Customer Reviews

Walt Disney's Donald and Gladstone (Gladstone Comic Album Series, No. 15)

5 star:		(1)
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3 star:		(1)
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This whole comic album is about Donald Duck vs. Gladstone Gander, his absurdly lucky cousin. It has 5 stories in it, and most of them are pretty good. The first story is about Donald and Gladstone competing over who can donate $5 to one of Daisy's organizations the fastest, with Donald trying to steal from his clever nephews. The second story is about Donald and Gladstone competing over rock collecting. The third story is about Donald entering a salmon fishing contest and doing quite well until gladstone shows up and trys to ruin everything. The fourth story is when Donald and Gladstone both go to Daisy's for dinner. In the fifth story Donald and Gladstone compete over the lead part in one of the plays Daisy is helping to put on. Donald and Gladstone both try to ruin everything for each other by playing cruel tricks and practical jokes on each other during the play. In the end they both get a surprise. I liked this comic album just as much as I enjoy all the other great Donald Duck comics out there. Anybody who likes Donald Duck or Disney comics would probably enjoy this comic.

Another fine graphic novel of duck comics master Carl Barks reprints from Gladstone comics, printed in 1988. These over-sized albums were printed years before Gladstone Comics and Another Rainbow Publishing tackled the comprehensive and chronological softcover series "Carl Barks Library in Color" (CBLC). Barks was known as "the good duck artist" for his stories he scripted and drew himself. They were the best of the "funny animal" class of comics, hilarious 10 pagers in the Walt Disney Comics & Stories series, or big adventure in the Uncle Scrooge or Donald Duck series. Oftentimes the Gladstone album reprint publisher picked a theme, such as this Donald versus Gladstone collection, and placed several excellent stories by the classic Duck master Carl Barks, and perhaps 1 more modern non-Barks story. The brand new cover is by modern duck artist Don Rosa. The colors and clarity of the image in these books is light years ahead of the company's Duck comics, and the cover art in the series is much better than the CBLC.

The stories in this album are:
1) "Gladstone Returns" 10 page story reprinted from Walt Disney Comics & Stories from Dell Comics, issue #95 from August of 1948. The script and art are by Carl Barks. In this story Donald Duck and his cousin Gladstone Gander are arguing over which of them is richer, and the answer is neither. Daisy Duck comes along and asks each of them to raise $5 for her club in half an hour, and they each accuse the other of being wealthier. Donald tries to swindle his nephews out of the money. This is the second appearance of Gladstone.
2) "Gemstone Hunters" reprinted from Walt Disney Comics & Stories, Dell Comics issue #143 from August of 1952. Art and script by Carl Barks. 10 pages, Donald and the nephews are swindled by a land seller when searching for gems in the desert. Donald tricks Gladstone, who wants in on the action. Good moral story.
3) "Salmon Derby" reprinted from Walt Disney Comics & Stories Dell Comics, issue #167 from August, 1954. Art and script by Carl Barks. The 10 page salmon fishing derby story. Donald and his nephews go to Puget Sound for vacation and he enters a fishing derby with huge prizes. It looks like Donald is a shoo-in until lucky cousin Gladstone shows up. This story marks the first time Barks used a big splash panel on an opening page in the WDC&S series.
4) The 4th story is a 4 pager, not by Carl Barks, but produced by the European Guttenburg Group and was first published in Denmark in D in the early 1980's. Script may have been by Bob Bartholomew and art is looks like it was Daniel Branca.
5) "Dramatic Donald" first printed in Walt Disney Comics & Stories Dell Comics issue #217 from October, 1958. Art and script by Carl Barks. Donald and Gladstone are competing for a role in Daisy Ducks drama club play, as the dashing prince. They each pull out all stops to sabotage each other right out of the role. This is the story with the exploding ink bomb apple.

A really nice collection of 4 Donald Versus Gladstone stories by Barks. It is nice to find good copies still available for new collectors.

I always enjoy donald duck stories and so do my kids. This one was pretty good. Artwork could have been a little better

I didn't like Donald Duck as a kid. Still don't. Why not? Because Donald's a LOSER, that's why! I had hundreds of Donald Duck comics magazines as a kid, but threw them all away. The other kids had a real bonanza, when they found the mags in the garbage room on ground floor, LOL. The only Duck tale I could stomach was "Trail of the Unicorn". I preferred sophisticated French comics: Tintin, Spirou, Johan and Peewit, Asterix, Lucky Luke and The Smurfs! :D

So Donald's a loser. He's an underemployed, non-unionized, unmarried, childless bum living in a town called Duckburg. His filthy rich capitalist uncle Scrooge McDuck constantly takes advantage of him. Every time Donald tries to scam him (and in my book, he has the RIGHT to scam Scrooge), he's turned in by his three sneaky little nephews, Huey, Dewey and Louie. Apparently, the kids are members of a fascist, paramilitary organization, modelled on the Hitlerjugend, known as "The Junior Woodchucks". They have a CIA-written spy guide to most of the known universe, and one of their rules is "LOVE BIG BROTHER, AND TURN IN YOUR UNCLE. HE MIGHT BE A COMMUNIST".

Donald also has an annoying cousin, Gladstone, who is always lucky and never tires of harassing poor Donald. In the Swedish version, Gladstone is called "Alexander Lukas". At least in my neighbourhood, that's a very posh, upper class, Uptown kind of name (he looks upper class too). Both Donald and Alexander, sorry Gladstone, have a incomprehensible crush on Daisy Duck, the worst womyn in Duckburg, a veritable showcase of Freudian neuroses. Donald usually gets her, another proof that he's a loser. They don't have kids either. (The three German ducks are his NEPHEWS, remember?). In some episodes, we also learn that Donald isn't very far removed from his rural roots in fly-over country, since he has a gluttonous goose cousin who lives at some barnyard in Deliverance County, West Virginia.

AAAAAAAAAARGH!!!!!!

When "Donald Duck & Co" was introduced in Italy, the tuff-ruff Italian kidos actually *complained* about Donald always being a loser, so the Italian publisher created PAPERINIK, Donald Duck turned into a SUPER HERO. Apparently, it's not available in English, but it became very popular in Europe, including Sweden. I remember being *very* confused when reading the Paperinik comics, often found in the same magazines as the real Donald Duck stories, since Paperinik doesn't belong in the "Donald Duck universe", but rather in some kind of parallel universe which never meets the "real" one.

Weird, huh?

So the American original is a LOSER, while the Old Europe version (they refuse to help us in Iraq, blah blah) is a WINNER?

Well, the world is strange, LOL.

PS. Product specific review? Who's to tell?