In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn the strange story of how a Donald Duck comic book story was re-done as a story starring the Jetsons
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and fifty-third installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend in this installment. Click here for the second legend in this installment.
NOTE: If my Twitter page hits 5,000 followers, I’ll do a bonus edition of Comic Book Legends Revealed that week. Great deal, right? So go follow my Twitter page, Brian_Cronin!
COMIC LEGEND:
A Donald Duck comic book story was re-done as a Jetsons comic book story.
STATUS:
True
In a relatively recent Comic Book Legends Revealed (of course, when you’ve been doing a column for over 17 years, “relatively recent” can sometimes mean, like, five years ago), I wrote about how MLJ Comics (now Archie Comics) would often reuse the same stories for its various comic book characters. In that legend, it was even more amusing than normal, since there was a story featuring Archie Andrews that literally just saw the faces re-drawn to make it a story about ANOTHER one of MLJ’s teen characters, Wilbur.
While that’s a bit of a silly thing (seeing the same exact story, just with heads swapped), at least with those comic book stories, you’re dealing with a teen humor character being swapped with a teen humor character. The very fact that they did the swap explains why the swap made sense, because they’re all basically the same sort of character, so in the grand scheme of things, does it really make that much of a difference if it is a story starring Archie or Wilbur? The story concept works the same for both.
However, those sorts of things happened at other comic book companies for other properties, and sometimes those re-done stories involve VERY different character, like the story that we’re going to look at today, where a Donald Duck comic book story was redone as…a Jetsons comic book story!
In 1967’s Donald Duck #114, Vic Lockman wrote a story called “The Forget-Me-Duck,” which was drawn by the great Tony Strobl (with inks by Steve Steere). You might have heard of the stories about how, during the 1960s, when there was no creator credits on Disney comic books, that fans loved the work that Carl Barks did so much that they came to refer to the then-nameless Barks as “The Good Duck Artist.” Well, Tony Strobl was the OTHER “Good Duck Artist,” as he was an excellent artist. If he wasn’t as good as Barks, he was damn close to it. Lockman, meanwhile, was the main writer for Western’s Disney and Hanna-Barbera comics, so he is likely way up there with the likes of Paul S. Newman (Western’s OTHER main writer), Joe Gill (Charlton’s main writer) and Frank Doyle (Archie’s main writer) as the most prolific comic book writers of all-time (Chuck Dixon has recently claimed that he has outproduced all four of those writers, and heck, maybe he has, beats me).
The story opens with Donald bringing in an old classmate of his and Daisy’s to impress her, only it’s not the duck he was thinking of!
He also forgot that it was Daisy’s birthday. We see other problems with Donald’s memory, like forgetting a pot on the stove that led to a fire…
Luckily, Donald’s friend, the brilliant inventor, Gyro Gearloose, has an invention that can give Donald the memory of an elephant…
It works and Donald’s memory is amazing now. Of course, right away he remembers that Gyro owed him some money (with interest) from when they were kids. Donald also remembered he meant to spank Huey, Dewey and Louie for something that happened a few years earlier.
The biggest problem is when he gets Daisy cut out of her aunt’s will by embarrassing her aunt…
Donald wants to get rid of his newfound memory and Gyro does, too, as the experiment has convinced the elephant that it is a cat! So Gyro reverses the effects, and Donald then has a new method with labeling the pieces of string he ties to his fingers to make him remember stuff…
Strobl, among his many other talents, was also the regular artist on the futuristic Jetsons comic book when Western had the license. Charlton comics then got the Hanna-Barbera comic book license in the 1970s and that, then, leads to a funny little bit…
The aforementioned Joe Gill and artist Ray Dirgo were the main creative team on Charlton’s Jetsons comic book series, but I don’t know who “wrote” this comic book or who drew it, but Jetsons #6’s “Forgetful George” in 1971 is literally just a redone version of the Donald Duck story!
It opens with George Jetson bringing an old schoolmate of his and Jane’s, but it ISN’T the guy he thinks it is!
George also forgot that it was Jane’s birthday. We see other problems with George’s memory, like leaving a device on at work that caused a fire…
George runs into a scientist who wants to experiment on George and give him the memory of an elephant…
It works and George’s memory is amazing now. Of course, right away he remembers that the scientist owed him some money (with interest) from when they were kids (this was probably the laziest ripoff in the whole thing, as George didn’t even seem to know the guy when he met him!) George also remembered he meant to spank his daughter Judy for something that happened a few years earlier.
The biggest problem is when he gets Jane electronically cut out of her aunt’s electrowill by embarrassing her aunt…
George wants to get rid of his newfound memory and the scientist does, too, as the experiment has convinced the elephant that it is a cat! So the scientist reverses the effects, and George then has a new method with labeling the pieces of string he ties to his fingers to make him remember stuff…
Man, that took some real guts to be that brazen, right? But hey, maybe it was Lockman writing for Charlton on the side? I don’t know that it WASN’T for sure. Anyone else have an idea?
CHECK OUT A TV LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest TV Legends Revealed – Learn whether Norman Osborn was nearly the Hobgoblin on Spider-Man: The Animated Series.
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that’s it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don’t even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it’s fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is [email protected] And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that’s fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don’t mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
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