Perhaps one of the great curiosities of modern American comics is the notable, periodic absence of some of its oldest, most famous, and most bankable stars. The long-running Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories, most recently published by IDW, has had a laundry list of publishers since the 1940s, but it has never quite gained a foothold on comic racks populated with superheroic science-fiction, fantasy, and horror. Despite the major influence on many cartooning greats, the Duckburg books are rarified treasures to be found at flea markets rather than back-issue bins.
This isn’t the case abroad, where strips and comics still proliferate. Generations of visionary cartoonists have populated a sprawling Disney universe with characters absent not only from American comics but from American culture at large. There was a time, back when Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse cartoons were still relevant to American audiences, where these characters might cross over – the Brazilian character José Carioca co-starred in Three Caballeros, later adapted to a rather epic animated series, and cameoing in 2017’s DuckTales – but that era has long passed.
In his introduction to For Whom the Doorbell Tolls, out this week from cartooning archivists (and Disneyana safe haven) Fantagraphics, Italian cartoonist Giorgio Cavazzano discusses his time educating at Accademia Disney, an institution where future artists were trained specifically to make more Disney comics (and cartoons, and properties). To this stable of future Disney creatives and future Topolino regulars, Cavazzano issued a decidedly strange challenge: adapt Hemingway.
Fantagraphics / Disney
The more curmudgeonly literature professors might argue that Hemingway himself has a diminishing presence in American culture; I will not (I’m of the mind that old dead white men’s stranglehold on literary academia has stagnated the discourse, if not the medium). Regardless of cultural ubiquity, the blending of stoic (often tragic) letters with the vibrant and manic world of Disney comics is just the right level of compelling and bizarre.
Fantagraphics / Disney
The ten stories in For Whom the Doorbell Tolls aren’t one-to-one adaptations, of course; some, like the book’s opener “Cowboy Blues” by Stefano Turconi, takes the smallest seed from bullfighting tale “The Undefeated”, transposing the bull to a rodeo, and Goofy (accidentally) onto said bull. It’s a kinetic, Disney Adventures-ready bit of chicanery.
Others, like Alessandro Perina’s moody take on “The Killers” (here called “Bad Boys”), thrust Mickey’s friends into the realm of gangsters, a diner taken hostage by Pegleg Pete and Sylvester (not that Sylvester).
The wide styles (and quality) of the work presented here only illustrate the massive range the Disney characters can exercise; it is a creative palette both diverse and dynamic. For all its Hemingway love, For Whom the Doorbell Tolls isn’t exactly a child’s gateway to the classics for overly literate parents so much as a call to action for prospective (and future) artists. It’s a celebration of cartooning, of craft, and of all the potential weirdness inherent in talking animals and literature.
It also, one might hope, might provide a small foothold in American comics for new fans of this classic, wonderful world.
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