Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Trick or Treat” is Volume 13 in Fantagraphics’s The Complete Carl Barks Disney Library. The book collects comic book stories and two single-page gags from October 1952 – November 1953 starring Donald and his nephews: Huey, Dewey, and Louie. It concludes with “Story Notes,” annotations by a team of writers; “Carl Barks: Life Among the Ducks,” a biography by Donald Ault, and a Covers Gallery.
Buy Walt Disney’s Donald Duck “Trick or Treat” by Carl BarksThe title story is adapted from the 1952 Donald Duck cartoon of the same name. Barks had to fill out a 32-page comic book, so he added scenes featuring Smorgie the Bad, Witch Hazel’s six-armed ogre, which were initially cut but have been restored here. The originally published opening can be found under “The Cutting Room Floor.”
To make up the difference in the cut pages, Barks created another Halloween-related story, “Hobblin’ Goblins,” where Huey, Louie, and Dewey use inventor Gyro Gearloose’s goblin foiler to get out of attending Donald’s girlfriend Daisy’s party so they don’t have to dance with girls. This funny story plays out like many that feature their uncle because every time they make a decision, it’s the wrong one. “Prank Above” is an amusing one-pager treat for readers about the Ducks playing a trick, at least they think they are. The book concludes with another Halloween one-pager, “Frightful Face.”
“The Hypno-Gun” reveals Donald quite gullible when Uncle Scrooge “zaps” him with the boys’s toy gun into a bill collector to get a tough customer to pay up in quite a wild battle. “Omelet” is the name of a town that suffers so much from Donald’s chicken-farming acumen he has to wear a disguise to pass through it, but their suffering brings joy to the reader.
This volume also includes other holiday-related stories. Donald takes on “A Charitable Chore” to feed someone poor on Thanksgiving until he discovers it’s his lucky cousin Gladstone Gander and looks for a way out from his commitment. “Turkey with All the Schemings” is set on Christmas Day. It’s rather odd seeing people making deliveries that day and for a printer come to Donald looking for payment for his Xmas cards. Discovering he’s out of money and forgetting to buy food, leaving him with only a can of beans in the house, Donald tries to trick Uncle Scrooge into buying him dinner disguised as a South American oil tycoon. But the story has a few unbelievable twists where we are supposed to accept Uncle Scrooge is too cheap to pay $9.73 for their dinner, that they are allowed to stay overnight in the restaurant, and when he learns of Donald’s ruse, Scrooge buys the restaurant for $1 million and forces Donald to wash dishes to pay off the bill.
“My Lucky Valentine” finds Donald getting a job as a postman. It’s a rugged, snowy day on February 14, and Donald proves to be an honorable duck and mailman when he risks his life to deliver a card…from Gladstone to Daisy! Donald has another comedic battle against Gladstone when they compete for the votes of children to be the Easter Parade Grand Marshal in “The Easter Election.” The nephews help their uncle, but will their efforts be enough to overcome Gladstone’s trademark luck?
In “Flip Decision,” Donald learns the philosophy of flipism where problems are decided by a flip of a coin, a philosophy adopted by Batman villain Harvey Dent/Two-Face 11 years earlier in Detective Comics #66 (August 1942). Flipism leads to trouble as Donald finds himself before a judge and an angry Daisy.
Gearloose’s inventions continue to cause Donald frustration to the reader’s delight. Donald performs quite a few wild stunts to get on a TV quiz show in hopes of winning $1,000 but will “The Talking Dog,” courtesy of Gearloose, make his dream come true? A number of fisherman become “Worm Weary” alongside Donald when Gearloose’s overactive worms cause strife at the lake.
“Much Ado About Quackly Hall” finds Donald working as a realtor trying to sell the old Quackly Place. He has an interested buyer, but this is the boys’s secret clubhouse and they work to sabotage the sale. “Some Heir Over the Rainbow” sees Uncle Scrooge testing Donald, Gladstone, and the boys to see whom he should pick as “heir to inherit [his] vast fortune, which is tough because all prove terrible with money.
Now anyone who has read a few of Barks’s Donald stories wouldn’t think that daffy duck could become “The Master Rainmaker” but the story opens stating Donald perfected the science. He does great work for the farmers who pay for his services, but when he learns Gladstone is taking Daisy on a picnic, jealously gets the better of him. So much so, when he unleashes a blizzard, he also gets trapped in it.
Donald attempts to prove he can do things without money better than Uncle Scrooge can with his fortune in “The Money Stairs.” They decide to climb a mountain, and there’s plenty of laughs when Uncle Scrooge falls behind and pays a zoo to let animals loose on the mountain. Unfortunately, the final twist is a cheat and disappointing. Donald battles a different group of animals in “Bee Bumbles.”
At this point, Barks had been working on Donald Duck stories for 10-plus years. The stories remain inventive and filled with humor, and the characters true to form. With so many stories dealing with holidays, this volume creates a sense of passing through a year more than other volumes, which is a nice change of pace. The artwork also continues to be a highlight, from the winter storm in “My Lucky Valentine,” to the bee swarm in “Bee Bumbles,” and the various shapes of clouds in “The Master Rainmaker.” The characters are very expressive. Their moods are conveyed by their facial expressions and body gestures before reading the word balloons.
