venues for its products. Disney itself was weathering a rough decade, declining after the death of

Walt Disney in 1966 and a string of box office disappointments that would continue into the

1980s. Disney nearly fell out of the comics business in a moment when the industry at large was undergoing a resurgence. A falling out between Western Publishing and Dell Comics disrupted the flow of comics. Issues with distribution exacerbated problems for both companies, with the loss of newsstand space and increasing competition from Marvel and DC. That rise of superheroes, which had displaced by Disney at the top of the charts, was accelerated by existing demographic trends, as the young readers increasingly looked to the more nuanced, real-world comics. The retirement of Carl Barks in 1966 marked the end of an era for the comics, though his work had already been compromised years before his retirement. Walt Disney's death in the same year marked decades decline in the company's fortune.

It was a slow death. Western possessed a backlog of material; the last new Carl Barks script was published in 1973, a full seven years after his retirement. Reprints of the old stories

(including authors other than Barks) continued under the Gold Key imprint until 1984, though the stories appear to have been arbitrarily chosen.332 The haphazard choices of stories were of little concern to the publisher, echoing a decades-old idea that reprinting old stories was fine,

332 Ault, Conversations, xxx

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since kids quickly outgrew the comics, and any tertiary readers (serviceman, for instance) would be content with whatever cheap material was made available. There was no real collectors' market for comic books at the time: the first Comic-Con was held in 1970, and the development of the direct market for comics in the mid-1970s saw the development of the comic book store, allowing for a more active collector community. While the mainstream Marvel and

DC titles tended to dominate the collector community, there was a sizeable segment that found interest in the old Disney comics, which Carl Barks as a focal point.

There was greater competition in the American market as well; while the Comics Code

(which Dell and Western had simply ignored) hurt the sales of comics starting in the mid-1950s, the restrictions it entailed eventually resulted in a flowering of creativity. Dell Comics, along with other "funny animal comics" publishers like , quickly filled the void left by the closing of EC Comics and other smaller publishers, though the genre proved quick to evolve.

DC Comics began reviving defunct superheroes from a decade earlier, beginning with , which served to breathe new life into their output, building upon the pre-existing popularity of

Batman, Superman, and . took a little longer to find its footing, experimenting with horror and romance in the 1950s before creating a new line of superheroes, beginning with the in 1962. Marvel grew quickly, fostering a talented bench of their own creators, crowding out non-superhero comics on American newsstands. Donald Duck remained kid's stuff, the domain of children, while a reader of Superman might graduate to the more serious or Spider-Man; there were far more opportunities for growing the readership with superheroes than there were with funny animals, of creating deeper narratives within the comics. Funny animals did continue to develop and challenge readers, with

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newspaper comics in particular continuing to evolve and adapt (Walt Kelly's Pogo was exemplar of the fine work being done in the period), but the comic books lacked the vitality of their peers.

Another comparison could be found in the personage of Carl Barks, who was effectively retired by the time his fans tracked him down. While perfectly willing to correspond with fans and even entertain those pilgrims that sought him out. Barks was unfailingly polite and pleasant, but lacked a certain vitality that someone like Stan Lee possessed. Lee, for his part, positioned himself as a sort of cultural ambassador for not just his own comics (though Spider-Man, The

Hulk, and The Fantastic Four loomed large in the 1960s zeitgeist) but for superhero comics at large. He appeared on college campuses to give lectures, used the back page of Mavel's comics as a ur-, responding to fan letters and excitedly previewing upcoming storylines and characters. Lee was hardly the only comic book figure of the period to be a figure in the mind of the general public (though his outsize persona outshone that of his peers), but serves as a useful example of one of the ways that comics were popularized to a growing audience. Stan Lee played a similar role to the one that Walt Disney had played in the 1950s, as a spokesman for a brand that could speak to the audience from the perspective of a creator, with all of the excitement that that entails. I have discussed the role of Stan Lee in the development of the

Marvel brand in "True Believers: Stan Lee and the Legitimization of the Comics Fan

Community," but the key point here is that Disney comics lacked any figurehead on the level of

Lee.333 The role creators have in growing fan communities should not be overlooked, and Barks

333 Peter Cullen Bryan, "True Believers: Stan Lee and the Legitimization of the Comics Fan Community." The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Special Issue, Fall 2016.

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did play a role in this own right, though not to the degree that Lee did. The oil portraits served to keep some interest alive, though perhaps contributed also to the rise of the collector subculture.

Barks's popularity was owed in large part to the nascent fan community. Western

Publishing's policy was to leave the names of creators off of their various comic properties, in the grand tradition of dime novels and juvenile literature. The justification was that the children should feel that these stories were being authored by Walt Disney himself, much as Nancy Drew novels were credited to Carolyn Keene. Of course, the actual reasons were likely more pragmatic; it was, after all, cheaper to pay creators when they could be easily and anonymously replaced. Carl Barks was not the only writer and artist employed on the Disney comics, nor was he only the former Disney animator, but he was prolific in his output, credited with some seven hundred stories (as artist, writer, and often both) across a roughly thirty-year career. Quantity alone does not explain this devotion to Barks; his work was recognizable enough that he acquired a reputation as "The Good Duck Artist" even before his identity was uncovered by a pair of diligent fans.

The identification of Carl Barks is a crucial part of the fanlore, and the subject of some mild disagreement. Malcolm Willits’s tale of locating Carl Barks speaks to the tenacity of the

American fan community in the early period. Willits was a fan of comics very nearly from the beginning, remarking of Barks's comics that "here was something new in a children's comic book

- character's almost adult-like in their demeanor with artwork that could grace National

Geographic."334 There was a recognition of Barks and his talents from the beginning, with

334 Malcolm Willits, "How I Breached the Barks Blockade!", Duckburg Times #10/11, 4/9

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Willits recognizing a brief hiatus in 1950 that had become an aspect of the lore around "The

Good Duck Artist" among the fans. Willits, working as an Army secretary in 1957, hit upon the idea of trying to suss out Barks's identity after previous, more direct correspondence had failed.

Having previously worked on a science fiction fanzine that had since folded, he "wrote to the

Disney studio informing that I'd like to do an article for on their Donald Duck .”335 The decision to contact the studio proved fortuitous, as Dell and Western tended to obscure the identities of their artists, Barks in particular.336

With the address and identity of Barks in hand, Willits became overwhelmed by his work, and kept the information to himself, for over two years. Malcolm Willits struck up a correspondence with fellow Barks fan John Spicer, using the information to help him to "have the honor of being the first fan to write [Barks]," writing to Barks himself a few weeks after.337

John Spicer would subsequently be "the first of many fans to make a personal Mecca of the

Barks' address," with Willits himself visiting several times, and conducting the first interview with Barks that helped to unmask him to the larger fan community.338 These actions were not the start of the Barks fan community; "The Good Duck Artist" was already a figure of myth by the time that Willits wrote his letter, and his correspondence with John Spicer clearly marked both as fans. There were certainly other collectors at this point (The Society of the First Dime was active by 1962), but the creation of a community came in this moment with these communications. Barks provided a locus for the readers of the Duck comics, and it is no

335 Willits, “Barks Blockade!.” 5. 336 Ibid., 5. 337 Ibid., 5-6. 338 Ibid., 7.

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accident that Willits references Barks's home as a Mecca, a site for fan pilgrimage in the same way that Monument Valley might be for fans of John Ford Westerns. Barks, for his part, seems to have been quite accommodating of fans, though some frictions developed over time.

This enduring popularity provided a valuable sideline for the retired Barks; when he was asked to paint a portrait for a fan, based on the old comics. One lead to another, until 1976, when Disney put a stop to it. Gare Barks explains that "Disney had good reasons for it...somebody had made an illegal reproduction of one of Carl's paintings and sold it, and that was too much for Disney, because that would have kept happening."339 Disney quietly allowed

Barks to resume his painting a few years later, and even signed off on a coffee table book of the

Barks portraits. It is possible that the executives deep within the company recognized the growing comics boom, and saw the possibilities offered in reviving the old licenses, content to allow the fans to explore those possibilities.

Published by Another Rainbow, The Fine Art of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck, was designed as a limited edition, a collector's item, a print run of 1,875 books, each apparently signed by Carl Barks himself. These were a niche product for a niche audience, but performed a valuable service in the pre-internet era, allowing the scattered fans of Carl Barks (who might have been lucky to encounter one of his fabled portraits at a convention) a chance to enjoy the continued production of a favored creator. For the community, the books were a big hit, selling out quickly, and served to help keep alive the fandom of Barks in a moment when his comics were falling out of publication and easy access. Crucially, it had a secondary effect, introducing

339 Stryz, Conversations, 118

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Bruce Hamilton and Russ Cochran to the attention of the Walt Disney Company. John Clark, one of their early editors, explains that “Disney was so impressed with that book that Hamilton and Cochran were able to get a license to produce a series of lithographs based upon oil paintings newly commissioned from Barks.”340 As mentioned previously, there are indications that

Hamilton might have been responsible for Disney loosening their grip on the Ducks, but the return of Barks to painting signaled a career resurgence for the octogenarian artist. Another

Rainbow began releasing the collected, chronological, complete works of Carl Barks; there had been other releases and reprints of the classic Barks over the years, but this effort was the most extensive undertaken, and predated even the efforts of Marvel and DC to release complete collections of their classic superheroes. Still, the Disney connection presented even greater possibilities.

The idea that Gladstone ended some extended the drought of Disney comics in America is inaccurate. There was never a full break in the publication of the Duck comics; Western's break with Dell had signaled a dearth of new material, with reprints of old comics occurring under the Gold Key imprint, but publication continued. These reprints included advertisements, rare in the initial print runs, aimed at diffuse audiences (an ad for Saturday morning cartoons might run next to one for mail-order jewelry for soldiers), but not given a great deal of care or consideration. Some scholars took this mean that Disney comics had entirely ceased publication

(Roger Ash begins with "by 1985, Disney comics had been missing from American comic racks for six years"), but there was no new material on American newsstands.341 Hamilton and

340 Ash, "Gander," 35 341 Ash, "Gander," 35

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Cochran saw potential in the format, and saw the potential to bring the classic stories to a new generation of readers. They were able to secure the publishing rights for three years, after

Western finally concluded that the reprints were no longer profitable.

Gladstone's initial efforts focused on the reprinting popular stories, though it occasionally included non-English stories, mixing in longer stories with a smattering of shorts. Erickson explained that he chose stories “recommended by knowledgeable fans (the Dutch Jippes stories, for example), but mostly it was a matter of going through the various foreign magazines we started receiving and ordering proofs of stories that looked good (I couldn’t read them, mind you, so my orders were based just on looking at the pictures)."342 The effort was haphazard, but served to locate new stories for even the most well-read American fan, as well as creating new covers and including special columns, an effort to reach beyond the long-term fans who were content to pay for the hardcover Carl Barks Library editions. Moreover, the comics included new material of interest even to old fans; Dan Cunningham explains that "editors took great care in presenting each issue's content: for the first time in the United States, Disney stories and art were properly credited to the artists, writers and colorists in the format they were originally presented. Thought-provoking text articles often accompanied comic stories, providing context and history on the featured tales.”343 The inclusion of credit for artists and writers was a major coup; the name Carl Barks was had broken through to the mainstream enough that his name appeared on collections, but there were many other artists who had toiled anonymously for years.

The comics often resembled a fanzine, containing additional bits of information and commentary

342 Ash, "Gander," 36. 343 Cunningham,

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that helped illuminate the obscure history of the stories. Geoffrey Blum recounts “new gag covers, chat columns (though I got too fey and literary with mine), background articles about the stories (there I was on more solid ground), vintage Gottfredson strips, and America’s first protracted exposure to the European-produced Disney comics (I think Whitman had trickled out a few European stories in its dying days). We were breaking ground, and everyone, fandom included, was excited.”344 These comics were still niche products; their readership was dwarfed by the numbers for Marvel and DC, but they were generally successful within their space.

