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Book and Comic
Reviews
(6/25/06)
As promised, I'm back!
Donald Duck
and Friends #340
(July 2006). Not a great issue, but it does have some good
points, most of them in the second Donald story. The lead-off
tale, "Farragut the Falcon," is a ho-hum 1944 Carl Barks
production in which Donald gets more trouble than he bargained for after
receiving a falcon as a gift from a relative. As was his wont in many
animated shorts and early Barks "ten-pagers" especially those
featuring a combative animal whom Don tries and fails to outwit Donald
gets himself in a pickle right off the reel thanks to overconfidence: "I
know all about falcons I saw one in a movie once!" In this case,
however, one can't really say that Farragut dupes Don, since the
bird proves to have a few loose wires upstairs itself, disrupting a
"falcon contest" by abandoning pursuit of a quail in favor of a model
airplane. Don gets revenge in the end by pressing the hapless Farragut
into service as a makeshift rickshaw driver. Closing with an
animal-abuse joke what a riot!
In Stefan Petrucha and Jorge David's
"Monkey-See, Monkey-Do," Goofy eagerly receives a shipment of
"Ocean-Monkeys," based on that all-too-familiar scam advertisement from
countless comic-books past. After a quintet of miniaturized crooks
who've stolen a shrink ray from a local lab blunder into The Goof's
house, Goofy mistakes them for
you guessed it. The crooks take
advantage of Goofy's credulity and live the life of Reilly at their
host's expense, enjoying such comforts as a dollhouse hideout, "pretty
blondes" in tiny sports cars (did those last two come pre-shrunk??),
and an endless stream of snacks. An increasingly peeved Goofy finally
gets wise, uses the obligatory "reverse switch" on the shrink ray to
enlarge the "real" "Ocean Monkeys" (which are, of course, brine shrimp),
and scares the crooks into giving up. A farfetched and loosely wound
premise, to say the least, but a nice tribute of sorts to one of
comicdom's most, uh, fondly "cherished" traditions.
In "The Careless Genie", writer
Michael T. Gilbert revives the somewhat familiar "The Ducks meet a
genie" plot, exploited most memorably in DuckTales: The Movie
(not to mention the earlier DT episode "Masters of the Djinni"),
but burnishes it with an unexpected twist or two. An incredibly selfish
and self-centered Donald lucks into a bottle of "Magic Wish Cola"
containing a doofus djinn named Spud, who's trying to graduate from
"Genie U." but is not, shall we say, the brightest flame in the lamp.
Drawing on his knowledge of the standard protocol for genie encounters,
Don tricks Spud into allowing him to wish for a million wishes. Don
quickly enriches himself and then (just to show an angry Daisy that he
can, too, give unto others) bestows various baubles upon Duckburg,
but the clueless Spud can't get any of the requests right. Don finally
trades places with Spud, becoming the genie himself
and Spud promptly
wishes that he'd never met the anseriform a**hole! Gilbert, who's cast
Don as a consummate jerk more than a few times in the past most
memorably, in "That Ol' Soft Soap", the William Van Horn-illustrated
"collectors' mania" satire from the Disney Comics era cranks up the
Duck's unlikability a few extra notches, which serves to make Don's
abuse of Spud both nasty and funny at the same time. Rodriques
compliments Don's hoggish doings with some funny, lively art. This is
one instance in which it would have seemed completely inappropriate
for Donald to have seen the light and repented in the end
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Mickey Mouse
and Friends #290 (July 2006). This ish's lead
story, "The Photonic Muffler," is all about automotive technology
and was literally "salvaged" from the scrap heap of the defunct
Disney Studio comics program. Coincidence?? (Uh, yeah.) The artwork
in Romano Scarpa's tale was completed in the mid-80s, but not until
2005, when the story was rediscovered, were Luca Boschi (a frequent
collaborator with Scarpa) and David Gerstein able to put their heads
together and reconstruct a semblance of the original script. Of the
many "tales of weird science" that have appeared in the Mickey
title, especially in recent years, this is definitely one of the
kookiest. Researcher Blint Brandon (a possible nod to Brick Bradford,
the hero of a sci-fi comic strip years ago?) has drawn on his wartime
work for Uncle Sam to develop a mail-order racecar that draws "boosts"
of solar power from "a special doohickey in thuh muffler (sic!),"
according to Goofy, who's bought one of Brandon's vehicles. Ever ready
to exploit others' "dinguses" for his own evil purposes, Pete learns of
the tech and forces Brandon to develop tanks and other solar-stoked
weapons for sale to the proverbial "highest bidder." Mickey and Goofy
discover Brandon's whereabouts from a secret message on a postcard
Brandon had sent to a neighbor and go to the rescue. As wacky as the
whole powered-by-a-muffler thing sounds, it's not the oddest
thing about the story, in my view. If Mickey and Goofy can only uncover
Brandon's SOS by doctoring the postcard with "special powder under a
bright light," then how would Brandon expect his neighbor to be
able to figure out where he is? And whence such off-the-wall sound
effects as "Tranch!", "Gweeesh!" and "Strankle!"?? (I don't even
think those make sense in Italian.) Boschi and Gerstein do their
very best with the available raw materials, but in the end, the tale
primarily serves to remind us just how completely off-the-wall Scarpa's
creative genius could sometimes be.
