I watched a Youtube video about Don Rosa (to any Americans reading: he’s a famous Donald Duck artist) today, and learned that in 2023, Disney banned two of his stories from ever being published again, effectively preventing The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck from ever being reprinted.

The two banned stories both feature the character of Bombie the Zombie, who is an African voodoo zombie created by a white guy in the 1940s and you can probably infer the rest

Apparently the modern Don Rosa collections that were published already had a content warning much like the ones Disney puts in front of their old animated features and shorts that contain racist outdated elements but I guess that wasn’t enough. Then again, the parent Walt Disney company has never given a single fuck about their comics side and treated the artists like absolute shit so this is completely on brand

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    it’s a story about how a rich guy became rich because he’s super special, works harder and is tougher than everyone else, which is cringe

    You’re telling me this character originated in comics published by the Walt Disney corporation in the 1940s and 50s??? wowee

    I wish there was a leftist podcast that examined the fucked up politics of old Donald Duck comics- lord knows there’d be plenty of material. Some European leftist nerds should get on that

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Financial_Fable

    “Barks himself called “A Financial Fable” a “story of easy riches” and said that the message of the story surely would get him “in a cell in a Siberian gulag someday.””

    also

    https://scrooge-mcduck.fandom.com/wiki/Brutopia

    “Brutopia is a country aiming for world domination. It is lead by a dictator named Bruto Castrova of Ironheelia. Brutopia specializes in placing spies in non-aligned nations.”

    michael-laugh

    Those banned stories are super racist too.

    Are you talking about older Barks stories that are also banned or just these two Rosa ones? One has the zombie character appear for like 4 panels in a dream sequence and the other one is the one whose Wikipedia article I linked in an earlier reply

    • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      Yeah, I read all this stuff as a kid, I was talking about the banned Rosa stories.

      Many Barks stories are also extremely racist, even if you don’t count all the ones with questionable depictions of non-white people, how many times is the trope ”these simples savages don’t know anything about the modern world, let’s trick them with some treats like pocket radios into giving up their riches” repeated?

      There’s definitely material for a leftist podcast, but since the comics have only ever been popular in some European countries and it’s probably really hard to get hold of most of the comics, there’s probably not that much interest in doing that.

      • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        There’s definitely material for a leftist podcast, but since the comics have only ever been popular in some European countries and it’s probably really hard to get hold of most of the comics, there’s probably not that much interest in doing that.

        Hard to get hold of? These comics have been reprinted again and again for decades in Europe and they litter every library, attic and used bookstore. Barks’ and Rosa’s stuff in particular is very easy to find scans of thanks to modern reprints and the same should go for every other big name classic Disney artist. The Italian Donald Duck/Mickey Mouse comics universe is also a fascinating rabbit hole. Those old Italian stories were wild, with Donald being a horrible lazy asshole that was always physically abusing his nephews