Our pal Seth Hahne, of GoodOKBad fame, came up with this 31 Days of Comics challenge, one of those things where each day of the month you're given a different category that you then make a choice of a comic to fill that category. We did it last year and I figured it would be a fun bit to do again, so here we are! Click here to see each of the categories so far!
We continue with Day 12, which is a Great Holiday Comic.
Read on for my pick and then you can share yours!
Last year I went with Darwyn Cooke's Valentine's Day story.
This year, I'm going with 1952's "A Christmas for Shacktown" from Four Color Comics #367 by Carl Barks...
This acclaimed Barks classic holds a unique place in Barks history as it was JUUUUUST before Uncle Scrooge became a lead character. In the previous few years since his debut in 1947, Scrooge had been a supporting character in Donald Duck comics. His personality was slowly coming into focus. However, since he was a supporting character, Barks was free to have Scrooge have a little more of an edge than he did when he became a lead character (not that Scrooge didn't have an edge as a lead character, of course. In fact, I would imagine that that edge is the main reason he is such a popular character).
In any event, A Christmas for Shacktown is a striking example of Barks interjecting some harsh reality into the comic world of the ducks...
They then come up with an idea of where to get the money...
This then sets up a comic set of misadventures as they try to raise the $25. Barks' Gladstone Gander (the luckiest duck in the world) helps out. However, after they finally raise the money, Scrooge then loses his entire fortune to a sinkhole (the first of many Barks stories where Scrooge loses his entire fortune). They then go on a new adventure to find Scrooge's lost fortune and finally the boys come up with a solution...
This is really a prototype for future Uncle Scrooge stories, only except with Scrooge coming off as a BIT more of a jerk than he did in later stories. A total classic tale.