Book and Comic
Reviews
(6/26/05)
Donald Duck and Friends #329
(July 2005). This issue features "The Mad Chemist," a 1944 Carl
Barks story in which Donald gets a crack on the cabaza and turns into
the headlined chemical-commingling loon. An above-average story for its
time period, this epic has earned more notoriety than one might expect
thanks to Donald's offhand reference to CH2 (carbene), a
subject of chemical research years later. Editor John Clark rather
overfills the beaker when he claims that "the formula for Duckmite" (the
explosive substance that Don cooks up while in his crazy state) "was
later to become the subject of a number of scientific papers and
discussions."
Personally, I think Barks' later "raising
a sunken yacht with ping-pong balls" story which was directly
mimicked for real salvage work deserves a ton more credit for
prescience than the strictly accidental reference here. In the middle
of the issue, Sarah Kinney and Xavi give us a surprisingly sprightly
Survivor parody, "A Tale of Two Crusoes," in which Mickey and his
pal Butch, marooned on a desert isle for reality-TV purposes, tussle
over whether Mickey's "adventurous" spirit or Butch's "streetwise"
smarts represents the best way to brave the various jungle perils. The
character conflict here entirely believable for anyone who knows
anything about Butch, a minor creation of Floyd Gottfredson back in the
30s who's been revived and (somewhat) updated in recent years far
outshines any specific reference to a "cultural phenomenon" that has
long since passed its sell-by date. Finally, Sharland, Sutter, Tony
Isabella, and Vicar's "Auto be a Law" finds a frustrated (imagine that)
Donald wishing that his old semi-reliable car were more responsive to
his needs in a pinch. Gyro gets involved, and Don learns, for about the
quintillionth time, to be careful what he wishes for
Mickey Mouse and Friends #278
(July 2005). "The Rajah's Treasure," a 1949 Mickey story
from the Four Color series, gets the whole issue to itself, and a
new generation of readers gets an opportunity to sample the art of Bill
Wright at length. Of all the Mickey artists whom Western
Publishing called into service circa 1950 when it decided to run
original stories rather than Floyd Gottfredson newspaper-strip reprints,
Wright's style is probably the closest in looks to what Gottfredson's
style had evolved into by that time. Since I like that style a great
deal, small wonder I like Wright's work. The story itself is a
"mystery" on roughly the Scooby-Doo level, but it does have its
share of intriguing quirks, chief among them being the constant
references to Mickey and Minnie as "kids" and "youngsters." Uh, if
Mickey is as wet behind his sizable ears as Chief O'Hara, O'Hara fellow
cops, "The Boss," and the Rajah seem to think here, then how does one
explain his snagging a risky job transporting jewels in an armored car
-- much less driving said car? At best, shouldn't he be tooling
around Mouseton in a jalopy with bad puns and slang painted on the side
(these are the late 40s, remember)? I've seen this sort of odd "verbal
juvenilization" of star Disney characters in other stories from the 40s,
including at least one story by Carl Barks. Was this some sort of
ham-handed way to help the truly youthful comics-reading audience
to more closely identify with the characters? Whatever the purpose, it
is a true oddity.
Back To The Top
(6/12/05)
Winsor McCay: Early Works Volume
5 by Winsor McCay (Checker Books). I've stuck with this series
from the first volume onward for both historical and aesthetic reasons.
McCay, best known for the century-old masterpiece Little Nemo in
Slumberland, created many other comic strips, most notably The
Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, and was an accomplished spot
illustrator, powerful editorial cartoonist, and pioneering animator
besides. Little Nemo has been collected in other venues, so this
series has concentrated on McCay's other credits, in particular,
Rarebit Fiend. Despite the fact that some of the works collected in
Early Works can only qualify as "early" in the loosest sense of
the word for example, some strips in Volume 5 postdate the glory days
of Nemo and company by half-a-decade or so each volume has contained
material of lasting interest. With Volume 5, however, it appears that
Checker is scraping the bottom of the barrel for unseen material and
running low on enthusiasm for the project at the same time. I don't
expect perfect reproductions of these ancient strips, but a number of
V5's offerings cross the line from "poor" to "unacceptable" insofar as
reproduction quality goes. This is especially annoying in certain
Rarebit Fiend strips that must be aligned vertically on the page and
reduced in size the dialogue and details become unreadable. Then,
too, some early versions of Rarebit Fiend are presented without
much information as to when they originally appeared, even though it is
obvious that some time elapsed between them. At least one more Early
Works volume has been solicited
Donald Duck Adventures #12 (May
2005). For the first time in a while, DDA goes an undeniable
three for three. All the stories herein are good to excellent. First,
Michael T. Gilbert and Fecchi give us "The Once and Future Donald,"
a light-hearted take on the same "futuristic Duckburg" theme that was
seen in issue #1's Uncle $crooge Matrix parody. Donald,
the Nephews, and Daisy all turn out to have futuristic doppelgangers who
surprise behave just like the original models. Donald and his twin,
DN-3000, switch places (and times) ,and the expected hell breaks loose.
