lake monster stories

[Matilda]

This came up on the thread relating to the first DuckTales issue (#0), since it has a lake/sea monster on the cover. I said I had collected lake monster stories, and Rob showed some interest, so here's my current list:

Ducks:

1958 The Loch Eerie Monster (Carl Fallberg/Tony Strobl) DD 59 --McDuck ancestral castle on Loch Eerie, caretaker Angus; monster loves haggis

1960 Mystery of the Loch (Barks)

1970 Das Ungeheuer von Loch McDuck (Martina/Scarpa & Cavazzano) LTB Enten-Edition 11

1971 The Lake Mess Monster (Carlo Chendi/Bottaro) Picsou 186 --female lake monster (also great singer) destroys Beagle Boys’ fake-monster amphibious vehicle

1982 The Crying Monster or The Sobbing Serpent (Andrew Galton & Dave Angus/Vicar) DDA-D 31 --Castle McDuck at Dismal Downs (HDL refer to Old Castle’s Ghost), Bran Eiderbill caretaker, nephew Bucky & HDL rescue baby lake monster, return it to parents

1988 A Trip to Scotland: DuckTales (Neville Jason & Jack Sutter/Millet Lopez) Picsou 200

1992 What a Whopper (John Kane & Tom Anderson/Vicar) JM 2153 --Ducks free Nessie from rival hotel owner with Gyro’s monster-lookalike submarine

2000 Who’s the Monster? (Hanne Guldberg Mikkelsen, Kurt Behnke & David Gerstein/Pasquale Venanzio) LTB 275



Mice:

1960 Black Murdoch’s Warning (Fallberg/Bradbury) MM 70 --castle of Mickey’s distant cousin Malcolm MacMouse, bad guy Slurk, monster awakened by ancestor Murdoch’s bagpipes

1964 The Loch Mess Monster (?/Bradbury) MM 95 -–Mickey’s Uncle Murdoch’s castle; Mickey, M&F use mirror to try to scare haggis-seeking monster away

1977 Dilemma at Deep Cove (?/Murry) WDC 445 --Loch Niff (female) monster thinks the submarine is a baby monster

1980 The Monster of Lake Tiddy-wah-wah (Ed Nofziger/Jaime Diaz studio) JM 1554 --Mickey tells M&F story of a Goofy-headed lake  monster in the tropics

1998 Loch Mess aka Il voit des monsters partout (Stefan Petrucha/Rodriguez Peinado) JM 2442 --Goofy finds monster’s key, so it follows him everywhere, but Goofy still doesn’t get a photo

2003 The Key to the Loch (McGreals/Ferioli) WDC 640 –villagers are shape-shifting dragons


Other:

1992 Sebastian in Scotland (Doug Murray/Bill Fugate) Sebastian 1 --Sebastian helps fish create a monster to scare off men planning to bomb fish out of lake


No stories about North American lake monsters. I actually suggested back on DCF that someone (Dave Rawson?) should write a story about Champ (monster of Lake Champlain in Vermont/New York/Quebec), and someone with Canadian cred should write a story about Ogopogo. The Chendi/Bottaro story could possibly be localized as a Champ story.

[RobbK1]

I'll do some research about The Ogo Pogo of Lake Okanagan, and write a Duck story about Donald and his nephews vacationing there, including lots of "Indian" lore. However, as we have lots of stories currently "in the can", in a bottleneck, long wait for submittal, it might be a few years until it can be published. But if we think it is a spectacularly great story, we would move it ahead of some others in the line.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

I mentioned the Barks/Wright story Be Leery of Lake Eerie earlier. That one's pretty interesting, because it had an alternate ending that the editors cut (where the lake stays polluted even though the dragon's dead). The inevitable Daan Jippes remake of the story actually has both the "normal" and "alternate" ending, and publishers who wish to print the story can choose which they prefer. And, finally — this is the oddest thing of them all — there is a third remake of that story, drawn mastefully by none other than Giovan Battista Carpi. That one's my favourite out of the three, though it doesn't have the alternate ending.

[Matilda]

Jun 22, 2017 8:39:09 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

I mentioned the Barks/Wright story Be Leery of Lake Eerie earlier. That one's pretty interesting, because it had an alternate ending that the editors cut (where the lake stays polluted even though the dragon's dead). The inevitable Daan Jippes remake of the story actually has both the "normal" and "alternate" ending, and publishers who wish to print the story can choose which they prefer. And, finally — this is the oddest thing of them all — there is a third remake of that story, drawn mastefully by none other than Giovan Battista Carpi. That one's my favourite out of the three, though it doesn't have the alternate ending.

