Be Leery of Lake Eerie is a comic story written and storyboarded by Carl Barks, and drawn by Kay Wright. It features Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, Grand Mogul Gentlefogg, Mayor Hogwilde, and, in their debuts, Trashivore the Dragon, Magnum P. Highpower, and the Motor Sludge Catfish.
Plot[]
While on a Junior Woodchucks outing at Duckburg's deplorably polluted Lake Eerie, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck discover the existence of various mutated lifeforms in the Lake's disgusting waters… including an equal parts awe-inspiring and preposterous Trashivorous Dragon! A blessing for the town both as a tourist attraction and as a living garbage-disposal, the Dragon soon rises to fame, only to catch the attention of hunter Magnum P. Highpower…
References[]
- The mutated fauna of Lake Eerie (from which Duckburg, we are told, gets most of its freshwater) includes Trashivore the Dragon and Motor Sludge Catfish.
Continuity[]
- Be Leery of Lake Eerie (1992) and Be Leery of Lake Eerie (2003) are retellings of the same story.
Behind the scenes[]
This story was first printed in 1973 in Huey, Dewey and Louie Junior Woodchucks #17. It was reprinted in Donald Duck Digest #2.
Carl Barks's original storyboard contained a notably less hopeful version of the last half-page — wherein Lake Eerie, while slightly less polluted than before, remained quite dire. Complaints from the publisher led to Barks rescripting this last half-page, and this was the version drawn by Kay Wright.
Giovan Battista Carpi in 1992, and Daan Jippes in 2003, both created remakes of this story, reusing the same Carl Barks storyboard originally used by Wright. Both versions restored Barks's original, bitter ending, and Jippes strove to stay closer to Barks's storyboards than either Wright or Carpi.
The story's antagonist, Magnum P. Highpower, is a typical Carl Barks "pig-faced villain", and one would be forgiven for assuming he is yet another alias of Argus McSwine from reading this 1972 version. However, the Carpi version distances itself from McSwine's usual look, casting doubt on whether this is truly McSwine himself, rather than a "near-lookalike" like several other Barksian 'pig-faced villains' (including Soapy Slick, Horsehoes Hogg and Bruno Castrova). Though we acknowledge the possibility that he may just be McSwine, we at the Scrooge McDuck Wiki will provisionally consider him an independent character, including in his 1972 and 2003 appearances.