Number 1236: Inspiration for Carl Barks...?

One of my favorite Donald Duck stories (which I still own in the form of my original 1957 subscription copy of Walt Disney Comics and Stories #204) is the untitled story the Grand Comics Database lists as “Losing Face.”*

Donald, Daisy and the kids are taking a ride near Mt. Mushmore, and Daisy wants to swing by and see the giant carved head of Senator Snoggin.

Donald is nervous. Daisy asks him what's wrong, and he tells her a story of he and the boys getting a job the past spring cleaning up the park grounds for the tourist season, including a clean-up of Senator Snoggin's head.

While cleaning, Donald has trouble with an eagle. After being kicked out it comes back at Donald with a vengeance.

Donald spills a weed killer, which turns Senator Snoggin's nose bright red. In order to get rid of the stain, which won't wash off, Donald uses a jackhammer, which breaks off the senator's nose.

Donald and the boys build a new temporary nose with plaster, with disastrous results.

Donald whittles the nose down to its original shape, but needs to use the jackhammer to set pegs to hold the nose on.

 

The ultimate gag is after Donald tells Daisy the story the whole thing comes apart.

I've always thought this was one of Barks' masterpieces of gag building, pacing and drawing; one of his best.

Imagine my surprise to be flipping through issues of Pep Comics from 1943-44, and find a three-part story, “Catfish Joe,” which has some of the same elements as the later Barks story.  Check it out. From Pep Comics numbers 43, 44 and 45:

Okay, so what do you think happened? Here's a thought, what if Carl Barks, in the early part of his comic book career, was going through comic books to see what others were doing. He saw this story and it had some gag elements he liked. Years later he recalled some of those elements and put them into this classic Donald Duck story. As you can see, “Catfish Joe” is no Donald Duck and Larry Harris** is no Carl Barks.

The Donald Duck story by Barks is funnier, better written and better drawn than “Catfish Joe,” but it gives one pause about the creative process and where those ideas come from. I could say that Barks remembered the story consciously and used it as a springboard for his own, or I could let Barks off the hook and say that he had cryptomnesia, which is thinking a memory is an original creation. Memory is a tricky thing.

The two stories make for an interesting comparison.

*I'm sorry that I can only show panels from the Barks story and not the whole thing. I have heard that Disney lawyers troll the internet looking for copyright infringements.

**Harris isn't a bad artist, but uneven from panel to panel. His art reminds me of a cross between Roy Crane and Al Capp. I've never heard of Harris before. It's possible that the Larry Harris of “Catfish Joe” is this Larry Harris, gag cartoonist of the fifties and sixties.

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Number 1203: Sign of the Hangman

The Hangman (Bob Dickering) had an interesting gimmick. When he cornered the guy he was after the shadow of the gallows fell on the felon's face. I wondered how he did that...then I watched one of those “reality” shows where we’re not supposed to think about a platoon of cameramen, lighting techs, sound guys, etc., following these “real” people around in their “real” daily endeavors. Maybe Hangman had a lighting guy who stood over his shoulder, and when the time was right would hold up a tiny gallows in front of a powerful light. Okay...so it’s a comic book and they don't have cameramen. I just needed to get that out, because Hangman's gimmick always bugged me, and if they explained it in any of the Hangman stories I've missed it (or forgotten).

This story, which comes from Pep Comics #34 (1942) is a good example of the series. Bob Fujitani, working in his early style with overtones of Will Eisner’s influence, drew some very dynamic and dramatic pages. There's even a scene of a guy getting shot through the head, which wasn't exactly typical of these stories, but gory stuff did happen. M.L.J. Magazines, Inc., publishers, was into the action, violence and horror that appalled parents and grownups across America. They also sold to servicemen who were more likely to handle this sort of thing, but it was the kids everybody worried about. After a time the line began concentrating on their teenage comics and out of bloody M.L.J. cleancut Archie Comics was born. Well, cleancut compared to this episode of Hangman. I remember some sexy stuff going on in Archie, but no one got a bullet through the brain.

I'm including a page on editor Harry Shorten. Shorten did comics, paperback book publishing, a comic strip (“There Oughta Be A Law” with Al Fagaly) and then comics again in the sixties with T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. All of that was ahead of Shorten when this biography was written, but you can see from it that Shorten took to the industry early on.

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Number 1066


The "forgotten" attack on Pearl Harbor, 1940!


Pep Comics #4, 1940, tells the story of an attack on Pearl Harbor, almost two years before the attack by the Japanese, 70 years ago today.

The story is not that that surprising or even prophetic fiction. It was common knowledge at the time that Pearl Harbor, where the U.S. Pacific Fleet was stationed, was a likely enemy target. The Shield, America's first patriotic hero, kicks some butt. The fictitious Musconians are standing in for countries with which we were not yet at war.

Irving Novick drew the story, and Harry Shorten wrote it. The story features a crossover with the Wizard and Keith Kornell, the West Point cadet. As we learn at the end of the Shield's engagement with the Mosconian enemy, the Wizard and Kornell would be picking up the fight in the "current issue of Top-Notch Comics." I can figure out the ending of the saga without seeing it, but maybe the crossover worked in 1940 to separate some kids from their dimes.











The panel on page three showing a sailor identifying the Shield as "the guy what done a Steve Brodie!" threw me. Steve Brodie is the name of an inker for DC, whose work has shown up in four Boy Commandos stories on this blog. I did some research. The Steve Brodie referred to in the Pep Comics story was a daredevil who claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge (and lived) in 1885. He died in 1901. You can read about that Steve Brodie here.

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