Favorite Vicar stories.

[marco996]

Hey guys!
What are some of your favorite Vicar stories?
He has one of the most dynamic and recognizable style.
Mine are:
"All Tricks and no Treats":


"Protection":


"Something Out of Nothing":

[Zantaf]

The Pharaoh's Papyrus (Lise-Lotte Larsen)
Viking Island (Werner Wejp-Olsen, Jim Kenner)
The Unemployment Problem (Bob Bartholomew)
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (Gail Renard, Unn Printz-Påhlson)
I Have Been Here Before (John Kane, Tom Anderson)
A Midsummer Night's Duck (Pat McGreal)
The Cartoonist (Gorm Transgaard)
Beam Me Up, Mr. Fargone (Kari Korhonen)
Fool For A Day (Carol & Pat McGreal)
Young Man Winter (Janet Gilbert)
Once A Loser (Janet Gilbert)
The Legend Of Big Bear (Gorm Transgaard)

[Matilda]

Hey, nice to see a few of my favorites already mentioned!

Around the Year with Vicar:
New Year's:  A New Year, A New Donald (Charlie Martin)
Valentine's Day:  Date with a Munchkin (Korhonen)--no, it's not set on Valentine's Day, but it's V-Day-appropriate
Easter:  Hot-Choc Donald (Hedman)--an Eastery version of "Weemite"
Cornelius Coot Day:  Pioneer Daze (Gerstein)--Vicar is great on chaotic crowd scenes!
back-to-school:  The Secret of Goblin Valley (McGreals)--love those Vicar aliens!
Halloween:  All Tricks and No Treats (J. Gilbert)
Christmas:  Christmas Magic (Hedman)--the one with the charmed mistletoe sprigs

This is assuming that Cornelius Coot Day falls in summer. (At least, it's certainly not winter, from the art.) David Gerstein: when do you think it is? And is it the same as "Founder's Day"?

Other Vicar favorites:
Beam Me Up, Mr. Fargone (Korhonen)--more Vicar aliens! and an homage to (not a direct parody of) Star Trek
Party of None! (M. Gilbert)
Out of Sight (Renard & U. Printz-Pahlson)--more great chaotic crowd scenes, plus an instantly recognizable Vicar-bear
The Crying Monster (Galton & Angus)--very endearing family of lake monsters
Pipe Dreams (Claxton & Anderson)
Young Man Winter (J. Gilbert)--story is not all that great, but I really love the interior of Old Man Winter's cave home
Snooper by the Book (Transgaard)

Pan: Didn't you have a story about meeting Vicar and telling him "Party of None!" was one of your favorites? I think I remember that from the DCF. You want to tell it here?

[Hyaroo]

You guys have mentioned some of my faves already... but I really liked The Dancing Dog with script by Tom Anderson.

It's only a six-pager, but it has some really nice and really funny depictions of Bolivar... especially after he's been equipped with a collar that makes him copy all Donald's movements. I still laugh when I see the final image of Donald and Bolivar doing the dishes and glaring at each other.

[Orora]

Aaah, Vicar, I kinda feel he is an author we take for granted.

Maybe it is because he has so many stories and are commonly printed in European magazines?

For me, he was THE Duck artist.
I was suscribed to Le Journal de Mickey (the main Disney magazine in France) that was weekly and they had a Vicar story in almost every issue in that time. For some reason, Carl Barks's stories were relegated to Picsou Magazine (monthly Disney magazine which had a gadget/toy and had a "cooler" image) along with Don Rosa's.

But enough about me, let me tell you about my favorite Vicar stories. It ain't gonna be easy to choose!

The Seaspray: A nostalgic story that has a wonderful "summer vacation" atmosphere, and two very nice original characters.

Dirk The Dinosaur: A touching story that is also nostalgic to me.

The Golden Bunny: The story is funny, has a nice atmosphere and ends in a very touching note.

The Little People: This story has atmosphere and intense moments. Even Don Rosa drew a cover for this story!

Turning the Tables : This story was quite funny!