I didn't include that one on my list because there's no real monster/creature--but it's very interesting to hear about the Jippes alternate endings and the Carpi remake, neither of which I knew about!

[Matilda]

Jun 22, 2017 7:33:28 GMT RobbK1 said:

I'll do some research about The Ogo Pogo of Lake Okanagan, and write a Duck story about Donald and his nephews vacationing there, including lots of "Indian" lore. However, as we have lots of stories currently "in the can", in a bottleneck, long wait for submittal, it might be a few years until it can be published. But if we think it is a spectacularly great story, we would move it ahead of some others in the line.

Cool! Then we'd just have to get Dave Rawson or somebody to write a Champ story. You know, if there were a special edition comic just of a story about the Ducks or Mice encountering Champ, I think that would sell as a tourist item in the environs of Lake Champlain indefinitely.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 22, 2017 13:52:09 GMT Matilda said:

Jun 22, 2017 8:39:09 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

I mentioned the Barks/Wright story Be Leery of Lake Eerie earlier. That one's pretty interesting, because it had an alternate ending that the editors cut (where the lake stays polluted even though the dragon's dead). The inevitable Daan Jippes remake of the story actually has both the "normal" and "alternate" ending, and publishers who wish to print the story can choose which they prefer. And, finally — this is the oddest thing of them all — there is a third remake of that story, drawn mastefully by none other than Giovan Battista Carpi. That one's my favourite out of the three, though it doesn't have the alternate ending.

I didn't include that one on my list because there's no real monster/creature--but it's very interesting to hear about the Jippes alternate endings and the Carpi remake, neither of which I knew about!

What do you mean, no real creature? My understanding of the story was always that the Dragon was a new lifeform that had evolved from the garbage, so he'd definitely qualify as a creature, if not a traditional sea serpent.

[RobbK1]

Jun 22, 2017 14:28:53 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 22, 2017 13:52:09 GMT Matilda said:

I didn't include that one on my list because there's no real monster/creature--but it's very interesting to hear about the Jippes alternate endings and the Carpi remake, neither of which I knew about!

What do you mean, no real creature? My understanding of the story was always that the Dragon was a new lifeform that had evolved from the garbage, so he'd definitely qualify as a creature, if not a traditional sea serpent.

Really?  I don't remember seeing anything in the pictures or text that indicated that the so-called "monster" was really alive.  I thought the secret was revealed at the story's end that they had been fooled all along, and the "MONSTER" was just an aggregation of garbage that, by coincidence, came together to look like a living animal.  He "collapses into nothing" when his nutrients of acids and bacteria run low, and reforms again when they are replenished.  It looked to me that the "animal" was really inanimate garbage, except for the bacteria that make it move.   So, the bacteria are alive, but they are moving a dead shell.   So it is not a "lake monster".   I'll have to go back and read it again. 

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 22, 2017 14:43:21 GMT RobbK1 said:

Jun 22, 2017 14:28:53 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

What do you mean, no real creature? My understanding of the story was always that the Dragon was a new lifeform that had evolved from the garbage, so he'd definitely qualify as a creature, if not a traditional sea serpent.

Really?  I don't remember seeing anything in the pictures or text that indicated that the so-called "monster" was really alive.  I thought the secret was revealed at the story's end that they had been fooled all along, and the "MONSTER" was just an aggregation of garbage that, by coincidence, came together to look like a living animal.  He "collapses into nothing" when his nutrients of acids and bacteria run low, and reforms again when they are replenished.  It looked to me that the "animal" was really inanimate garbage, except for the bacteria that make it move.   So, the bacteria are alive, but they are moving a dead shell.   So it is not a "lake monster".   I'll have to go back and read it again. 

Both interpretations are valid, I guess, but I took the "collapse" as the creature dissolving when the water was no longer inhabitable for it — just like I'd expect a worm to rather quickly lose any recognizable wormness if it were dipped in concentrated chloric acid. Not a conventional animal, mind you, but an entirely new lifeform after the manner of Willie the Wisp, if you will, or perhaps the Blob if you want a real-life creature.

[Minotaur]

"The Dragon In My Garage" is a chapter in Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, which presents an analogy where the existence of God is equated with a hypothetical insistence that there is a dragon living in someone's garage. This is similar to Russell's Teapot in the way it forms an apt analogy for the concepts of the burden of proof and falsifiability. The main thrust of how Sagan develops the garage-dwelling dragon example is that the proponent employs increasingly ad hoc reasoning to describe their belief in the face of further questions. Eventually, the goalposts are moved in such a way as to render the initial assertion practically unfalsifiable. In a more general sense, this part may be done during the initial definition of the belief, or as when replying to critical examination of the belief in question.

