What's your favorite comic-related prank/hoax? OR, if that's not your cup of tea ... what are your favorite humor comics?
We're quite a ways behind April 1, 2009, but still in April 2020. My favourite April Fool's Day comic book story is Carl Barks' untitled Donald Duck story in "Walt Disney's Comics & Stories" # 211, from 1958, in which Donald's nephews try to play a trick on him by having the local electrician, who services many of the homes in their neighbourhood, connect a microphone to Donald's radio, and disguise his voice, pretending to be a radio newscaster, informing the public about the discovery of the legendary "wishing stones" on a remote island in The Pacific Ocean' South Seas, which have been confirmed by scientists to REALLY grant wishes. Donald , characteristically, goes into a mad frenzy, so busy running around preparing for his trip to The South Seas, that he is oblivious to his nephews' shouts of "April Fool!". He returns from Duckburg's Downtown with 4 tickets on a luxury ocean liner (cruise ship) to the South Seas port nearest the remote island where his nephews pretended the wishing stones were recently discovered. They are too scared he will spank their rear ends so hard they'll not be able to sit for months, so they don't dare tell him it was a joke now. The 4 of them arrive at the island after some small humourous adventures, and Donald offends the native islanders, who throw thousands of coconuts at him. They had the bad luck of the coconut buyers not coming right after the annual harvest time, and they want the coconuts removed. They give Donald till sundown that day to remove them from the island. Miraculously, the coconut buyers' ship arrives, and Donald becomes rich, and The Ducks sail for home, The Nephews are wondering about the nature of tempting Fate, regarding how their April Fool joke on Donald turned out to be a joke on them.
Many years after reading THAT Barks April Fool story in 1958, and even more years (almost 50) after reading Carl Barks' first April Fool story in 1945, I wrote and storyboarded my first Donald Duck April Fool story in 1994, for Oberon's "Donald Duck Weekblad" (Dutch Disney Comics) in my 10th year of working for them, which, coincidentally, also appeared in "Walt Disney's Comics & Stories" (#691). This story has Donald as a member of Duckburg's "Leg Pullers' Club", who try to be the champion hoaxters, tricksters, and practical jokers in their town. Their bitter rivals, "The Bamboozlers", are the other major club with those same goals. Each year, on April 1st, both clubs fight for the trophy for being Leg-pulling champions of Duckburg. As is typical, Donald brags he can pull off the most difficult prank - to fool the ever wary, Scrooge McDuck. bumbling Donald is last to have pulled of his leg-pulling prank. He fails many times to fool his zillionaire uncle. Pressure mounts, as the judge has determined that the Bamboozlers and Leg-Pullers are exactly tied in points. Donald just needs to score 1 measly point with a tiny bit of foolery for his team to win. But, as usual, he wants to do this up in a big way because of his unrealistic bragging. Donald takes Scrooge to a fake observatory to look closely at Mars, where he sees Donald's nephews dressed in space alien outfits (with antennae), counting piles of play money, and holding up signs in Duckburgian language, that say they plan to steal from Scrooge McDuck, next. Scrooge is sweating, terrified. But Prof. Donald shows him a close up of The Moon, where he shows him that he can hide his money in the big craters which form the nostrils in the shape of The Man-In-The-Moon's face (who is drawn to look like Carl Barks (complete with spectacles).
Scrooge is in such a panic over the thought of aliens stealing his beloved money, that he can't think straight.
After Donald and his nephews see that Scrooge has many money trucks loading tonnes of money into a several billion Euro space rocketship, they haven't the nerve to tell him it was an April Fool joke. The rocket takes off. The Nephews get Donald to understand he CAN'T use this duping job on Scrooge for winning the contest, because that scandal showing that McDuck fell for such a silly trick would make him look like an idiot, and ruin his image and that of all his businesses. So Donald changes his leg-pulling gag to having fooled all Duckburg into thinking he would try to pull a gag, which he now says he didn't. The crowd doesn't go for that, and they start chasing him and throwing things at him, so do BOTH contending teams, angry that no team won, and so does Uncle Scrooge, for making him spend millions on his rocket launch. As Donald runs away into the sunset, his nephews say they are proud of him for not ruining Scrooge's reputation and businesses, but that doesn't provide much solace to Donald, who won't be able to show his face in Duckburg for 1,000 years.
My favourite humour comics are: Carl Barks' stories; John Stanley' "Little Lulu", "Tubby", "Nancy & Sluggo" (especially with Oona Goosepimple), "Peterkin Pottle"; Walt Kelly's "Albert & Pogo"; Ec's "Hector The Inspector" from "Animal Fables",; Cecil Jensen' "Elmo" (St. John); Irv Spector's "lucky Duck" and "Muggy Doo (Boy Cat)" from Standard Comics and his "Coogy" comic strip; Jack Bradbury's "Dizzy Duck" and other titles for Nedor/Standard and Creston/ACG Comics; Creston/ACG's "Spencer Spook"; and Ken Hultgren's "Duke and The Dope" in Creston/ACG's "Giggle Comics". I also liked "Bugs Bunny", "Daffy Duck" and "Loony Tunes" from WB, and "Woody Woodpecker" and "Li'l Eight Ball" from Walter Lantz.
