Zitat:
THE THREE CABALLEROS
RIDE AGAIN! p. 33
‘This is an adventure that I had planned to do ever since I began writing and drawing Duck comics! I am a fan of
Donald Duck strictly due to the comic book stories by Carl Barks. I have never been especially interested in the slapstick animated Disney Donald Duck cartoons... to me, that seemed to be a different character altogether. However, I have always felt that the only truly great use to which Disney put their Donald Duck character was in the 1945 film The Three Caballeros. | thought the interaction between Donald and the other two characters, José Carioca and Panchito, was marvel- ous, and the action and music in the film was wonderful! In fact, the trio’s rendition of “The Three Caballeros” song is one of my very favorite musical numbers in any movie! I wanted to bring the Three Caballeros back to comics, where they had not appeared together domestically since some promotional stories when the film was released in 1945. But that would make this the first Duck story I ever created that was based on something Disney did with Donald, and not based on a single thing that Barks did with the character (though I slipped Barks’ Junior Woodchucks into a small role).
The great thing about that Three Caballeros film is that it is the only instance that I know of where Donald is teamed with an equal partner—in fact, two—who like and respect him. He has no “buddies” in the comics—Uncle Scrooge exploits him, Gladstone Gander humiliates him, Daisy drives him crazy. I wanted to create a situation where Donald is an equal member of a trio—still having the foibles for which we love him, but also being a capable and respected and liked member of a group. However, this was not an easy idea to launch. if you've ever seen the film (and surely you must!), you know that the movie does not have a plot, nor does it explain just who José Carioca or Panchito are; its actually a comedy/fantasy/musical travelogue where our heroes simply introduce segments pertaining to different locations in Mexico or South America. To try to use a non-story as a story springboard is a difficult job!
I wanted to reintroduce José and Panchito into Donald’s life as if they were old pals from his early days; but I could not actually make any specific references to such adventures, since there actually were none other than their appearance in that travelogue film. Therefore, I could only make references to some sort of adventures and high times that Donald had with these two old buddies in some earlier period of his life, without being specific. It was added fun to make vague references to exploits that Donald might have had with old girlfriends before he met Daisy. After all, one of the most fun aspects of the Disney film was the constant lovesickness that the characters expressed for every pretty girl they saw in their travelogues!
Another major objective in this story, for my personal pleasure, was to try to render into comic strip form a musical performance by Donald and his friends. This was one of my typically screwball ideas! How could I expect a song and dance number to succeed in a non-audio, non- animated comic? So, as was my usual procedure when knowing I had an impossible and preposterous idea for a comic story, I did it anyway!
There were two different areas of research I had to do for this adventure—one was on the two supporting characters, and the other was the geographical setting. The reason that finding out more about José and Panchito was not a simple task for me is that, after brief appearances in American comic books and newspaper comics in 194246, neither of these characters had ever again been seen in American comics. As you might know, José Carioca was the star of our American Silly Symphonies Sunday comic strip from 1942 to 1944, after which Panchito also got a year of that strip to himself. The Symphonies stories with these characters were reprinted in South America and Europe, most notably in Brazil and Holland where José became so popular that local creators have since produced decades’ worth of stories about him themselves. | had never seen any of these, and yet I thought it was important that I see what these other writers had done with both José and Panchito before I started messing around with them myself.
As for José, I saw that the Silly Symphonies strips, the Brazilians, and the Dutch made him into a fairly nice guy, but still a sort of opportunistic, Chaplin-like tramp. That didn’t set so well with my ideas, so I chose to use José in an interpretation of the character I see in the original film. There he seems to be some sort of dapper nightclub entertainer. So, mad José fans, please forgive me.
I found that Panchito had always been depicted as a wandering Mexican vaquero, and that the comics had given him a trusty steed named Sefior Martinez; however, the way this horse had always been drawn was in a very cartoony style reminiscent of an old Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse newspaper strip of the 1930s. This is not very consistent with a Barks horse, or the sort of horses I prefer to use in my stories, which are more like horses youd see in Asterix; so that’s how I chose to draw Senor Martinez.
But Panchito fans (of whom I consider myself one) may have more to forgive than that. During my research I found—somewhere in my collection of vintage Three Caballeros memorabilia—one reference in a promotional pamphlet that gave Panchito’s last name as “Pistoles.” This pleased me because it had always vaguely bothered me that Donald Duck and José Carioca both had surnames, but Panchito was just “Panchito.” So I added “Pistoles”; to my knowledge, this became the only time this lost surname had ever been used anywhere besides that pamphlet. But later I noticed that in reaction to my story, this “Pistoles” surname was now being given to Panchito across the internet in almost all reference works!!! Like everything I’ve done in any of my
Duck stories, I never intended my personal interpretations to ever be regarded as the “official” version, but it seemed like the rest of the world had also been anxious for Panchito to have a surname, and had swiftly adopted this “Pistoles.” The problem is that until now, I could not recreate my research to find where I discovered that “lost” name—perhaps, I imagined, it was in an article not even written by a Disney representative. But Don Rosa Library editor David Gerstein has now informed me that the name was indeed used in several Disney-authorized venues in the 1940s, including a guest spot by the Caballeros on the radio show Command Performance. So at least | can relax in the knowledge that “Pistoles” has some official status.
