Pirate gold
Piratengold (Eng. Donald Duck finds Pirate Gold ) is a comic story by Carl Barks and Jack Hannah from 1942. It is considered the first longer Donald Duck comic by Carl Barks and has significantly influenced the further development of Donald by Barks.
action
Donald, Tick, Trick and Track run a pub, the "Bloody Butt (Bucket Blood)". One stormy evening they have a strange visitor, Captain Kakadu, a parrot with a wooden leg and a pirate hat. He is on the run from the cat Karlo and asks for a hiding place. Donald wants to refuse at first, but when Captain Kakadu promises a treasure, they hide it and lie to the cat Karlo, who goes to the "Bloody Flounder" shortly afterwards. However, the cat Karlo becomes suspicious and listens, while Captain Kakadu reveals that a treasure map is hidden in the bar, which the five find soon after. The next morning they are looking for a ship to sail to Treasure Island. Kater Karlo, disguised as an old woman, offers them his ship, himself and his two sailors, to which Donald and Captain Kakadu respond after hesitation. During the trip, the cat Karlo tries to find the treasure map in order to get rid of his guests. After several failures, he loses patience and wants to kill her and his two sailors. Tick, trick and track can prevent this, but then they are locked up. After Karlo has blackmailed the card, Donald and Captain Kakadu are sent over the plank. The children, however, can save her and escape on a raft. Now Karlo has to recognize that Captain Kakadu has cut out a part of the card and without this part the card is worthless.
Separately, they all land on Treasure Island. Disguised as a ghost, Karlo gives Donald and Kapt'n Kakadu the map back and follows them. Unsuspecting, they find the treasure, but Karlo and his sailors take the treasure chest from them. But then the children manage to eliminate the bad guys by throwing coconuts. Now these can be locked on the ship and the treasure is brought on board. Since Donald and Captain Kakadu have proven to be incapable of searching, the children sail the ship home while Donald and Captain Kakadu have to scrub the floor.
Emergence
In 1939 it was decided at Disney Studios to create a film with Mickey, Goofy and Donald based on Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island . The employees Harry Reeves , Homer Brightman and Roy Williams developed a plot under the project name Morgan's Ghost (other project names were "Three Buccaneers" and "Pieces of Eight") and created a storyboard from it (Carl Barks was not involved in it, contrary to frequent reports). Due to the entry of the United States into the war, comic films became more important for Disney Studios that had the war and its background on the subject (e.g. Der Fuehrer's Face or The Spirit of '43 ). Morgan's Ghost was therefore dropped.
In 1942, however, the editor of Western Publishing , Oscar Lebeck , planned to publish a longer comic book story with the Walt Disney characters. In search of a possible basis, he discovered the story board. He then asked John Rose, who is responsible for short films at Disney Studios, for the rights, which the latter released. Rose suggested Barks and Hannah as draftsmen for the comic, who both accepted. The storyboard had to be rewritten for the comic, which Bob Karp did while Barks and Hannah completed the drawings. Karp supplied the pages that precisely described the individual panels in text form. Barks and Hannah later unanimously reported that they never saw the storyboard images. However, this is doubted because some images in the comic and the storyboard look extremely similar. The project was under time pressure from the start, so Barks and Hannah started working as soon as they got the first pages from Karp. When they finished, they got the rest of the script. Now they divided the pages so that Hannah would draw the scenes on the island and Barks the ones on the ship. Barks was very interested in sailing ships and had numerous photos, including a. in issues of National Geographic , which enabled him to realistically draw the ship's rigging.
Karp made a few changes to the script. So he deleted Pluto, Mickey and Goofy from the script and took Donald's nephew in. The role of Captain Kakadu was also expanded and the bird, which only had a supporting role in the storyboard, was given individual traits. This also means that a scene from the script was omitted in which the main characters on the raft are hungry and suffering and Micky is selflessly willing to throw himself into the sea so that the others survive. Karp found this idea too implausible.
Towards the end, the time pressure on the draftsmen increased so that they also worked at night. Hannah in particular seems to have been under a lot of pressure recently, which can be seen in the quality of his drawings. So the background is less pronounced, the ship has different sails in the last picture than in the rest of the story and Captain Kakadu has his wooden leg now and then on the left.
The original cover, which has been reprinted a lot to this day, was designed and drawn by Harry Porter.
effect
Piratengold was the first long comic story with Donald and offered Barks in particular plenty of space to incorporate gags and a continuous development of the story. This established a tradition that continues to this day z. B. in the series Funny paperback and has had a lasting impact on the development of the Donald Duck comics.
literature
- Piratengold, Carl Bark Library, 1st edition, EHAPA Verlag GmbH Stuttgart 1994