Dragon-style arguments originate in what Daniel Dennett terms "belief in belief":rather than actually holding a belief, you think you should hold the belief—or "fake it till you make it". The post hoc justifications come from dissonance between what the believer thinks he should believe and how these beliefs would actually manifest in practical terms. While such justifications need to be made quickly on an ad hoc basis, someone declining all these tests must, somewhere in their head, have a model that makes them not expect to see this sort of evidence at all.This is tantamount to not really holding the belief (since you'd expect to see something if you really did believe), but just thinking that they do, hence "belief in belief". This is often rationalised away in much the same manner that the metaphorical dragon is, by changing the rules to say that the dragon doesn't really need to have a real effect on our lives to have a real effect on our lives. What? Exactly.

The Demon-Haunted World was published much later than Barks' story, I was wondering if they were related. 

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jun 24, 2017 5:14:49 GMT Minotaur said:

"The Dragon In My Garage" is a chapter in Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, which presents an analogy where the existence of God is equated with a hypothetical insistence that there is a dragon living in someone's garage. This is similar to Russell's Teapot in the way it forms an apt analogy for the concepts of the burden of proof and falsifiability. The main thrust of how Sagan develops the garage-dwelling dragon example is that the proponent employs increasingly ad hoc reasoning to describe their belief in the face of further questions. Eventually, the goalposts are moved in such a way as to render the initial assertion practically unfalsifiable. In a more general sense, this part may be done during the initial definition of the belief, or as when replying to critical examination of the belief in question.

Dragon-style arguments originate in what Daniel Dennett terms "belief in belief":rather than actually holding a belief, you think you should hold the belief—or "fake it till you make it". The post hoc justifications come from dissonance between what the believer thinks he should believe and how these beliefs would actually manifest in practical terms. While such justifications need to be made quickly on an ad hoc basis, someone declining all these tests must, somewhere in their head, have a model that makes them not expect to see this sort of evidence at all.This is tantamount to not really holding the belief (since you'd expect to see something if you really did believe), but just thinking that they do, hence "belief in belief". This is often rationalised away in much the same manner that the metaphorical dragon is, by changing the rules to say that the dragon doesn't really need to have a real effect on our lives to have a real effect on our lives. What? Exactly.

The Demon-Haunted World was published much later than Barks' story, I was wondering if they were related. 

I'm familiar with the Garage Dragon thought experiment, and I fail to see a connection with Lake Eerie. Whether or not the dragon in that story was "alive" biologically, there was definitely a visible, observed dragon-like form, whereas the whole point of the Garage Dragon is that there is no evidence whatsoever of its existence and the garage-owner keeps making up excuses.

[drakeborough]

As for the creature in "Be Leery of Lake Eerie", I have always thought that it was alive, and that it died at the end of the story.

[Zantaf]

Jun 24, 2017 18:23:36 GMT drakeborough said:

As for the creature in "Be Leery of Lake Eerie", I have always thought that it was alive, and that it died at the end of the story.

Same here, I think it's pretty clear.

[Matilda]

Y'all are free to include animate garbage on your own list of lake monster stories!

The Sebastian story on my list doesn't have a real lake monster, either... I just included it because it was explicitly about Loch Ness and the Nessie myth, here exploited by Sebastian and the fish. 

[Minotaur]

Jun 24, 2017 9:04:34 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jun 24, 2017 5:14:49 GMT Minotaur said:

The Demon-Haunted World was published much later than Barks' story, I was wondering if they were related. 

I'm familiar with the Garage Dragon thought experiment, and I fail to see a connection with Lake Eerie. Whether or not the dragon in that story was "alive" biologically, there was definitely a visible, observed dragon-like form, whereas the whole point of the Garage Dragon is that there is no evidence whatsoever of its existence and the garage-owner keeps making up excuses.

it does not have to be consistent in details. When Barks talked about Lost in Andes, he said people always said "square eggs" when the whole concept was absurd, so he got the inspiration and thought, "what if square eggs actually exist?" His dragon story may have a common origin as Sagan's metaphor.  

[Zantaf]

I would like to add three more stories to the list. I can confirm that they all have real monsters.
1974 Last of the Fire-Breathing Dragons (?/Paul Murry) from MM 152
1993 Zio Paperone e il mostro di Rockness (Fabio Michelini/Giovanni Romanini) unpublished in the US
2004 Paperino e il mostro del lago (Marco Gervasio) also unpublished in the US

Most of the stories that I stumbled upon while going through my collection were about fake monsters. Are we listing those too?