Book and Comic
Reviews
(11/20/05)
Walt Disney's Christmas Parade
#3 (Gemstone). The trouble with producing a yearly Christmas-themed
comic that prominently features reprints of classic Christmas stories is
that ultimately, in order to avoid repeating yourself, you will be
obliged to reprint some material that's
well, something less than
classic. Having reprinted Carl Barks' evergreen "Letter to Santa" in
XP #1, and having followed that up with the solidly enjoyable "You
Can't Guess!" in XP #2, Gemstone leads off XP #3 with "The
Golden Christmas Tree", which is neither evergreen (well, obviously
it's "golden"!) nor particularly enjoyable. If this story isn't Barks'
single worst long "adventure" tale, it's surely one of the finalists for
that dubious honor. It's not all Barks' fault; his editors gave him a
script pitting Donald and HD&L against the Disney Witch and asked him to
work it into a story. His lack of interest in the whole idea is evident
on just about every page. The narrative takes crazy lurches, the
characters' emotions swing with an almost palpable violence, and some of
the gags are more suited to Looney Tunes cartoons than to the
Duck comic-book "universe." Barks' other significant "office-directed"
story, "Trick or Treat" (just recently reprinted by Gemstone), was a far
more pleasant experience (but then, Barks' source material in that case
was much better). Happily, Barks gets a chance for some redemption in
another story in this issue, "Silent Night," a 1945 tale that was
originally shelved by Barks' editors due to excessive violence (not to
mention excessive roughness on a venerable Christmas carol) but managed
to avoid the trash bin. The story's opening half-page is newly written
by David Gerstein and Unn Printz-Pahlson and drawn by Daan Jippes in a
bang-on simulation of Barks' artistic style of the era.
The best thing in this particular
Christmas package is the Mickey Mouse tale "It's a Wonderful
Christmas Story," written and drawn by Romano Scarpa and dialogued by
"Dandy" Dave G. Of course, once one reads the title, one knows what to
expect and Mickey duly undergoes the "George Bailey" treatment. Given
the fact that the plot is essentially predetermined, the story is quite
enjoyable, featuring appearances by many members of Mickey's supporting
cast and an unexpected, holiday-flavored twist involving Mickey's
eternal enemy Black Pete. I can't bring myself to buy the rationale
that causes Mickey to become alienated from his closest friends (even
Pluto!), but them's the conditions that prevail when one writes a plot
according to a preset formula. The Uncle $crooge tale
"Sentimental Energy," by Marco Rota and Tony Isabella, is also good.
It's simply saturated with all sorts of noble sentiments, but it does
present what can accurately be termed a wholly original spin on the
familiar notion (dating back to "Christmas on Bear Mountain," Scrooge's
first appearance) of old McDuck's crusty heart softening under the
influence of mistletoe, holly, and such like. Reprints of Li'l Bad
Wolf and Pluto Christmas stories from the 1950's (well, I
guess the LBW story is about Christmas at least, it's got a
wreath hanging from the title box but the holiday isn't mentioned)
round out the issue.
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The Ultimate Casper Comics
Collection, edited by Sid Jacobson (iBooks). In the immortal
words of Tale Spin's Don Karnage: "Congratulations, Meester
Jacobson! You have not done a terrible job!"
The first truly meaningful Harvey
Comics-related release in many a moon features what appear to be
complete reprints of the following issues of Harvey's Casper
title: #11, 13, 17, 18, 20, 22, 48. I'd like to think that Jacobson,
the long-time (by now, even extending well beyond the life of the
company!) Harvey editor, puzzled long and hard over which classic
Casper tales to present to children and adolescents whose only
exposure to Casper has come in the form of the 1995 live-action film and
possibly the subsequent cartoon series. (Will they be surprised
to learn that Casper, Spooky, The Ghostly Trio, and the other Enchanted
Forest ghosts once had feet?) Or perhaps Sid just happened to
have had these issues sitting in his desk drawer all along. In any
event, he chose well. The leadoff story, 1959's "Real Gone," which
might be considered Harvey's take on Chuck Jones' Duck Amuck,
features caricatures of Alfred Harvey and Casper artist deluxe
Warren Kremer (who drew all of the 15-page Casper stories
herein). As such, it's a fitting introduction for newbies. The other
15-pagers are all entirely representative of their era, the late 1950s
to mid-1960s, and are of uniformly high quality. Unexpectedly, thanks
to the "reprint-everything" policy, we also get some Spooky
filler stories drawn in lively, funny style by Howard Post. The
coloring is uneven for example, the sky in the opening panels of "Real
Gone" is much too blue but, for the most part, the book
reflects the look of a "real" Harvey comic of the Silver Age. Most any
young reader would enjoy this collection, I think. In his opening
comments, Jacobson makes some peculiar and somewhat confusing assertions
(if Casper were truly "born a ghost," that raises all
sorts of unsettling questions about how ghosts procreate!), but this is
the best project with which he's been involved in quite a while.