"A Shot in the Dark," the middle
Donald story, features the first appearance of Danish artist
Mardon Smet (cf. "Legacy" in the recently released Donald Duck
Adventures #18) in a "regulation" Gladstone release. On a moonlight
picnic with a horny (there is simply no other word for it) Daisy, Donald
insists on indulging his newfound obsession of bird-watching and
concentrates his attention on photographing the mating ritual of "the
toggle-crested rainbow-beaked pink-bellied sapsucker." (Why do people
constantly use "sapsucker" when they're parodying bird-watchers? Just
the funny way it sounds, I guess.) Donald's increasingly desperate
efforts to get a perfect picture, even unto building a whistle lure,
lead to ultimate overkill as he's literally buried under dozens of
lecherous sapsuckers. Smet's art looks a little peculiar in places
I've rarely seen any artist draw Daisy's legs quite so long but
his hyper-lively approach definitely brightens what could have otherwise
been a by-the-numbers, Gold Key Daisy and Donald-type story.
To wrap the issue, Sarah Kinney produces
yet another fine Goofy story in "Power Goofy," illustrated
by Marcal Abella Bresco. As she has often done, Kinney takes a fairly
simple conceit and builds on it by making logical extensions from
Goofy's own personality. Desirous of building up his strength, Goofy
buys "Muscle Munchies" from a shifty operator at the local gym and is
soon sporting supercharged sinew (not to mention a head of newly-curled,
thicker hair) that would put Super Goof himself to shame. Trying
desperately to put his new powers to good use (inspired by a recent
viewing of the movie Gallant Gilroy), Goofy begins acting like a
vigilante, much to Mickey's dismay. After he learns that the "Munchies"
were doctored with a special strength serum and have "crazy side
effects," The Goof decides to return to pipe-cleaner extremities and
mild-mannered lassitude. For those who feel that the heroic pose struck
by Super Goof lacked a certain degree of "authenticity", this tale may
serve as a welcome departure.
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Uncle $crooge
#355 (July 2006). When I opened the copy of U$
#355 that I'd bought at the local store, I discovered that the last page
was folded back upon itself and could only be loosened by a
certain amount of tugging and (ultimately) tearing. When I literally
"straightened things out," I found that the page had not been cut
properly to begin with; its edge extended several inches beyond the rest
of the pages'. Somehow, this production snafu seemed fitting for a book
prominently featuring "The Mysterious Stone Ray" (aka "The
Mysterious Unfinished Invention"), one of Carl Barks' most jumbled,
chaotic, and ultimately unsatisfying early Uncle $crooge epics.
An article in The Carl Barks Library revealed the numerous
changes Barks made to the story before final publication, but even with
these adjustments, the tale simply contains far too many plot holes and
out-of-left-field coincidences to be rated any sort of success. How
likely is it that a message in a bottle dropped by a stranded Beagle Boy
would wash up on Duckburg beach and be recovered by Scrooge and the
Nephews? Why does the "peeved" (he's not loony enough to be truly
mad) scientist who's developed the titular invention while seeking a
means of producing fumeless cabbage (huh?) suddenly shut the stone ray
off while meeting the Ducks, giving the previously petrified "stone
Beagle Boys" a chance to escape and snag the ray for their own piratical
purposes? Why does the ray itself need a key to operate? Why
does Scrooge claim that stopping the Beagles from using the ray to "glom
all of my money" is equivalent to "sav[ing] the whole world!"?
