Anyone who regularly visits this Blog should be at least passingly familiar with the story I titled "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold Again", published in DONALD DUCK # 366 (Boom! Studios, Cover Date: May, 2011).
In it, the parrot YELLOW BEAK shows up at Donald's door... on a stormy night, as the Ducks are watching TV, and causes some momentary fright!
So, imagine my surprise when I opened my copy of YOSEMITE SAM # 36 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: June, 1976) to find THIS...
No, it's not another remake of the classic "Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold"...
...Nor is this "wet stomping parrot" any sort of analogue to Yellow Beak...
But, it IS curiously coincidental enough to declare DONALD DUCK # 366 and YOSEMITE SAM # 36 to be (at least visually) "Separated At Mirth"!
12 comments:
Maybe Bugs and Yosemite Sam are being visited by...the OTHER PARROT!
Elaine:
Yes… maybe it’s the parrot that the Australian English translation that I originally worked off of, to dialogue what I titled “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold Again”, called “Salty”… because whoever did that translation had NO IDEA that this was a sequel/tribute to the original classic “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold”! Probably was never even AWARE of the original story, and simply “wrote to what he or she saw on the printed page”.
That would also ensure my (admittedly precarious and presumed) status as the only living American who has ever written for the character of Yellow Beak!
Though, the way this parrot WALKS, it would seem he owes much to Chuck Jones’ animated Mynah Bird! You can almost “hear” that “Mynah Bird Walking Music” in your head as you absorb that last panel! …At least *I* can!
Ahoy, thar, Joe! It be we, the Pack of the Pirate Parrots, who sail the seven seas in search of - crackers! Our good Captain Polly really wants those. We think that ye may 'ave discovered our old first mate in that Yosemite Sam comic - 'e was banished from the ship back in the '70s after he decided to search for gold instead! Can ye believe it? Gold! Who would want that when ye can 'ave crackers?
Who, indeed… PPPs! Who, indeed?
While conventional wisdom would tell you to “go gold”, it’s quite evident that this Blog, it’s host, and everyone who reads it has clearly elected to… “go crackers”!
In fact, I can’t decide whether to say “ARRR!” or “ARRRGH!”
I think, uncharacteristically, you missed the joke! It's the parrot, or...or...THE OTHER PARROT! :-)
…And are the two parrots here to EAT EACH OTHER?
Yes, quite uncharacteristic of me, I missed that one! Shame on me! Especially as *I* wrote that bit from scratch! I can’t decide if I should be keelhauled, or merely flogged, for such an egregious oversight.
I know, I’ll force myself to eat some of Scrooge’s “bad fish cooking” as seen in the story! …And, as a result, maybe start a series of “Bad Fish Jokes” to go along with my now-classic “Bad Goat Jokes”!
Did you know that fish are extremely weight-conscious?
Yes, they carry their SCALES with them, wherever they go!
Or, as also mentioned in the story, but NOT seen, have the “bad pirate” drop a cannonball on MY head, as he did to poor old “Cap’n Scrunch” – giving him his cereal-mascot-like name!
I still can’t get over the similarities between the two story-openings. Our main characters are huddled before their TV set on a stormy night. There’s a sound at the door! They get scared… and a parrot walks in! Purely coincidental, of course!
The great stuff you find, when rooting around your comic boxes!
You know, Yellow Beak being a former pirate and all that… if we're doing pirate/parrot switchouts…
…is that John Cleese I hear coming up the stairs? Eh? Something about a Norwegian Blue pining for the fjords… can't quite make it out……
I'm more intrigued by Bugs and Sam apparently being "roomies". A continuation of The Fair Haired Hare (1951) would be in order here, with the parrot sent by the court (at Bug's behest) to make sure the judge's ruling is being adhered. Sam's attempts to eliminate him are continuously thwarted by Bugs. Working title: "Polly Want Attacker?" or "Caws for Alarm".
