Donald Duck & Co # 50 - 1999

["Jørgen Andreas Bangor"]

Donald Duck & Co # 50 - 1999

Egmont front cover this week. It shows the nephews cleaning the floor. 
Donald comes, carrying a big stack of presents. He doesn't see the soap 
bar just in front of him on the floor...

Story number one is a Donald Duck story (D 99002, 12 pages), written by 
Per Hedman, and drawn by Vicar.

Donald has a lot of Christmas cards to send, but discovers that there are 
too few mailmen to deliver all the mail. He gets a job at the local post 
office himself, and soon after he sorts mail. He needs a container to put 
them all in, but is told that it is at the moment busy somewhere else. 
Donald then finds one himself, and fills it with cards. What he doesn't 
know is that this container is supposed to contain things destined for 
Faraway. It also contains something else which is not supposed to be 
there: Donald Duck.
When Donalds wakes up in the cargo room in a plane, he accidentally opens 
a hatch in its bottom, and he and all the cards are dropped out over a 
small, isolated country. This country doesn't seem to have come much 
further than the sixteenth century, and for some reason celebrating 
Christmas is forbidden there. But the cards from Duckburg wakes up 
forgotten feelings in the population. Soon after there's a big Christmas 
party, and the people are happy. In return they offer to help Donald 
deliver the cards back in Duckburg, which isn't exactly a success.

Hedman has written a pretty good story here, and Vicar's art is as usual 
good - although he certainly hasn't made a masterpiece out of this.

Story number two is a Goofy one-pager (D 88243). Something that was 
discovered behind a shelf, eh?
The art looks like Esteban.

 Goofy is standing at the front door of his house, lacking the key to 
the door. That's no problem though, since he's got another key in the 
kitchen, and the back door is open so that he can get it... 

A very good little story. Typically Goofy.

Number three is the fifth of the stone stories (D 99038, 12 pages). In 
this one Gyro Gearloose is the main character. It's written by 
Pat and Carol McGreal, and drawn by Vicar - and this _is_ a masterpiece 
by the artist. 

Minnie and Daisy have given the stones to Gyro, in the hope that he can 
find out what they are. He's filming the experiments. After some failing 
attempts, he tries to activate them with sound waves. The stones start 
to spin in the air, and a picture is created between them. It shows a 
village in the year 999 just before new years eve. It is Duckburg - or 
at least it is on the same place; Gyro recognizes the mountains in the 
area. Among the farmers in the village are two ancestors of Donald and 
Mickey. 
To practice as acrobats before the new year party, they walks into the 
forest. Then they see that something strange is going on in the mountains. 
A battle is being fought between to sorcerers - one good and one evil. 
The two stones are hanging in the air in front of the evil one, who's the 
strongest of the two. At the moment the new millennium starts (they were 
obviously one year early a thousand years ago too...) the stones, which 
are created by the evil one, will melt together, making a force that will 
make him the ruler over a big area.
The two farmers distract him, and the good sorcerer sends one stone into 
ice and the other into fire. The evil one cast a spell that will make 
the stones come back one thousand years later, and he then hides himselft 
in the mountain. The good one cast a spell that will make sure the stones 
are attracted to good people, relatives of the two farmers.
After having seen all this, Gyro walks into the mountain to prevent the 
evil sorcerer from coming out from it. He arrivs just in tim to see him 
walk out, and tries to stop him. It's all in vain, and the sorcerer walks 
away to find his stones.

A really memorable story, not least because of the art. Vicar has done an 
outstanding job on this one - but I do think he should stay with drawing 
ducks ;-) The first time he draws Mickey in this story, he has obviously 
copied Ferioli's Mickey from the second stone story, but Mickey's ancestor 
looks more like some villain from an old Gottfredson story; or maybe a bit 
like Barks' Mickey...
This story also raises some interesting questions about where Duckburg is 
located. The people living in the village a thousand years ago are 
certainly not Indians. The style of the buildings and the clothes looks 
mostly German, maybe French. If I had written the story, I suppose I would 
have put a Viking village at the spot of present day Duckburg, although 
they probably never went as far south as to Calisota (wherever that is...). 
 
Story number four is an old one-pager (KF 12-23-51)

Story number five is an old story about the Three Little Pigs (W/C'N'D 12, 
four pages). I think it's drawn by Paul Murry. It was first published in 
Norway in # 1 - 1959.

Number six is a Grandma Duck story (D 99030, seven pages), written by 
Gorm Transgaard, and drawn by Marsal.

Grandma is yelling at Gus because he doesn't work, as usual. Then suddenly 
she's transfered to a space ship, inhabited by aliens. On their planet 
they had become so used to techology fixing everything for them  that 
they'd forgotten everything about fixing things themselves. So when 
something went wrong with their powerplant, nobody could fix it, and it 
exploded, destroying the entire planet. The population escaped in big 
space ships, with areas on board for growing food. There's only one problem; 
they haven't the slightest idea how to do it. Therefore they found 
Grandma, so that she could teach them how. She does, and in return she's 
given a small robot which does the work Gus was supposed to do.

Not bad. Much better than these short stories use to be.

Number seven is a Dutch one-pager with Goofy and Mickey (H 9376), written 
by Jan Kruse, and drawn by Comicup Studio.

Goofy has earned some money so that he can pay back some he's loaned from 
Mickey. He buys a wallet to carry them in, but... then he doesn't have 
any to Mickey with.

The art is excellent, but that joke is very much older than this story.

Number eight is the final part of Don's Kalevala story. I will put this 
in a mail by itself.

Number nine is another old one-pager (KF 02-03-52).



   Jørgen