Technolandy

Day 39 (of 2025/26) Toons and Halloween… 

Trick or Treat for Hallowe’en! 

“Trick or Treat,” is the master cartoonist’s (Carl Barks) adaptation of the Donald Duck cartoon of the same name. It has appeared in a number of collections as well as it’s own featured roll in Dell comics Donald Duck serial… 

The film opens with the song “Trick or Treat for Halloween”, the lyrics of which tell the film’s moral – one must be generous on Halloween or face trouble.

The print adaptation by Carl Barks was published simultaneously in the Donald Duck comic book. Barks was given a storyboard of the film by Ralph Wright while production of the film was still in progress. Barks

Barks was asked to create a 32-page comic adaptation, yet Carl did not believe he had enough material. In the end, he wound up making a lot of his own material, creating new characters such as Smorgie the Bad, a villainous six-armed ogre serving Witch Hazel. When the final product was sent to the publisher, Barks’ segment with Smorgie was rejected, and the story was cut to 27 pages. To fill out the rest of the comic book, Barks created an additional story called “Hobblin’ Gobblins”

Interesting with the Voice cast:

Two voices for Hazel the witch, and singer of ‘the Grinch’ himself as the Jack-o’lantern.. the’re great!!! (He also voiced Tony the Tiger). Animation and voices is an art within itself!

• Clarence Nash as Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey, Louie, the Scaredy Cat
• June Foray as Hazel the Witch
• Lucille La Verne as Hazel’s scream (Archive audio)
• Jimmy MacDonald as Beelzebub
• The Mellomen as Fencepost Ghosts
• Thurl Ravenscroft as Jack-o’lan

This has been a seasonal favourite because of how close the comic and cartoon were towards each other. I can appreciate each for very different reasons while it pushes and blurs the lines between the supernatural and the humorous. Read and watch together this ‘spooky time of year’ here: 

https://youtu.be/kCnDhmxFgoc?feature=shared

Bonus project – what are some other comic book to tv/movie adaptions?!? And does the Grinch count as a comic book? Is a picture book = a graphic novel?