But then again... while “Pistoles” sounds like a good last name for a pistol-packin’ vaquero, the correct Spanish plural for “pistol” is pistolas with an “a’—and David tells me that at least one 1940s use in connection with Panchito actually spelled it right! If 'd known, I would have spelled it right, too!!! So, along with the mad José fans—mad Panchito fans: please forgive me.
The trio that I finally used is supposed to be reminiscent of the old Bob Hope and Bing Crosby Road films of the 1940s and 1950s—the characters are basically good guys, but not above getting involved in some get-rich-quick schemes on the side.
The main reason | decided it was time for this story was that I had just taken a trip through the area that I figured would make an excellent scenic locale for the adventure, Mexico’s Copper Canyon in the Sierra Madre mountains. So, as usual, everything concerning the setting is authentic. Copper Canyon actually is deeper and wider than Arizona's Grand Canyon—so why don’t we hear about it as much? It’s because Copper Canyon is in a remote area of Mexico and therefore not developed and catering to tourists. Also, the canyon does not have a desert climate, and the many trees that fill it decrease the viewing range and the rugged beauty.
The Chihuahua and Pacific railway in my story actually exists, and it does run precariously along canyon ledges—I rode the length of the system and the views are just as I show them! (And fortunately, the tracks were completed in the 1960s, after my 1950s story takes place.) There actually is a spot where the railroad tracks loop around and cross under themselves—though the loop is much wider than I show it to be.
El Divisadero and Cuiteco are actually railway towns on the canyon rim, but for my purposes I could not depict them as they were in the 1950s. Even today there’s certainly no fancy resort hotel in El Divisadero, and there’s still virtually nothing at all in tiny Cuiteco. I can’t imagine what
the two tiny villages were like over a half-century ago!
Furthermore, in the 17th century there was a silver mining town named Tayopa, run by the Jesuits, that has been lost to history. I don’t really know if a volcano was to blame, but they do have active volcanoes in Mexico. In fact, the remote town | show destroyed by a volcano in my story—with only the cathedral bell tower sticking up from the hardened lava—was loosely inspired by similar sights in the 1954 Gary Cooper Western Garden of Evil.
But my much greater inspiration for this entire adventure came from one of the greatest movies ever made, John Huston’s 1949 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre! Employing a story involving three treasure hunters set in those same mountains, I could not resist engaging in some light parody of that film. Not only is it one of my very favorite movies, but it is the basis for every Scroogian treasure hunt adventure that I’ve ever done; it proves that a story about how the hero finds but then doses a treasure is far more interesting than simply having him keep it.
D.U.C.K. SPOTTER’S GUIDE: In the opening splash panel, look in the wood grain on a horizontal fence slat to find the dedication.
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THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (MINUS 4) CABALLEROS p. 709
LT enjoyed doing my first “Three Caballeros” story with Donald, José Carioca, and Panchito Pistoles! It was fun to team our hero up with equal partners who respect him and regard him highly as opposed to how the typical Duckburg resident treats poor Donald. And readers seemed to also enjoy that adventure, so another “3C” story was happily inevitable.
Since the first story (“The Three Caballeros Ride Again!,” Don Rosa Library Vol. 9) was set in Panchito’s Mexico, the second adventure obviously needed to be another treasure hunt, this time in Josés Brazil. But I didn’t want it to take place in the Amazon jungle that most of us think covers all of Brazil, since that’s all we see in typical movies or comics. There are vast grasslands and low mountain ranges and gigantic swamps in central and southern Brazil, so I needed to do some research to see what sort of lost treasures were laying around loose in that region. And it didn’t take long to find out about Colonel Percy Fawcett and the Lost City of Crystal! Whether or not the Lost City with which our heroes get involved is actually still waiting to be stumbled upon, somewhere in the Mato Grosso, is a matter of conjecture. But it’s a fact that it was reported discov- ered by 18th century explorers, and has been the objective of numerous expeditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A group of Portuguese explorers reported the discovery of the Lost City in 1753, and their report was entered into the Brazilian government files as “Document 512.” By the time anyone had the time and resources to research this document a cen- tury later, it had fallen into decay and was only partly legible. My depiction of the Lost City as being a Phoenician-style construction of stone and glowing crystal beyond a triple-arched gate hidden across a dangerous swamp, however, is just how “Document 512” describes it.