Gladstone quickly introduced a letters column ("The Quacker Box) that spoke to the response of the community at large. Donald Duck No. 253 (May 1987) received correspondence that gives a sense of the larger feelings about the Gladstone publications. One fan wrote "it's been great to not only have regular Barks reprints, but also the stories from and

Holland, which are fabulous."345 There was an appreciation for the printing of non-American stories, which had generally never been read (let alone translated into English) for the American audience. There was at least some awareness among fans that non-American authors existed, thanks to The Barks Collector and its ilk, which had served to generate interest in the stories and authors for years prior.346 Another letter commented "I'm sure you'll receive outpourings of gratitude from all over North America for reprinting 'Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold,' but I can hardly refrain from adding mine. No longer is 'Pirate Gold' just a black and white photograph of

344 Ash, "Gander," 41. 345 Donald Duck No. 253, 23. 346 Barks Collector editor John Nichols stated emphatically in 1982 that "we appreciate the opportunity he has given us to show English-speaking Duck fans just what they are missing by not being able to get his stories on this side of the Atlantic...since Western Publishing has not seen fit to print high-quality European-drawn material." Nichols, The Barks Collector 20, 3.

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the original cover."347 This speaks to the significance of what Gladstone was doing, recreating a classic story (Barks's first) as it had been originally read, rather than the black-and-white photocopies (at best) that circulated of the long-ago stories. A story like "Donald Duck Finds

Pirate Gold" might not have been printed in America in over forty years ("Pirate Gold" was a 64- page story, well beyond the roughly 22 pages that the modern comics publishing had standardized), but it was once more available to the public, not as a bootleg or a foreign release, but an official, English language edition.

“The Quacker Box” also served as a space to communicate with fans about editorial decisions. The editors responded to one request for a reprint of a classic Barks comic that "as far as printing an all Barks issue, we'll to that from time to time (as in this very issue). For many technical reasons it is not possible, nor at all desirable, to reprint a replica of an old comic."348

There is a recognition that the collectors' market is a key component of fandom (for instance, an exact replica, even with the Gladstone insignia, would likely have negatively impacted the prices for the reprinted comic), as well as certain economic realities (Western had been reprinting old issues without any apparent issues, legal or otherwise, but did suffer a long decline in sales). The small scale of the operation allowed for exchanges like this; it's unclear how many letters

Gladstone was receiving, and whether there was any editing involved, as there was in other letter's columns.349 What is also striking is the number of letters from children and teenagers;

347 Donald Duck No. 253, 23 348 Donald Duck No. 254, 23 349 The editors comment "amazingly enough, that very story is scheduled for the next issue of Donald Duck...but what's really amazing is that we can dig up real letters when we need to come up with a plug for the next issue." (Donald Duck No. 256, 23). This seems to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the tendency of the letters columns in Marvel and DC comics to occasionally mention villains or side-characters that were scheduled to appear in subsequent releases. Due to the nature of its business model, Gladstone was a little more able to field requests, but it is likely this was simply a snarky reference to mainstream comics of the era.

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several of the columns almost exclusively feature letters from youthful, who tend to focus more on specific stories than the larger concerns. Nevertheless, it reflects that the fandom was once more growing under the auspices of Gladstone, interacting in new ways, and growing out of the relatively insular fan community that had developed.

Another feature in most issues was Geoffrey Blum's "Cross Talk" column. It started life as a news column, but developed into an at-times more scholarly space, briefly discussing topics from Don Rosa's use of mythical monsters to the history of particular Barks stories.350 The plot descriptions of upcoming releases often include small details on publication history, or cuts made to the original stories, introducing readers to aspects of the process they might not have been aware of. On occasion, there would be more expansive pieces, taking a deeper dive into a given character or creator, something that Gladstone comics apart from the more mainstream offerings of the period. These were likely relics of Gladstone's origin as a spinoff of Another Rainbow, where extensive introductions were a matter of course for the premium releases, and it made sense to introduce stories that had originally published in Europe. It further cemented certain similarities to the fanzines as well, reinforcing the ties of fan community, and helped foster the transnational exchange that had become key to the Ducks fan community of the period. Finally, the moment included the hiring of Don Rosa and to write new stories; what was intended as a one-off job soon grew into a career for Rosa, which I will discuss in greater detail in the following chapter. It does stand out that this was an unnecessary expense; Erikson explains that "a book-length Rosa or Van Horn epic didn't sell any more copies than an issue filled with European stories and a Barks reprint. We did new material because I wanted to, or as

350 Blum, Donald Duck No. 258, 24

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I pitched it to Bruce at the time, to give us credibility as more than just a reprint house."351 This effort is part of the appeal of Gladstone and their work, that secure them in the minds of the fan community. It also demonstrates that there was a passionate group of fans to serve as a market for these releases, something that was not lost on the Disney executives.

The rise of Gladstone coincided with another key development. Disney's efforts to enter the lucrative children's cartoon market finally paid off in 1987 with the release of DuckTales.

Drawing from the classic stories of Carl Barks for broad inspiration, the show featured Uncle

Scrooge with Huey, Dewey, and Louie, with Donald departing for the Navy in the pilot episode.

The initial pitch appears to have been to recreate the Barks stories wholesale, appealing as much to the nostalgia of Boomer parents as to the child audiences. LA Times animation critic Charles

Solomon writes "to the Baby Boomers who grew up reading these comics, Barks' Duckburg was as familiar as their hometown, yet as exotic as anything in 'The Arabian Nights.'"352 While the show utilized Barks as a base, it expanded the stories to fill timeslot, and softened Scrooge somewhat from his comics original.353 It was repackaged for a new audience, keeping the same basic shape as the original works, though there were accusations that it was not quite in the spirit of the original (Solomon included). Carl Barks himself seemed appreciative, explaining in an interview with a Swedish fan that "I think [DuckTales] was very excellent, but they couldn't get enough material out of my stories to fill up a half hour, so they had to put in a great deal of fresh

351 Ash, 39 352 Charles Solomon. "The Duck Stops Here..." LA Times. 20 September 1987. 353 Solomon quotes producer Tom Ruzicka as explaining that "Barks was never really consulted although the show was initially based on the concept of doing Scrooge McDuck and the nephews. We discovered that a lot of stuff that made wonderful comics wouldn't translate into the '80s or into animation, so we started evolving new characters and other things to contemporize the show. As we did that, the stories got further and further away from the comics, although a few episodes are lifted right out of them." Solomon, "Duck Stops"

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material which introduced a lot of other characters and a lot of other situations that weren't in my original stories."354 The origins of the decision to do the show are unclear; Disney had produced a few previous shows ( and Gummi Bears) to limited success, as is the decision to utilize the Barksian stories. Production on the series began around the same time that Gladstone revived the comics line, though Another Rainbow had found some success with its prints a few years prior, and there does not appear to have been much coordination. Cunningham remarks

"initially, the Another Rainbow/Gladstone staff had minimal interference from Burbank executives, who were likely pleased with long-dormant profit from U.S. comic books. In turn, the comics likely experienced a bump from the September 1987 debut of DuckTales as a new generation discovered the exploits of the world's richest duck each weekday afternoon."355

DuckTales, for its part, was an instant success; Ron Grover notes "the half-hour weekly cartoon show became Disney's first hit show in syndication...within a few months, it was the top-ranked afternoon kids' show in syndication, having captured nearly 11 percent of the market...by the end of the 1989 season...the show was seen by more than 12 million children."356 For many children, it became their first exposure to the stories of Barks, and helped to solidify the mythos around

Disney's Ducks.

The cultural footprint of DuckTales is significant in its own right, eclipsing the cultural memory of Barks's stories to some extent. That the episodes of DuckTales draw upon the same basic DNA of the Barks stories is notable, effectively repackaging the old narratives for new audiences in a new medium, much in the fashion of Disney's animated offerings. Like the Dell

354 Svane, Conversations, 166-167 355 Cunningham 356 Grover 146

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Comics from the mid-century, the show occupied a major place in the cultural zeitgeist at a specific moment in time, developing a small, dedicated fanbase and a larger awareness that it existed (in DuckTales case, buoyed by a catchy theme song), but the work itself largely faded from the pop cultural landscape. As with Barks, it did not pull its punches; AV Club critic Todd

VanDerWerff explains "Rather than trying to be as kid-friendly as possible, the series made its protagonist an irascible old man. Rather than celebrating the sorts of family-friendly virtues

Disney was associated with, the series was about the awesomeness of unchecked avarice and greed."357 The original stories often cast Scrooge as a borderline antagonist at times; here too,

Scrooge is often the cause of his own troubles, and is not beyond the bad behavior of his various villains. The show was keenly aware of the structure of Scrooge's relationship to his family (the only thing that kept him from falling into pure villainy at times), and expanded on the roles of the characters. Fan blogger Kevin Johnson notes that "DuckTales delved into that relationship between Scrooge and his nephews. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are not annoying brats that find themselves getting into trouble like so many cartoons tend to portray their younger characters.

They are PART of the adventure, characters that Scrooge truly relies on to help. He doesn’t simply want them around; he NEEDS them."358 The appeal of the series was similar to what was offered by the Barks stories, where the nephews were equal partners to the larger adventure.359

The child characters, nominally surrogates for the audience, were allowed to contribute and even fail in their efforts, much as the adult characters. It was also refreshing in comparison to the rest

357 Todd VanDerWerff, "DuckTales Invented a New Animated Wonderland - That Quickly Disappeared" 358 Kevin Johnson, "Childhood Revisted - Ducktales," Total Media Bridge. 359 VanDerWerff concurs, explaining "Scrooge’s trust in is implicit, and at the center of the series is a sense that any of the dangers—from multiple genres—that are thrown at the team will be defeated by the ducks’ ingenuity. This is a series about adults and kids relating to each other, but remaining adults and kids, instead of trying to play at each other’s levels." VanDerWerff, "Animated Wonderland"

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of 1980s animated programming; unlike the majority (, G.I. Joe, He-Man, My Little

Pony) of contemporary cartoons, the series did not exist purely to sell toys (though merchandising tie-ins would follow later in the run).360 The series had surprising longevity for a children's series, reaching 100 episodes by the end of its run (most children’s maxed out at 65 episodes), and continuing to air in syndication for several years after the end of production in 1990. It had a significant impact overseas as well, being the Western animated show broadcast in many former Soviet nations.361

The 2017 revival (also called DuckTales) remains very much in the spirit of the original, though updates the style to the more dynamic, 21st century style of animation. The series more directly references Barks, including Donald among the main cast, and prominently including one of Barks's oil portraits (Always Another Rainbow) in Scrooge's lounge, along with other visual references to the portraits. The series also includes elements of Don Rosa, particularly an emphasis on character history and developing a canon, as well as introducing as-yet unseen characters from the comics (notably, Huey, Dewey, and Louie's parentage is explored in greater detail than even in Rosa's run). The series is still ongoing, and has garnered a significant following since its debut.

Gladstone Comics was not without its issues. Daan Jippes, a Swedish Duck artist and writer, had initially been hired to draw new covers for the reprints of old stories. While the initial efforts went smoothly, issues eventually arose. Jippes explains "it happened way too often

360 VanDerWerff, "Animated Wonderland" 361 in particular has a unique relationship to the show, when the death of the nation's first democratically elected prime minister, József Antall, was announced during the airing of an episode of DuckTales on 12 December 1993. Journalist Dorottya Ócsai coined the phrase "DuckTales Generation" in reference to the experience of the children watching the show that day. Dorottya Ócsai, "A Generation's Political Awakening"

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that ideas were dismissed without proper or constructive criticism, often just for arbitrary reasons. I could only expect financial compensation from those efforts after turning in completed, inked covers. So, all these submitted small masterpieces, for perspective covers that would never see the light of day, became, as far as I was concerned, a waste of my time."362

Gladstone remained a small operation, even as sales grew. The Walt Disney Company, during the early 1990s, sought to bring its various products back under direct control, including the comics, which had not been produced by Disney since the 1930s. In this period, Cunningham notes that "creative notes from a once-quiet Burbank began to show up at the Gladstone offices more frequently: one notorious incident was a note regarding Barks-drawn duck characters looking 'off-model' on the cover of a comic book album, suggesting Studio-approved models in its place."363 There was a general sense of friction, as Disney sought to assume control over the product. The decision to license out the characters for outside publication was more the result of

Walt Disney's disinterest in that aspect of the business than anything else.

