THEVOLCANOVALLEYSTORY

Most of Carl Barks' so-called adventure stories were used to present Disney comic book tales featuring the Duck family (Donald and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie - and later Scrooge McDuck as well) in exotic and exciting environments abroad. Although Barks was not a travelling man, he was able to render overseas locations in convincing ways via his library of Encyclopaedia Britannica and National Geographic magazines. One of the tales took place not far from his Californian home, namely FC0147 Volcano Valley from 1947. This is the story.

SYNOPSIS

FC0147 Volcano Valley - 1947 - 30 pages

Donald Duck intends to purchase a toy airplane for his nephews, but by mistake he winds up with a giant, military bomber that awaits him at the airport. Luckily, he is approached by a foreigner, who offers to buy the machine for 300,000 Volcanovian pezozies and a free roundtrip for the Ducks. The gullible Donald accepts without realizing that the seemingly impressive sum is equal to 3 dollars! This becomes clear, when he has to pay 1,200 dollars for a full tank of fuel, but the tank attendant reluctantly agrees to take Donald's little red car as full payment.

The sly buyer is Major Pablo Mañana, who now flies the Ducks to his homeland of Volcanovia, which turns out to be situated in a valley somewhere south of the American border (in reality a part of Mexico). The whole area is totally surrounded by countless very active and fiery volcanoes! Contrary to the citizens who are all extremely lazy and prefer to sleep all day.

But there is a catch to visiting Volcanovia, namely that visitors are not allowed to leave before they have done something to benefit the people! Pablo had gotten permission to leave by demonstrating his talents for saving: I discovered that eef we siestaed two hours instead of one hour, we could skip a whole hour of work.
Donald decides to attempt being announced National Hero by doing good, but instead he is declared a National Menace as his project fails. He is sent to prison awaiting his verdict. But the Ducks manage to flee due to a cunning ploy that involves the area's only dormant volcano, Old Ferocio.

COMMENTS

The ficticious country of Volcanovia was a typical product of Barks' inventive mind; he made several stories containing that type of self-explanatory and humourous state names (examples: Tropicania (FC282), Farbakistan (FC1267), Jumbostan (U$54), Unsteadystan (U$64), South Miserystan (U$70)).
But we are never informed of the name of the location's capital. We only know that the President lives there, because he meets with the Duck family.

The airplane illustrated by Barks was described as a bomber B-197 X-NG, which was just a figment of his mind. Visually and temporally it resembles Boeing's XB-38 Flying Fortress that the USA used during the Second World War. It would then have been logical for Barks to use the plane that was also mentioned in the story as surplus material from the war.
It probably would have surprised Barks to learn that the US Air Force released a B-197 Stealth bomber a few years ago...

It is the common belief that Barks never left the USA, until he embarked on his European promotion tour in 1994. But this is not entirely true; in fact, he went abroad many times before then! When he was living in the Southern California he paid numerous one-day visits to the neighbouring Mexico to spend a day of leisure, see the sights, and shop.
In those carefree days American citizens did not need a passport and the customs controls were quite relaxed. Still, it is unlikely that Barks used the enterprising Mexican people as stereotyped models in his story. He just caricated them as it was common in the comic books at the time.

From time to time Barks re-used some of his plots in new stories. Here are some examples originating from this story:
The airplane makes an almost vertical climb in order to clear a mountain (repeated using Scrooge's airplane in U$61 So Far No Safari). The Ducks are suddenly freed from prison when it is demolished by an earthquake (repeated in U$61 So Far No Safari). The entire valley is covered in popcorn (repeated using bottle caps in U$06 'Tralla La' and eggs in WDCS146 'Omelet').

Barks would occasionally add - often overlooked - pieces of surprising or even needless information to his adventures. In the story Donald is keeping a sharp eye on his girlfriend Daisy's house from the airplane in an attempt to find out who is visiting her in a car (well, at least, it was not Gladstone Gander, who was not 'born' until the following year). Also we are told that the nephews are junior members of the Bear Cub Rangers (which obviously must be a forerunner to their membership in the Junior Woodchucks some years later).

One might think that a spectacular volcanic eruption would be a prime choice for a Barks story because of its potential of creating exciting and colourful situations.
But Barks only used volcanoes in the plot of two stories: In this one the ducks try to leave a volcano infested country but they are effectively stopped by a veritable barrier of active volcanoes. And in CID 'The Black Pearls' the ducks triggered a colossal volcanic eruption, but that was 'only' manmade, although it looked quite spectacular.
Also, we must not forget that Magica de Spell lives on a volcano, namely the sleeping Mount Vesuvius in Italy!

Although the ducks were frequent users of airplanes for simple transportation when they travelled abroad, Barks only made one other story in which an airplane played an important role. It was the 4-pager WDCD Dainty Daredevil, in which Daisy involuntarily winds up as a daredevil on the wings of a flying machine.

Earthquakes did not appear very often in Barks' stories. In FC0147 Volcano Valley and in U$61 So Far No Safari the Ducks are suddenly freed from prisons when their walls were crumbling. But these events were only mild tremors in comparison with the repeated series of earthquakes, which almost flattened several cities around the world in U$13 Land Beneath the Ground. Here the instigators were strange beings deep under the surface, who were competing against each other to make the most elaborate earthquake!!!

Donald's characteristic little red car is certainly not the kind of car that you will find roaming the streets in your hometown! It is thoroughly unique.
In this story Barks 'divulged' some of its secrets, as the attendant states: A 1920 Mixwell engine! 22 Dudge body! 23 Paclac axles! Wheels off a lawn mower!
Barks is playing on words here: 'Dudge' refers to Dodge and 'Paclac' is a combination of Packard and Cadillac.

From 1946 to 1949 the Whitman Publishing Company (subsidiary to Barks' employer Western Publishing) published 5 books based on Barks' stories. The books would have a Barks drawing on one page with accompanying text written by unknown writers on the opposite page.
A version of the story from FC0147 Volcano Valley was published in Better Little Book 1457 from 1949. It was broken down into no less than 248 pages. The front cover was not by Barks.