Similar collections of Hot Stuff and Richie Rich stories
are forthcoming in 2006.
Superman in the Forties (DC).
The latest decade-by-decade collection of Superman and Batman's
"greatest hits" actually bleeds over into the late 1930s, as the first
two stories in the collection appeared in Action Comics #1 and
#2. Several other items in the collection, such as a two-page prose
tale written by co-creator Jerry Siegel, also date from before 1940.
Superman was a much less complicated, yet paradoxically more refreshing,
character in these early tales. When not personifying a caped and
cowled New Dealer during his battles with political fixers, crooked
businessmen, greedy war profiteers, foreign strongmen, and similar
contemporary villains, he was facing off against oddball opponents (such
as genial con-man Wilbur Wolfingham and devilish sprite Mr. Mxyzptlk)
who checked the Man of Steel's already-formidable powers (which were not
nearly as comprehensive as they would ultimately become) by keeping him
off balance. Among other things, the reader will learn how the company
managed to explain why Superman could not simply step in and win World
War II all by himself.
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Mickey Mouse and Friends #283
(December 2005). A pretty decent holiday ish begins with "Mickey's
Christmas Trees," a reprint of a story from one of the late-1940's
Firestone holiday giveaway comics. (The Donald Duck story in
that same issue appears in this week's issue of Donald Duck and
Friends.) The ancient epic has never been reprinted in this country
before. It's OK if you can stomach the sight of shoplifter Peg-Leg Pete
getting away with a "drag" bit that a fully "functioning" Mickey should
really have seen through from the beginning. The Donald Duck
"sandwich" tale, "Skeptics and Sorcery" by Jens Hansegard and Rodriques,
is a "Donald masters a craft but ultimately causes disaster" tale
married to a Magica De Spell story. Here, Don is vying to become the
Duckburg Skeptics' Club's "debunker of the year" by uncovering just a
few more charlatans, but he makes the mistake of dissing Magica's
supposedly "fake" sorcery. Magica did make some use of gadgetry
to perform her witchcraft in "The Midas Touch," the early-60s Barks tale
in which she was introduced, so one can't entirely blame Donald
for jumping to an incorrect conclusion. At the very least, though, he
should have thought twice before angering a sorceress with a notoriously
short temper. The book closes with "Songs of the Season" by Donald
Markstein and Rodriques, a tale in which Mickey and Horace Horsecollar
compete to win a holiday songwriting contest. The running gag
concerning the incessantly dinned "Silver Bell Rock" should ring a bell
(pun intended) with anyone who's had their fill of holiday "background
music" by the middle of December.
Donald Duck and Friends #334
(December 2005). "Santa's Stormy Visit," one of Carl Barks' five
original contributions to the Firestone giveaway series, anchors this
month's issue. I wouldn't call it Barks' best Firestone frolic,
but it's certainly better than average. Barks dispatches the expected
dose of holiday sentiment with a minimum of candy-coating and focuses
most of his attention on the comic albatross who encounters Donald and
the Nephews serving as lighthouse keepers in Duckburg Harbor on a stormy
Christmas Eve. In its denouement, the tale presages a later and more
famous story, Barks' "Submarine Christmas" tale of the mid-1950s. "The
Sure Cure," Michael T. Gilbert and Noel Van Horn's middle Mickey
story, seems rather out of place, since it doesn't make even the
slightest mention of the holiday season. Van Horn's always-reliable
artwork enlivens a fairly predictable story in which Mickey is tormented
first by hiccups, then by his friends' attempts to cure his ailment in
increasingly dangerous ways. The third story, "Santa's Helpers,"
features the return of the zany Easter Bunny character created by writer
Lars Jensen. This time around, if you can believe it, the long-eared
galoot (thanks, Yosemite Sam) and Donald are forced to substitute for
Santa Claus (!!) after the latter suffers a "ho-ho-horrible"
accident. Two things conspire to make this "saving Christmas" chestnut
better than it has any earthly right to be: David Gerstein's dialogue
and Marco Rota's artwork. Gerstein realizes that he has a Herculean
task to make this tale seem like anything more than a really lousy
holiday special, and he pulls out all the stops, making references to
everything from Henrik Ibsen to Chuck Jones to the Rudolph TV
special. Rota's art gives the story dignity where it is required, and
the elegant Italian also proves capable of getting across the expected
slapsticky pratfalls.
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Movie Review
Disney's DuckTales,
Volume 1 (Episodes 1-27) (Disney DVD). To paraphrase Ernest
Hemingway's comment about Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn: All
modern television animation stems from one source, Disney's DuckTales.
