The old Dell Comics used a variety of settings over and over. Jungle adventures, tropical islands, Westerns settings and of course, the Northern. With the drop of a toque, Donald and his nephews were off to the Arctic, Alaska, anywhere there was gold. You got the usual collection of tropes: dogsleds, gold mines, sour doughs, gambling halls, etc. This Klondike fever would continue into the newer comics from Gold Key, Disney Comics and Gladstone.
But there was this one time, back in September-October of 1962 when Donald Duck would have a strange adventure in the North. It was a five-pager called “Self-Made Hero”. We don’t know who the writer was but the art was provided by Tony Strobl and Steve Steere. It was the final Dell comic in the series, Donald Duck #84.
The comic begins with the boys asking their uncle for a bedtime story. Donald recalls that time he was a member of the Northwest Mounted Police. He is given a special assignment: to stop the abominable snowman. the creature has been terrorizing the locals.
Donald prepares by getting his special equipment like camouflage as well as his secret weapon. Loading up his dogsled, he is off to stop the monster.
It doesn’t take long before he locates the horned, fire-breathing beast. Donald throws a snowball at it to get its attention.
It is time for the secret weapon….a mirror. The monster is so ugly it scares itself over a cliff.
Donald returns to the love of the local citizens. He is even given a medal for his braver.
Just then he sees a big shadow on the wall and jumps under the table. It is only a shadow from one of the boy’s toy, a Thumper puppet. Donald puts the boys to bed. They tease him for being so brave.
This short encounter with a monster has plenty of Northern cliches in it but also some lost opportunities. The representation of Canada as if it were still 1890 is typical of all Disney and other comics. As with the other adventure settings, this is a chance to step back in time. It is too bad the writer used “the abominable snowman” rather than Bigfoot or Sasquatch. I think they used it because it more familiar and the joke: “He was not only abominable, he was anti-social.” Still, by 1962, Bigfoot legends were becoming much better known in the media.