(36 years after this story first appeared, Scrooge would get a
chance to legitimately save the world from being rendered inert
in the last DuckTales adventure, 1990's "The Golden Goose".)
Barks never truly wrestled this story to the mat, and it shows. If
nothing else, as David Gerstein points out in the editorial column, this
does mark one of the last times that the Beagles threatened the Ducks
with actual bodily harm, as opposed to pulling the endless series of
"goofy Money Bin capers" with which they're most identified. (As if the
story weren't already problematic, the normally reliable Susan
Daigle-Leach makes a bad coloring error along the way, momentarily
forgetting that red-capped Huey was left on the beach to guard the
"surviving" Beagle and allowing him to get zapped with the ray along
with Dewey.)
Barks is better represented in the
Junior Woodchucks story "Bottled Battlers," one of The Duck
Man's better yarns for the JW title. Once again, Daan Jippes is
called upon to redraw Barks' script, and he does his usual fine job.
The tale is notable in that it features an unexpected revival of Magica
De Spell, whom Barks had abandoned after using her extensively in the
early 1960s. Intending to break into Scrooge's Bin (curiously, there's
nary a mention of the Old #1 Dime) with a powerful acid, Magica runs "afowl"
of HD&L, who are picking up glass litter along a highway. Unlike some
of Barks' JW scripts, this tale doesn't preach, but instead uses
the pollution theme as a jumping-off point for a straightforward "Ducks
in conflict" tale.
Writer Kari Korhonen, whose efforts
rarely disappoint, scores again with the Gyro Gearloose tale
"Creative Impulse," drawn by Santanach and dialogued by Tony
Isabella (whose work for Gemstone has steadily improved over time). The
inventor confides in Donald that he's become a slave to his "creative
impulse," reflexively offering to improve people's lives with his
inventions whether or not they want or need his assistance. Trying to
relax at Donald's house, Gyro can't keep from tinkering with Don's TV or
remodeling Don's kitchen (the latter, while in somnambulist mode).
Donald hits upon the solution: get Gyro so many jobs that he's simply
too busy to fall victim to his own subconscious desires. There
would still seem to be a problem in that Gyro, being human (so to
speak), still has to sleep and thus might still perform inadvertent
inventage while sleepwalking, but perhaps Donald also suggested some
sort of bed restraint.
At the book's (somewhat mangled) back
end, writer Tomas Kolodziejczak (with an assist from Donald Markstein)
makes a sparkling Gemstone debut with the $crooge tale
"Something for Nothing," drawn by Vicar. Listening to Scrooge
ramble on about the glories of the free-enterprise system on page one,
you can just sense that he's heading for a financial fall of some
sort. It comes in the form of a strange bargain store that offers
luxurious premiums ("Buy a TV Guide, get a TV!") and is soon
posing a healthy threat to Scrooge's gorilla grip on the local economy.
Donald and Gyro each investigate and find that the store's proprietors
(the Beagle Boys, in a trio of particularly hideous disguises) have
compelled the kidnapped Gyro to produce merchandise with his new "matter
creator." In a twist that fans of DuckTales will particularly
appreciate, Gyro protests that the device had a "fatal flaw" all along:
the items it produces aren't permanent. After the populace discovers
the ruse, Scrooge profits from the Beagles' bungle by offering
evanescent ephemera in his "TemporaryMart." Markstein does an excellent
job on the tale's dialogue, lifting it a notch or two above the norm,
and the plot itself is an ingenious idea that might have worked even
better with Flintheart Glomgold as the brains of the shifty
operation.
