I'm seeing a couple of strips with a fortune teller called Madam Zaza. Is this name a coincidence, or is this also one of the characters you're keeping track of?
I'm seeing a couple of strips with a fortune teller called MI have in a folder all the strips with fortune tellers from the 50s to the 80s, so that I can work on them in some time to understand if it is appropriate to differentiate any of them (because I'm not convinced that putting them all under the umbrella name Fortune teller is the most suitable solution: but we'll see).
adam Zaza. Is this name a coincidence, or is this also one of the characters you're keeping track of?
Thanks for the observation. I have in a folder all the strips with fortune tellers from the 50s to the 80s, so that I can work on them in some time to understand if it is appropriate to differentiate any of them (because I'm not convinced that putting them all under the umbrella name Fortune teller is the most suitable solution: but we'll see).
Also, you read every Donald Duck strip? Both dailies and sundays from the 1930s to the 1990s? Wow. Did you perhaps mark your favourites? If you did, pelase tell us which ones they are!
I'm late in replying to this. Good idea. I already have a list like this for daily strips (not Sundays, yet) from 1940 to 1945, because I'm preparing a project with the help of a friend. When the project has expanded, I will publish the lists here too. There is so much that is relevant for the Disney fan in the Donald Duck strips from the 1950s onwards and I will certainly point it out.
Post by Special Mongo on Feb 19, 2024 20:06:59 GMT
Hi again, pals!
Here I have a strip from 1944 whose dynamics escape me probably because I don't know everything about how war bonds worked. What does Donald get in the end? The refund? And why did he have to stage for himself a stressful and dangerous holiday?
Here I have a strip from 1944 whose dynamics escape me probably because I don't know everything about how war bonds worked. What does Donald get in the end? The refund? And why did he have to stage for himself a stressful and dangerous holiday?
Can you see the strip clearly or should I publish the image in this post too? Let me know!
This is a tough one and I don't really know how to interpret it. I put my guess below, but it is just speculation.
I would guess that the first two panels are linked to the "castaway" series. It doesn't look like a vacation to me, but like DD being stranded at sea. The ending is obscure. my guess would be that we discovered that DD was not really a castaway, but just "acting" in some kind of movie. And now he stops to do important things and buy war bonds.
Hope somebody else will chime in, as this is really a tough strip to understand.
My first thought was that Donald was simulating a holiday because he did not have money to go on a real one because he wanted to spend that money on war bonds. Then again this probably isn't the correct interpretation, just speculating.
I don't know everything about how war bonds worked. What does Donald get in the end? The refund?
In short, WW2 US war bonds could be purchased for 75% of their face value and then traded in for their face value plus 2.9% semiannual interest after at least 10 years had passed. Buying war bonds helped the war effort and provided an essentially risk-free way of investing your money for quite nice returns.
That said, I don't really get the strip myself either. If the joke is that Donald is faking a vacation so he can buy war bonds for the money he saved, why does he look so miserable in the photo he's taking? And why is he faking going on a vacation in the first place when spending your vacation money on war bonds would be seen as admirably patriotic rather than something negative? Who is he trying to trick here, and why?
As an Italian, you may have read this story, a humorous depiction of how such bonds worked (the Norwegian title is literally "Uncle Scrooge and the Bond Collapse"): inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1904-H
Post by Special Mongo on Feb 25, 2024 20:28:30 GMT
Well, thanks for the discussion. From what I have gleaned, it *might* therefore seem that Donald wants to present the holiday experience as negative in his historical period where they should rather dedicate themselves to war bonds, so this would be a propaganda strip. Better yet: perhaps propaganda against the choice of holidays to the detriment of the war effort was raging in the newspapers of the time, so Karp would be presenting us a Donald loyal to propaganda... but with a holiday set up in the studio (nice dig about advertisements of that era?). What's confusing is Donald's suffering look, in fact: if we had seen a cheerful Donald in the first two panels we might have thought "Well, he pretends to have been on holiday so he can buy war bonds", but it's *because the experience holiday is represented as negative* to create room for interpretation. Thanks for the advice on the Italian Disney story, I hadn't read it yet! Contributions to the best understanding of this strip are still welcome.
What's confusing is Donald's suffering look, in fact: if we had seen a cheerful Donald in the first two panels we might have thought "Well, he pretends to have been on holiday so he can buy war bonds", but it's *because the experience holiday is represented as negative* to create room for interpretation.
You know, I think that might be it, that the trick is supposed to be on the reader - we see Donald having a miserable vacation in the first two panels, and then the last two reveal that he didn't actually take a vacation after all, because it's better to buy war bonds.
I do think the idea is that he's trying to force himself to have a vacation he can't afford (pretending to be in some tropical resort when he's just in an inflatable bloat in his backyard) and by the end goes "you know what, if I can't afford a real vacation and have to pretend to enjoy this bad substitute, I might as well go save my money on some War Bonds". It's a propaganda short about investing your money smartly (by buying bonds)
I do think the idea is that he's trying to force himself to have a vacation he can't afford (pretending to be in some tropical resort when he's just in an inflatable bloat in his backyard) and by the end goes "you know what, if I can't afford a real vacation and have to pretend to enjoy this bad substitute, I might as well go save my money on some War Bonds". It's a propaganda short about investing your money smartly (by buying bonds)
