Rhymes With 'Karl Marx'

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Volume 11: A Christmas for Shacktown (1951-52/Reprinted 2013): written and drawn by Carl Barks; edited by Gary Groth and J. Michael Catron; editorial material by R. Fiore, Donald Ault, Rich Kreiner, and others.

The Fantagraphics Carl Barks Library presents some of Donald Duck's most Marxian adventures in this volume of stories from 1951 and 1952. And by 'Marxian,' I mean Karl and not the Brothers. 

Every story herein seems to be about the absurdities and inequities of capitalism. Writer-artist Carl Barks is such a fine and entertaining storyteller that no one at Walt Disney seems to have noticed the critique of Capitalism in pretty much every story. At point, it's a lot like Das Kapital with talking ducks.

This is another beautiful volume of reprints from Fantagraphics Books in the Carl Barks Disney Library. Barks' smooth, funny and often beautiful cartooning comes through on every page. The colour reproduction is sensible in its replication of the four-colour tones the comics were drawn for, the biographical and critical notes useful. 

As to Capitalism and Ducks... well, in the course of this selection of 1-page, 10-page, and 32-page adventures starring Donald, Huey, Louie, Dewey, and Uncle Scrooge, money dominates. We see a quest for a rare (and real) stamp that takes our heroes to the lost city of gold, El Dorado, where an obsession with acquiring silver dominates: too much gold has made gold valueless and silver a prize beyond all measure. 

We see Scrooge McDuck hire Donald to help him spend money fast enough to keep his money bins from exploding, leading to a week of wretched excess that ends with a bizarre and hilarious twist that reveals the all-devouring nature of Scrooge's wealth, a wealth he is increasingly the servant of. 

We follow the odious Gladstone Gander, luckiest duck alive, as he falls into wealth after wealth after wealth while the hard-working Donald and nephews repeatedly find themselves screwed over.

I mean, it's astonishing. Maybe the critics in this volume dwell too much on the Barksian critique of capitalism. But the accumulation of these stories reprinted here and in other Barks Disney Library volumes makes an overwhelming case for Barks' often horrified bemusement at the American pursuit of money and the falseness of such beliefs as 'Cheaters never prosper' or 'Hard work always results in financial reward' or 'Rich people are wise and benevolent job creators.' That last one sees its refutation in Scrooge McDuck, hoarder and skin-flint supreme, but also in an assortment of other rich people who are absent-minded buffoons or malevolent tyrants. 

But because Carl Barks is  dealing with funny stories about talking ducks and other anthropomorphized animals, he can throw a blistering social critique like "A Christmas in Shacktown" at his then-massive readership of millions of children without anyone in the adult world noticing. It's an astonishing, on-going act of subversive popular story-telling. And it's the immensely entertaining and beautifully drawn world of Carl Barks, master storyteller. With ducks. Highly recommended.

Uncle Sam: written by Steve Darnall and Alex Ross; illustrated by Alex Ross (1997): This blistering, satiric attack on the corruption of the American Dream is probably the least-popular work ever illustrated by beloved comic-book painter Alex Ross. That's too bad, because Ross and scripter Steve Darnall deliver a beautifully and sometimes disturbingly illustrated graphic novel that jumps through the history of America as viewed by what appears to be a living avatar of Uncle Sam. But this Uncle Sam has been driven insane by his country's atrocities and contradictions. The ending peters out a bit, but the overall effect is quite remarkable -- a scathing satire and jeremiad done up in Ross' photo-realistic art. Recommended.

Evolving Ducks

The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Volume 5: Christmas on Bear Mountain (1947/Reprinted 2013): written and drawn by Carl Barks; edited by Gary Groth and J. Michael Catron; editorial material by R. Fiore, Donald Ault, Rich Kreiner, and others.

The Fantagraphics Carl Barks Library really is a joy. Its main content, the Disney comics written and drawn by Carl Barks from the 1940's to the 1960's, are masterpieces of all-ages comics storytelling. The editions themselves are marvelously produced, with crisp artwork and sensible, period-faithful colouring. Carl Barks was (and is) one of the giants of popular American comic books, and indeed American popular culture.

