Article from Komix #149

[Kriton Kyrimis]

Here is the translation of an article from last month's Komix, which I
think is of interest to the list:

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    Armed with humor, Barks sets up the story of _Voodoo Hoodoo_
               BLACK HUMOR IN THE BLACK CONTINENT

  Travels, adventure, and, mainly, crazy humor. The _Voodoo Hoodoo_
  story is an excellent sample of Carl Barks' early style.


Black humor is one of the most demanding kinds of humor. It can easily
stop being funny, and it can even more easily end up being a bad taste
parody of itself. In _Voodoo Hoodoo_, Barks manages to avoid these traps
and to produce one of his best stories.


BLACK HUMOR

_Voodoo Hoodoo_, along with *The Mummy's Ring* (_Komix_ #39), were
written at the end of the 1940's, before the Comics Code was imposed,
at a time when creators could allow themselves things that would soon
be forbidden on pain of punishment.

The plot of this story could have been the script for a horror
movie. Indeed, as Barks himself has said, the original inspiration for
this story was given to him by a horror movie starring Bela Lugosi,
one of the leading performers of the genre. "A movie I saw had flocks
of zombies working tirelessly pushing the arms of a giant grinder that
crushed ore or something... I became convinced that zombies do not feel,
and I set out to preach their virtues as ideal stooges for anyone who
needed a dangerous job done cheaply..." Carl Barks is capable not only
of giving a serious aspect to his humor, but to see the humorous side
of even terror itself as well.


THE COMIC ADVENTURE

Of course, Carl Barks does not write horror comics. Moreover, he doesn't
seem to take seriously all the literature on black magic, voodoo, and
other similar hair-raising things. His zombie is too worn out to be scary,
while, as we learn a little before the end of the story, the threat that
sent Donald to the heart of the Black Continent had been non-existent,
as the hex had evaporated.  _Voodoo Hoodoo_ is a hilarious comic story,
and for this reason we do not believe that the American publishers had
been right in refusing to reprint it for many years. Any, not politically
correct, cliches in depicting African natives--which, in any case, were
removed from the story's reprint, on which its publication in _Komix_
is also based--or the references to horror movie esthetics, are nothing
more than the base for gags.

The main theme of the story is not how scary or dangerous the zombie
is itself, but the fear that Donald feels. _Voodoo Hoodoo_ is, in the
final analysis, an insane comedy of misunderstandings. If Barks really
did borrow something from horror movies, this was the technique of
suspense. As in the story *Luck of the North* (_Komix_ #136), without
the element of suspense, which turns this crazy adventure into a race
against time, _Voodoo Hoodoo_ would have been an artless concatenation
of enjoyable gags.


HUMOR AND ADVENTURE

_Voodoo Hoodoo_ has all the ingredients of a barksian "comic adventure". A
travel to an exotic country. suspense and enjoyable gags, and, mainly, a
well-designed plot based on the character of the central hero. However,
something is missing. It is that clearly fictional dimension, that
romanticism which, without detracting from the humor, makes the reader
dream. The strongest point of the story--the fact that it is based on
an outrageous, almost illogical, sequence of misunderstandings--seems to
be its "weakest" point, as well. _Voodoo Hoodoo_ is, above all, a comic
story, and, in the final analysis, its 32 pages are not very different
from the ten pages of Donald Duck short stories. But how could things
be different in  a story with Donald Duck?

What's missing from this story is the further involvement of uncle Scrooge
with the plot. We are in 1949 and Donald's rich uncle has yet to become
the central character of Carl Barks' multi-page stories. The rich Croesus,
with the adventurer's temperament and the integrity of character will
become later the ideal hero who will allow eh Duck Man to complete his
unique personal recipe for "comic adventure". In _Voodoo Hoodoo_, however,
adventure is the framework for  purely comic story. In the recipe of the
classic stories of the 1950s, Carl Barks will find the secret which will
allow him to combine, in his own unique way, humor adventure, laughter
and emotion, fun and daydreaming.

[Caption:] Although the plot of the story could very well have formed
the script of a horror movie, Barks sets up his action, mainly, around
the character of his central character, Donald.


                 DON ROSA COMMENTS ON VOODOO HOODOO

The _Voodoo Hoodoo_ story represents one of the most important moments
in uncle Scrooge's biography, as it will be reconstituted by Don Rosa,
based on Carl Barks' classic stories, in the _Life and Times_. In the
introductory note for the eleventh chapter of the series, Rosa explains
how he managed to incorporate in his own story the events mentioned in
_Voodoo Hoodoo_:

"In my effort not to omit any of the elements of Scrooge's life,
I also met some relatively insignificant contradictions, which I
had no difficulty in overcoming; what should I do about the _Voodoo
Hoodoo_ story, however? It is one of uncle Scrooge's first stories,
and Barks had not yet rounded up his hero's character; he could not
have imagined that the Croesus from Duckburg would be regarded as his
most important creation. Thus, in the story, Scrooge is responsible for
a deadly danger threatening his nephew, and we see him already earning
his second billion in 1879, in Africa. The worst thing, however, is
that in this story Scrooge is presented as a ruthless big shark who
won't hesitate from hunting an African tribe off its land. At first I
did not intend to make any references to this story. Later, however,
I thought that these two problems--that Scrooge could have behaved like
a villain, and the need to cover more than thirty years--would cancel
each other out! As Scrooge would become more greedy and more cynical,
perhaps there came a time when he crossed the limit and behaved like
Glomgold... Perhaps this could form the core of my story. This isolated
misdeed could haunt him for entire decades. I only had to explain why
Scrooge of that time looked like Donald, but., in the end, I managed to
find a solution for everything...it is only for 1879 that I could not
find some explanation, and so I chose to ignore it.  Finally, I had to
render Foola Zoola and Bombie the Zombie in a way that is acceptable to
today's Disney publication standards. However, I am certain that I had
found clever solutions to all these problems... If my story is successful,
it goes without saying that it is for the readers to judge."

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        Kriton  (e-mail: kyrimis at cti.gr)
                (WWW:    http://dias.cti.gr/~kyrimis)
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"You wouldn't really want a pet that could shoot you with its ears if you
 didn't give it enough lettuce, would you?"
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