When Donald met God
Hello! Today we’re looking at “A Very Special Day” by Gorm Transgaard (script) and Flemming Andersen (art) (Inducks). It’s a celebration comic for Donald’s 70th anniversary as a character in 2004. It is essentially a variation on the “It’s a Wonderful Life” plot, which has been used several times in Duck comics. Don Rosa used it for his celebration of Donald’s 60th anniversary, for example.
The premise here is that Donald is in a self-pitying mood over his bad luck and he wishes his life was different. What if he was a lucky duck instead? And he finds a way to actually make that change. But as always in these comics, he learns that he is fine the way he is.
It is also one of the few comics to feature God himself as a major supporting character, which is unusual. Because of length and to protect those who are not ready to see the face of God, the rest is under the cut.
The story takes place on Donald’s birthday, which doesn’t begin well for him. He falls out of bed and down the stairs, just to start things off. Donald is understandably in a bad mood because of this and curses his bad luck and wishes he would have never been born.
He comes across a fortune teller, Visionette (I like her personality and design, by the way). She can see nothing but ill fortune in store for Donald. Donald is even more distraught of his lot in life and Visionette takes pity on him. She decides that Donald should plead his case with the big man upstairs, who she is on a first-name basis with. The two drink a potion that makes their souls leave their bodies, as you do:
I like the creepy vacant expression on their literally soulless bodies.
And then they take off for the stars. Are you ready for God? For here he is:
Yes, turns out that God looks and acts like a amiable middle-aged office worker. A celestial bureaucrat.
Because this is a Disney comic, he is of course not called God explicitly. In German, he is (roughly translated) called “the Great Registrator”, but I prefer the Swedish version in which he is called “The File Clerk”. And I was not kidding when I said Visionette is on a first-name basis with him. In German she calls him Rudi and in Swedish Knut-Arne, which are both peak middle-aged man names. For native English speakers, I suppose “Joe” or “Dave” would have similar connotations.
But I wasn’t joking when I said The File Clerk is God, or a sufficiently similar substitute there of. With his computer, he determines the lives of everyone on Earth. He programmed it himself way at the dawn of time and can change the fate of every person at will. I strongly doubt it was intentional, but this is actually a quite frightening idea if you think about it. There is no free will or happenstance in life, everything is determined by the will of a powerful being. Even Jean Calvin didn’t go that far.
When Donald learns this, he angrily berates The File Clerk and asks why must get all the bad luck, as his old theme song goes. It is literally the standard question of the self-pitying person: “Why me, God?”
The File Clerk first tells him to just accept his lot in life, but eventually agrees to change Donald’s fate. He removes all the accidents and mistakes in Donald’s file, past, present and future. And instead The Clerk writes a new life for Donald in which Donald is rich, famous and successful and surrounded by beautiful women.
When this is done, the File Clerk leaves his computer for his lunch break (yes, really). And Visionette decides to commander his computer and give Donald a glimpse of his new life in luxury.
Lucky!Donald lives the cliché rich guy life with a mansion, servants and alimousine. And as you can tell by his expression, living a life without problems has spoiled him and made him into a selfish and arrogant jerk. It turns out that the catch of being born lucky like Gladstone, also means you develop a personality like Gladstone’s. In fact, this Donald is arguably worse: Gladstone on figurative steroids.
A beggar comes and asks for food and lucky!Donald’s response is to order his hired goons to throw him out. Regular!Donald is of course horrified by his new self: " I’m rich now, why didn’t I just give him a sandwich.” But Visionette explains that his new self has never experienced misfortune. He doesn’t know what bad luck is and therefore he feels no empathy with the poor.
Daisy is now just his maid, who he doesn’t care about. One thing I don’t like about the script is that Daisy still is in love with him, despite lucky!Donald not showing any traits that can justify that love. Her having a crush on him makes no sense whatsoever.
Lucky!Donald is indeed surrounded by women who pretend to be smitten with him, but they are of course only interested in his wealth and are secretly disgusted by him. Think Donald Trump and his wives, and you’re not far off.
Scrooge of course has zero respect for this version of Donald. He is now quite poor, because while he may be the better businessman, he can’t compete with Donald’s luck. Every stupid investment Donald makes somehow turns a profit.
Regular!Donald realizes that practically the entire world hates his new self. But, he says, there is always Huey, Dewey and Louie. Nothing in the world could come between him and his nephews. I’m truly moved, Donald, but let’s see about that:
Donald isn’t exactly wrong, the boys still seem to want his affection. As a birthday present, they give him a cutting board which they have made themselves in school. That’s cute, but...
... lucky!Donald just throws it away. Regular!Donald’s expression says it all, really. Donald realizes what a mistake he has made. The File Clerk returns, fuming about them using his computer without permission. Donald begs him to change everything back to how it he used to be, but...
...No dice. Donald has made his bed and now he must lie in it. He and Visionette return to Earth, where Donald’s spirit finds that his old body is gone.
The spirit of his old self will soon vanish when Visionette’s spell runs out and all that will be left is his horrible new life.
The only ting that can be done is for Visionette to reconstruct him with her magic. However, she needs some part of his old body to do that. Luckily, there are some feathers left.
You’ve brewed a Donald! It works, everything is back to normal.
But this miraculous rescue was in fact a miracle. The File Clerk had arranged it by placing the feathers on the floor, knowing that Donald has learned his lesson. Donald’s case isn’t the first time this has happened. “Strange how no one wants the change, when they actually get it.", he muses.
And so Donald returns to home to his real birthday party. He literally trips and falls into his own birthday cake, but now he knows he wouldn’t have it any other way. The End.
So what do I think about this story? The premise is an interesting and imaginative twist on the “It’s a Wonderful Life” plot, which makes it seem new.
Of course, the premise relies on a high concept, the logic of which doesn’t hold all the way. As stated above, the whole idea of the File Clerk seems to imply the ducks have no free will, although that was probably unintentional.
It is however a good comic overall. I like Flemming Andersen’s art and the script has its strengths. God the middle-aged office worker is just brilliant. And the depiction of a Donald who was born lucky is genuinely disturbing. Therefore the vindication of Donald’s regular personality in the ending feels really cathartic. It just works emotionally.