Michael Eisner and Frank Wells joined Disney in 1984 and begin a transformation of the company. Disney was still regarded as a theme park company, with the opening of Tokyo

Disney occurring in 1983, control of operations scattered across a dozen small fiefdoms, with comics licensing being small consideration within merchandising, well outside the purview of the higher-ups. James Stewart explains that “Eisner was more interested in reviving Disney’s live- and television divisions, businesses he knew well from his stint at

Paramount.”364 The focus was on more prestigious divisions than merchandising, and comics

362 Ash, 38. 363 Cunningham 364 James Stewart, Disney War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 73.

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were likely considered a sideshow, even within the context of comic book shops and increasingly visible auctions of old superhero comics. Furthermore, efforts to cut staff likely enhanced the positive aspects of contracting the comics production to an outside company like Gladstone;

Stewart notes that “Over one thousand Disney employees lost their jobs during Eisner’s and

Wells’s first year.”365 A key shift was the entry of Disney into the home video market, and

Eisner’s dismissal of concerns about the brand and nostalgia when considering the economic profitability.366 It is unlikely that Eisner would have been directly consulted in 1989, but the approach to the home video market underlines the corporate mentality of Disney that developed under his tenure: Notably, the growth of profits in this period was driven less by various theatrical successes like Three Men and A Baby (1987) and Who Framed (1988), but by theme-park admissions, hotel ownership, and (crucially) the distribution of the old animated classics on home video.367 Keeping the efforts in-house meant a larger share of the profits for Disney, and expanded the integration of the Disney brand.

The exact details behind the decision-making process are murky. , the then recent editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, was brought on as a consultant by Disney executive

Michael Lynton.368 Shooter explains: "Lynton’s Plan B was starting a comic book publishing division at Disney. Disney Comics were being published under license by Gladstone Publishing at that time. Lynton meant to terminate their license and bring Disney’s comic book publishing

365 Stewart, Disney War, 76. 366 Ibid., 92-93. 367 Ibid., 96. 368 Interestingly, this may have been the genesis of Disney's eventual acquisition of Marvel in 2009. Shooter recalls "Lynton was the head of marketing for Disney’s consumer products division (the other two being the film and parks divisions). I don’t recall his exact title, but he was a major cheese in the House of the Mouse. Turned out that Lynton, too, had been interested in acquiring Marvel. He’d tried to talk Disney’s upper management into it, and when that proved to be a no-go, he’d considered making an attempt on his own." Jim Shooter, ""

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in-house."369 The plan was to develop the Disney brand into a comic publishing powerhouse, seeing the possibility for growth in the market following the founding of independent publishers like in 1983, in 1986, and Shooter's own in

1989. It also coincided with a larger effort to bring the Disney empire under the control of the company itself; the period also saw the creation of the chain of Disney Stores under direct control of the company.370 Dan Cunningham posits that "the resurgence in interest of their classic characters and the boom in the comic book market inspired Disney to undertake something they'd always left to others: the company would publish the comic books themselves.

The desire being that all profits could be kept in-house, and editorial control wouldn't receive any creative pushback."371 The independence of the licensees had been a fluke of history, and it seemed to make sense to bring the outlying operations back into the monolith.372 The American market was not the only place where this occurred, with Disney acquiring Italian comic Topolino in 1988, and launching new lines in Latin America and in a related effort. 373 The idea that

Disney endeavors to control all of its properties with an iron glove had been something of a myth throughout much of the company's history, at least as far as comics were concerned, but the corporate culture of the late 1980s dictated otherwise.

369 Shooter, "Disney Adventures" 370 This might also be a reflection of Eisner’s “firm belief that a good executive can run anything,” as outlined by Stewart. Stewart, Disney War, 198. 371 Cunningham, "The Disney Comics Story (1990-1993): Prologue." 372 An alternative explanation might be that Disney’s corporate leadership began to understand the power held in their various properties, including the comics. CEO Michael Eisner wrote in 1995 that “it may not be such an exaggeration to appreciate the role of the American entertainment industry in helping to change history. The Berlin Wall was destroyed not by force of Western arms by the force of Western ideas. And what was the delivery system for those ideas? It has to be admitted that to an important degree it was by American entertainment.” Michael Eisner, “Planetized Entertainment,” New Perspectives Quarterly 12, no. 4 (Fall 1995), 8. Whether this was something recognized at the time, or a matter of hindsight, is unclear, though this line of thinking echoes the same ideas posited by Wanger, Carr, and others, as noted in Chapter Five. 373 Grover, 267.

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In 1989, Gladstone was informed that their license would not be renewed. Gladstone editor-in-chief Bryon Erickson relates that "...our small success with Disney comics had convinced [a vice-president] that there was a market for Disney comics, so Disney had decided to publish the comics themselves...they lost a million and half dollars per year...add to that the million and a half in lost annual Gladstone royalties, and that's a tidy sum to flush down the toilet."374 While Another Rainbow was able to continue publishing its high-end collections, and

Gladstone had a few other properties under its auspices, the publisher suffered grievously from the sudden reversal. Geoffrey Blum wrote in his farewell Cross Talk column that "we at

Gladstone have longed believed that Carl Barks and Floyd Gottredson are the two unquestioned masters of the funny animal comics. We made their work a staple of our books and enjoyed introducing a new generation to the stories we loved as children."375 It was clear that Gladstone amounted to an officially sanctioned fan project; Another Rainbow was a business, but one more concerned with keeping Barks, Gottfredson, and other artists in the public consciousness. It was a labor of love, an expression of fandom writ large, and it served purposes beyond simply celebrating the old artists. Geoffrey Blum speaks to Gladstone Comics as a transnational space:

we also uncovered new talent, and a flock of European artists who had been drawing Disney comics for several decades. After reading through a bushel of Dutch, Danish, and Italian comics, we found a good handful that seemed to demand exposure in America; and an enthusiastic flood of fan mail has proven us right...each man, however firmly grounded in the Disney tradition, has brought the force of his own personality and interests to bear on his comics. That is what made them so good.376

374 Ash, 41. 375 Geoffrey Blum, "Cross Talk" (Uncle $crooge No. 242, April 1990), 57. 376 Blum, 57.

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This period of Gladstone Comics only lasted around three years, but had a deeper impact on the development of the comics than anything in the two decades prior. New creators were brought into the comics, new audiences introduced to the classic stories, even incorporating elements of scholarship into the production.

Disney Comics was an ambitious project from the start. Under the leadership of Len

Wein, the line continued publishing many of the old series like Uncle $crooge and Donald Duck

Adventures (though its numbering restarted from #1, a nod to the burgeoning collector's market of the period) while introducing several new series, particularly ones based on their new properties: Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, TaleSpin, Roger Rabbit, among others. Cunningham notes that "the initial Disney Comics output featured brand new commissioned material, plus

European stories that had never been printed in the U.S., as well as classic content from the

Western Publishing era to round out the books (and satisfy former Gladstone readers)."377 There was at least an awareness that the readership had evolved in the years since Western Publishing, and efforts were made to maintain the overall quality, continuing to print new Don Rosa stories as well as classic Barks, and not taking the readership for granted.378 Disney had a vested interest in keeping the long-time fans on board, though did not appear to entirely understand the wants and needs of the fan community, nor the comics market in general.

Cross-promotion became a larger aspect of the overall project, in line with other Disney efforts of the period. Cunningham explains that "Lynton conceived a U.S. equivalent to Italy's

377 Cunningham, "The Disney Comics Story (1990-1993): Ready to Launch." 378 Interestingly, the seeds for Don Rosa's Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck appear to have been laid during this period at least to some extent. Responding to a fan letter, editor Bob Foster wrote: "we are in the process of doing a duck genealogy book that will include the story of how Huey, Dewey and Louie came to inherit Donald Duck as their uncle." Bob Foster, "Destination: Duckburg," Donald Duck Adventures No. 6, 27.

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wildly popular digest Topolino: Disney Adventures featured articles, puzzles, contests and full- length comic book stories based on properties. There was no mistaking the connection, as early issues of Disney Adventures proudly boasted a banner or stamp touting it as 'The Official Magazine of The Disney Afternoon.'"379 Lynton sought to borrow the format of

Topolino entirely, which further incorporated a smaller , which allowed them to be stocked in supermarkets and other venues. Disney Comics expanded quickly, creating tie-in comics for Disney films (The Little Mermaid), as well as spinning off imprints for more adult fare.380 The issue quickly became the saturation of the comics market; Disney Comics was producing far more than Gladstone ever had, far outstripping demand.381 The various cross- promotions (including tie-ins for and The Rocketeer) fell short as the films underperformed at the box office, and low sales prompted the cancellation of several titles ahead of the publisher's first anniversary.

The dedicated fandom, which had been opposed to the shift from the start, grew even more unhappy. 382 There were efforts to appeal to the fans, but these were often ham-fisted and

379 Cunningham, "The Disney Comics Story (1990-1993): The Disney EXPLOSION!!!" 380 The use of imprints became common in the 1990s as a way to target different consumer demographics. DC's Vertigo line, for instance, often produced darker, more adult horror and fantasy comics, and Marvel's imprint was aimed at fans of and . 381 This is something that was reflected in other Disney endeavors of the period, particularly film. Eisner and Katzenberg maintained a philosophy of boosting production on the back of successful projects: for instance, the success of Oliver and Company (1989) lead to yearly released from Walt Disney Animation Studios until 2006 (which coincided with acquisition of , ensuring a consistent annual output between the studios into present day). This thinking seems to have undergirded the approach to the comics as well. Stewart, Disney War, 109. 382 The fan response was decidedly negative; Duckburg Times editor Dana Gabbard wrote "arrogant presumption of this sort explains why Disney, with no experience publishing comics, could decide not to renew Gladstone's license in the belief that they could more successfully produce and market the comics themselves. Before a single issue of the new Disney Comics line had even been distributed, Disney executives were rumored to be confidently predicting that in a short time they would be competing on an equal footing with industry leaders Marvel and DC... Disney never had a commitment to publishing comics beyond a desire for profit. When it became clear marketing Disney Comics would require more than just publishing the books and hope they sold, it was decided to scrap the line except for the Duck titles." Dana Gabbard, The Duckburg Times No. 24/25, 45.

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ineffective. Dan Cunningham recounts one such effort, involving a map of Duckburg. This was not the first effort to map the city (Ken Bausent had submitted one such map in The Barks

Collector #15), but it nevertheless went awry.383 Cunningham explains that the "problem was that the map pieces were placed in the three titles geared to collectors, yet the map really keyed directly off the animated series DuckTales, not the traditional, Barks-style stories. The promotion may have been a desire to develop that overlap between sales demographics, but it wasn't properly executed, and came across as more youth-driven than collector-minded."384 This speaks to the larger problem of Disney Comics, too expensive to appeal to child audiences, without the attention to detail that collectors and long-time fans demanded, while also stretching their resources too thin in attempting to publish a wide-range of titles.385

Gladstone returned to publishing Disney's comics in late 1993, picking up more or less where they had left off. Russ Cochran left Another Rainbow in after the initial split with Disney in 1989, though Bruce Hamilton remained at the helm. Information on the company's second run is harder to come by; Gladstone retained the license for Donald Duck and other characters until

1998, when the company suffered some degree of financial setback that saw it lose the license once again.386 Dark Horse Comics briefly took over publishing Disney's comics, though this would be short lived, and there would be a true drought of Disney comics starting in the late

383 Ken Bausent, "In Search of Duckburg, Calisota," The Barks Collector No. 15 (October 1980), 5-7. 384 Dan Cunningham, "The Disney Comics Story (1990-1993): The End of the Line," 385 There were other accusations of Disney’s mismanagement in this period, and predictions that the company has expanded too quickly, and had expended too many resources. Writing in 1994, Douglas Gomery explained “the Walt Disney Company seems to be just another overextended media conglomerate. Eisner and Wells cannot seem to effect a long-run turnaround; they have exploited all of the assets in the Disney closet.” Gomery, “Disney’s Business History,” 85 386 It seems plausible that it was the result of the larger collapse within the comics industry, which had the ultimate effect of closing many comic book stores and disrupting the market that existed for some years afterward. Bradford Wright, Comic Book Nation, 283.

