Donald Duck & Co # 46 1999

["Jørgen Andreas Bangor"]

Donald Duck & Co # 46 1999

There's a Dutch front cover on this one, of which we've had many during 
the last year. A good thing, I think, since I usually like them better 
than Egmont's. For some reason they have stopped putting the picture code 
on the cover, so it's sometimes a bit difficult to be certain of the origin, 
though. On this one, the tree ducklings are each holding a musical 
instrument - a trumpet, a saxophone and a violin. The latter is obviously 
troubling the conductor, Donald, a bit, since he's oiling it.

During the last few weeks, two mysterious stones have puzzled Norwegian - 
and presumably some other - Duck readers. The stones, which appear in 
both Duck and Mouse stories, are spherical, and have strange abilities. 
All the stories are written by Pat and Carol McGreal.

And here it is, the first story with one of  these mysterious stones, 
written by Pat and Carol McGreal (D 99007, 12 pages), and drawn by Vicar.

The first part of the story is pretty standard, with Magica de Spell going 
by magic to Duckburg, without these two detectives noticing anything. 
Scrooge himself is on the other side of the globe, in some business, and 
Donald is watching the money bin. Magica is of course fooling Donald, but 
Scrooge gets a feeling that something is wrong, and heads home. After some
problems they all end up at Vesuvio - Magica's volcanoe - where the first
coin is to be melted. And now mysterious things are beginning to happen. 
Donald falls into the volcanoe, and Scrooge runs to his rescue, giving 
Magica time to lower the coin into the molten lava. Rather strange 
behaviour for the old McDuck... But he's in luck, since Magica pays more 
attention to what they are doing than to the coin. And now Donald discovers 
this stone, stuck near the top of the crater. It suddenly comes loose, 
flies away, hits Magica in the head, and flies back to Donald. Scrooge 
runs after the coin, which Magica has lost. Magica is followed back to 
her house by the detectives, and everything is back to normal again.

Not really a story I would have remembered for long, if this stone hadn't 
reappeared a few times.

Story number two is an old one-pager (KF 09-18-49).

And, ah, here's something. Story number three is written and drawn by 
Noel van Horn (D 98381, 10 pages). It is, as you might have guessed, a 
Mickey story.

It seems that everyone in Duckburg (yes, Duckburg and Mousetown is one 
thing in Norway) are checking whatever anyone else is doing, using 
binoculars, video cameras etc. Mickey gets very tired of this, while Goofy 
doesn't really seems to understand what's going on. No surprise there... 
Then they meet an astronomer who's just finishing a new, enormous 
telescope - which is for studying the space, not the neighboors. While 
looking at some distant planet, they discover aliens looking at Earth. 
Immediately after the discovery, Mickey and Goofy are transfered to the 
distant planet, and are being studied by the aliens. Soon after the latter 
looses interest in the earthlings, and our friends start to walk around. 
They meet lots of other aliens that have been transfered there, and all 
of them look at Mickey and Goofy all the time.
They then find out that by reversing the machine that got them there, 
they can get back. But first they'll give the aliens a lesson. Mickey 
finds some really monstrous creatures which he gets there, to cure the 
aliens from their curiosity.
When they return, Mickey is annoyed by the fact that the astronomer has 
been looking at them all the time in his telescope. He and Goofy then 
walks into a forest, to rest under the trees, alone. They don't notice 
that two of the trees are aliens who's there to study them.

Not really such a memorable story, although there's some good gags here. 
The art is splendid, though. I especially like van Horn's Goofy. And some 
of the aliens are really hillarious.

Number four is a one page Gyro Gearloose story (D 98308) written by 
Lars Jensen, and drawn by Alferez.

Gyro has invented a walking tennis racket which he's playing against. The 
robot is too good for him.

Number five is a Dutch Donald Duck story (H 94167, 10 pages), written by 
Frank Jonker, and drawn by Mau Heymans.

Heymans is one of my favourite artists, and he's done a very good job on 
this one. Donald is exhausted from his job in a lamp factory, and he sees 
lamps everywhere. Even old 313 looks like a lamp in his eyes. He decides - 
or rather his doctor does - to go on a vacation on a place where he can 
really cool down. The place seems to be pretty close to Antarctica. They 
rent a plane, and Donald is put down alone on a floating piece of ice. On 
the way down there they spot a whale catcher going southward.
Donald's ice floe breaks up, and some time later he's rescued by the whale 
catcher - which seems to be hunting sperm whales. This upsets Donald, but 
he's even more upset when he's told that the crew were disguised as lamp 
sellers to get safely to the ship. He fires the harpoon gun through the 
bottom of the ship, which then sinks. 
The plane with the doctor and the nephews onboard starts looking for 
Donald, and when they find the catcher's crew in a life boat, they think 
he's drowned. But then they find him, being used as a toy by some whales.

The story isn't so very interesting really, but the art does a very good 
job in saving it. Heymans obviously doesn't know what a whale catcher 
looks like, though. And I do think it would have been pretty easy for 
someone in the Netherlands to find that out, since that nation was very 
active in pelagic whale catching in the sixties (together with Norway, 
UK, USSR and Japan - and of course the Greek pirate fleet).

Next is an old Mickey one-pager (KF 10-06-46)

And number seven is a Donald Duck story (D 97368, 6 pages), written by 
Pat and Shelly Block, and drawn by Guirado. Guirado? Must be a new one.

Donald's nephews are delivering newspapers every morning, and they are 
doing it very well, putting all their pride into the job. Then one 
afternoon, they all come home with a cold. Donald offers to deliver the 
newspapers the next day, to which the nephews protest heavily. They have 
to give up, though, and beg Donald to do a good job.
Donald has a few, in his own opinion, quite revolutionizing ideas - which 
don't exactly have the expected results... The nephews are crushed, since 
they now believe they'll lose all their customers. But it shows up that 
they're wrong. All Donald's accidents make big headlines, and more people 
end up buying the newspaper.
Not much new in this story really, although the end is a bit surprising, 
but it is well done. The art is ok; standard Branca style.

The next story is the end part of a two part story. It's a Donald Duck 
story (D 98352, totally 16 pages) written by Charlie Martin and drawn 
by Santanach.

The Duckburg football (that's soccer for those of you on the other side 
of the Atlantic)  club has gone to some quite corrupt nation, to play a 
game against the local club. Donald and his nephews are there to see the 
game. The team is kidnapped by the president, so that the local club will 
win, and Donald rescues them.

I don't know. Maybe football fans would find the story interesting. It 
didn't give me much.

The issue ends with an old Mickey one-pager (KF 03-09-47)

In addition to the stories, there's one page with an index of the issue, 
and also an old newspaper strip. This is a regular feature. There's one 
page with jokes - also regular (I wonder if the same jokes are in the 
Swedish issues, with Norwegian substituted for Swede...). Two pages with 
funny things to do, and strange things from around the world (yes, also 
regular). Two pages with puzzles, one page with instructions for a simple 
airbrush set which came with the magazine, and one page with information 
about next week's issue (regular). There's also five pages with 
advertisements (all of them between the stories; they are never inside 
them) - four of them for other Disney publications.

Now, isn't it time for you all to learn a Scandinavian language? :-)



   Jorgen