Comics Review: DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #356 (Boom! Kids, July 2010)

Scratch one reformation -- maybe. The fag-end of "Souvenir de Paris", and especially the first page of DD&F's final (for now, anyway) DOUBLE DUCK story, "Total Reset Button", throw us yet another curve ball regarding Kay K's true loyalties. Was she simply "using" Donald, and the cover of the fake kidnapping of Daisy in #355, to rifle The Organization's coffers? Is she, in fact, the mysterious individual who's targeted Don based on the results of his "first mission" for The Agency -- the one the details of which he so conveniently can't remember? Is ANY person or event in these DOUBLE DUCK stories what he/she/it appears to be at first glance? I'm going to wind up hoping that the emergency "TRB" that Don has been instructed to apply to the backsliding ex-Agency director Felino Felinys can be applied to this entire collection of story arcs. It's all getting so difficult to keep straight. Even if you can, there's Giorgio Cavazzano's bizarre cover to this issue to consider. What symbolism could be inherent in agent Don's brandishing of a banana, I don't like to think... and who is the "Double-O-Duck" extra pushing a button in the corner, there? Is he auditioning for Minion status?

A good portion of the opening action of "Total Reset Button" is simply a rehash of the beginning of "Before the Premiere", with the opera changed to Aida, the setting switched to Cairo, and Gladstone Gander serving as the cocklebur in Don's cummerbund. (For some reason, I think even Gladstone will be less irritating than Daisy has generally been during these stories -- though the preoccupied Donald's blowoff of his bragging cousin at the start of "TRB" suggests that he might be able to handle the situation.) While trying to keep Felinys in "ignorance-is-bliss" mode, Donald is evincing a growing interest in exactly what happened during that nebulous "first mission," the one that's got that supposed assassin in such a snit. Don even goes so far as to attempt to do some espionage work at The Agency itself. If the "first mission" subplot is wrapped up at the end of "TRB," as I suspect it probably will, then that will indeed be an ideal time for the DOUBLE DUCK tales to go bye-bye for a spell.