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1990s. The Disney comics line was once again revived in 2003 by , led by several Gladstone veterans, including John Clark. Further financial woes of a murky nature eventually lead to the collapse of Gemstone in 2008; subsequently, BOOM Studios and IDW have taken up the Disney licenses. Another Rainbow is effectively defunct beyond a small online store (which does not appear to have been updated since 2012), with Bruce Hamilton's death in 2005 effectively marking the end of an era.

It is unclear whether there is a connection between the Walt Disney Company's takeover of their comics line in 1989 and the collapse of American fan community. Considering that the last issue of The Barks Collector was released in 1990, while the final Duckburg Times appeared in 1992, might speak to the state of the fandom, though could quite as easily be the handful of individuals making personal decisions to cease publication. Disney Comics effectively sapped the momentum that Gladstone had been cultivating, and interviews with veterans emphasize the first run more than the second. The 1990s also saw the departure of many of talents from

Gladstone, both editors and creators, heading for the Danish publisher Gutenberghus, which offered better wages and other perks; it would eventually become Egmont, which continues to publish Disney comics into present day. Demand for the stories appears to have remained steady during the period, with the various collected reprints maintaining steady sales (Fantagraphics began their own collected reprints of Carl Barks stories in 2011, with similar effort for Don Rosa stories beginning the following year), and the ongoing IDW comics have achieved modest success with a relatively small audience. The modern fan community around the comics appears limited at best, more based around Carl Barks than the larger collected works, but it was likely never as robust as the Europeans. Maurice Sendak stated, in reference to Winsor McCay, that

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"America, it seems, still doesn't take its great fantasists all that seriously."387 That might be true of Barks and Rosa as well, and the Ducks in general.

387 Canemaker i.

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Chapter 9: “The King of the Klondike”: Don Rosa and (Re)envisioning the Frontier

Don Rosa differs from Barks in experience and background. Born into a relatively wealthy family of builders, educated at the University of , his drawing was nevertheless self-taught like Barks, whom he had idolized in his youth. The majority of Rosa's writing were sequels or reimaginings of Barks's stories, involving return trips to exotic locales and efforts to solidify the world that Barks had created. In particular, Scrooge's time on the frontier is a major focus of Rosa's work, be it the Old West or the Klondike. Rosa explains his methodology “I constructed a list of every ‘fact’ about Scrooge’s youth that was ever revealed in a Barks tale, no matter how minute or obscurely buried morsel of history may have been. Next, I assembled these ‘facts’ into a timeline, mixing in actual historical events and people to give it an authentic feel."388 Rosa's West, as an extension of Bark's, is not a wild space of high noon showdowns and bank robberies, but rather the birthplace of modern capitalism. It is no accident that Scrooge, an idealized symbol of the promise of twentieth century capitalism, makes his fortune there, and thus his identity. Rosa's reinterpretation of the character's history serves to reconstruct the West that was: Scrooge becomes a Zelig-style figure, present at a great many major historical moments, though nevertheless on the fringe, never entering the grand stage of history. These stories mixed so-called "Barksian Facts" with real historical research to create a fuller picture of the life Scrooge had lived. Rosa takes the moments laid out by Barks to their logical conclusion, while emphasizing the gritty realities of frontier life. These stories deconstructed the mythology

388 Rosa, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck (Timonium, MD: Gemstone Publishing. 2005), 70.

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of the West, locating the real-life individuals and portraying the events as they would have happened (albeit with a comical touch).

The elements of Scrooge’s character formed the starting point for Rosa. Barks’s retirement signaled a decline in sales of Disney comic in the United States, as Marvel and DC brought superheroes into the mainstream, with the comics being largely out-of-print by the late

1970, and the Barks classics had become collector’s items for the small, yet dedicated, fanbase. Hoping to bring the classic stories to new audiences, Bruce Hamilton and Russ

Cochran founded a company, Another Rainbow Publishing, with the express purpose of reprinting the stories. When discussion turned to the possibility of creating new stories, rumors spread through the tight-knit fan community, catching the attention of a mild-mannered builder and comic hobbyist in Kentucky. Rosa immediately wrote the editor that he was the only

American who was born the write and draw a Scrooge McDuck adventure, and jumped at the opportunity to pen a story, explaining “I said, ‘I was the only American who was born to write and draw Uncle Scrooge comics, it was my manifest destiny.’...I found myself writing and drawing one Uncle Scrooge adventure, which I'd dreamt of since I was a child."389 “” (1987) featured Scrooge making a trip to South America, a spiritual retread of “Lost in the Andes,” intended by Rosa to be a one-off effort. However, the overwhelming response to the story quickly prompted Rosa to retire from his family’s trade, and begin to write and draw the comics full time.

389 Don Rosa, Interview by Fieval A. Elliott.

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If Barks’s work represented the traditional travel narrative drawn into a graphic narrative,

Rosa’s work represented something deeper. Rosa’s work still functions as a travel narrative, but it was one that travels through Barks’s chronology and geography, rather than the world itself. Rosa’s first steps were slow and tentative; he revisited “Lost in the Andes” more directly with “The Return to Plain Awful,” (1989) written as a tribute for the 40th anniversary of the original. The adventure in this case largely follows the original, with the addition of Uncle

Scrooge and his rival Flintheart Glomgold enlivening the proceedings. Within the story, Rosa resoundingly echoes Barks with another grand panorama overlooking the lost city, one which places his own art as an evolution of Barks’s style, but Rosa most significant contribution would be in his stories and characterizations. Diana Green notes that "Rosa's palette is specific to mood, location, and era...Rosa's use of nuanced coloring and more muted tones in his work differs from that of many funny-animal books; by contrast, Carl Barks, Rosa's predecessor in duck narratives, tended to use flat colors. While some of this may be attributed to advances in printing techniques, it also reflects a stylistic difference."390 He took a special interest in Uncle

Scrooge; with “The Return to Plain Awful” (and “Son of the Sun” before it), he placed Scrooge within the historical canon of Duck adventures, even into stories written before Scrooge’s integration into the cast.

Rosa explained in his introduction to “Son of the Sun” that "I want to take everything

Barks wrote and it into a workable timeline. My original dream was to become the new

Carl Barks. I wanted to write, draw, and letter all my own stories. People tell me that my pencils

390 Diana Green. "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck," in Critical Survey of Graphic Novels, Vol. 2 (Ipswich, MA: Salem Press. 2012), 481.

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look just like Barks, but my inks are pure Rosa, and I can't letter properly! So, I'll have to settle for being Don Rosa."391 Rosa closely matched Barks style in drawing and storytelling, building upon the world that Barks had crafted over his career. He knew the stories that Barks told as well as any fan, and took great care in assembling the timeline that made the backbone of Life and Times, drawing from the old stories themselves, notes, scripts, even the course of history itself. For him, it was a work of love, a paean to the many hours of joy he'd had reading these stories as a youth. Moreover, it would serve to reintroduce audiences to those stories he so loved; Diana Green explains that "by redefining the genre beginning with his first duck story in

1985, Rosa rekindled interest in funny-animal narratives. His redefinition was, however, quite faithful to the tone of the stories that inspired him. His work is seen as on par with, if not eclipsing, the masters of the form from the 1950's and 1960's."392 From there, Rosa began to chart the personal history of Uncle Scrooge, following the basic markers laid down by Carl

Barks, elaborating on the basic outlines with his own in-depth research, that would eventually be dubbed The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck in its collected twelve-issue format, with a dozen other side stories filling in gaps and references.

Rosa’s research often proved an adventure in itself; he explains “as with all these stories of Scrooge’s early years, I don’t begin writing until I’ve done extensive research into history and geography.”393 His efforts were not merely re-reading old the Barks stories for context and clues as to Scrooge’s origins, but involved trying to square the timeline with real life places and events. Rosa explains his methodology “I constructed a list of every ‘fact’ about Scrooge’s

391 Rosa, U$ 219, 392 Green, 482. 393 Rosa, 131.

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youth that was ever revealed in a Barks tale, no matter how minute or obscurely buried morsel of history may have been. Next, I assembled these ‘facts’ into a timeline, mixing in actual historical events and people to give it an authentic feel."394 He refined his timeline, speaking to other Duck fans across the world, carefully researching the history of the later 19th century, when the young Scrooge was having adventures across the globe. Rosa even went straight to the source: “I sent my original detailed outline of this entire series...to Carl Barks, who was nice enough to check over its authenticity to his work...I was pleased that, apart from a few of his suggestions which I then followed, his letters of reply indicated his apparent satisfaction.”395 The writing process was a journey in itself; Rosa, like Barks, never ventured far from the comfort of his study, but traveled further than his idol, through the stories of his youth on an adventure of a lifetime.

Rosa emphasized the idea of Scrooge as a frontiersman, both at his old age and in his youth. The character functions in the manner of a Teddy Roosevelt: a man equally at home on the frontier and in the hustle and bustle of city life, equally able to exist in the primitive wilds and the modern cityscape (it was part of the intent of Rosa having Roosevelt cameo three times in the course of the comics, something that Barks had never done). Rosa explains specifically that “my research told me of another famous American (Teddy Roosevelt) who was in the

Montana/Dakota Territory at the same tune, I knew it would be an absolute natural to make him one of Scrooge’s mentors and have him teach Scrooge the true values of life!”396 Scrooge's connection to nature reflects his status as the self-made richest duck in the world: his fortunes

394 Rosa.,70. 395 Rosa, 117. 396 Rosa, 89.

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gained from a gold strike deep in Alaska wilderness, enhanced by his willingness to dive straight into various endeavors.

The frontier keeps drawing Scrooge back; he adventures from the Mississippi to

California, with forays to , the Transvaal, and Australia, before ultimately finding his fortune in Alaska. Scrooge lives a rough-and-tumble lifestyle throughout this period, his jobs ranging from cowboy to riverboat captain to miner, generally working by himself. It is from this hard work that Scrooge’s success will eventually come, and his superhuman efforts will be rewarded with incredible riches. Rosa posits the character as a man present at the closing of the frontier, for whom is fortune was a means for recalling his expansive personal experience, and echoes a certain sadness that these adventures are no longer possible. He explains “it’s the sense of authentic history that is one of the most salient aspects of Barks’s great adventure sagas- perhaps that’s the one thing that makes me, like many others, find Scrooge to be a more fascinating character than Donald, who seems to live only in the present.”397 In Barks’s stories,

Scrooge’s old adventures often formed the excuse for a given plot, sending him and his nephews in pursuit of a missing land deed or searching out some half-remembered legend. In Rosa’s stories, these adventures would often form the basis for the story itself, with Scrooge regaling his nephews with some tale of old-time adventure that is invariably a little wilder and more dangerous than the modern world.

Rosa’s work on The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a creative endeavor that embodies something beyond the typical comic book reboot, a process more personal and

397 Rosa, 155.

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entwined within the deeper history of the characters featured. It is a grand history of a fictional character than is nevertheless as meticulously researched as any history of a Roman Emperor or

19th Century business magnate. If Barks’s stories serve as a series of travelogues by way of adventure stories though very nearly real-life places (at as much as possible with National

Geographic and the local library), Rosa’s work is travelogue through the breadth and scope of

Barks’s prodigious output, with a few detours to places of note. Neither man would travel much during their prime; Barks did not visit Europe until he was 94, though Rosa would spend significantly more time on the European continent (as well as considerable time and money exchanging e-mails with fans across the Atlantic in the early days of the internet). The Life and

Times of Scrooge McDuck allowed Don Rosa to follow the paths staked out by Carl Barks:

Barks was the trailblazer, striking out into the wilds with his adventurous tales, but Rosa was the builder, who followed the path of his predecessor and built a roadway that others could follow.

Carl Barks would be a name fondly remembered by fans and scholars alike, but Don Rosa built a monument out of grand scale of his work that allow others to undertake the grand tour for themselves.

