Donald Duck and the Pirates

Donald Duckand the Pirates
First page of the story in its remounted format.
INDUCKS	W CGW W 1-01
DCR	Duck Comics Revue, September of 2020
Writer(s)	Chase Craig (?)
Artist(s)	Jack Hannah
Dates	1947 (release date)

Donald Duck and the Pirates is a comic story believed to have been scripted by Chase Craig, and which was, at any rate, drawn by Jack Hannah; it is a nominal sequel, and actually a partial remake, of the earlier story Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It accordingly features Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, Yellow Beak, Peg-Leg Pete, Red Eye and Red Eye's Brother. The story also mentions Captain Kidd. The version remounted for Donald Duck #365 also sampled artwork from Finds Pirate Gold depicting the skull of Henry Morgan (as seen in the infobox).

Plot

After coming to his aid after a fight on the docks at night, Donald Duck and Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck get swept up by old salt Yellow Beak into a new treasure hunt. Unfortunately, Peg-Leg Pete (working as a sailor) has heard about the treasure, and arranges to steal it from under their beaks…

References

• Yellow Beak owned the only map to Captain Kidd's buried treasure, but burned it after memorizing it exactly thanks to his perfect photographic memory.
• Peg-Leg Pete, Red Eye and Red Eye's Brother have apparently been working as ship-hands in-between schemes.
• Pete has acquired an X-Ray Camera capable of printing out the picture memorized by Yellow Beak.
• Captain Kidd's treasure is buried on Crying Island, ten paces away from Buzzard Rock.

Continuity

• This story is loosely adapted from the broad structure and main setpieces of Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold (1942), although, as David Gerstein noted in his afterword to the story in Donald Duck #365, “the actual plot of Pirates differs from Gold in every major detail” — such as Peg-Leg Pete and his rat henchmen ending up as the crew of Yellow Beak's ship through (un)lucky coincidence, rather than as a deliberate deception. All in all, the only obstacle to viewing Donald Duck and the Pirates as a straight-up sequel to Finds Pirate Gold is that the Ducks do not appear to have met Yellow Beak before.
• This is, perhaps problematically, not the only story to deal with characters seeking the pirate treasure of Captain Kidd; among them are the Italian story Uncle Scrooge and the Treasure of Captain Kidd (1961) and the Danish Mickey Mouse one-pager The Treasure of Captain Kidd (2009).

  

  Years after helping find his treasure, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck meet Captain Kidd in the flesh (in Captain Kidd and the Kids, 1973).

• In addition, Captain Kidd and the Kids (1973) saw Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck meet Kidd in person as he was brought to the present day by one of Gyro Gearloose's time machines, and the Ducks instead travelled back in time to 1698 to meet a different version of Kidd in A Treasure for Sure (2012), thanks to the Chronopad. The latter story saw the Ducks initially travelling back to ascertain the nature of treasure buried by Kidd on the island of Grand Manan, but it turns out to have actually been a pirate chest stolen from rival pirate Fantasma De Spell, with the fate of Kidd's own loot remaining unknown — which leaves open the possibility that it was the treasure featured in the 1947 story, or in any of the other Kidd treasure-hunt stories.

Behind the scenes

Donald Duck and the Pirates was originally printed in 1947 as one of several Cheerios one-strip-a-page giveaways. It was later reprinted in Donald Duck #365. The original promotional booklet was also marketed in Australia as part of a series of giveaways for Weeties or Kornies.

Interestingly, the 1949 Italian localization of the story corrected the continuity error with Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, altering dialogues slightly to have Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck recognize Yellow Beak upon finding him on the docks. By contrast, the 2008 Dutch localization compounded the incompatibility of Donald Duck and the Pirates with Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, by altering the story so that the treasure being sought after was now once again Henry Morgan's rather than the distinct loot of Captain Kidd.