SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About/Contact
  • Previews
  • Reviews
  • Manga
  • All Ages
  • Young Adult
  • Interviews
  • News

November 6, 2014 by J. Caleb Mozzocco

Review: Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck: “Return To Plain Awful”

November 6, 2014 by J. Caleb Mozzocco   Leave a Comment

Walt Disney’s Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck: “Return to Plain Awful”
By Don Rosa
Fantagraphics; $29.99

Fantagraphics certainly is doing their level best to keep us supplied with Disney Duck comics. Hot on the heels of the first volume of their new Don Rosa Library and kid-friendlier trade paperback repackaging of some Carl Barks classics comes the second volume in the Don Rosa Library.

This second volume includes 170 more pages of Rosa’s work with Uncle Scrooge and his nephews Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey and Louie, plus some 45-pages of behind-the-scenes material, including copious notes on the stories and plenty of covers, some for the comic book Walt Disney’s Comics In Color, each of which featured Donald, Scrooge and Mickey Mouse sharing space in an image, something one rarely if ever sees. (As Rosa explains in the notes on an unused story collected here, in his imagination, Mickey Mouse doesn’t event exist in the Ducks’ universe.)

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

In addition to the expected Carls Barks-inspired adventure stories and shorter gag strips, this volume contains several uniquely interesting entries.

The title story is Rosa’s first direct sequel to a Barks comic, 1949’s “Lost In The Andes” (collected in Fantagraphics’ Donald Duck: Lost In The Andes), as Donald and the boys return to hidden Andean land of Plain Awful, where everything is square, even the eggs laid by the chickens there. This time Scrooge tags along, in the hopes of striking a business deal with the Plain Awfultonians that will allow him to sell their square eggs—unlike egg-shaped eggs, square eggs can easily be stacked, never roll and are much harder to break, you see. Scrooge’s perennial rival Flintheart Glomgold, the world’s second richest duck, follows them, and they all discover what trouble their cultural influence can level on the peaceful, if square, lost civilization.

There’s an even straighter, more exciting adventure story in “The Crocodile Collector,” which sends Donald and the boys along the length of the Nile looking for a semi-mythic crocodile. Other stories find the Duck family mountain-climbing, Scrooge declaring himself king of his own tiny country, Donald nearly dying in a money cave-in at Scrooge’s money bin and, in perhaps the most remarkable and inventive story in the book, Magica De Spell trying to get her hands on Scrooge’s lucky dime via a magical, two-way portal she opens in an enchanted silver platter.

As for the more unique features, the collection includes a ten-page comic that only exists in rough, black-and-white form, as that’s as far as Rosa got with it before his publishers rejected the story. It’s of note not only because of the interesting look at Rosa’s process it offers—although it is great fun to see what his comics look like in a rough, first-draft version—but because it features Donald and his nephews visiting the then-new Disney-MGM Studios park, in which Donald attempts to get Mickey Mouse’s autograph (I mentioned Rosa’s insistence that Mickey and Donald don’t co-exist in the same comics universes earlier; Rosa explains here that the story is premised on the fact that in Donald’s universe, Mickey might be a big time movie star). Goofy also makes a brief cameo in the story.

There’s also  Rosa’s only collaboration with Barks, if you could call it that, in which he takes the photocopied rough pencils of the beginning of an abandoned Barks strip and finishes it, and there’s  a very rare instance of Rosa working outside the Barks/Ducks milieu in which he’s most comfortable—a short story for a DuckTales comic, starring the kinder, gentler version of Scrooge from the after school cartoon show.

Whether you’re a little kid reading the book for its humorous adventures or a grown-up comics enthusiast availing yourself of a great curated collection, you’ll find Plain Awful to be anything but.

Filed under: All Ages, Reviews

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
Don RosaDon Rosa LibraryDonald DuckFantagraphicsReturn to Plain AwfulUncle ScroogeWalt Disney's Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck

About J. Caleb Mozzocco

J. Caleb Mozzocco is a way-too-busy freelance writer who has written about comics for online and print venues for a rather long time now. He currently contributes to Comic Book Resources' Robot 6 blog and ComicsAlliance, and maintains his own daily-ish blog at EveryDayIsLikeWednesday.blogspot.com. He lives in northeast Ohio, where he works as a circulation clerk at a public library by day.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

July 2022

Run on Your New Legs, vol 1 | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

June 2022

Banana Fox and The Gummy Monster Mess | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

June 2022

Review | Red and Rover: Fun's Never Over

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

June 2022

Review | Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

March 2022

DC Super Hero Girls: At Metropolis High | Review

by J. Caleb Mozzocco

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

Newbery, Part Two-bery

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Review of the Day: Seen and Unseen by Elizabeth Partridge, ill. Lauren Tamaki

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Dewdrop | This Week’s Comics

by Lori Henderson

Heavy Medal

And now there are 70 Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Suggestions

by Emily Mroczek-Bayci

Teen Librarian Toolbox

In the Haunted Glen: Finding the Middle Grade in “Goblin Market,” a guest post by Diane Zahler

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

What’s New? (Part 2) with Meg Medina and Christina Soontornvat

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

10 Sports Manga for Hardcore Fans and Newcomers Alike | Mondo Manga

Free Comics, and Resources on COVID-19, in Graphic Form

Saturday Morning Comics | Stellar Panels

10 Standout Graphic Novels by AAPI Creators

Six Manga About People with Disabilities

Commenting for all posts is disabled after 30 days.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2022


COPYRIGHT © 2022