Though the focus is definitely on belly-laughs here, a note of pathos is
struck in the subtheme of the future Nephews' status as the last three
Junior Woodchucks in a robot-managed world that (supposedly) has no need
for such paragons of youthful virtue and intelligence. Gilbert and
Joaquin then team up for "The Town that Hated Mickey," wherein
The Mouse is placed in the decidedly unfamiliar role of the most hated
personality in two towns (including one that he's never even
visited before this story!). The self-loathing, comically mean-spirited
villain of the story reminds me of nothing so much as a dog-faced Norton
Nimnul (cf. Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers), in looks if not
(exactly) in personality. Finally, Dave Rawson and Miguel weave an
intricate web of double-crossing, triple-crossing, etc. in "Deep-Sea
Dilemma." Scrooge, Gyro, and a marine archaeologist sail in search
of a priceless sunken vessel, but the Beagle Boys have shanghaied the
"expert" crew. Each group soon realizes what's afoot, but which group
will reveal itself first?...
Back To The Top
(6/5/05)
Uncle $crooge
#342 (June 2005). There's one thing you can
definitely say about Don Rosa, the acknowledged master of the
flamboyant, maniacally-reseached, vista-spanning Scrooge epic: when one
of his stories scores a hit, it scores a BIG hit. This issue's "The Old
Castle's Other Secret," a.k.a. "A Letter from Home," is one
rib-snapper of a tale. In one 34-page story, Rosa concludes the
"Knights Templar" story arc begun in "The Crown of the Crusader Kings" (U$
#339), drags Scrooge, Donald, and the Nephews through one of the most
intricately detailed treasure quests they have ever had to attempt,
and gives Scrooge the opportunity to reconcile with an alienated
relative and close a circle in his relationship with his parents,
especially his father, Fergus. Rosa warns the reader in his
accompanying essay that "Secret" required more background research than
he has done for any other Duck story so much, in fact, that he openly
frets that between dropping crumbs of info about the Knights Templar and
patching up Scrooge's "dysfunctional familial relations," he might have
shortchanged the reader in the areas of action and humor. In fact,
there's more than enough of each to go around, from the dramatic
revelation of the Treasury of the Knights Templar to an elaborate riff
on a "poop joke" involving Rosa's perpetual fall-guy, Donald (don't
worry -- it's clean, both literally and figuratively). Moreover, Rosa
injects some authentic "Heart" into the story (an aspect of his work
that has often been less than stellar in the past) in the
instantly-memorable scene in which Scrooge reads a letter from the
long-dead Fergus. To get the absolute most out of the story, I'd
suggest that those less acquainted with Rosa's past work start by
reviewing the eleventh chapter of "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck,"
as well as "The Crown of the Crusader Kings." There are a couple
of other items in here, including a reprint of Carl Barks' "Raven Mad"
and a Beagle Boys story scripted by David Gerstein, but this ish is 99
44/100% Rosa's show.
Walt Disney's
Vacation Parade #2 (June 2005). Gemstone's second whack
at a special summer issue features "Dangerous Disguise," one of Carl
Barks' more
er, innnnteresting stories. This 1950 parody of
overwrought spy movies (not, as some heavy-breathing critics have
claimed, a satire on the Cold War) pits Donald and the Nephews against
real, live human supporting characters. Not "cartoony" humans, mind
you, but folks that could have stepped out of any of the popular "slick"
magazine illustrations of the time. Barks had used human characters in
several other stories around this time, but in no other tale were the
characters so realistically depicted. Opinions on the appropriateness
of Barks' gambit (which caused Barks' editor to exact a promise from him
never, ever to do it again) span the spectrum. Personally, I
never much liked it, because there was no established precedent for the
Disney Duck (and Mouse) characters to do this sort of thing in
the cartoon shorts and newspaper strips, they regularly interacted with
dogface, pigface, chicken, etc. "humans" from the very beginning. I
think that the Ducks' world has its own integrity that should not be
violated except in cases of "magic" or similar outrι
justifications. Barks may have let his desire to do a human adventure
strip get the better of his judgment on this occasion. In Barks'
defense, he does do a much better job at blending his humans in with the
Ducks' environment than did Paul Murry and Dan Spiegle in the
short-lived Mickey Mouse: Super Secret Agent misfire of the
mid-60s, or the artists and writers who threw the cuddly Walter Lantz
character Andy Panda into a world of humans in his earliest comic-book
adventures.
Elsewhere in the ish, we get a couple of
reprints from the original Vacation Parade #2, the one
published under the Dell Comics banner in 1951. Bill Wright's "The
Ram's Head Ramblers" is a frothy, silly, slapstick-riddled concoction in
which Mickey and Goofy find more trouble than they bargained for while
traveling to a remote mountain resort. The story isn't much, but it's
nice to see the clean, precise artwork of Bill Wright once again. The
Li'l Bad Wolf story "The Pigmy Pigs" goes way out on a
limb in positing that a tribe of fierce little porkers straight out of
"darkest Africa" territory live downstream (sic) from the Big and Li'l
Bad Wolves. This is the sort of illogical story that Western Publishing
seemed to dote on in a lot of its Annuals, Giants, and so
forth. I guess they thought that readers taking these comics on
vacation would automatically be less demanding insofar as elementary
plot integrity was concerned. Again, good artwork, this time by Al
Hubbard, is the saving grace. Other reprints (not from VP #2)
include a Chip & Dale tale drawn by Harvey Eisenberg and a
Ludwig Von Drake epic penned by Tony Strobl. The only "new" item in
the lot is the $crooge story "Brig-a-dog," a by-the-numbers
parody of Brigadoon produced by Egmont and scripted by Tony
Isabella, whose jobs for Gemstone to date have been disappointingly
ordinary, given his reputation.
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