A Screwball's Life for Me

If you go and ask someone on the street what’s their favorite holiday, you'll end up getting piles full of the exact same answers; Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day for the VERY hopeless romantic kind, maybe New Year’s for those who ACTUALLY believe in fulfilling new year’s resolutions, the usual likings. But if you ask Betty, the only woman known to man who’s powered on Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries, you'll get “International Talk-like-a-Pirate Day” . That day where people get a two dollar pirate hat made out of form, say “Ahoy there”  once and then just… give up. Not really much of a holiday, but to the girl whose main hobby is being a pirate, not only is it like a national holiday to her, but she drags her friends along for the ride, no doubt including you know who.

Betty does everything she likes to do as a pirate, but usually makes it more like a giant event than a usual outing in the ocean. Drinking as much untouched rum as she can, sailing around and annoying every single isolated island she can that has at least more than one living being that inhabits it, and gathering as much plunder and gold as she can. Lotta, being more used to living out in the west than on the sea, happily takes pleasure in shooting around those who question her position as a pirate and collecting all the “loose” change that falls out of them when they run away. Jade, however, is alot more secluded when playing pirates. Her only main goal is tidying up the ship, fighting off any incoming enemy ships, digging up the multiple treasure chests that've been buried around every island across the globe, and getting her paycheck from Betty for showing up.

When Betty asked Tom to play along with her and the girls, he gets on the sailor suit he bought years ago and drags Tom Jr. along because when is he NOT dragging the teenager everywhere he goes. Despite being her boyfriend, he’s stuck with the job a sailor gets when aboard the ship; peeling potatoes because how else can Betty cut and fry them up into homemade potato chips? Also, Jr’s a monkey because monkey be funny because monkey except actual real-life monkeys and chimpanzees because they hate anything that even looks at them.

 Donald Duck; The Fearless Pirate (2019)

Synopsis: Donald’s acting in the new pirate movie, playing the role of Captain Featherbeard. But after he accidentally hits his head, he starts to believe he’s the real Featherbeard.

The Fearless Pirate (D 2016-169) | I.N.D.U.C.K.S.

“Den frygtløse pirat” highlights our favorite trademarked-by-Disney Duck in the position he’s been presented on at least a couple of times; the role of an actor. Rather it be on stage or, in this case, for a feature film. The role he’s selected to play as is the role of the dreaded pirate captain “Featherbeard The Terrible” (who 100% is a real person and not the duck version of Blackbeard, which is funny in this case because nowhere in this comic does Donald dons a beard, but you know, it fits). The comic is also another member of the (for some on-godly) series of comics where a character gets a short-term version of Amnesia and thinks he or she is someone else. This happens ALOT with Donald and especially with Scrooge, which I feel like that’s not very healthy for someone his age.

This story is one of dozens upon dozens of comics drawn by the masterful Paco Rodriguez, who’s penciled layouts are chock full of perfectly solid characters and poses that are both easy to tell what the action is conveying and are so full of life. The scenes where the staged ship is being dragged across the heavy waves with Donald and the other actors struggling to stay aboard is nothing but beautiful and so jammed packed with action and excitement. I will say though, that I do wish we had atleast an extra page of the ship landing in the park’s fountain, because it does feel like something was cut off. It’s weird because most of the Denmark Donald stories usually are exactly 10 pages, so this being only 9 definitely shows that they had at least a page left to tighten the blot just a small bit. Not really an issue, but something I noticed in which is otherwise a pretty solid donald story.

Considering this IS Donald, I know that bandana peel was all Fate's fault (But knowing how often Donald blames him for his own nonsense, I see it more as revenge) 

Donald did NOT study on who he was playing if his OWN confused mind thinks his crew swabbing the deck is considered a punishment for disobeying orders. Maintaining the ship's KINDA their job if they're not on battle.

Could you imagine opening up the window shades of your house and you suddenly see a GOD DAMN WATER TORNADO just sliding across town as if it's on its way to work?

The director of that film must REALLY know Donald if he picked him for the role of the guy whose empire committed Mutiple acts of mass Genocide. Also, you KNOW Donald dragged the kids into the theater to watch that shit!

An Eagle Out for The Game

 Football season has reached out onto the playing field once again, and everyone (or those who actually care for the sport) is cheering on their favorite teams. Rather it be paying a boat-load of merch-

andise (that’ll either gather dust around their house if they go all out and win the super bowl or be burned completely that’ll be slightly mistaken for a forest fire if they make a slight mistake out in one of the games), betting all of their life savings into if they actually make it onto the super bowl, or it being yet ANOTHER excuse for people who clearly need to join a group of alcoholics anonymous members and raiding their local bar and gurgling down as much blandly-tasting beer cans as they can before they end up in a hospital. Fun!

Anyways, I’m not a sports person, I just draw whatever I feel like, and if it so happens to cross paths for a sport, especially if a big game like football comes in, then I know for sure Tom’s willing to be dragged into it for me (Unless it’s him participating in playing with the Cleveland Indians because there ain’t NO WAY I’m drawing Tom in redface).

Note to self; invest in either an ACTUAL good scanner or Neon Yellow markers that doesn't fade away when scanned.

