Disney Art - Daniel Branca 1

Just about every Scandinavian child learns to read with Disney comics. So did I. My most active Disney comics years were in the mid 1980s. At the time I didn't pay any attention to who drew the stories - I didn't notice that they were done in slightly different styles for instance - but when I looked at them again later in life, it was very easy for me to tell that just about all of my favorite stories had been done by two artists, Vicar and Daniel Branca. And of the two, I'd put Branca first: both in terms of quality and in the number of stories that especially stuck in my mind. (One of them, I could for a while recite the entire dialogue by heart).

Branca (1951-2005) was a very prolific Disney artist in the 80s and worked in a style VERY close to Carl Barks. In a way, he combined the expressiveness of Barks's later years with the precision of line he had in his early years. In those years in the mid-80s, the Donald Duck weekly in Finland didn't publish a whole lot of Barks, so for me personally Branca was "the good Duck artist" at the time. The one who drew the Ducks the way they SHOULD look. And the current Scandinavian Disney comics artists seem to agree on this as well: all of the ones I've met have named Branca as the biggest influence on their own work. (He actually also personally taught them at seminars).

* * *

One of my very favorite Disney Duck stories of those years, if not THE number one favorite, was called "Windmill Whirl". In it, Donald and the nephews can't afford an expensive vacation, so they end up renting an old windmill. Unfortunately for them, it is being used as a warehouse (and a signaling post) by smugglers. The story ends in a confrontation, and a major climax, where Donald is tied to the wings of the windmill with lots of fireworks.

I was extremely delighted, not to say surprised, when this entire story happened to come up for sale as a package. I had very little choice but to buy it. Looking at the art now, I can't but wonder what a great visual storyteller Branca was. He did it so effortlessly that you don't even pay much attention to it at first. But when you go through the story panel by panel, you can see how much he elevates the script with his expressive characters and innovative panel layouts. You can pretty much understand the whole story even with the balloons empty. It really is a great shame that the world lost Branca so soon.