The Custard Gun (Barks Quiz)

Daniel van Eijmeren dve at kabelfoon.nl
Mon Jul 7 15:01:14 CEST 2003


NILS KLARTEKST to me, 06-07-2003:

>> "THIS is getting monotonous!" (Donald Duck)
>>
>> Hint: This story features a Gyro Gearloose invention. Gyro is 
>> mentioned, but does not appear in this story. At the end of the 
>> story, Gyro is mentioned again. About a deal, this time. 
>> New hint: The story refers to a dinner.

> I had given up this one, but your new hint did the trick: It's 
> from "The Custard Gun", WDC186. 

Indeed! It's the custard gun story. The code is WDC 183, though.
(WDC 186 is the ice taxis story.)

> Gyro has invented a gun that shoots custard goolets. This is 
> supposed to be a more humane form of hunting. The idea is to 
> blind the game with the custard and then hog-tie it while it's 
> helpless. When I read this as a kid, I remeber thinking it was 
> not very logical. You're still going to kill and eat the game in 
> the end aren't you? Do you also have to humiliate it first? 

Nice observation, though I do think there's a difference between 
killing an animal on a distance, and killing a caught animal. From 
a distance it's easier to miss, or to shoot on the wrong place, so 
the animal can get wounded instead off killed. And if the wounded 
animal gets away, it may get a horrible death. 

The custard gun avoids this, although I don't know what cruelty 
will happen if an escaped temporarily blinded animal gets attacked 
by another animal...

However, I think that the custard gun is a way to be able to make 
a Disney story about shooting animals. There's another such story, 
Jungle Bungle (WDC 259), in which Donald uses arrows that don't kill 
the animals. One type of arrows puts them asleep, and the other type 
of arrows wakes them up.

> For anyone who has access to the story: Dig it out and look again 
> at panel four on the last page. It's one of the funniest panels 
> in comic book history.

It's very funny, indeed. I'm not very enthusiastic about the rest 
of the story, though. There's too much discussing about what that
failing custard gun can do, and about what it cannot do. It takes 
the pace out of the story, IMHO. The *main* reason for not being 
enthusiastic about the story, could be that the story is badly 
reproduced in The Netherlands, with hazy and muddy art. I just 
checked the Carl Barks Library, and there the story looks *much* 
better. It's a difference of day and night. So, maybe I'll change 
my opinion after reading that version. 

--- Daniël


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