Synopsis:
Donald and the nephews are on vacation in the deep woods and Donald tries to take pictures of a deer. But it is not that cooperative...

Comments:
The story holds just about all the ingredients you can wish for in a comic book - suspense, mystery, slapstick, nature panoramas, running gags, rescues, a villain, good luck, bad luck, narrow escapes, parental love, atmosphere. Furthermore, Barks experimented heavily with panels in unusual shapes thereby strengthening the graphic flow of the story.

Barks' comments:
Well, I liked the forest fire story in the 1950 25-cents Vacation Annual. It was serious - I couldn't create suspense without having them (the Ducks - Editor's remark) in real danger, and real danger means the fear of death. So all of the times these ducks got in bad situations they did have that opportunity of dying in case they got clobbered. It made it more true to life to have them up against these impossible situations, in which they could lose their lives if they didn't win. And in the forest fire sequence, you bet they were in danger. It made the story memorable.

Synopsis:
The nephews want to skate but Donald makes them go down south with him. There they pull a trick on their uncle making him believe that he has been sleeping for 40 years!

Comments:
Barks had a go at the most famous sleep story in the world - the American author Washington Irving's story about a Dutch immigrant to the USA, Rip van Winkle, and his long nap in the Catskill Mountains before waking up to a much-changed world. Barks doubled Rip's 20 years' sleep, though, in order to present a more changed and futuristic Duckburg.

Barks' comments:
The tale of Rip van Winkle always intrigued me. I tried many times to use the long sleep gimmick in a duck situation before I came up with this plot arrangement. Even so, the powers of suggestion had to be stretched to incredible lengths.

Synopsis:
When a cyclone sucks up Scrooge's entire fortune from an open corn crib and distributes the money all over the country, the old miser is surprisingly calm...

Comments:
This story is frequently referred to as the story of economics, and it is true that it is a brilliant fable of how inflation - and human nature, for that matter - works. In short, on Scrooge's farm all of his money is sucked up from his corn crib by a cyclone which then spreads the fortune all over the land turning everyone into millionaires. No one wants to work anymore except Scrooge and the nephews who carry on with the daily work on the farm. Soon Scrooge has all his money back, because he can set the prices for the food that is more important than a few measly dollars.

Barks' comments:
Of the 10-pagers in Comics and Stories, I think the March 1951 story about the cyclone distributing Uncle Scrooge's wealth is the best. I always considered this story technically well done. It had a rhythm that could almost have been set to music.
I'm sure the lesson I preached in this story of easy riches will get me in a cell in a Siberian gulag someday.

Synopsis:
Following a traffic accident Donald and the nephews feel as they have travelled back a hundred years in time. They visit a Spanish ranchero and gold is found.

Comments:
The story is set in a special, non-typical environment and it does not even have very much action. It is Barks' only romantic story, and it became one of his favourites because of its sentimental qualities

Barks' comments:
The one I always liked best for sentimental value was In Old California! I created an atmosphere and then kept that atmosphere through the whole story. Composing these stories is like writing music. You've got to have the beat and keep the whole thing going.
I was able to present a little love story in that and also got in a great deal of nostalgia and a little history and a little bit of villainy, and some crazy names like Don Porko de Lardo. And I have a love for the Old West, the wide open spaces.
I would have preferred to have drawn the characters as real humans, but I was warned for using humans when I submitted 'Dangerous Disguise' four months earlier.
Barks' interest for the old California began when he and his family moved to Santa Rosa for two years from 1911: That's when I started reading about it. I'd always had a desire to go along that old Camino Real (a historic trail linking Mexico with the USA - Editor's remark) and just follow it from one mission to another and maybe make photographs and drawings of it. I've always been fascinated by Californian history.

Synopsis:
He who bears The Golden Helmet can call himself King of North America. Many are interested. Including Donald!

Comments:
Despite all of its indisputable qualities this is one of Barks' most cynical stories filled with exploitation and conquest. Another dark vision was cast in the character of Sharky who was, by Barks' own admission, inspired by the ongoing divorce proceedings with his second wife Clara, and it gave him a life-long mistrust to money-grabbing, self-righteous lawyers.
In 2006 an official panel of culture experts under the auspices of the Danish Ministry of Culture declared this story the best comic story ever presented in Denmark.

Barks' comments:
It was done at a time when my fortunes were at a very low ebb. I had just given everything I owned to my alcoholic ex-wife in exchange for my freedom. Broke and in debt I chose to keep on working and jotted down gags and plots and situations that seemed to pour onto me from somewhere. 'The Golden Helmet' must have been one of those situations. So, under the circumstances, there is evidence that 'The Golden Helmet' plot was not hacked out by the same method that built most of my stories, but it was - at least partly - 'divine inspiration'.

Synopsis:
Donald and the nephews become chicken farmers on a hilltop but it is not that easy to earn a living.

Comments:
Barks saw this story as one of his funniest 10-pagers. It was the short story Barks recalled most frequently, in which Donald worked as a chicken farmer - as had Barks done some time before the story - and everything turned out wrong to such an extent that the unfortunate town in which the story takes place was renamed Omelet. Barks would shudder when remembering the huge number of eggs that had to be drawn, though.

Barks' comments:
Of the 10-pagers, the story I like best is the one in which Donald has a chicken farm and stacks the eggs so high that when an earthquake shakes them loose they cover the town on the valley floor and have to be burned.