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a content warning much like the ones Disney puts in front of their old animated features and shorts that contain racist outdated elements but I guess that wasn’t enough.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
You must log in or # to comment.
what’s the donald duck comic that got banned for being actually cool and good?
Not sure what you’re referring to but it sounds interesting 🤔
oh I misremembered, it wasn’t a donald duck comic, it was a book about disney comics in general
there might be actual banned comics that are good but this is the thing I was thinking of when I wrote that comment
In 1973, a coup d’état, secretly supported by the United States, brought in power the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. During Pinochet’s regime, How to Read Donald Duck was banned and subject to book burning; its authors were forced into exile.
Here I assumed Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck was just a metal album.
It’s a concept album based on the 12-part comic series. Tuomas Holopainen even got Don Rosa to do the cover art for it
Kinda surprised Disney didn’t nuke it from orbit
…am I supposed to think it’s bad that Disney are gonna stop publishing a coupla pieces of gross racist bullshit, or is it just bad that this cartoonist is gonna stop being paid for those particular pieces of gross racist bullshit?
Oh, he wasn’t being paid- Disney has always treated their comic artists like shit. They’re paid a flat sum per story to which they relinquish all rights and they can’t collect royalties despite artists like Don Rosa being hot commodities in places like Europe where their names alone move tons of reprinted collections. It’s still an improvement over the old days where the writers and artists weren’t even allowed to be credited and no one knew who they were and all their work was just credited to Disney®
While the character of Bombie the Zombie and the story he originated in was created by Carl Barks in the 1940s and has aged poorly to say the least, Don Rosa tried to recontextualise the events when he was making The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck in the 1990s. How successful he was or how wise this was is up for debate but it wasn’t exactly Tintin in the Congo
Funny because the new Duck Tales has a Bombi episode.
I looked it up and the character was completely reworked for that show, losing any trace of his “voodoo as imagined by a white guy born in 1901 whose only experience of people and countries outside of the US was through issues of National Geographic” origins so it’s not that surprising
I liked that story as a kid, but now as an adult, 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. Those banned stories are super racist too.
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???
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.”
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
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.
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
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
WTF does this have to do with DEI?
The email from the publisher to Don Rosa quotes Disney’s commitment to diversity and inclusion as the reason why they’re no longer going to allow the publication of two of his stories
Totally. Not calling out the title of the post.
I’m questioning Disney’s “reasoning.” As far as I can tell, racial sensitivity ≠ DEI.
Btw: thank you (earnestly) for this post. I’ve perused The Life and Times… before, but now I’m on a mission to find as much Barks and Rosa stuff as I can. Watched a lot if related YouTube videos on them this afternoon.
I found the entire Don Rosa Library posted on several online comic reader websites with a single google search so they shouldn’t be hard to find.
I don’t think publishing stories with a gross racist caricature is particularly compatible with DEI? Have I missed something? From Wikipedia:
"diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are organizational frameworks that seek to promote the fair treatment and full participation of all people, particularly groups who have historically been underrepresented or subject to discrimination based on identity or disability."Publishing stories featuring a lumbering racist caricature with rings through his nose and ears does seem like it would conflict with DEI. Even if you trimmed it down to just employment… Publishing racist caricatures probably isn’t going to make you very welcoming to members of the group being caricatured.
I’m not saying they conflict, I’m saying they are separate things, both laudable.
How to treat content with racist undertones (or overtones) is certainly worthy of debate; I tend to agree that not hiding them, but rather to used them to educate, as they’ve done heretofore, is probably the best. But even if the decision is to hide them, I don’t think it falls under the DEI bucket, at least not directly.
And I’m saying they’re not separate, because if you publish “the turner diaries” for a broad public audience (I could see an exception for very hyper specialised academic presses and orgs of that nature), you aren’t providing a welcoming environment to potential black colleagues, even if you put a disclaimer at the front. No form of bigotry is compatible with DEI for that reason. I just don’t think that we need to keep publishing racist Donald duck comics to teach about racism any more than America needs to keep statues of Columbus to teach the evils of colonialism, so the continued publication of those comics is unjustified and therefore hostile to PoC. Which is in direct conflict with DEI.
