Walt Disney's Donald Duck: ''Christmas on Bear Mountain'', Hardcover/Carl Barks

Scrooge McDuck is now such a fixture in the Disney universe that few remember Carl Barks had been writing and drawing Donald Duck stories for half a decade before he cooked up the miserly multiplujillionaire for what he thought would be a one-time Christmas yarn involving Donald, the nephews, Scrooge in a bearskin, and (inevitably) a couple of real bears. Christmas on Bear Mountain is one of Barks s funniest holiday stories and a true landmark in comics history, and offers a fascinating look at a rough-edged, genuinely nasty character whom Barks would soon soften... Scrooge aside, there s plenty of fun to be had in this volume. In Volcano Valley Donald and the Nephews end up stuck in Volcania, a south-of-the-border country inhabited by sombrero-wearing, siesta-addicted Volcanians. Other long-form adventures include the self-explanatory Adventure Down Under, as well as one of Barks s most atmospheric thrillers, the West Indies-based Ghost of the Grotto, which includes a lovely night-time sequence drawn in Barks s trademark silhouettes and a giantoctopus- vs.-hot-chili-peppers throwdown that climaxes in an explosive splash panel. The book is rounded off with seven of Barks s hilarious 10-pagers, and as with the previous volumes, on Bear Mountai vintage art and meticulously colored to match the original printing s warm, simple hues, and features abundant critical and historical notes penned by some of duckdom s finest experts. We are also offering a boxed set that combines the newWalt Disney s Donald Duck: Christmas on Bear Mountain with the 2012 release for Shacktow box set (see following page).