News and Views by Chris Barat

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 48, "The Red Menace"

2012-01-23T19:49:00.022-05:00

We've seen fires in Kimba episodes prior to this one -- the "chungle fi-yah" that the crazed Herr Director sets to add realistic drama to his movie in "Two Hearts and Two Minds," the somewhat gratuitous and melodramatic blaze served up at the climax of "Diamonds in the Gruff." "The Red Menace," by contrast, sets up a can't-miss battle between Kimba's kingdom and a potentially deadly conflagration as its sole raison d'etre, and the result is one of the series' most visually impressive and emotionally freighted viewing experiences. The sense of peril is heightened by a curious conceit in which the characters seem to find it difficult to say the very word "fire," much as the wizards in the HARRY POTTER novels tried to avoid saying "Voldemort" whenever possible. Fittingly, just as Harry Potter was the most willing to avoid euphemisms of the "You Know Who" variety and speak the true name of the evil that threatened the wizards' world, so Kimba, the Harry-figure of this particular "universe," calls the perilous blaze "fire" more often than anyone else. Add one great act of compassion, one moment of intellectual inspiration, and the direction of a monumental feat of natural engineering that would put most human techies to shame, and Kimba comes out looking mighty good here... even though he is actually helpless during the most dramatic sequence of the ep.

Peewee the elephant and his mother (given the name "Patsy" here) return here for the first time since "Too Many Elephants." They're not actually subjects of Kimba's, preferring instead to live with other elephants in nearby Gullygap Valley, but there is abundant evidence that Peewee and Patsy have been in contact with their old friend since they left the game preserve...

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As in "Volcano Island," we get a nice use of real (tinted) fire-and-smoke footage to gin up the opening scenes of fire-fleeage. Even so, the pyro-dramatics were hardly necessary, as the first couple of scenes are more than frightening enough. Dot, Dash, and Dinky's "isn't this neat?" reaction again firmly establishes them as distinct juniors to the more responsible Kimba, who leads the charge to find Peewee. It's clear that, even though Peewee and Patsy have chosen to live in Gullygap Valley, they must have gotten word to Kimba at some point about their current whereabouts, else how would Kimba and D-cubed even know that Peewee was there?

I would have been keenly disappointed had Kimba's getting his tail singed been played for laughs. No doubt, had Pauley or Bucky accompanied Kimba on this mission, the animators would probably have tried to squeeze out a few yocks at their expense. No, this episode, like the "red menace" itself, definitely "means business."

When Peewee is located, he immediately starts up with one of this episode's lone debits, the "Goody gumdrops!" conceit. The "gumdrops" references will all too quickly be smashed into the ground like a lost Jujube flattened on the pavement by the feet of dozens of heedless passersby. Apart from the fact that Peewee shouldn't even know what a gumdrop is, the ootsey-cutesy sentiment seems like too obvious a bid to tickle the child audience into replying, "Aw, that Peewee is so silly!" Given his rather annoying, high-pitched voice, Peewee was already fighting an uphill battle to be taken seriously; this "gumdrops" business sure doesn't help his cause.

Technically, I suppose that Kimba was taking an ethical risk in offering Kelly Funt's grazing grounds to the Gullygap elephants. Seeing as how Kelly's herd is not formally a part of Kimba's kingdom, it could be argued that Kimba was being a little presumptuous here. But remember that Kimba was willing to feed some of the animals' precious stock of seeds to help keep one animal alive in "Jungle Thief." The occasional hiccup-ep like "The Return of Fancy Prancy" aside, it isn't in Kimba's nature not to be compassionate in a situation like this.

Kelly Funt (Ray Owens, this time) is both more "Irish" and considerably more truculent than he was in "A Friend in Deed." If the episode had gone on longer, would he have started ranting and raving and going purple in the face (or at least the trunk) at some point? I'm glad we never had to find out. Kelly's selfishness is truly infuriating here. Check out the nasty trunk-whip that he gives D-cubed. I'll bet that Dinky's snout ached for weeks.