Thankfully, this series doesn't bowdlerize some of the rougher edges of Donald Duck and company's adventures. Here, all the stories are from 1947. Some of the racial caricatures are embarrassing, none moreso than what appear to be cannibalistic Australian bushmen. There are some pretty awful caricatures of lazy Hispanics as well. Ay caramba!

Nonetheless, the storytelling is tight and beautifully paced, the artwork delightful, and the characterization of Donald Duck and nephews Huey, Louie, and Dewey an increasingly nuanced production. The four have not quite become the seasoned adventurers they would be in the book-length (30 pp) adventures of the 1950's, but they're getting there. 

And while the eponymous long story plays things entirely for laughs (and introduces Uncle Scrooge to the Disneyverse), the last of the long-form stories reprinted here, "The Ghost of the Grotto," foreshadows the adventure stories that would come, in which comedy serves the thrilling and the perilous. At one point, the Disney comics that introduced and then reprinted these stories were far and away the best-selling comic books in the United States and Canada. Carl Barks almost certainly had as much of a formative influence on film-makers that include George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as any other artist -- Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom even cribs a number of sequences from Carl Barks. 

More important than influence, though, is effect. These are great, accessible, funny, beautifully written and drawn comics. They actually make one care about perennially sputtering Donald and his originally obnoxious nephews, giving them moments of heroism and regret that they never got in animated cartoons. Highly recommended.

Fat Birds

In a World...: written and directed by Lake Bell; starring Lake Bell (Carol), Rob Corddry (Moe), Alexandra Holden (Jamie), Ken Marino (Gustav), Demetri Martin (Louis), Fred Melamed (Sam), and Michaela Watkins (Dani) (2013): Lake Bell does triple duty on this Hollywood-centric comedy. And in her feature-film writing-and-directing debut, she really brings it.

Many of the delights of this film come from surprise, so I'll just note that it's primarily about Hollywood voiceover artists. You know, the voices you hear on movie ads, movie trailers, and in TV commercials. And it's a real delight, a light-hearted industry satire that tackles feminist issues with intelligence and wit.

Bell is terrific as the protagonist, whose father is a great and hilariously self-important voiceover artist and who herself aspires to become the first great female voiceover artist. The supporting roles are all warmly written, with Rob Corddry getting his best film role ever as Bell's brother-in-law. All this, and a weirdly plausible Young Adult movie named The Amazon Games, clips of which we see. Highly recommended.

Saving Mr. Banks: written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith; directed by John Lee Hancock; starring Emma Thompson (P.L. Travers), Tom Hanks (Walt Disney), Annie Rose Buckley (Ginty), Colin Farrell (Ginty's Father), Paul Giamatti (Ralph), Bradley Whitford (Don DaGradi), B.J. Novak (Robert Sherman) and Jason Schwartzman (Richard Sherman) (2013): The often hilariously fractious relationship between Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers and Walt Disney, who's been trying to make a movie of Travers' novel since the 1940's, makes for a pretty funny movie.

Of course, we also have the non-hilarious stuff detailing Travers' childhood relationship with her troubled, alcoholic father in the Australian outback. The movie threads together this formative storyline with one involving Travers' two-week stay in Hollywood as she worked with Disney writers while debating whether or not to sign over the rights to Mary Poppins to Disney.

The cast is excellent from top to bottom. Hanks probably deserved more recognition for his work as Disney, and Thompson is typically excellent as the prickly Travers. Colin Farrell is unusually sweet as Travers' father. B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman play the songwriting Sherman brothers with understated humour. Paul Giamatti is particularly charming in what could have been a thanklessly sentimental role as the driver assigned to get Travers to and from her Beverly Hills hotel each day.

The movie plays fast and loose with certain facts of the movie's development, but much of the film's Hollywood portion really did happen. Really, the funniest thing the movie doesn't address is Dick Van Dyke's terrible attempt at a Cockney accent in the movie of Mary Poppins. There is  a reason Travers didn't want him as Bert -- even Van Dyke thought he was wrong for the part! Recommended.