What I found even more interesting was the man who spent a large part of his life in search of the Lost City of Crystal: Colonel Percy Fawcett! Fawcett was a sort of “rogue archaeologist” who conducted private expeditions in South America and would go on lecture tours telling of his discov- eries and theories. He was the man who first claimed to have seen evidence of living dinosaurs in the swamps of western Brazil (the Panatal region), and told of these sightings during a tour sponsored by the British Geographical Society in 1911. Two world-famous authors who enjoyed Fawcett’s lecture and befriended him were Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes!) and H. Rider Haggard (writer of She and King Solomon’ Mines). The following year Doyle wrote his clas- sic The Lost World. Haggard surely used some of Fawcett’s tales as inspiration for the adventures of his own famous hero, Alan Quatermain. And to bring Col. Percy Fawcett directly into modern pop culture: you should already be realizing he was also the model for Indiana Jones! (ConTINUED ON PAGE 189)
But enough about other people's pulp heroes, let’s get back to our own comic book heroes! The other interesting aspect of my research on this story came about when I decided it should open in José’s hometown of Rio de Janeiro, and certainly should include a trip to the top of Rio’s Sugar Loaf Mountain. As most of you know, in order to keep my stories (particularly those involving Scrooge McDuck!) in agreement with the Carl Barks classics I grew up with, I set my stories in the 1950s. Well, I had no trouble finding many photos of Sugar Loaf cable cars from the 1950s, but zo photos of the cable car stations. 1 even had Duck fans in Rio searching their local libraries for such photos. Ultimately I was forced to have my 1950s cable cars docking at modern stations, which I had the Rio fans photograph for me. (If you knew how much effort I put into just this single detail, youd know how nutty I really am!)
As discussed in Vol. 1 of the Don Rosa Library, | did a comic strip adventure for my college newspaper that later became the model for my first Duck adventure, “The Son of the Sun.” But there was a villain in that earlier plot which I omitted from the Duck version: an arrogant American- educated prince of a tribe of primitive Amazonian natives who usurped his authority to command them to do his dirty work. I finally resurrected that bad guy for this plot!
Probably my favorite scene in my first Caballero story was the rendition of a Donald, José, and Panchito musical performance in comics form. I had originally intended to repeat that song and dance sequence somewhere in this new adventure, perhaps during the big “saving the animals” scene. But I finally decided the story was already overlong, and I wasn’t sure if readers enjoyed that part of the first story, anyway... after all, is there any sense in having a song and dance number in a comic book? So, the only singing and dancing this time is in the very last panel of the story.
And another apology: I spotted a goof when the story was published. Check page 114, panel 2—I forgot to draw Rio in the distance. The whole city is gone! All that’s left is my construction lines for the streets.
D.U.C.K. SPOTTER’S GUIDE: In the opening splash panel, the dedication letters are disguised as the corner bolts of the plaque below the airborne Donald.
MOUSE SPOTTER’S GUIDE: | frequently hide lil Mickey Mouse appearances or shapes in my stories, just for fun, to give readers one more detail to hunt for. In this story, a few readers told me their favorite panel is the one where the rescued capybara turns and waves to Donald. When I remembered that the capybara, the world’s biggest rodent, lived in Brazil, and that readers enjoy my little “hidden Mickeys,” that was a cheap gag | couldn’t resist.
INSANE DETAILS TO LOOK FOR: The Three Caballeros, like their namesake film, have little to do with Carl Barks’ Duck story heritage—but because ’m Don Rosa, a few Barks references had to slip into my story. And so did a few callbacks to my own previous tales.
On Page 111, when Donald’s nephews recount how Unca Donald saved the logs of Fort Duckburg from being ground up in a mill, the action happened in my “W.H.A.D.A.L.O.T.T.AJ.A.R.G.O.N.” (Don Rosa Library Vol. 8).
‘Then on Pages 117, 127, and 133, when José and Panchito marvel at the tales of Donald’s and “Oncle Scrunch’s”—er, Scrooge’s past exploits, the discovery of Eldorado took place in my “Last Lord of Eldorado” (Don Rosa Library Vol. 7), while the mines of the Incas were found in Barks’ “The Prize of Pizarro” (Uncle Scrooge 26, 1959). The refer- enced lost world of dinosaurs is Barks’ “Forbidden Valley” (Donald Duck 54, 1957), while Barks also revealed “The Secret of Atlantis” (US 5, 1954). And of course, it was Mr. Barks who set Scrooge and his nephews on the trail of “The Mines of King Solomon” (US 19, 1957).