dustt

i think they really missed out on the opportunity to call it moby-duck

thank you to @dusttt for inspiring this post via your review of another comic adaptation!! (a much more serious adaptation but alas)

so long story short my friend encountered this somewhere, somehow while we were reading moby-dick. here are some highlights and a very unserious review

ok so the beginning is not that abnormal. ishmael duck wants to go sailing so he does. pretty major plot changes (ex. no drama at the spouter-inn) but not that surprising for a shortened children's adaptation in which every character is a duck. moving quickly onto the ahab portion. or should i say quackhab

yeah that's his actual name. i have so many questions. why are only some names turned into duck names. why not quackmael. was quackhab really necessary. was there anything wrong with the name ahab. i'm so confused

so basically there's this whole dramatic scene and ahab has a power trip and yells at storkbuck. yeah that's starbuck's name. yeah

anyways the whole scene is pretty clearly based off of the quarter-deck. very very shortened version but does a decent job at establishing quackhab's personality so it's alright overall

we also find out that there are stowaways on the ship. 99.9% chance you won't be able to guess who the stowaways are

yeah they're three queequegs. queequeg is three ducks in a trench coat. i am genuinely out of words at this point

maybe it's just me, but turning one of the only poc characters who actually gets a voice in the book into three children just feels... wrong. giving it the benefit of the doubt, maybe the "three queequegs" choice was made in order to eliminate any strange possible duck romance with ishmael? ishmael can't marry queequeg if there are three of him and all three are children!! still a very odd and uneccessary choice.

his name is trallalah. i don't even understand what that name has to do with ducks. why was the name change necessary, i ask for the sixth time

also just some pretty explicit racism. once again, why was this at all necessary?? it's not even like fedallah's race is ambiguous in the book. he is pretty explicitly neither indian nor native american?? (unsure which meaning of "indian" the comic is trying to convey, it's clearly outdated so could be either)

we later find out that ahab's quackhab's goal is not to kill moby dick, but to find him and get his lucky coin back. which i guess moby dick stole and ate. i understand not wanting violence/killing in a kid's book but. i am also quite confused by the lucky coin choice here. i guess a nod to the doubloon?

this still raises so many questions because if the reason quackhab is hunting moby dick is that he wants his coin back, then why is he missing a leg?? was that a seperate incident and he just cares more about the coin than his own leg, so the coin becomes his primary reason?? did he tape the lucky coin to his leg and moby dick had to eat the entire leg in order to get the coin???? and if the leg is unrelated to moby dick, then what happened to it??????

leg confusion aside, they begin their hunt for the white whale. several insignificant things happen, but none of them are actual plot points from the real book. for example:

ishmael is the cook (no fleece i guess)

the three queequegs made pancakes out of gunpowder and glue

ishmael is convinced he saw the white whale, but it was some floating ice. he manages to bring down a sail in the process

the crew is mad at ishmael, so they decide to abandon him on an island. just left alone to die i guess??

the "island" was a giant squid

ishmael is rescued and the three queequegs chase away the giant squid with horrendous coffee. you can't make this up

anyways they finally find moby dick and they have to crawl inside of him to retrieve the coin. jonah style i guess

conclusion: ahab finds his coin, everyone is happy, everyone lives happily ever after. yayayayayayayay

my final thoughts: i would maybe? recommend if you enjoy moby-dick and are extremely bored. this is clearly not a serious work of literature, and it's pretty amusing to see what incredibly strange changes they make to the book for this adaptation. its biggest flaw is obviously the racism, which is really disappointing considering this comic was not written that long ago. whenever i see a modern adaptation of moby-dick, i always hope they will allow the poc characters to have more of a voice than they do in the original moby-dick, but a lot of the adaptations seem to disappoint in that sector.

i am obviously not the intended audience for this comic (i am not a child) so i can't tell you if the plot is great for children or anything like that. but i will say that as an adaptation of moby-dick, it is... questionable. pretty much everything is altered from the original version, which does make sense for a kid's book, but i would not actually consider this an adaptation of moby-dick. more so a comic about donald duck searching for a coin that was eaten by a whale.

offtober day 7: overworked

I've seem such good ideas for this prompt what the heckkkkkk mine is mid

California Condor Gymnogyps californianus

“She was a British lighthouse keeper. Grace's father was the lighthouse keeper at Longstone Lighthouse on Longstone Rock in the outer group of the Farne Islands off the Northumberland Coast, England. When steamship Forfarshire foundered during a storm, Grace and her dad rowed out to help, taking an oar each through the raging sea. They saved nine people. Both were awarded honours. Grace was awarded an RNLI Silver Medal, the first woman to receive such recognition. Queen Victoria sent her £50. Grace became a celebrity and didn't like it. She died of tuberculosis, aged twenty-six.”