Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Balloonatics” is Volume 25 in Fantagraphics’s The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. This book collects comic-book stories starring Donald (that ran from March-April 1960 to January 1961); his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie as members of the Junior Woodchucks (that ran from January 1970 to January 1971); and Grandma Duck and her Farm Friends (that ran in Four Color #1161, February-April 1961). It concludes with a Cover Gallery; “Story Notes,” which are annotations by a team of writers; and “Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks,” a biography by Donald Ault.
Buy Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Balloonatics”: The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library Vol. 25In the title story, Gyro Gearloose has invented a gas and builds a giant balloon that resembles Donald. Unfortunately, Donald falls asleep filling his likeness with so much gas that it becomes ten stories tall and rises ten miles high, which pings the Duckburg air base radar, sending pilots into action and delivering a funny climax.
Donald’s has a money-making scheme to become a “Froggy Farmer.” He realizes if he can speed up their growth, “big frog legs [will] bring fat prices in the cafes!” The nephews see this as a good time to play a prank on him. When Donald seeks revenge dressed up as a giant frog, he ends up in a cafe. In another animal story, “The Fraidy Falcon,” a shy bird gets kicked out of falcon school. The boys enlist him to help Donald’s parachute-jump routine, but will he the bird overcome his fear or just get in the way? The story offers a good resolution as the bird pushes itself.
Donald takes over as “The Dog-Sitter” for a rich, snooty couple when the boys have to back out. When the dog runs off, Donald and the boys search for him through the city. The foursome also heads to Scotland to search for the “Mystery of the Loch.” They aren’t the only one searching, but he’s the only one who snapped a picture. Sort of.
When Donald struggles as “The Village Blacksmith,” the boys bring in jobs from Gyro, Uncle Scrooge, Daisy, and Daisy. When tasked with turning a cannon into plowshares by Duckburg officials, he comically struggles with that as well. Scrooge also appears in “Rocks to Riches,” but the story is about the boys finding a box filled gold bars and jewels. Donald works as a janitor on a missile base in “Missile Fizzle.” Rockets keep blowing up, and Donald and the boys solve the mystery.
Daisy’s club gets the men to hunt for game and wild fruit for the annual Thanksgiving Day Feast in “Turkey Trouble.” The winner gets to eat with the Queen of the Festival, which is Daisy. Out in the woods, Donald gets tricked by a shady real estate salesman. Cousin Gladstone Gander enters the competition but his typical luck doesn’t prove successful, in a surprising twist for regular readers.
There are four Grandma Duck’s Farm Friends stories. In “The Whole Herd of Help,” Uncle Scrooge brings Grandma an elephant, which causes a problem with her horse. A young chick causes problems for Grandma’s neighbors in “The Day the Farm Stood Still.” Gladstone is responsible for “The Training Farm Fuss” when he comes to practice bullfighting and riles up Angus the bull. Or does he? “The Reversed Rescue” sees Donald rent a helicopter to save Grandma and the boys after a blizzard, though they don’t need saving. Seeing the chopper, the Beagle Boys shoot in down and make their way to the farm, but they are no match against Grandma and Billy Goat.
The book concludes with five Junior Woodchucks stories. The first three see greedy Uncle Scrooge as the villain. The “Peril of the Black Forest” is due Scrooge trying to bulldoze it. The Woodchucks and forest animals fight against him, and Scrooge learns the pleasures of the woods. In “Whale of a Good Deed,” a tidal wave has thrown a whale inland. Scrooge wants to turn it into whale oil while the Woodchucks try to return him the creature to the sea. “Let Sleeping Bones Lie” sees the Woodchucks find dinosaur bones out in the badlands where Scrooge wants to build a super highway. Scrooge seems to be winning until local fauna is slipped into his tea and he experiences visions that cause him change his mind.
It’s a “Bad Day for Troop ‘A’” when a plane of circus performers goes down in the mountains. The Woodchucks go to rescue them but have a tough time dealing with the circus fat lady. The Woodchucks work on being “Life Savers” but first mistakenly interrupt a movie set then have to deal with the crew members teasing them.
Although the template for the Donald stories are familiar, Barks does a very good job creating entertaining stories that still feel fresh after writing the characters for decades. It likely helped that he was able to expand his creativity by telling stories focused on the Woodchucks and Grandma’s farm.
The art remains marvelous. The characters are expressive, conveying their moods before anything words are read. There’s enough detail that the settings are never confusing. Fantagraphics does a great job reproducing the colors, which appear in bold hues, and the inky blacks.
The art for the Junior Woodchucks stories were “based on Carl Barks’s layouts, but drawn by different artists. [Fantagraphics] have chosen to present Daan Jippe’s later versions [1992, 2005, 2006, 2008]…based on the same layouts, as they more closely reflect Barks’s style and vision.” Jippe’s depiction of the ducks’ facial features look slightly different as do the way the backgrounds are handled.