It is quite simply the most uniformly enjoyable animated series ever
created. Proving that high quality and daily strip syndication were
indeed compatible, it raised the bar for all subsequent daily-strip
animated projects, ultimately leading to the creation of The Disney
Afternoon, Warners TV Animation's numerous projects, and many other
worthwhile efforts. The "quality TV Toon boom" that DuckTales
detonated helped convince FOX to green-light The Simpsons in
prime time, with all that that move implied for the future. The series'
popularity even convinced Disney to develop TV-themed attractions at its
theme parks. 18 years after its debut, DuckTales' impact can
still be felt. It was long overdue to appear in DVD form.
Unfortunately, Disney's treatment of the
property in this release can charitably be described as uninspired. The
episodes are uncut and unaltered, apart from one or two tweaks (e.g. the
voice-track volume in "Top Duck," originally very hard for the viewer to
hear, has been turned up, and a line of dialogue in "Sir Gyro de
Gearloose" that originally [and inadvertently] sounded very much like a
string of cuss words has been redubbed). There are no extras of any
sort. It is to weep, especially when this set is compared to previous
releases of such series as The Simpsons and Batman: the
Animated Series, not to mention Disney TV's only previous DVD
release, Gargoyles. It appears that Disney now regards
DuckTales as just another "old" product to be vended in as generic a
manner as possible. A series that has had such a profound impact on the
TV-cartoon industry deserved more respect than that. The comparison
with the Gargoyles release is particularly bothersome because
Disney, in its decision to include extras with that particular
set, may have been expressing its belief that DuckTales, unlike
Gargoyles, was strictly "kid stuff" and never had any sort of an
adult following. How soon they forget: A healthy chunk of DuckTales'
regular viewers (not to mention many of its most fervent fans) were over
18 years of age.
Disney DVD's commitment to the highest
standard of quality as regards this release may further be questioned in
light of the fact that the multi-part adventure "Treasure of the Golden
Suns," which aired before the show debuted in syndication and
served as the series' "origin story," is not included, simply
because the complete version of the serial aired after the 27
episodes packaged herein. It is not absolutely essential to have
seen "Golden Suns" before plunging ahead with "syndicated" Episode 1,
but the epic serves as such a dramatic and memorable curtain-raiser that
its absence is keenly felt. Had actual fans of DuckTales
been in charge of this project, you can be assured that "Golden Suns"
would have been in the leadoff slot on Disc 1. (In like manner, Volume
1 of Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers neglected to include "To the
Rescue," that series' "origin" tale.)
Ultimately, if you buy this collection,
it will be for the format alone. For DuckTales fans, this will
be sufficient reason for most to make the purchase, but a source of
consternation and disappointment for others. I'd encourage all fans of
the show to contact Disney DVD and request that extras and other
materials be included in future volumes. Disney may in fact need to be
reminded that such materials do, in fact, exist.
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(11/6/05)
"Hobblin'
Goblins" Halloween Giveaway Comic (Gemstone). To
say the least or haven't you seen the latest statistics on childhood
obesity? the last thing young trick-or-treaters need to receive
on Halloween is candy. This year, Gemstone gave the comics-loving
treat-providers of the world a viable fallback option with this 12-page
mini-comic. Given that there are a number of other short Carl Barks
stories that either have Halloween themes or involve creepy creatures of
various sorts (cf. the "Wispy Willie" story from WDC&S), one can
certainly visualize this premium becoming a yearly ritual. "Hobblin'
Goblins," focusing as it does on Donald's Nephews, was a good place to
start. Barks wrote the 8-page tale as a quickie replacement when his
editors axed some pages from the long story "Trick or Treat," and the
haste shows the practical-minded inventor Gyro Gearloose attributing
all the world's troubles to goblins?? Still, the brief story does
showcase artwork from Barks' peak period, a good advertisement for The
Duck Man's many virtues for those kids who may not have seen his work
before. Gemstone packs in the expected ads relating to Previews,
the Gemstone Web site, and such, so let's hope that this leads to an
uptick in the number of young readers of Duck comics.
