Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jul 4, 2017 20:06:39 GMT
I believe I have found a new candidate for the Garbage Award of Worst Disney Comic of All Times (TM): a mind-bogglingly stupid and weird effort entitled Family Fun, for which we can blame an unusually terrible Carl Fallberg and the uninspired art of Tony Strobl and Steve Steere (who did do good work, on occasion… but not here). Here's the details.
First, the general plot is: a Duck family gathering at Grandma's house (including Donald, Daisy, Donald, Gyro, Scrooge, HDL, Gus, Gladstone and April, May and June) is hijacked by the Beagle Boys, apparently intent on tasting some of Grandma's pies (??). A tornado comes out of nowhere and transports the whole damn house to a nondescript Lost World setting where they meet dinosaurs (though it doesn't really amount to anything) and try to simulataneously one-up the Beagles and go back home. That premise could have imaginably been made into something enjoyable, but it wasn't really conductory to greatness all on its own. But this is only the beginning. The brain-boggling stupidity has yet to arrive.
You see, when the Ducks are gathered in the house at the beginning, they take a look at the Duck family tree (the first such tree shown in Disney comics, for what it's worth), and after some confusing "comedy" regarding a certain Black Duck, pirate, being located on the same branch as Gladstone, someone points out one of the branches ends on a question mark. Grandma explains that a Duck's egg disappeared long ago without explanation. Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.
Moving on, when they get to the Lost World… by golly, there's no way to type this that doesn't sound mind-numbingly dumb. They stumble upon a giant egg while wandering about. After some poking, the egg hatches to reveal a cave-duck character (looking like a wild-haired Donald, basically), already grown-up and already in possession of a fur cloth and wooden club, I mean what the goddamn WAK for WAKness's sake!!! I see nothing wrong with Disney ducks hatching from eggs, but this is two-year-old-level stupidity. (Assuming you were a particularly dumb two-year-old, too. I could have told you baby ducks were born little, at that age.)
And not only that, but the Ducks naturally jump to the conclusion that the Cave Duck (whom the French translation dubs Hibernaduck in allusion to Hibernatus, though he remains nameless in the original) is their long-lost relative. Again… what? The egg was lost long ago and for some inexplicable reason it never hatched in all these years, and instead found its way to the aforementionedly nondescript Lost World? And by sheer virtue of having… been… in the Lost World, the kid hatches as a prehistoric duck…? Not to mention, they find a random orphan duck, and simply because they'd talked about their missing relative earlier, they immediately assume that must be him? It's not like they're the only ducks in the world, dammit! And in 1960, Fallberg should have known that. Characters like Glomgold existed already, to say nothing of random extras.
It's so stupid that I have racked my brain for an explanation to all of this and still, neither of the two I found makes much goddarn sense.
Thoughts?
First, the general plot is: a Duck family gathering at Grandma's house (including Donald, Daisy, Donald, Gyro, Scrooge, HDL, Gus, Gladstone and April, May and June) is hijacked by the Beagle Boys, apparently intent on tasting some of Grandma's pies (??). A tornado comes out of nowhere and transports the whole damn house to a nondescript Lost World setting where they meet dinosaurs (though it doesn't really amount to anything) and try to simulataneously one-up the Beagles and go back home. That premise could have imaginably been made into something enjoyable, but it wasn't really conductory to greatness all on its own. But this is only the beginning. The brain-boggling stupidity has yet to arrive.
You see, when the Ducks are gathered in the house at the beginning, they take a look at the Duck family tree (the first such tree shown in Disney comics, for what it's worth), and after some confusing "comedy" regarding a certain Black Duck, pirate, being located on the same branch as Gladstone, someone points out one of the branches ends on a question mark. Grandma explains that a Duck's egg disappeared long ago without explanation. Obvious foreshadowing is obvious.
Moving on, when they get to the Lost World… by golly, there's no way to type this that doesn't sound mind-numbingly dumb. They stumble upon a giant egg while wandering about. After some poking, the egg hatches to reveal a cave-duck character (looking like a wild-haired Donald, basically), already grown-up and already in possession of a fur cloth and wooden club, I mean what the goddamn WAK for WAKness's sake!!! I see nothing wrong with Disney ducks hatching from eggs, but this is two-year-old-level stupidity. (Assuming you were a particularly dumb two-year-old, too. I could have told you baby ducks were born little, at that age.)
And not only that, but the Ducks naturally jump to the conclusion that the Cave Duck (whom the French translation dubs Hibernaduck in allusion to Hibernatus, though he remains nameless in the original) is their long-lost relative. Again… what? The egg was lost long ago and for some inexplicable reason it never hatched in all these years, and instead found its way to the aforementionedly nondescript Lost World? And by sheer virtue of having… been… in the Lost World, the kid hatches as a prehistoric duck…? Not to mention, they find a random orphan duck, and simply because they'd talked about their missing relative earlier, they immediately assume that must be him? It's not like they're the only ducks in the world, dammit! And in 1960, Fallberg should have known that. Characters like Glomgold existed already, to say nothing of random extras.
It's so stupid that I have racked my brain for an explanation to all of this and still, neither of the two I found makes much goddarn sense.
- The first and easiest (if a little cop-outish) is that, like in The Wizard of Oz, the tornado knocked all of them unconscious and the rest was a dream. But it still requires one to believe in the possibility of a shared dream between all the characters. This is not unheard of in Disney comics lore (see Barks's Ali Baba story), but it's the bane of "All Just a Dream" twist endings and I'd really rather avoid it.
- The second, more complex one is that the "lost-world" style area was actually under some kind of 'aging' ray/curse that turned anything in a certain range into an older version of itself. That it would then turn lizards into dinosaurs and an egg into an adult duck (without actually hatching the egg) is well within the realm of Gyro Gearloose science, if perhaps kind of far-fetched; and all bets are off if it is Witch Hazel-style magic. On the other hand, this still doesn't expalin why the Ducks would automatically assume the Cave Duck is their long-lost relative, or why they're not surprised in the least by the Cave Duck hatching as an adult, so it requires one to believe the ducks are kind of stupid (perhaps the aging curse is making their brain senile? I don't know! I'm grasping at straws here!), and secondly, it makes for an unsatisfying story since the heroes would never have figured any of that out.
Thoughts?
