After a brief introduction in Uncle Scrooge's treasure vault, Carl Barks takes the reader to Magica De Spell's laboratory on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, where the witch is preparing a fearsome and terrible potion, the recipe of which she found in Circe's cave. This is a reference to the story "The Magic Odyssey" from 1963 and is one of the few times the great creator refers to some of his earlier work. By the witch's side appears her then-anonymous raven, Poe, who has the gift of speech.
To escape from the witch, Scrooge and his nephews take refuge in the heart of a dense jungle where they discover a tribe of faceless natives. Barks may have been inspired by the island of the expressionless Goons from the adventures of Pogo by Walt Kelly, or by the slaves of the evil magician as they appear in an adventure of Mandrake the Magician by Lee Falk and Phil Davis, which was published in installments in American newspapers from June 11 to November 24, 1934.
Prefacing a reissue of the story in the 1980s, Barks refers to another form of magic, the alchemy of artistic creation: "I don't know how I came up with the idea of a magic potion that transfers faces from one person to another. Such things suddenly come to mind. Like when I imagine all these crazy names for the heroes. Such ideas come to me out of the blue!"