The expansive work of Carl Barks functioned as a series of travel narratives, adventure stories that sent his Ducks in search of lost treasure or hidden history, though they would always be back in Duckburg by the time of the next issue. Barks emphasized authenticity in his stories that allowed them to function as more classic stories of travel literature, albeit aimed at a younger audience, even though he was largely confined to his farm in California throughout his working life. Don Rosa picked up the thread of these old stories, finding value in the same aspects of authenticity that Barks did, and focused on the travels of a single character, Scrooge

McDuck, tracing his grand fictional history across a world of adventure. In this endeavor, Rosa

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himself was engaging in his own journey through the canon of Barks’s “Poor Old Man,” uncovering the myriad of clues Barks had left scattered in his wake, and found the characters he had loved in a whole new light. Rosa consistently claims he did not reinvent Scrooge’s character; rather, he simply found what was buried deep in works of Carl Barks.

Don Rosa and the King of the Klondike

"The King of the Klondike" (U$ #292, 1993) includes encounters with several historical figures, but more distinctly features mud. Rosa's West (in this case, Skagway, Alaska and

Dawson City, Yukon Territory) is covered in mud, with the first two pages including Scrooge's efforts to navigate half a mile of mudflats to reach the shore.398 In this moment, Scrooge encounters dime-novel hero Wyatt Earp, who introduces himself threateningly with "don't you recognize my famous buntline special?"399 Earp proves to be more a violent, egotistical brute, engaging in a barroom brawl, challenging a would-be gunslinger that "it's me you want! The

Wyatt Earp! Brave, courageous, and bold - the whole bit...I demand you shoot me!"400 Rosa makes fun of the idea of the Western hero, casting Earp as a petty, violent brute, offering a tarnishing the image of the white hat cowboy. Later in the story, the villainous Soapy Slick is introduced as a stand in for the real life Skagway politician/criminal Jefferson Randolph "Soapy"

Smith, engaing in the same underhanded behavior that Smith was often accused of; here, Soapy is a loan shark and gambling kingpin who engages in claim jumping, similar to the historical

Soapy.401 Soapy is the primary antagonist of Scrooge, though the difficulty of the environment

398 Don Rosa, "The King of the Klondike," Uncle $crooge 292, 1-2. 399 Rosa, "Klondike," 2. 400 Rosa, 3. 401 Rosa, 4-5

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(the mud and the cold) prove more of a hindrance on Scrooge's efforts. In Rosa's reckoning of the West, there are few "good" individuals, with nearly every character in the story proving either outright malicious or simply ineffectual (as with the Mounties that appear near the conclusion of the story).402 Rosa laments that "I had to include Skagway in this tale; after all, another disappointing truth is that it was the American Skagway that was actually the lawless, crime-ridden murder capital of North America, not the peaceful Canadian town of Dawson City where the Northwest Mounted Police kept law and order. But that's America for you."403 The reality of Klondike gets in the way of the storytelling to some extent, but the message of Rosa echoes that of Barks: that the frontier is dangerous, unfriendly, and consistently covered in mud.

Rosa's stories in general to stick as close as they can to the facts and real-life figures that inhabited the wilderness: many historical figures well-known and obscure turn up throughout his adventures there, ranging from Teddy Roosevelt and Wild Bill Hickock to Murdo MacKenzie and Sam Steele. The American frontier keeps drawing Scrooge back: though he initially adventures as a riverboat captain, circumstances cause him to take up a job as a cowboy, and soon after a prospector. Rosa uses these experiences to weave his story; at the start of "Raider of the Copper Hill" (U$ 288, 1993), Scrooge laments "bad timing is my life story! I bought a riverboat right before the railroads out 'em out of business! Then I got into cattle, but there's not future there, either!"404 This West is not a land of endless opportunity, but one of broken dreams. Success is achieved more through luck and timing than grit and determination. Rosa explains pf the story: "I have woven my tale around the founding of the famous (real life)

402 Rosa, 22 403 Rosa, 25 404 Rosa, Life and Times, 68

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Anaconda Copper Mine...this was a beautiful situation in which to place the young and callow

Scrooge, and then teach him he won't be able to retain success until he wins it wholly of his own hard work!"405 Scrooge achieves success more through legal chicanery and the assistance of a wealthy benefactor than hard work, and his success is short lived. Rosa uses the story to question the myth of the self-made man, though Scrooge will eventually embody that particular trope.

Scrooge's excursions take him across the world in search of gold, participating in several major gold rushes yet invariably returning to the United States, first to Arizona, and later to the

Klondike. Rosa further grounds the stories within historical reality by weaving the Barks stories into actual history, introducing historic figures to enhance the connections to the past. Rosa's work, particularly the epic Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, was couched in authenticity, just as Barks's was, while also remaining true to the classic canon. Rosa remarked "the sense of authentic history that is one of the most salient aspects of Barks’ great adventure sagas - perhaps that’s the one thing that makes me, like many others, find Scrooge to be a more fascinating character than Donald, who seems to live only in the present”406 Rosa builds upon this history in his stories, expands upon the themes and tone of Barks by delving deeper into Scrooge's time on the frontier. The period is portrayed in loving detail, deeply-researched, and Rosa took pains to portray life on the frontier accurately. Scrooge works menial jobs, barely scraping by (and even then, occasionally relying on assistance from allies and loan sharks), his fated fortune seemingly forever out of reach. He becomes a hardened frontier spirit over time, his youthful optimism

405Rosa, 81 406 Rosa, 155

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sharpening into a distrust of the world and a feeling that he owes nothing to anyone. This transformation embodies the landscape, the loss of the independence allowed by the frontier playing out within the character of Scrooge.

Don Rosa and the Vigilante of Pizen Bluff

The frontier seems to be ever fading into the distance through The Life and Times of

Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge is always lighting out for the territories in the fashion of Huckleberry

Finn, one step ahead of the sprawl of civilization. He departs the Mississippi River for the

Dakotas and Montana, from there stopping in Arizona. The story in Arizona, "The Vigilante of

Pizen Bluff," reads the closest to a traditional Western, with Scrooge facing off against the

Dalton gang, with the assistance of Buffalo Bill and elements of his Wild West Show. The story subverts the myths of the Wild West, when at one point Buffalo Bill explains "but if we don't have an exciting climax to this chase, P.T.'s publicity scheme will be worthless!”407 Buffalo Bill and Scrooge's uncle Pothole proceed imagine half a page worth of pulp heroics, including Bill claiming "I pin two more to wall with Bowie Knives" and while Pothole "busts a table across a row of Daltons."408 These statements directly parody the silliness of many classic Western tropes, but there is a underlying sense of seriousness to the story as a whole. Buffalo Bill's concluding monologue intones "our glory days are quickly coming to an end! The great Indian tribes are all on reservations and we frontiersman are in silly Wild West shows! This year's

407 Don Rosa, "The Vigilante of Pizen Bluff" (U$ 306), 15. 408 Rosa, 16.

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census shows that the frontier has now disappeared...we're officially relics of a bygone age!"409

This is Rosa at his most metatextual, echoing bluntly Turner's frontier thesis.410

Rosa's stories are more direct in their portrayal of life in the Old West. The brief snippets of Barks were woven into full-length stories, borrowing elements of reality to create a more complete portrait of the historical moment; Rosa notes "as always, I've mixed much accuracy into this biography to give it a feel of authenticity."411 Every major character that is not a Barks creation is a historical figure. Barks himself made use of a few real-world figures in his stories; for instance, "Soapy" Slick appears as an antagonist in a single Barks story, but is featured as a major villain in Rosa's work. Comics scholar Geoffrey Blum explains "where Barks dabbled and borrowed, Rosa researches his stories in painstaking detail, drawing maps...when Barks deftly but cavalierly combined features of two cities, Rosa goes out of his way to apologize for the inaccuracy...[Rosa] has sought to flesh out Scrooge's myth and tidy inconsistencies in the timeline."412 Barks's world-building reflected his own experiences and interactions, which Rosa in turn enhanced, bringing it closer to the reality, explaining "the setting and events are as authentic as possible. I also tried to tell a bit more than some readers may know (or want to know) about Klondike gold prospecting."413 In Rosa's version, the West was dustier, muddier, and lonelier. The wide-open spaces were even more vibrant, yet also emptier, building on the themes of his predecessor. Rosa's Scrooge suffers loneliness in his efforts to pull wealth from

409 Rosa, 21. 410 This echoes Slotkin as well, who writes "in Cody's farewell tours, that nostalgia for the 'Old West' that had been the basis for his first success gave way to a new form of sentiment: a nostalgia not for the reality but for the myth- not of the frontier itself, but for the lost glamor of Buffalo Bill's Wild West." Slotkin, 87. 411 Rosa, Life and Times, 70 412 Blum, "Dawson," 28. 413 Rosa, Life and Times, 132

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the land; in Barks's version, he is always joined by his nephews or other relations, but in The Life and Times, he is most often on his own, or interacting with some stranger who will depart on some other path at the end of the story. While this plays upon certain larger myths of the Old

West ("riding off into the sunset" may be the best-known trope produced by a Western), it captures a certain truth to it. The glory achieved by Scrooge is through blood, sweat, and tears; when he returns to Dawson City after striking gold, he is exhausted, dirtied, and virtually unrecognizable, echoing many of the lonesome images of cowboys in Goetzmann's West of the

Imagination. There is little glee in his triumph, nor does life become particularly easier as the stories progress; the frontier is not a space that can be tamed, as such efforts simply result in its disappearance.

The portrayal of the Old West in the Scrooge McDuck comics of Carl Barks and Don

Rosa stands apart from contemporary images of that space. The western craze that consumed film, television, and comics was avoided on the pages of Barks, with Rosa further deconstructing the idealized West that persisted in the American imagination (and perhaps even the Uncle

Scrooge stories of his childhood). Here, frontier life is almost entirely bereft of glamour, the streets are paved with mud and wooden planks, hard work rarely pays off (and when it does,

Scrooge is too exhausted to really enjoy it). The sense of loss is palpable, that the frontier is very quickly closing, and even Alaska is falling to the forces of civilization by the end of Scrooge's time there. Barks knew the frontier through his upbringing and stories, and worked it in to the history of Scrooge, capturing small moments and details of the reality, subtly echoing his own experiences. Rosa seeks the historical truth of the moment, locating historic figures present at major crossroads (or at least that could have been plausibly present), and uses them to signify the changes that were occurring, occasionally quite directly commenting on the close of the frontier

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(as in the "Vigilante of Pizan Bluff"). The motivations of the two writers are similar: each endeavor to capture a sense of reality, and correct the myths of the West while still playing in that space. Barks writes an elegy for the frontier he missed by accident of birth, while Rosa constructs a masterwork of scholarship and fandom that serves as a towering monument to the work of Barks. The frontier is idealized within these stories, just as it is in the American mind, but both authors locate the pieces of truth buried deep within those myths, and illustrate the way things were.

His style would be adopted and expanded upon by his successor Don Rosa, who found space for his own sweeping panoramas within the comics pages. Rosa cultivated the seeds Barks planted into a fully formed biography of Scrooge McDuck, charting his travels and adventures across the world, dubbed The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. He created a travelogue through the comics of his youth, crucially revisiting the locations that Barks drew, including the mysterious valley in the Andes (twice). Barks’s originals enjoyed a popularity that owes much to this sense of adventure and authenticity, while Rosa’s follow-ups represent a different journey, crafting a canon out the assorted stories. Barks’s stories are modern travel stories, albeit ones written by a middle-aged man who would not leave the United States until his 94th birthday literally drawing from second-hand sources, and a successor working decades after his inspiration who spent an incredible effort researching the work to create something resembling fact.

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Chapter 10. “From Duckburg to Lillehammer”: Barks, Rosa, and Duck Artistic Hybridity

in Donald Duck Comics

The history of Disney comics and their fans is one much vaster than the average

American is aware. While Mickey is the American face of the Disney corporation, it is Donald

Duck and his Uncle Scrooge that are the face of Disney worldwide, and the root of this is the comics (often referred to by fans as the Duck Family). There is a something of a blind spot within the American consciousness towards Disney comics and the massive popularity of

Scrooge McDuck; there is some recognition, generally born out of the late 1980s television series DuckTales (which featured retellings of many classic stories from the comics), or the 1983

Mickey's Christmas Carol. In America, the fans of Disney comics are a subgroup of a subgroup, a scattered (if devoted) group that has existed since at least the 1950s on the outskirts of comic fan culture, a group dwarfed by the massive fan congregations overseas, particularly in Europe.