[tork]

Vicar, the third best duck artist after Barks and Rosa according to me. If some publisher ever put together his work in a library I would buy it! (but considering his very productive output maybe that will just keep being a dream..) Nice stories posted so far, here of some of the top of my head that I consider great. Only mid 90's to the very beginning of 2000's, in my opinion the best period. I will have to look up more from other years another time.

Stop the Presses!
Snow Smitten
Room For Rent
Modern Times
The Rest of the Story
Somewhere Hot
Tough Truckers
Tough Tomato
Interior Duckorator
Gathering the Ducks
Heavy Traffic
Appetite For Success
By the Book
Detective Duck

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

I have read just a few stories by Vicar, mostly from the 90's.
Most of the time I found them extremely bad, but that's not the artist's fault. It seems to me that he received the worst scripts from Egmont. Or simply he drawn a tone of them, good and bad, and maybe I have only read bad ones. In the end I do not know any of the one mentioned by you so far, so maybe I only had a bad chance. I mean, he did more than 1000 stories! There must be some good writing and a lot of crap, in a percentage probably similar to the one applicable to the whole body of Disney comics.    

The two stories by Vicar that I found good so far are War on all fronts (Korhonen) and The Duckburg Ice Festival (Janet Gilbert).

As concerns the art of Vicar in general, I remember expressing my opinion in another thread. In his mature years his characters looked too "puppets" to me. Also, sometimes he clearly did not put much effort (or maybe he did not have the time to) on giving them the right expressions. Which amplifies the "puppets sensation". But when he focalized on the expressions he could be very good. As an example, take the overmentioned War on all fronts, a classic Jones-Donald fight, much relying on Donald's facial mimics. Or consider this (Dutch?!) story, one of his last works, where he is astonishing good (when I read this one I said to myself "hey, why he was not this good in the previous twenty years???").

[Matilda]

Didn't Vicar have a studio of artists doing the work credited to him? As sort-of shown in Transgaard's The Cartoonist? So it seems likely to me that this explains why some of the huge volume of stories credited to Vicar have run-of-the-mill art while others have terrific art.

[Matilda]

Jun 17, 2018 19:58:00 GMT tork said:

Vicar, the third best duck artist after Barks and Rosa according to me. If some publisher ever put together his work in a library I would buy it! (but considering his very productive output maybe that will just keep being a dream..) Nice stories posted so far, here of some of the top of my head that I consider great. Only mid 90's to the very beginning of 2000's, in my opinion the best period. I will have to look up more from other years another time.


Gathering the Ducks

Hey, "Gathering the Ducks" is a story of Grandma Duck's birthday! So this gives me another birthday story to check out--one where the birthday person is female, too.

[Monkey_Feyerabend]

Jun 18, 2018 1:27:40 GMT Matilda said:

Didn't Vicar have a studio of artists doing the work credited to him? As sort-of shown in Transgaard's The Cartoonist? So it seems likely to me that this explains why some of the huge volume of stories credited to Vicar have run-of-the-mill art while others have terrific art.

I didn't know. You may be right. Here is why. 
The inducks says that the Vic-art studio was composed of three men, one being Vicar himself. One other was one Raúl Bratesco, until 2009 at least. Now, if wee look at Bradesco's inducks list of stories, we discover something fishy: he is credited just for inking a Vicar story in 1983, then his name disappears from 1983 till the death of Vicar (2012)! From 2012 to date he reappears, regularly credited for drawing a certain number of stories, most in a perfect Vicar style. Whereas from 1983 to 2012 he was not even credited for inking Vicar's pencils. But at this point it is clear that he could be one of the men behind the signature "Vicar". I wonder at what extent. He may have been just an inker all the time, but it is also reasonable to guess that he also did some pencil work. He has a blog, in spanish, there could be some information there.
The third man of the Vic-art studio was one Héctor Flores, but he is not credited of anything on the inducks.
            

[RobbK1]

Jun 18, 2018 7:40:56 GMT Monkey_Feyerabend said:

Jun 18, 2018 1:27:40 GMT Matilda said:

Didn't Vicar have a studio of artists doing the work credited to him? As sort-of shown in Transgaard's The Cartoonist? So it seems likely to me that this explains why some of the huge volume of stories credited to Vicar have run-of-the-mill art while others have terrific art.