Donald Duck
and Uncle $crooge One-Shot: "Somewhere in Nowhere" and "North of the
Yukon" (Gemstone). It may bear only the slightest
of resemblances to the one-page "concept" typed up by Carl Barks in the
mid-1990s thanks in no small part to numerous "suggestions" made by
the manipulative staffers of "The Carl Barks Studio," the same friendly
folks who unnecessarily soured the last few years of Barks' life but
the much-anticipated "Somewhere in Nowhere" turns out to be a pretty
darn good yarn. In several prose articles, scripter John Lustig (in a
funny "mock-interview") and artist Pat Block give us the dope on how
what began as a fairly simple story mutated into a 28-page Arctic
adventure. Despite his supposed trepidation, Lustig has no reason to go
back into his "underground bunker" for fear of reprisals, from Joe
Torcivia or anyone else. Indeed, the finished product represents what
might be considered a wholly unique Duck adventure, at least by American
standards: it is the closest we have ever come to a "Barks-like"
adventure epic starring Donald all by himself. Scrooge appears briefly
at the beginning and the end, while the Nephews are mentioned in Barks'
outline but do not appear at all in the finished story. In between,
it's Donald against the elements of the frozen North and the would-be
monopolist Hamalot McSwine, yet another version of Barks' protean "pig
villain." Don tries to prove himself to Scrooge (I've lost count of
exactly how many times he's done this by now!) by making a success out
of his new job: delivering mail to folks in impossibly out-of-the-way
places in the "Frozen Nowhere." Things get complicated when the vicious
McSwine attempts to interfere with Donald's deliveries so as to maintain
his iron economic grip on the town of Bearflanks, Alaska. Though the
cast may be sparse, the gags definitely have the staging of Barks gags
(indeed, Carl provided several of them!), and the plot has the structure
and the pleasantly "completed" feel that one associates with most of
Barks' long adventure stories. Artistically, Pat Block (with advice and
hints provided by Barks, at least on the penciled roughs) outdoes
himself with some first-class work, featuring tighter and more precise
inking than he has employed in most previous stories. The last Block
artwork we saw, in "Duck of the Deep" (WDC&S #653), still
reflected his early desire to mimic Barks' style of the early 50s; this
effort bears more of a personal stamp. If Block had only continued
along this path with both stories and art for Egmont
The back of the book maintains the
far-North theme with "North of the Yukon," a Barks tale from 1965. It's
been speculated that the character of Barko, the ancient sled dog whom
Scrooge coaxes out of retirement to help him recover a valuable document
from the clutches of ruthless moneylender Soapy Slick (yet another
manifestation of the "pig villain"), reflects Barks' own concerns about
encroaching age and impending retirement. In that respect, Barko's
appearance in the comic containing Barks' absolute last story
contribution to the Duck saga seems rather poignant, indeed.
Little Lulu
Volume 6: "Letters to Santa" (Dark Horse). They're
putting the volume number on the spine now. Other than that, it's
thankfully more of the same clever storytelling and family-friendly
fun. Random thought while reading this collection: Given that Lulu and
her family and friends spent most of their stories in and around their
own neighborhood, did John Stanley conceive the "Story Telling Time"
tales (the stories in which Lulu relates wildly improbable achievements
or adventures to little Alvin) as an indirect way of introducing a sort
of adventure feel to the Little Lulu comics? I know that Lulu,
Tubby, and company visited other countries in some of the Dell Giant
Comics, but Stanley may have had nothing to do with those stories.
If the "Story Telling" theme was Stanley's way of sneaking in something
like epic adventure through the back door, it was a most
ingenious strategy.
The Complete
Peanuts, Volume 4: 1957-1958 by Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics).
This particular installment of our semiannual Peanuts fix
catches Peanuts at a point in time when Charles M. Schulz had
really begun to hit his stride. Despite a few dated oddities, such
as Lucy and Linus spending a week engaged in "stereophonic fussing," the
numerous mini- and micro-dramas enacted herein have begun to assume
familiar contours. Charlie Brown is now firmly established as the
ultimate loser and fall-guy, whose "soul is full of weeds." He drops a
fly ball to lose a "championship" game (I always wondered how the
Peanuts team managed to attain that opportunity, considering
how inept they were), fights numerous losing battles with the
kite-eating tree, endures insults and humiliation at the hands of Lucy,
Patty, and Violet, and braves his first "official" Valentine's Day sans
Valentines. (On a more pleasant note, he does begin regular
correspondence with his pen-, er, pencil-pal.) Snoopy, meanwhile, has
begun to dance and walk upon his hind legs on a regular basis, though
he's still recognizably what he himself might call "a plain ol' 'dog'
dog." Linus is now thoroughly hooked on his blanket, barely surviving
both Snoopy's repeated attempts to steal the prized poultice
and Lucy's first attempt to wean him from it by force. The direct
references to childhood pastimes (aside from that ol' standby, baseball)
are beginning to wane as the characters slip more and more easily into
the "philosophical" mode that would come to be associated with the strip
in its next, incredibly lucrative decade. The vast majority of the
strips here have been reprinted at some point, making the few
"no-see-ums" all the more intriguing to me. (My favorite among the
latter: Linus explaining what appears to be a cowboy-and-Indian "fake
gunfight" as, in fact, a game of "liberals and conservatives." What
would he be using today, multi-megaton bombs?) This comes with my
highest recommendation. Big surprise, eh?
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