However, America is the birthplace of Scrooge and Disney at large, and it holds some weight.

Carl Barks was a largely self-taught author who managed to kick off a phenomenon, and Don

Rosa is his heir apparent (albeit a generation removed, and born out of the American fan movement), but the Duck characters strike a more complicated picture than simply the output of

American authors and artist. Rosa, in particular, represents a new paradigm in Disney comics, and stands as a symbol of the power of hybridity.

The fan-created Disney comic database I.N.D.U.C.K.S. contains at least 160,000 stories, running the gamut from simple, single-page jokes to expansive, hundred-page efforts that contain multiple narrative twists and epic adventures. The worldwide publishing machine continues to churn out new material every year, controlled not through the Walt Disney Company itself, but through independent licensees, who handle localization of old works and the creation of new

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efforts, often by regional artists. There are thousands (likely tens of thousands) of authors across all nationalities, most of whom are effectively anonymous even within the fandom at large, though there are a few names that stand out: Carl Barks, the most significant figure in the creation of the Duck Family and the popularity of that their comics enjoy even today; Guido

Martina, who grew the Italian version of Donald Duck into something divergent and unique; and

Don Rosa, who created a definitive vision of Uncle Scrooge that has been accepted by the majority of the fandom worldwide.

In order to understand the culture of the Duck Family comics, we must first examine the work of Carl Barks. Walt Disney himself was responsible for the creation of Donald, but it was

Barks who is generally regarded as the man who popularized the Disney comic book.414 To recap: born in 1901, Barks came to work at Disney in 1935, bouncing around to various jobs in the company before quitting; his departure coincided with the Dell Comics/Western Publishing deal to begin creating comics for Disney. Barks came to the attention of one of the editors, becoming a semi-freelance writer of Donald Duck comics in 1942. From there, Barks wrote and drew over 700 stories featuring Donald, his nephews, and various relations and hangers-on; the most notable among these was one Scrooge McDuck. From his creation in 1947, Scrooge would prove an instant success, an irascible, fabulously wealthy old man who was a counterpoint to

Donald's hapless everyman. Italian scholar Piero Zanotto notes "Barks...revitalized an entire sector of Disney comics. As he transformed Donald Duck from a character always enraged with life into a responsible uncle, ancillary characters appeared, and gradually took on independent personalities...Carl Barks gave expression to the universal happenings of life, the human defects

414 Thomas Andrae. Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 3-4.

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that all of use to some degree carry around with us."415 By 1952, Scrooge had his own title, and the sales of his book would outstrip even Donald's own, especially under Barks's authorship.

Within the Scrooge stories, Barks began to sketch out a family tree, Scrooge's extensive personal history, and the extended world around his characters. That history and world essentially remained just that: sketches, fragments of a larger portrait, one that Barks had little interest in putting together. Even Donald's own family tree would not be authenticated by Barks until 1974, sketching out a rough diagram of the major characters' relation; fans would fill in the rest in the years that followed, including the definitive version drawn up by Don Rosa.

The enduring popularity of Carl Barks is key to understanding the Duck comic fan community. He was first and foremost a good writer and artist, a man who perhaps cared more about his art than many of his contemporaries, but not a great revolutionary figure in the writing of comics. If anything, he tended to be somewhat conservative, which was in keeping with

Disney's policies, though he lacked the edge that even some of the other Disney artists (notably

Guido Martina) possessed. He explained in an early interview that he had limited the use of slapstick violence "there are only so many things you can do with the human body or a duck body and then you start repeating yourself, otherwise you'd kill him. You've only a few that are safe."416 This was a marked shift away from some of the earliest comics, which tended to have a much stronger component of comic violence, and it may have been a reflection of Barks's more conservative values.417 In some ways, he saw his work as something of a patriotic duty; he was a

415 Piero Zanotto, "The Most Sensational of ," (in Uncle Scrooge. New York: Abbeville Press), 8-9. 416 D. Willits and M. Thompson, "Interview with Carl Barks" (in Carl Barks: Conversations. Ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi), 7. 417 Barks credited fellow artist Floyd Gottfredson's input with the decrease in comic violence in an interview with Michael Barrier, as Bark’s style shifted from the more classic slapstick of Disney animation to more psychological

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standard-bearer of Americanism, an ambassador of good will.418 He was a humble man; he never sought the attention of the fan community, and almost seemed confused by the long-term popularity of his work. He explained in a post-retirement interview that "while I can't understand their great attraction or great attachment to these things that we've done and the valuation they have put on our work, good for them! I'm all for them."419 Barks did what he could to engage with the early elements of the fan community, but he was not well-equipped to understand their mindset.

With Carl Barks's retirement in 1966, and the death later that year of Walt Disney, production of new comics began to slow. By 1973, Dell was out of business, the victim of a shrinking market and a business split from Western Publishing. The Duck comics would sputter on for a few more years, but Dell's end effectively marked the end of their publication, at least in

America. The old issues became collectors' items among the scattered fan community; there was no longer a guarantee of regular reprints of classic stories (let alone any new ones), but the fandom held steady. Barks remained a popular figure within the small but devoted fandom, making a living selling oil paintings of his Duck characters (at least until Disney put a stop to it) and engaging readily with fan mail.420 Barks made his first major convention appearance in New

humor. Michael Barrier, "Interview with Carl Barks (1974)" (in Carl Barks: Conversations. Ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi), 66-67. 418 Barks explained in an interview that "I was a little afraid to draw or write any stories that might get publishers in trouble with the government or tread on some politician's toes...anything that gets published under the Disney name in a foreign country is accepted as part of American foreign policy, I imagine, by people who read it." Willits and Thompson, "Interview," 14. 419 Bill Blackbeard and Bruce Hamilton, "Interview with Carl Barks and Floyd Gottfredson" (in Carl Barks: Conversations. Ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 136. 420 The Barks's portraiture presents something of a unique case within the history of the Disney company. Barks began painting after his retirement, and started taking requests from fans for oil portraits. Disney took no issue with it, at least initially, until a fan starting selling high quality reprints. Disney put a stop to all of the painting after this. Gottfried Heinwein, "Interview with Carl Barks (1992)" (in Carl Barks: Conversations, ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi), 152-154.

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York in 1976, which along with his eager response to fan mail and sought-after portraits, which served to keep the fandom relatively intact in this pre-internet age. He was a man well past his prime, which limited his public appearances, and he was only able to make a single tour of

Europe, in 1994. Barks also opened himself up for interviews by fans and academics, many of whom gladly took him up. Carl Barks died in August 2000, shortly after completing a final interview with biographer Donald Ault.

In 1985, publishing partners Bruce Hamilton and Russ Cochran (who had met with some success with a book of Barks's post-retirement Duck portraits) learned that the license for publishing Disney comics had lapsed, and formed a small publishing outfit known as Gladstone

Comics to re-enter the market, initially reprinting old stories (including translating a few foreign ones). At the time, Gladstone had no intention of publishing new material: Barks was two decades retired, and the small fan community seemed sated by the reprints of rarities, back issues, and new translations of European releases. The market that existed was primarily made up of older fans, most of whom had grown up reading the classic stories of Barks, not the mass audience of children that had driven sales in the past. While the occasional newly translated story from Europe might have piqued their interest (particularly by writers of some reputation like Guido Martina and Romano Scarpa), there was no great demand for new works for the

American market.421

However, a few years later, Barks quietly got permission to resume; Barks explains "[Disney] gave me the right to paint pictures of their characters, and I've made a good lot of money out of painting those characters. They let me sell those paintings and they let me sign my name to them. I'm the only person other than Walt Disney that was ever allowed to sign my name on a painting of the Disney characters. I can sell those for whatever and I get to keep the money." Erik Svane, "When Donald Duck Turned 60" (In Carl Barks: Conversations. Ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 168. 421 Roger Ash. "A Gander At Gladstone." Back Issue #23. August 2007: 35-41.

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In Europe, the end of Dell comics completed a shift towards more localized publishers, with local artists and writers becoming increasingly popular and having a greater degree of control over the stories they told. Just as the Walt Disney Company divested itself of editorial control of the comics in America over the years, so too did the control loosen in Europe. Italy in particular took advantage of this: Donald Duck was so popular there in the post-war years that the demand for the comics began to outstrip the American supply of the stories. The Italian

Duck comics experienced a divergent evolution, one that began under Romano Scarpa and Guido

Martina in the early 1950s. The flagship Disney comic digest, Topolino, began bi-monthly publication in 1952, and quickly outpaced the supply of American-supplied comic stories (the

American books tended to feature one or two 10-page stories, and a few one or two page works to fill the space, whereas the Italian books tended to several lengthy stories, interspersed with a few one-page stories, in a digest format). To compensate, the publishers began to rely on home- grown talent, who in turn put their personal spin on the characters. Martina began to create a parallel to Barks’s universe, spring-boarding off of the originals to create both new characters and recast old figures in a new light, one that became increasingly defined after Barks’s retirement. Martina’s contributions included John Rockerduck as a major rival to Scrooge, the expansion of Duck’s character, and the introduction of Donald’s anti-heroic alter-ego

Paperinik. Scarpa’s influence on the characters is somewhat less obvious; he introduces several characters of questionable canonicity, including a brother for Scrooge McDuck and some later generations of the Coot Kin (a related branch of the Duck Family), though his most significant character is Brigetta MacBridge, a potential love interest for Scrooge (and rival to Barks creation

Glittering Goldie). Martina retired in the 1980s having written some four hundred stories, while

Scarpa’s output was more diverse and sporadic; neither would become as well known as Barks

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outside their home country, nor would they actively engage with the fan community in the manner that he did.

The Italian stories tend to be somewhat more violent than other versions of the characters. The violence is certainly comical, but stands in contrast to Barks's softer, more light- hearted stories. Scrooge in particular is a much more violent figure. In one Martina story

("Paperino e il disidratatore disidratato," Topolino #1185), Scrooge and Donald attempt to boil a chicken alive, with Scrooge at one point chasing the bird with a large knife and fork. Later in the story, Scrooge actually chases Donald with an antique musket, after Donald accidentally destroys a portion of Scrooge's wealth in a successful attempt to transform a miniaturized Scrooge to normal size. Huey, Dewey and Louie act in less mischievous and more directly violent manners, and there a strong element of slapstick that transcends the softer American variety. Martina's recasting of Donald as Paperinik (a violent, selfish vigilante in the vein of the Shadow or other

American pulp heroes) is a more direct example of his changes, though it is one that exists primarily within the Italian continuity than in the works of foreign artists. This should not be read as trafficking in offensive stereotypes; rather, it is indicative of Italian comedic traditions.

Italian popular culture, from Roman times and the emergence of Commedia dell’arte in the

1500s, has a long and robust element of violence used for comic effect. Martina makes Donald more recognizable to his audience by situating the character within familiar tropes and roles, in the same fashion that Erika Fuchs did with her references to German culture.

The modern worldwide face of modern Disney comics is Don Rosa, an unassuming writer and artist from Kentucky, whose contribution to the comics canon is relatively small, with

I.N.D.U.C.K.S counting 88 stories, yet well-accepted by fans the world over. Rosa's unique position is informed by his personal history: a life-long Scrooge McDuck fan, he gave up a

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lucrative career to draw and write comics full-time, following in the footsteps of his idol, Carl

Barks, while planting himself firmly as a fixture in the transnational fan community of Duck comics fans. He explained his reasoning thusly: "I have to keep myself interested in this job.

The pay doesn't keep me interested, but the reception the stories get around the world; and the type of people who I know I'm working for, people who like the same kind of comics as I do."422

Rosa was a unique figure among the Disney comics creators; whereas Barks, Martina, and other major figures were professionals first and foremost, Rosa was a fan, interested in exploring many aspects of the characters and examining the nature of Barks's creations. His attention to detail, in-depth historical research, and love of both Barks and the characters propelled him from a simple member of the fan community into the preeminent living author of Duck Family comics.