Achille:
Sorry, no parrots were harmed (much less made “Dead Parrots”) in the creation of this post!
However, if you are thirsting for some good old “parrot mortality”, consider THIS COVER from the LOBO CONVENTION SPECIAL (DC Comics, 1993). A really funny comic, BTW!
This cover presents a LOBO PARODY of many of the more famous American comics… but, to me, there was always one missing!
So, in one of the very last gasps of my absolutely horrible attempts at art, I drew it up myself.
PICTURE THIS... “LOBO Finds Pirate Gold”! A homage to THIS COVER, with the following alterations…
LOBO is lusting over the chest of treasures. “It’s MINE! All fraggin’ MINE!”… while, off to the side lies a DEAD PARROT clad in a pirate costume!
Yellow Beak had LOTS of shipmates, to which I alluded in the sequel story… Donald and the Boys, Peter Pan, The Seven Drawfs, and even Woody Woodpecker! But, none of them treated him quite as harshly as LOBO!
TCJ
I love the allusion to “The Fair Haired Hare”! I never thought of that myself… But YEAH!
Actually, in the YOSEMITE SAM comic, Bugs and Sam were often cast as an “odd couple” with the expected results. The YOSEMITE SAM comic actually went off into lots of unusual directions and, despite its often uneven, or inconsistent, art was always a great read!
PS: LOVE your titles!
Blow me down: ol’ Yellow Beak sure gets around! Adventures with Donald and the kids, Peter Pan, Woody Woodpecker, and now BUGS AND YOSEMITE SAM?! We’re surely close to uncovering his lost trek to Bedrock, or Little Lulu and Tubby’s neighborhood...
With the notion of a multi-verse now firmly part of mainstream pop culture (thanks to recent Marvel films) we can easily map out how Yellow Beak is crossing over different earths. Yet his greatest power is NOT inter-dimensional travel, command of the sea, nor a beacon to riches: Yellow Beak’s greatest strength may just exist BEYOND the strict copyright and trademark of media conglomerates!!! The Walt Disney Company, Universal and Warner Bros. may not be able to clip those wings: he’s a lone parrot schlepping from title to title.
Who knows? Could the gluttonous Galactus one day recruit a NEW herald able to traverse cosmic dimensions, this time tufted with feathers green instead shining silver? In the words of Smilin' Stan: to our favorite piratical parrot, I say, EXCELSIOR!!!
Dan:
Well, well…
As Donald and the boys welcomed the return of Ol’ Yellow Beak at the beginning of “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold Again”, allow me to do the same for your return to this humble Blog!
I’d have Cap’n Popeye “pipe you aboard”, but I don’t think he HAS his pipe anymore!
Your theorem would appear to cast Yellow Beak as a sort of “Doctor Who of the Intellectual-Property-Verse”, traversing rights-holders, stakeholders, napkin holders, and the like, to alight smack in the middle of any realm of entertainment-fiction he chooses!
He, via one of his omnipresent MAPS, could lead Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve a murder case – or cause Doctor Smith to once-again endanger the Robinson Family while lusting after one Yellow Beak’s seemingly-endless caches of treasure, this time buried on some remote planet!
Heck, in this Comment Section alone, I’ve told of my imaginings of YB’s sojourn to the DC Universe and his brief and rather tragic “partnership” with LOBO! And, maybe – like Doctor Who, he regenerated into the form that walked in on Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny!
Herald to Galactus? Yes… Oddly I *can* see that! A COLOR leading-off his name, like “Silver Surfer”! GREEN Lantern, BLUE Falcon, and RED Wasp (as himself, or as Mickey Mouse subbing for him), are probably “too resistantly heroic” to serve “that big guy who’s always peckish for planets” – and I would hope that YELLOW Beak would eventually say… um, “I Can Break Away” as well!
Perhaps there’s much more to that parrot than meets the eye… or beak, or feathers, or whatever!
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