I didn't know. You may be right. Here is why. 
The inducks says that the Vic-art studio was composed of three men, one being Vicar himself. One other was one Raúl Bratesco, until 2009 at least. Now, if wee look at Bradesco's inducks list of stories, we discover something fishy: he is credited just for inking a Vicar story in 1983, then his name disappears from 1983 till the death of Vicar (2012)! From 2012 to date he reappears, regularly credited for drawing a certain number of stories, most in a perfect Vicar style. Whereas from 1983 to 2012 he was not even credited for inking Vicar's pencils. But at this point it is clear that he could be one of the men behind the signature "Vicar". I wonder at what extent. He may have been just an inker all the time, but it is also reasonable to guess that he also did some pencil work. He has a blog, in spanish, there could be some information there.
The third man of the Vic-art studio was one Héctor Flores, but he is not credited of anything on the inducks.
            

I have read that Vicar had a studio with several drawing assistants at the height of his production.  His underlings performed several tasks in the production process, some including penciling and some inking.  Vicar, himself performed varying numbers of tasks in each production.  Sometimes he did the storyborading, pencils and inking, sometimes only the first two, and sometimes only the storyboarding.  The major differences in the drawing style came from the different inkers, and, especially when one of his assistants also drew the final pencil drawings.  My favourite period of vicar's work was the mid to late 1970s, when his style looked most like 1953 Barks.  I didn't like most of his work from the early 1980s onward, as that's when (in my opinion) his assistants' drawing degraded his style.

[iggy]

Him and Van Horn are the closest thing to Barks for me, would also love a library of his work

[Matilda]

Jun 18, 2018 1:57:16 GMT Matilda said:

Jun 17, 2018 19:58:00 GMT tork said:

Vicar, the third best duck artist after Barks and Rosa according to me. If some publisher ever put together his work in a library I would buy it! (but considering his very productive output maybe that will just keep being a dream..) Nice stories posted so far, here of some of the top of my head that I consider great. Only mid 90's to the very beginning of 2000's, in my opinion the best period. I will have to look up more from other years another time.


Gathering the Ducks

Hey, "Gathering the Ducks" is a story of Grandma Duck's birthday! So this gives me another birthday story to check out--one where the birthday person is female, too.

Finally got my copy (in German) of "Gathering the Ducks"--and I like it a lot. At last I have a good Duck story about the birthday of a female character, to read around my birthday along with the fine Donald/Gladstone/Scrooge/HDL birthday stories that I re-read then! Thanks, tork! Now maybe I should check out some of the other Vicar stories on your list....

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Aug 19, 2018 19:52:06 GMT Matilda said:

Jun 18, 2018 1:57:16 GMT Matilda said:

Hey, "Gathering the Ducks" is a story of Grandma Duck's birthday! So this gives me another birthday story to check out--one where the birthday person is female, too.

Finally got my copy (in German) of "Gathering the Ducks"--and I like it a lot. At last I have a good Duck story about the birthday of a female character, to read around my birthday along with the fine Donald/Gladstone/Scrooge/HDL birthday stories that I re-read then! Thanks, tork! Now maybe I should check out some of the other Vicar stories on your list....

Question: does the story give an age for Grandma? Or at least suggest one? (I'm particularly wondering if they acknowledge that she's probably a centenarian per Rosa-timeline.)

[Matilda]

Aug 19, 2018 20:10:13 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Aug 19, 2018 19:52:06 GMT Matilda said:

Finally got my copy (in German) of "Gathering the Ducks"--and I like it a lot. At last I have a good Duck story about the birthday of a female character, to read around my birthday along with the fine Donald/Gladstone/Scrooge/HDL birthday stories that I re-read then! Thanks, tork! Now maybe I should check out some of the other Vicar stories on your list....

Question: does the story give an age for Grandma? Or at least suggest one? (I'm particularly wondering if they acknowledge that she's probably a centenarian per Rosa-timeline.)

Nope! At least, not in the German version. There's a very old-fashioned (pre-film) camera which reaches back to her youth, but she says her father got it already used, so you can decide what you want in terms of its relevance to her age. And of course, that calculation would also depend on whether you think the comics-present is today or mid-20th-century.