He is best known for the collected story arc The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, though his engagement with the global fandom is unique among his fellow authors.

Don Rosa was born in 1951, discovering comics (including many early Carl Barks releases) though his older sister's extensive collection. "The house was filled with comic books...these characters Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge, that I liked so much, one of the reasons I like them is that there're alive to me as my parents were. They have always existed. It's hard for me to imagine these are just comic book characters."423 Rosa maintained an interest in comics, even as he completed a degree in civil engineering, working as a cartoonist for the campus newspaper and writing for comic fanzines in the mid-1970s. Rosa explains "I started working for these fan magazines, comic book collector, fanzines. The biggest one of the day

422 Elliot, "Interview With Don Rosa.” 423 Ibid.

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was the Rocket's Blast ComiCollector. The first thing I did was contribute indexes. I was always an archivist, indexer, assembling full sets, writing reports... I first started contributing indexes of comic book series. One of them being Uncle Scrooge, it's one of the first ones I did."424 He was perhaps the first American to begin indexing the classic Disney comics; he was a precursor for the creation of I.N.D.U.C.K.S. by the European fandom. His print work in this period included an adventure comic strip called The Pertwillaby Papers, which served as his attempt to capture the spirit of the classic Barks adventures, and would lend the structure to many of his later Duck stories.

By 1986, Rosa had quit doing The Pertwillaby Papers, though he had kept involved in the comics fandom, and learned through the fan community that Gladstone had resumed publishing Duck comics. Rosa explains his pitch to Bruce Hamilton: "I said, 'I was the only

American who was born to write and draw Uncle Scrooge comics, it was my manifest destiny.'

I'd known it my whole life...I found myself writing and drawing one Uncle Scrooge adventure, which I'd dreamt of since I was a child."425 His first work would be "The Son of the Sun" (Uncle

Scrooge #219), an adventure tale in the mode of Barks, containing myriad references to Barks's work. The first page alone, set in the Duckburg museum, features visual allusions the golden fleece (Uncle Scrooge #12), the treasure of the (Uncle Scrooge #25) and the

Candy-Striped Ruby (Uncle Scrooge #41), while the story itself is a spiritual sequel to the Barks classic "Lost in the Andes" (Western One-Shot #223). It was intended to be a singular work, the culmination of one fan's ambition, a sort of love letter from Don Rosa to Carl Barks; instead, it

424 Frank Stanjano, "Don Rosa January 2008, part 2." (Frank Stanjano's Comic Podcast, 9 June 2008). 425 Elliot, "Interview With Don Rosa."

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revived interest in new Duck stories among the American fandom, and even garnered enough attention to receive a nomination. This single issue helped Gladstone Publishing shift production to new stories, with Rosa acting as the primary writer and artist on the first new

American Disney comics in over a decade.

Rosa's style was heavily based off of Barks; he consistently cites Carl Barks as a personal idol, and those comics as the most significant influence on his work. It is more fully formed than

Barks's work; Rosa took care to put detail into the backgrounds, including a lot of work with shading. The DNA of Barks's work certainly runs through Rosa's contributions, but there are other influences apparent. Whereas Barks largely worked within a vacuum (he wrote stories without much input or contact with outside sources), the fact that Rosa was a fan (and defined himself as such) ensured that he had contact with other sources of work. While Rosa himself largely sings the praises of Barks (particularly within The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck), his work seems to contain elements not found in Barks's work. Rosa's stories tend to be a little more violent at times; Barks largely shied away from anything beyond light slapstick, something not shared by Italian authors like Scarpa and Martina. Rosa, in contrast to Barks, would have had some further awareness of other authors of the Duck comics, and his style was likely influenced by stories beyond Barks's own. While most of Rosa's stories are paeans to the work of Barks, they are not pure imitations, but rather mark a hybrid of styles, a bridge between the divergent evolution of Europe and the tradition of the Barksian classics.426

426 Barks himself speaks of Rosa's unique artistry, explaining "Don Rosa has a style that is a little bit different from the Disney style. I know there are a great deal of people that like that style, which is extremely detailed." (Durand and Ghez 178)

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There are several large scale, full page brawls depicted within Rosa's comic, particularly with the young Scrooge. The violence at times goes somewhat beyond purely slapstick, particularly in the sequence that occurs in Uncle Scrooge #292. Scrooge, captured by the current villain, is taunted to the point of breaking by the news of his mother's death back home. The action largely takes place offscreen, and there are implications that the event itself is simply a folkloric retelling of a disaster, but Rosa lends a great weight to the event. A grand piano crashes through a window, as smokestacks fall and smash through the docks, an event that is described as something akin to an act of nature. It seems clear that the destruction is the result of an unhinged Scrooge, and might go some distance towards explaining how Scrooge maintains his power. It is not wealth that allows him to dominate the world around him; his wealth is but a symbol of his power. Rather, it is his capacity for violence, that seems more readily apparent in

Rosa's work, much as in the Italian stories. The younger Scrooge has little compunction over using his physical might to control others; he simply carries away a would-be thief (Glittering

Goldie) whom he effectively enslaves following her attempt to steal away his hard-earned gold.

This story is canonical to Barks, though the event itself is kept somewhat vague in the original story, and it leads to a more violent conclusion, one much more akin to the Italian authors.

Don Rosa completed around eighteen stories for Gladstone before he caught the attention of the European publishers, who could offer a better salary than the small American publisher. It was through this new connection that the genesis of Rosa's masterpiece occurred: The Life and

Times of Scrooge McDuck, a twelve-issue (plus or minus a half dozen side stories) release by

European publisher Egmont. Rosa explains the genesis of the series: "I wrote and drew the first series at the request of Egmont Creative A/S in Europe - my main goal was to gather every factoid, however small, that Scrooge McDuck (via his creator, Carl Barks) had ever mentioned

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about his early life and somehow feature (i.e. CRAM!) them all into a 12-chapter biography."427

Rosa began his work in 1991, meticulously researching scattered bits of information, tracking down leads, speaking to fans, and writing letters directly to Barks; Rosa elaborates that "I sent copies of that to all the main Barks fans around the world - including Barks - to get opinions...I was amazed that people even liked the finished series. To me, it was just a fan project. I was trying to assemble everything that Barks had ever said that Scrooge had done in one story. This is all what Barks said, and I'm putting it in one chronology, in one long story, and this is the tribute to Carl Barks."428 Rosa's efforts were not wholly appreciated, however; according to

Barks biographer Thomas Andrae, the elder author "disagreed with attempts of other writers, including Don Rosa, Bark's heir apparent as the scripter of Uncle Scrooge comics, to develop fully fleshed-out biographies for this characters and a coherent family tree."429 Barks was never overtly confrontational over the use of the characters in this fashion; his sensibilities seem much more conservative and old fashioned, that he was simply telling stories for a younger audience, not creating grand and significant works of fiction within a connected universe.430

Don Rosa entered a more divided canon in 1986 than Barks had left twenty years earlier, and it would have been a simple thing to jettison the various developments of foreign artists like

Martina to focus on the original work of Carl Barks. While each of the stories in Life and Times

427 Rosa, Life and Times, 3. 428 Dueben, "Legendary 'Uncle Scrooge' Artist Rosa." 429 Andrae, 107. 430 Barks was, however, quite agreeable to different styles that Europeans and others undertook. "Those guys in Italy and a number of people working for Egmont. They are wonderful artists. They are doing much better drawings of the ducks and other Disney characters than I was able to do. Daan Jippes, for example... who comes from Chile is excellent...those guys are superb artists." Sébastien Durand and Didier Ghez. "Carl Barks at ." (In Carl Barks: Conversations. Ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 178.

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was based on one of the original Barks-penned comics, many characters and situations are adapted from foreign comics. On such figure is John Rockerduck, a one-off antagonist in a late period Barks story ("Boat Buster", in Walt Disney Comics and Stories #255) that ended up becoming a major rival in the Italian comics continuity. Rosa explains "Barks used John

[Rockerduck] one time in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 255, but this wealthy antagonist was later adopted in place of Flintheart Glomgold as Scrooge's main rival in all the Italian Duck stories."431 The prequel story, "Of Ducks, Dimes, and Destinies" (Uncle Scrooge #297) features an appearance by Howard Rockerduck, John’s father, who is instrumental in Scrooge’s acquisition of his lucky dime. John Rockerduck later appears in "The Raider of the Copper Hill"

(Uncle Scrooge #288), along with his son, acting as a sort of origin story for Howard (in which the boy fails to learn a lesson about wealth and kindness), a first encounter between Scrooge and his future rival. The use of Rockerduck by Rosa, even in a small role, reveals his appreciation of another culture of Ducks; Rosa is not solely acting upon his old childhood fandom, but incorporating elements of that were important to non-American readers. It is a testament to the fusion of his art style and the content within his comics.

Carl Barks remained Rosa’s main source, however. Each element of a given Life and

Times story was first identified within a Barks story, and Rosa worked hard to ensure the authenticity of these stories within the context of the original stories. Rosa explains "I first assembled all of the facts that Barks had ever mentioned…these references he's made to what

Scrooge had done early in his career. And I charted it out, and then decided which chapter would deal with which era, and figured out different actual historical people or places or events that

431 Rosa, Life and Times, 21.

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Scrooge could interact with. When I got into it, that took me about 2 ½ years to do those 12 chapters."432 There is an incredible attention to detail within these stories; Rosa includes myriad references to Barks, referencing both significant stories ("Lost in the Andes", "The Status

Seeker") and characters (Glittering Goldie, Scrooge's sisters), while attempting to craft a coherent and complete telling of Scrooge's life story. It was his fondness of Barks characters and stories that drove him forward; Rosa explains of Goldie that "the dramatic manner in which the lost love of young Scrooge McDuck was revealed to me after I had already been a lifelong

Scrooge fan is most assuredly why, when Egmont asked me to create a series depicting the life story of this character, I jumped at the chance with such enthusiasm."433 Enthusiasm is what marks the work so strongly, and it seems to be a major reason for its success and acceptance within the larger fan community.

Don Rosa went into retirement due to health issues in 2008, though would not "officially" retire until 2013, with the publication of a high-end collection of his work that included a frank discussion of the forces that lead to his giving up the work he had so loved. Rosa has not left the scene entirely; he remains an enthusiastic fan of Barks and a booster of the worldwide fandom; he explained in an e-mail to a fan that "looking back on my own work, I realize more than ever that I was NEVER a 'professional.' Everything I did was done as a FAN... that's why everything

I did was based strictly on someone else's work and makes constant allusions to all my favorite movies and TV shows and everything else. I (my ego) never felt an urge to create anything totally new that would be 'all my own.' I (the fan) only wanted to pay homage to everything that

432 Elliot, "Interview With Don Rosa." 433 Rosa, Life and Times, 112.

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I love."434 Rosa's status as a fan gave him an edge as a creator, allowing him to expand upon the stories Barks wrote, and bring in elements of the Italian tradition.

In Rosa's conception of himself, he is not a successor to Barks in the professional sense, but an ascended fan, who can now act as an ambassador to the community in the fashion that he pleases. He remains as active as he ever was on the convention circuit, continuing to appear at events in America and especially Europe, continuing to guide reprints of his work, though is a bit embittered by his mistreatment by Disney in particular. Despite his retirement, he still draws, even contributing cover art for Toumas Holopainen's "soundtrack" album, The Life and Times of

Scrooge.435 Rosa was able to do something fans only dream of, standing firmly next to his idol as one of the grand masters of Disney comics, but has left behind the praise and fame for a somewhat quieter life. His goodbye essay concluded on a bittersweet note; he writes "I thank

Carl Barks for creating the comics that I loved so much that I serendipitously fell into the blessed work of paying homage to those great comics for over 20 years. And I thank you for receiving that work so graciously and making me feel very special… until they broke my spirit. But if you’ll excuse me…I think I’ll now go back to being only a fan."436 Rosa may be finished with his life's work of comics, but he played a great role in shaping the Duck Comics fan community into what it is today, and created his own definition of what the canon comprised, even in the face of disagreement from Barks. Everything Don Rosa did, from The Life and Times of Scrooge

McDuck to answering fan mail to attending conventions in Europe, was an act of pure love, for both Carl Barks and the entire Duck Comics fandom, and marks a shift towards a hybridized

434 Rosa, "An Epilogue" 435 Nikola Savić, "A Lifetime of Adventure" (in Progsphere, February 2014). 436 Rosa, "An Epilogue"

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world. Barks could sit at his chicken farm and rely on old copies of National Geographic, but

Rosa brought in elements from other traditions, and marked a major shift in Disney comics that is still being felt today.

