The Seven Dwarfs and the Pirate is a comic story drawn by Tony Strobl. It features the Seven Dwarfs (Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy and Bashful), Yellow Beak, Grimhilde, King Neptune, Snow White, the Magic Mirror, and, in their debuts, a Flying Fish, the Waves, Abercrombie and his owner, Yellow Beak's Wife, Yellow Beak's Children and Polly. A picture of appears. Yellow Beak looks like José Carioca in this story. One French translation notably posited that instead of the real Yellow Beak, this story featured José Carioca posing as a pirate.
Plot[]
Pirate parrot Yellow Beak recruits the Seven Dwarfs on a treasure-hunting sea adventure. However, Grimhilde, determined to not be bested by Yellow Beak in the wealth department onto which she has siphoned her pride, sneaks aboard the ship and tries to undermine the parrot's faith in the Dwarfs — and vice versa…
References[]
- Grimhilde is shown to love money almost as much as she once loved beauty, and be the owner of a fortune in gold coins (albeit one inferior to the Treasure of); she now asks the Magic Mirror every night if she is “the richest one of all”.
- Yellow Beak is the skipper of the Crimson Crate.
- The Dwarfs want to buy Snow White a present for her upcoming birthday.
- Grimhilde displays the ability to transform herself into a rat through witchcraft without needing any potions of preparation.
- Yellow Beak monomaniacally attempts to fulfill “the law of the sea”, ending up throwing all the Dwarfs in the brig for frivolous “mutinies” such as reading a joke book on the job (in Happy's case).
- Waves are shown to be sentient magical beings who are actively, consciously at the command of King Neptune.
- Yellow Beak has a map to pirate treasure buried on Nothing Atoll.
- Grimhilde hypnotizes the Dwarfs to stand in place, frozen, through the power of her stare and the incantation “Zooky de rooky! Stand still, don't move!/You're all in my power, as I can easily prove!”.
- Grimhilde thinks it is within her ability to turn the Dwarfs into edible cheese. She notes that, “both as a witch and as a rat”, she is very fond of cheese.
- Yellow Beak is revealed to be married and a father of five.
- Polly is adopted by Snow White.
- Yellow Beak begins planning an expedition to “darkest Goosarabia” in search of “the goose that lays the golden eggs”, with the Dwarfs refusing to go.
Continuity[]
- Yellow Beak previously appeared in Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold (1942) and Donald Duck and the Pirates (1947), whose loose plot structure is borrowed by this story. In both of these stories, he had a peg-leg and looked notably older than he appears in The Seven Dwarfs and the Pirates, suggesting it may actually take place prior to the 1942 tale.
- King Neptune is, additionally, shown to still be alive and in charge of the Seven Seas, and claims that there are no such things as seagoing witches, which suggests this story takes place a significant amount of times before the events of The Little Mermaid (1989).
- The treasure is buried on Nothing Atoll. Although the atoll was not originally intended by Giorgio Pezzin to be the same location, with it being doubtful Pezzin was even aware of the 1949 story, the 2015 localization of The Siege of Nothing Atoll by Thad Komorowski saw Donald Duck and Fethry Duck visiting Nothing Atoll to defeat a mad scientist.
- In Joe Torcivia's 2011 localization of South Sea Shenanigans (1962) has Yellow Beak mention “the Seagoin’ Seven” among his past sailing companions, in reference to this story.
- The story notably ends with Grimhilde seemingly killed for good, as, while transformed into a rat, she is eaten alive by the cat Abercrombie.
Behind the scenes[]
The Seven Dwarfs and the Pirates was the third comic reincarnation of the unfinished 1939 feature film Morgan's Ghost, released in 1949 in Four Color Comics #227. It would later be reprinted in English in One Shot #19.