The Guns of Summer

The Lone Ranger: written by Justin Haythe, Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio; based on the character created by Fran Striker; directed by Gore Verbinski; starring Johnny Depp (Tonto), Armie Hammer (John Reid/Lone Ranger), William Fichtner (Butch Cavendish), Tom Wilkinson (Latham Cole), Ruth Wilson (Rebecca Reid), Helena Bonham Carter (Red Harrington) and James Badge Dale (Dan Reid) (2013): Based on an 80-year-old character originally created for radio, The Lone Ranger was last year's much-ridiculed mega-bomb. Like another recent mega-bomb, John Carter, it came from Walt Disney Studios.

The two movies share another affinity, insofar as neither movie is really terrible -- indeed, The Lone Ranger is fairly entertaining despite its ridiculously protracted length. As well, both movies have an overly long framing story that does nothing to improve the viewing experience. But when a movie has the backing of the people who brought Disney the hugely profitable Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, and is a labour of love for Johnny Depp, certain things will remain in the picture.

Per: star power, Depp's Tonto is the comic-grotesque centre of the film, the Lone Ranger (gamely played by Armie Hammer in a role that's mostly thankless until the last half-hour) a gormless, even-more-comic sidekick. William Fichtner's outlaw Butch Cavendish is a monstrous cannibal, he and his band of outlaws seeming to have sprung out of a spaghetti Western by way of a Rob Zombie movie. It's like the movie is a crossover among several different movies. Or a teleporter accident.

Unevenness of tone also does some very odd things to the narrative. One minute the movie's making grade-school poop jokes, the next it's asking us to seriously contemplate the aftermath of a massacre of Native Americans. Then it actually shows us a lengthy massacre of another group of Native Americans. Mmm, genocide! A nice light snack!

Some of the action set-pieces are spectacular, though so far divorced from the laws of physics that they exist in their own cartoon world. It's not that more successful blockbusters aren't equally divorced -- it's that The Lone Ranger seems almost giddy at times with the prospect of highlighting its own artificiality. This may be a bad thing for the box office, but it gives the action scenes a charm lacking from the usual sturm-und-drang summer explosion-fest, especially the ones in which Silver the horse repeatedly demonstrates that it's a spirit horse by running around on roofs or on the tops of speeding trains.

Thematically, the movie also moves itself out of lock-step with contemporary mores by depicting the U.S. military as genocidal boobs. Which, of course, they were during the time in question. There's no supporting the troops here -- they're in bed with corrupt governmental officials, corrupt businessmen, and cannibal outlaws. It's very much a 1970's touch. All in all, an odd, frustrating, but occasionally rewarding movie best not watched in one sitting. Lightly recommended.

Duck and Cover

The Carl Barks Library: Donald Duck: Lost in the Andes: written and illustrated by Carl Barks (1948-49; collected 2011): Writer-artist Carl Barks may be the most-read comic-book creator of all time. It may not even be close.

At its peak, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories -- the comic book in which Barks' tales of Donald Duck and friends appeared -- sold 3 million copies a month upon first publication and millions more in reprints over the decades. That number dwarfs anything the superhero sub-genre in America ever achieved. More importantly, Barks wasn't just popular: he was a tremendous storyteller.

This first volume of the Fantagraphics Carl Barks Library comprises a nice selection of three long stories, several shorter ones, and a few one-page 'gag' strips. Barks wouldn't settle on the final personalities of his versions of the Donald Duck characters for a while, but already they're distinctly different from the one-note cartoons, at least in the three long adventures. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are helpful and curious, and while Donald is frequently exasperated, he still makes for a surprisingly good adventure hero. Only Uncle Scrooge remains undeveloped -- it would be a couple of years before Barks would make him a crusty but loveable participant in the adventures, rather than the Ayn Randist asshat he is here when he briefly appears.

The stories are enjoyable and often enjoyably odd, with the Andes adventure being the stand-out here -- square eggs, square chickens, and an entire Native American civilization dealing with a case of cultural contamination from North Americans that's left them all speaking with parodies of Southern accents (!). The cartooning is clean, the colours vivid, and the incidental action occuring in the background and away from the main action quite witty in a way that would anticipate the more crowded panels of Mad.

All in all, this is a delight, and a testimony to one of America's finest all-ages storytellers in any medium, at any time. Barks was truly "the good Duck artist." Highly recommended.