Review by Frank Plowright

‘Isle of the Golden Geese’ is an anomaly in the canon of Carl Bark’s duck tales for being the only occasion he mixed his characters into the world of fairy tales. He discovers an old chest containing a single gold feather and a journal detailing superstitious practices for making money. It rankles with Scrooge, who completely disagrees with the idea of money that’s not earned, yet if there’s easy money to be made he’s not above an opportunity. It’s a clever shedding of principles resulting in a trip to the small island where golden goose eggs originate. Unfortunately for Scrooge, Magica de Spell needs goose eggs for a potion.

The beauty of her working witchcraft is that it opens Scrooge’s world to the irrational, whereas his usual life is all about control. Readers are also given the irrational as the trip occurs, with Magica marshalling marine life against Scrooge, causing sawfish to cut his boat in half. The geese come from a fairytale, and the wide-eyed Miss Featherbrain who looks after them greatly resembles the traditional look of the nursery rhyme Bo Peep in her pink dress and bonnet.

It’s not only the fairy tale aspect that makes this story unique. Magica isn’t actually after Scrooge’s first dime for once, and she also teams with the Beagle Boys, but Barks doesn’t make much of it. They’re just convenient henchmen, and Magica’s raven has a larger role than they do. There’s also what’s surely a tip of Scrooge’s top hat to The Birds, a cinematic hit not long before the story was created.

Barks works his way to a glorious ending, with Huey, Dewey and Louie acting as Scrooge’s conscience when it avoids activating of its own accord, and Miss Featherbrain wondering about the desire for items worthless to her.

Accompanying story ‘The Travel Tightwad’ engineers the type of ridiculous circumstances reflecting the unique twists of Barks’ mind. Scrooge believes he needs to be seen to have money, but that costs too much, so he needs to be seen in something cheaper. Only he can’t realise how that circumvents his original purpose. What develops is pure slapstick as Scrooge goes on a very different ride from the one he imagined, but it’s two different stories bolted together, and would be more satisfying for being shorter. When reprinted in Lost Beneath the Sea, accompanying material notes Vic Lockman responsible for the strip.

The main story is the better of the two, and very nicely drawn, but both lack the wonder of Barks at his peak.