"The Ghost of the Grotto" is a 26-page

Disney comics Disney comics are comic books and comic strips featuring characters created by the Walt Disney Company, including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge. The first Disney comics were newspaper strips appearing from 1930 on, starting with ...

story written, drawn, and lettered by

Carl Barks Carl Barks (March 27, 1901 – August 25, 2000) was an American cartoonist, author, and painter. He is best known for his work in Disney comic books, as the writer and artist of the first Donald Duck stories and as the creator of Scrooge McDuck ...

. It was first published in ''

Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...

'' ''

Four Color ''Four Color'', also known as ''Four Color Comics'' and ''Dell Four Color'', was an American comic book anthology series published by Dell Comics between 1939 and 1962. The title is a reference to the four basic colors used when printing comic ...

'' #159 (August 1947).

Plot

Donald Duck and his nephews have rented a boat in order to collect

seaweed Seaweed, or macroalgae, refers to thousands of species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of '' Rhodophyta'' (red), ''Phaeophyta'' (brown) and ''Chlorophyta'' (green) macroalgae. Seaweed species such as ...

in the West Indies for money. When they get back on land in order to wait out the low tide so they can collect seaweed inside a

grotto A grotto is a natural or artificial cave used by humans in both modern times and antiquity, and historically or prehistorically. Naturally occurring grottoes are often small caves near water that are usually flooded or often flooded at high ti ...

, the four hear that "tonight is the night". It turns out that the night is the night the

ghost A ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person or animal that is believed to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely from an invisible presence to translucent or barely visible wispy shapes, to rea ...

of the grotto kidnaps a little boy. With the ducks luck, Dewey is the one to be kidnapped. Now the ducks are faced with the task of saving Dewey and not only have to face the kidnapper, but an

octopus An octopus ( : octopuses or octopodes, see below for variants) is a soft-bodied, eight- limbed mollusc of the order Octopoda (, ). The order consists of some 300 species and is grouped within the class Cephalopoda with squids, cuttle ...

guarding a giant ship. The ducks manage to get rid of the octopus by using a ton of

pepper Pepper or peppers may refer to: Food and spice * Piperaceae or the pepper family, a large family of flowering plant ** Black pepper * ''Capsicum'' or pepper, a genus of flowering plants in the nightshade family Solanaceae ** Bell pepper ** Chili ...

, while collecting a ton of seaweed in the process. Later, Donald uses a mouse named Montmorency to disarm the kidnapper. He is revealed to be the latest guardian of the treasure of Sir

Francis Drake Sir Francis Drake ( – 28 January 1596) was an English explorer, sea captain, privateer, slave trader, naval officer, and politician. Drake is best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580 (t ...

while Dewey was expected to succeed him. The story ends with the guardian being allowed to keep the treasure and spend it as he sees fit, which to him, is on fancy clothing and hamburgers.

Development

In a 1974 interview with

Michael Barrier Michael J. Barrier (born June 15, 1940) is an American animation historian. Work Barrier was the founder and editor of ''Funnyworld'', the first magazine exclusively devoted to comics and animation. It began as a contribution to the CAPA-Alpha a ...

, Barks said, "I can remember the first idea I had on that was just trying to figure out something Donald could do. I thought of him sailing boats and came up with a potential ten pages of gathering seaweed, and selling this kelp, which would give me a lot of gags with boats. Like I told you before, I think of a scene, I mean a locale, and think, 'Well, I feel in the mood to draw boats, and the ocean, and so on,' and that would cause me to start working on that particular type of story. As I developed more and more things with the story, I think it's quite possible that that 'Ghost of the Grotto' was brought in as a menace. There is so much in that, I couldn't have thought of it in a whole bucketful of writing at once. It had to come out one thing after another."

Reception

Thomas Andrae writes that "The Ghost of the Grotto" marks a turn in Barks' writing toward the themes of Gothic fiction, which focus on "psychic repression and the fragmentation of self-identity, focusing on obsession, taboo, and the irrational." The story "introduces a motif that will inform many later Donald and Scrooge adventures: that western civilization's lust for conquest and empire and obsession with wealth and power invariably lead to alienation and self-disintegration."

References

External links

*
''The Ghost of the Grotto''
in Carl Barks guidebook {{DEFAULTSORT:Ghost of the Grotto, The Disney comics stories Donald Duck comics by Carl Barks 1947 in comics Ghosts in written fiction

Plot

Development

Reception

See also

References

External links