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Chapter 11. “A Duck’s Eye View of Europe”: Conclusions on the Significance of Donald Duck Comics

No work of art is produced in a vacuum. The creation of Donald Duck resulted from the efforts of countless individuals, many of whom have been lost to history. The Duck that existed in 1942 was at a crossroads: the same year that saw the releases of Der Furher’s Face and

Saludos Amigos, utilizing Donald as a stand-in for the average American in these propaganda projects, also saw Carl Barks enter the comics industry, with some help from and

Bob Karp, on “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold.” The Donald of these comics became a more dimensional figure than the roiling ball of rage and disruption featured in the early shorts, still a beaten-down everyman, but possessing a more stable psyche. The disjointed process of creation and transformation necessitates an interdisciplinary approach. Donald Duck is an American figure, grown out of that landscape, bound up with myth and symbol (Donald is, after all, the eternal everyman, and Scrooge serves as a pure distillation of the bootstraps myth). This view, while accurate to the initial creation, fails to consider the broader, deeper power these characters possess, power far beyond the ken of their creators.

The transition of Donald from an American figure to a transnational one should be at least partially credited to Walt Disney. Donald Duck, after all, came out of the war without any of the baggage of the more outwardly racist propaganda shorts like those of Bugs Bunny and

Popeye. The studio’s decision to moderate the content of their shorts might have been a business decision, or a reflection of Walt Disney’s humanity (or perhaps both), but the end result was a resurgent Disney attaining footholds worldwide, expanding the global appeal of their franchises.

The use of Donald Duck as a world diplomat, as a figure of friendship to South America at large, had solidified the character as the flagbearer for the Disney brand worldwide, even as the more clean-cut Mickey Mouse became a mascot of the larger enterprise stateside. Donald’s role in the

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Good Neighbor policy and diplomatic outreach had positioned the character to play that role again: Disney had found success with the character in South America, and there was a certain inevitability to Donald Duck becoming a world diplomat.

Carl Barks, writing from his home studio in the heart of the , was free to write the adventures of the Ducks as he saw fit, free from the watchful eye of Walt Disney, no editor looking over his shoulder, no market research to make minor demands. In this space,

Barks created his alternate vision of Donald, an inhabitant of Duckburg, watchful uncle to Huey,

Dewey, and Louie, cousin to Gladstone Gander, nephew to rich Uncle Scrooge. This Donald possessed the gift of speech: he did not speak with Clarence Nash’s nasally squawk, but like a normal person. The traits that inured him to the audience in the first place, his tempestuous temper, were muted; instead, he became an often plucky, sometimes lazy, always relatable everyman. The Donald glimpsed in Modern Inventions, a victim of modernity, at odds with the march of technology, trapped in a world he did not create, was given from on the pages of

Barks’s comics. 24 pages of color allowed for greater development that Donald had ever been given in the original animated shorts, with family histories and grand rivalries sketched out across thousands of panels. Carl Barks made Donald Duck, or at least a version thereof, his own.

There was more to this work than simply giving life to the Duck. The world grew and sprawled, as Donald (especially with the addition of Uncle Scrooge) took wide-ranging adventures, straight out of the pages of National Geographic. Barks had a command of sweeping vistas and grand landscapes that was virtually unmatched in comics in this period, and it lent an authenticity to the treasure hunts and comical vacations. In a moment when Superman seemed trapped in Metropolis, Donald Duck was exploring the Andes, diving for pearls near the

Great Barrier Reef, navigating secret passages within the Great Pyramids, and sailing across the

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South Pacific. Even the more fantastic adventures had a weight of reality, such as the pursuit of the fame Golden Fleece that results in a gold waistcoat that it both heavy and cold. There was excitement and adventure to be found in the best Barks stories, which was at times lacking in the staid superhero comics of the Comics Code era. These stories did lack much of a sense of continuity, however, as Scrooge’s fortune was invariably sufficient to drive whatever plot was brewing in a given week, and Donald remained relatively poor and downtrodden, though there were small hints of character development. This meant that Barks’s stories were quite simple and straightforward, however, allowing new readers to jump in without much sense of the supporting cast at large, nor requiring editorial oversight to explain the plot up to a given issue

(as was the case with Marvel and DC, as serialized storytelling in superhero comics become more commonplace).

This mix of simplicity and authenticity allowed a wider audience to enjoy the stories, and the narratives could be easily understood (or, indeed, translated) by new audiences. Barks never fathomed the breadth of the readership during his career proper, and was taken aback that his comics remained popular not only in America, but in Europe as well. Walt Disney himself had little inkling of the success of these comics: there was no great intent behind this process, but chance and happenstance. These comics did achieve success in nearly every market they entered, as the stories were translated and adapted by local publishers to suit the needs of local audiences. The dialog that Barks wrote bent and shifted with each iteration, as the comics entered markets starved by World War II, a process that was effectively invisible to the readership in the pre-internet cultural landscape. The Fuchs Effect, as I referred to it,

Germanized Donald Duck in a very real way for German audiences, and the process certainly occurred in other locales. Erika Fuchs had a deeper influence on the adoption of the Ducks as

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cultural institutions in Germany, creating a unique relationship between the characters and the country.

The process of translation is complicated by cultural contexts. The comics that Germans read functioned closer to adaptations through the efforts of Fuchs, with art and culture injected into the language that had not existed prior. Barks wrote for an American audience, with no knowledge of the wider reach of his works, while Fuchs recognized the potential of these comics as educational spaces, to bring bits of culture to a readership coming of age in a Germany still in a process of reconstruction. In this mix, Don Rosa represents the force of hybridity, taking the work of Barks and the context of history and of European traditions to create something that spoke to a global audience. Rosa might have created The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as a love letter to Barks, but it was not born solely from his mind, in the way that the work of Barks were. Rosa’s Scrooge was a citizen of the world, his history inexorably bound up with the events of the 19th Century: this Duck was not just a day-tripper, but an adventurer who had seen what the world was, for good and (more often) bad. Rosa was a fan, one who had corresponded with European fans, who understood the Ducks not as a product of America but as a gift to the world.

This split is apparent today. New issues of Donald Duck comics can be found on newsstands. The German fan organization D.O.N.A.L.D. continues to hold yearly conventions and publish a long-running fanzine. Don Rosa has received the prestige format reprinting of his stories in the same fashion as Carl Barks did in America, and it was under Egmont that Rosa’s later work was produced. The Ducks have never really left the American consciousness, as evidenced by the success of the Ducktales reboot, which is beginning its second season as of the completion of this dissertation (and has already been renewed for a third season, as well). The

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comics have never left circulation in the same way they did with the collapse of Western

Publishing, and new stories continue to appear, albeit taking a much smaller space on newsstands than they did in their heyday. Even Dorfman and Mattelart’s How To Read Donald Duck has received a new edition as of 2018. American fans lamented the glory of the German fans in the

1980s, and it seems now that there are even fewer American fans now to look across the

Atlantic, and lament what might have been.

The ultimate question is what this means. Walter Wanger and Robert Carr promised a glorious future for Donald Duck as the flagbearer of Western civilization, while Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart feared that this future was coming true. The reality was somewhere in the middle; Disney was subverted to the ends of local actors, serving as an avenue for art appreciation (as it would under Fuchs’s pen in Germany) or outright propaganda (as it would in

Chile). This process has been rendered more complex by the rise of Disney as a multi-national conglomerate: the Eisner Era saw responsible for the collapse of the Disney comics community in America, though Disney’s takeover of Italy’s Topolino saw the continued success of the publisher. There are certainly discussions in the upper echelons of power as to whether

American culture could still be a force for diplomacy, even if these discussions have turned to superheroes and giant robot films.

There are always possibilities. The 1987 Ducktales television series helped revive the old stories of Barks, and it is plausible that the 2017 Ducktales will inspire a generation to pick up the comics of Don Rosa (whose interest in history and narrative loom much larger in the series).

There are potentials for a situation like the one of 1949 Germany to reappear on the world’s stage; Disney would be one of the first cultural products exported to North Korea, should the current regime collapse. The final story of Donald, Scrooge, and the nephews is unwritten, even

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as creators retire or die, and the characters will continue to evolve and adapt to new settings, spaces, and cultures.

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Andrae, Thomas. Carl Barks and the Disney Comic Book: Unmasking the Myth of Modernity. University Press of Mississippi, 2006.

Ash, Roger. "A Gander at Gladstone." Back Issue #23, August 2007. 35-41.

Ault, Donald, Bruce Hamilton, John Ronan, and Nicky Wright. "Living the Stories: The Carl Barks Genius." Carl Barks: Conversations. Ed. Donald Ault. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. 210-214.

Ault, Donald. "Telling It Like It Is." In Carl Barks: Conversations. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. 37-49.

Ault, Donald, Thomas Andrae, and Stephen Gong "An Interview with Carl Barks, Duckburg's True Founding Father." In Carl Barks: Conversations. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. 91-108.

Azenha, João and Marcelo Moreira. "Translation and Rewriting: Don't Translators 'Adapt' When They 'Translate'?" In Translation, Adaptation and Transformation. Ed. Lawrence Raw. London: Continuum, 2012: 61-80. Barks, Carl. Uncle Scrooge. New York: Abbeville Press. 1979.

Barks, Carl. Uncle Scrooge McDuck: His Life and Times. Celestial Arts, 1987.

Barks, Carl. The Fine Art of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck. Scottsdale, AZ & West Plains, Mo.: Another Rainbow Publishing. 1981.

Barks, Carl. Walt Disney's Donald Duck "A Christmas For Shacktown": Carl Barks Library Vol. 11. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2012. Barks, Carl. Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge "Only A Poor Old Man": Carl Barks Library Vol. 12. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2012. Barks, Carl. "The Sheriff of Bullet Valley." Donald Duck #199, October 1948.

Barrier, Michael. Hollywood Cartoons. New York: Oxford University Press. 1999.

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 2007.

Barrier, Michael. Funny Books: The Improbable Glories of the Best American Comic Books. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015.

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VITA

Peter Cullen Bryan

Education Pennsylvania State University - Harrisburg Ph.D of American Studies with Communications Minor August 2013-December 2018

Pennsylvania State University – Harrisburg M.A. of American Studies August 2011-May 2013

Western Michigan University B.A. English and History January 2008-April 2011

Oakland Community College Assoc. Liberal Arts January 2002-August 2005

Selected Publications "Always Another Rainbow: Fans, Comics Publishing, and the Return of Donald Duck." The Other 1970s. Ed. Brian Cremins and Brannon Costello. Louisiana State University Press, 2019.

"The Buckaroo of the Badlands: Carl Barks, Don Rosa, and (Re)envisioning the West." Drawing the Past: Comics and the Historical Imagination. Ed. Michael Goodrum, David Hall, and Phillip Smith. University Press of Mississippi, 2019.

"Purple Healing Rays and Paralysis: Intersections of Disability and Gender Theory in Comics." The Journal of Fandom Studies, Special Issue, December 2018.

"Geeking Out And Hulking Out: Towards an Understanding of Marvel Fan Communities." The Age of The Geek. Ed. Kathryn Lane. Palgrave, 2017.

"The Master of the Mississippi, The King of the Klondike!: History and Authenticity in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck." The Journal of South Texas English Studies, Fall 2016, Vol. 6, Issue 2.

"True Believers: Stan Lee and the Legitimization of the Comics Fan Community." The Popular Culture Studies Journal, Special Issue, Fall 2016.

"Hawthorne, Jackson, and LeGuin Walk Into a Peculiar Little Town: The Particular American Horror of the Small Town." In Critical Insights: Literature of Fear and Paranoia. Ed. Kimberly Drake. Grey House Publishing, 2016.