 Captain Buccaneer Booty Betty: The True Pirate Queen

A debatable question that’s asked across multiple historians is “Who would be considered the real pirate queen?”. A buccaneer that not only looks as dashing as one in royalty, but one who knows all ins and outs when it comes to piracy. Now, when asked, you’ll get the usual answers “Anne Bonny” and “Mary Read”, or (if the person REALLY has done last night’s homework) “Ching Shif”. But there’s one that’s always hidden away from every pre-1st edition history book. An ex-sailor who’s so infamously dangerous and reckless that she’ll scare the head right off Blackbeard. Her name’s O’l Betty Jenkins, or as it says on her Piracy license “Captain Buccaneer Booty Betty”.

Don’t let the name fool you into thinking she’s just some common tavern wench who decided to play dress-up. She got that name from just HOW she gets the aforementioned Booty. She quietly steps onto the dock of a local town or island in the middle of the night, removes some of her more visible pirate accessories so she looks the part of a local sexy woman, and (in her most attractive and sweetest voice), asks for some love. When everyone in the bar comes near, she quickly strikes and knocks out all of them (with her fists of course), plunders EVERYTHING they got, and gets away with her crew on her grand ship “The Betty Roger”. 

She’s always one who’ll do anything to get her hands into two things: treasure and rum. She’ll drink as many bottles of rum as you can think and sing away her glory plunders in a drunken manner (with the slight intoxicated hiccup here and there). When an enemy ship (or more usually a ship that just so happens to cross her path) comes near, she raises the flag now covered in red food coloring, a sign of no-return for the ones who dare to face her in person. She adores a nice battle, especially so she can rub it in the captive’s faces that she now owns their possessions. Although sometimes, she would get alittle too power-hungry for her liking, much to her crew’s dismay. So, they commit a mutiny upon her and sentence her by either hanging from the yardarm or by feeding the hungry sea creatures after she walks the plank. She swears and cries for revenge, but she also knows after a minute whose fault it is (and if she does refuse to be fair to her royal pirate brothers and sisters, she’ll never get to plunder again), so she gives in to their understandable demands.

(Why did I write an entire character synopsis for artwork of Betty when this isn't even her full-time pirate alter ego)

 A Mermaid's New Nails

You know, for someone who’s supposed to be the smartest one out of the entire cast, she sure kinda forgot that… nail polish spreads across water and doesn't stay still. That is, unless it’s completely dried, but I’m not exactly sure how long a mermaid can withstand the sun until their gills collapse. Considering that most kinds of standard nail polish take about a good hour or two to dry, I don’t think she’ll last long when the colorized coating hardens. But hey, at least her skeleton will look pretty when studied in The State Museum of Pennsylvania. Wait, are their tails like fish scales and it’s not actually their bones? Oops.

 The Unwelcoming Cruise

Most crews aboard a cruise ship typically would try and hold their tongue when handling rowdy and uncooperative passengers, especially if said passengers are affecting the safety of others. Keep in mind, you’re not in a theme park or a hotel where you can easily be kicked out and have to drive back home. You’re stuck in the middle of the freezing dangerous waters of the ocean, with the only thing holding you in are the handlebars looped around the top deck of the vessel. If anything were to happen with your tickets when riding aboard the cruise, most of the time, you'd be asked to either pay right up or leave, typically before the cruise had left the arms of the dock.

So… how on god’s green earth did Tom and Betty get themselves stuck in a situation like this? Who really knows. Bad luck probably. The only kind of cruises where passengers would be forced to walk the plank are those Barbados-based pirate-themed cruise lines that have a surprisingly large number of good scores on Tripadvisor. But you gotta admit, the crew’s pirate outfits are a perfect 10/10… even if they’re most likely REAL cutthroat buccaneers. Betty’s kind of fancy, but not really what she wanted on a relaxing vacation with her boyfriend.

 A Little Push for a Quick Dive

As the final weeks of the warm season come approaching, everyone tries to scratch off their final itch to go swimming. Now, of course, a good amount of people (usually either more careless mid-teenagers or insane people; you know exactly who I’m talking about) prefer to spice up their water aerobics session by skipping the left turn where the beach is and to make a sharp right turn over to… the nearest cliff.

Completely isolated, unsupervised, without a single eye in sight. Though, there are the occasional small school of fish swimming around the bends of the sharp rocks that's poking out of the blankets of water. There’s also the rare flock of birds, refilling their free subscription of Liveleak as they get a crisp clean view of the next new idiot who decides it’s a good idea to bungee jump something that couldn’t be more of a death zone even if it wasn’t trying to (Mother Nature forms her earth the way she decides, though it could be argued she makes a game out of it and does her spells blindfolded). Or even worse and more often the case, the victim of intense peer-pressureing by the group of Fair-weathered “friends”. Sure, they’re chant for the kid to dive right in, but there ain’t no way from Hell and back they're gonna pay for the huge hospital bill after all of the surgeries.

Of course, Tom isn’t that type of guy. He just likes to have fun… while not fully knowing the outcome of what’s about to come. Betty knows Tom like a book and loves him to death, but even she can agree Tom can be the handful sometimes. Tom doesn't have to worry about any hospital bills, but he may have to worry about Betty beating his ass when she climbs back up the cliff. A perfect life-lesson lol.