Christmas stories by Carl Barks

Sat Dec 28 08:03:01 CET 2002

    This week I re-read several of Barks' Christmas stories.  I surprised
myself  when reading "Christmas for Shacktown" that I realized this story
has the first appearance of  Huey, Dewey and Louie's fellow troup
members of the Junior Woodchucks (page 14, panel 1).  HDL recruited
9 of their fellow Junior Woodchucks to earn money shoveling snow,
and Louie leads the group in this panel with the first appearance of
the Woodchuck flag.  This story was first printed for the Christmas season,
1951 (dated Jan. 1952), and was thus Barks' third story using Junior
Woodchucks.  The first 2 stories were the 10-page WDC&S 125 (Feb. 1951)
"Operation St. Bernard" and WDC&S 132 (Sept. 1951) "Ten-star Generals"; in
both these stories only a single adult leader from the Woodchucks interacts
with HDL, promoting them to 5-star generals in the first story, and then
10-star generals in the second story.  The Woodchucks have a minor role
in "Shacktown", but it has the first appearance of the flag and other
troup members, although the emblem on the flag was first seen on the
leader's cap in "Ten-star Generals".