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(6/4/06)
Donald Duck
Adventures #18 (May
2006). With this issue's lead tale, "Let's Get Kraken,"
the Egmont team responsible for the Donald/Fethry "TNT" series takes
well, not precisely its first misstep, but a sidestep, at the
very least. This time around, Don and his gung-ho cousin pose as
sailors on a ship belonging to tycoon John D. Rockerduck (a regular foe
of Uncle Scrooge's in European comics but not often seen on this side of
the "Duck pond"). JDR intends to capture the Kraken, a legendary
sea beast, for his marine park. TNT's Head fears that the giant
"carnivorous squid-crab" poses a "terrible danger to mankind" -- exactly
what said danger consists of, apart from the usual "perils of the
open sea," is never explained and assigns Don, Fethry, and fellow TNT
agent Boysenberry to sabotage the mission. After the expected
screw-ups and the ultimate encounter with the Kraken, Scrooge, who'd
wanted the boys to monkey-wrench the operation for his own (financial,
of course) reasons, saves the day by abruptly appearing and using a fake
sperm whale the one sea creature the Kraken fears to scare the
monster away to a remote location. The story isn't bad, but I
don't feel it takes full advantage of the "TNT" scenario of Don, Fethry,
et al. tussling with bizarre paranormal threats, and Scrooge's
convenient rescue run at the end is pretty contrived. One can
easily imagine the tale being presented without the "TNT" references,
which kind of undercuts the whole rationale for having it be part of a
special series of stories in the first place. (I'm reminded of the
stories in the
Richie Rich and Jackie Jokers title wherein Jackie, a kid comic with
a very distinctive personality, is presented as "just another young
companion" of Richie's.)
The middle Mickey story, "Blot
Clot," features The Phantom Blot, as you might expect, but both
writer Stefan Petrucha and artist Miguel have spilled ink to much
better purposes that this. The Blot's plot this time around is to
hypnotize folks into using "hypnotic paint" to delineate a certain
symbol on the surface of the moon, the consequences of which will be to
"zombie-fy" the entire population of Earth. OK, to be clearly
visible from Earth, the sinister device would have to be HOW many
hundred miles on a side, exactly? (As depicted by Miguel, it's
anything but that size.) And how can "hypnotic paint"
influence people from such an immense distance when people have to be
staring at it at close quarters in order to become hypnotized in the
first place? Add in The Blot's sudden ability to mount an
elaborate interplanetary expedition (not to mention his unexplained
mastery of the Vulcan Neck Pinch-like "Antasian Death Grip") and the
convenient appearance of an alien who helps the Moon-stranded Mickey get
back to Earth, and you've got a story as poorly thought out as any I've
ever read. From the date code, I gather that this was one of
Petrucha's first scripts for Egmont, which may explain the tale's
slapdash nature; Petrucha must still have been trying to purge his
system of the notion that he could be cavalier with facts and logic,
because, after all, who takes adventure stories about a four-foot-tall
talking mouse seriously. Happily, he's gotten much, much better
since then.
It took me three or so readings to pick
up on all the details of the issue's third tale, Andreas Pihl and Mardon
Smet's "Legacy," but in this case, that's actually a compliment.
Pihl does nothing less than give us a potted "origin story" for Donald's
masked-hero alter ego, Duck Avenger ("Paperinik" in Italy, where this
notion was originally hatched). DA's origin was told in more
detail in a very long Italian story that would have been difficult to
print in its entirety in this country, so the gesture of printing this
tale is much appreciated. The story finds Phantom Duck, the
supposedly "departed" crimefighter whose mantle Donald had commandeered,
returning to Duckburg to see how his legacy is being handled. The
twist: PD's property was actually supposed to go to Don's Cousin
Gladstone Gander, but Donald got the deed by mistake and horned in on
the role. Under the impression that Gladstone is Duck Avenger,
Phantom Duck reacts violently to Gladstone's layabout lifestyle and
resolves to train him "properly" using, among other things, a diet of
"cold lentils" and a phony "nemesis" that will give DA the chance to
truly "prove" himself. Said "nemesis" ultimately materializes in a
rather contrived fashion the weakest aspect of the tale by far but,
with Gladstone having cut and run, Donald himself appears in Duck
Avenger mode to defeat the menace and convince Phantom Duck that DA is
now a truly worthy heir. The tale is complicated, and attention
must be paid, but it's an excellent read and features some dynamic art
by Smet, a relative newcomer to the Ducks whose work has never appeared
in America until now. I must confess to never fully buying into
the whole Duck Avenger concept; DA isn't wacky enough to be a full-blown
superhero parody like Super Goof, nor is he a one-shot concept
like Scrooge's alter ego in DuckTales' "The Masked Mallard," so
what, precisely, is the point? That being said, I did enjoy this
tale quite a bit.
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