Kimba and Peewee's aborted "night grass raid" permits us to wave a final goodbye (or should that be good riddance?) to Tom and Tab, as they blow the whistle on the former for no reason other than to be contrary. And then Kelly's cold-bloodedness really comes to the fore, as he traps Kimba and Peewee in the ruined tower "dungeon" even though he must be aware that the fire is approaching. At the very least, he knows that the fire is close enough to have forced Peewee's herd to abandon Gullygap Valley. This may be the nastiest thing that any animal who is not an out-and-out villain has done during the entire series.

Funny thing about the elephants' dungeon... in the manner of Daffy Duck's "one-off act" at the end of Show Biz Bugs, the dungeon can only be closed once! How did the elephants incarcerate their enemies before they initiated this rockslide?

Barks fans know the emotional drill of the subsequent scene. We don't see a single sight with the impact of the flames licking at the bunkers where the Ducks have buried themselves in "Vacation Time," but the fact that Kimba and Peewee essentially must trust to good fortune to survive the fire, without making any last-minute preparations, almost makes up for it. Billie Lou Watt's dramatic coughing and hacking is both a great job of acting and a case for sober reflection, given that she would die of emphysema many years later. I can just imagine her inhaling an extra portion of cigarette smoke to help put this scene over...

The other animals' rush to the rescue of the trapped pair is similarly packed with pathos and excellent acting. Kimba and Dan'l's reunion is exceptionally poignant, with Kimba uncommonly tearful, questioning the "foolishness" of his own heart, and "Uncle Dan'l" literally acting like a wise, forgiving old uncle. Kimba's emotional "delayed reaction" may partially stem from his realization that he is well and truly lucky to be alive, and that his well-meant generosity came close to depriving the jungle of its leader. Kimba's tears here are those of a mature leader with many responsibilities, rather than a child. A "Heart-ful" scene, with emphasis.

And speaking of "delayed reactions," Kimba now has his own "Vacation Time Donald" moment as he recognizes a way to use the jungle's own natural resources to hold back the blaze. This is arguably even more impressive than Donald's famous brainstorm, in that Kimba has absolutely no civilizational accouterments on which to draw. This is going to be an appeal to sheer animal muscle-power... and, frankly, the animals' ability to put together their firewall with such dispatch is nothing short of mind-boggling. Tezuka must have been kicking himself that he didn't think of using such a dramatic sequence as part of JUNGLE EMPEROR. The theme of cooperation and hard work has rarely been as gloriously on display in Kimba as it is here. You might argue just a bit for the work that the animals put in to build the amusement center in "Jungle Fun," but there's really no comparison... the survival of the jungle itself is at stake here.

The ep now begins to parallel the climax of "Diamonds in the Gruff" in earnest (and not simply because of the fire) as Kelly Funt takes the Gruff role and rumbles with it. Given the truly despicable nature of his earlier actions, Kelly's "face-turn" here is fairly remarkable. He doesn't even wait until after the emergency is past to issue a formal apology to Kimba and Peewee, as Gruff did to Kimba in "Diamonds." No doubt, it was the added muscle-power of Kelly's herd that allowed Dan'l "rescue truck" to come to the aid of Kelly, Kimba, and Peewee with such incredible dispatch, and for the animals to complete the firewall just in time to beat back the blaze. The ancient Egyptians who stood in awe of the Ur-Kimba in the flashback sequences of "Journey Into Time" would have been better served to have "prayed up" this bunch of critters to help them build the Pyramids!

Unless Kimba imparted some information about incredibly fast-growing grass to Peewee and his herd, I don't see how the Gullygap elephants' going back to their burnt-out home constitutes a "happy" ending. ("We'll work hard to make Gullygap flourish again... unless we starve to death first!") The more proper ending would have been for Peewee's herd to join Kelly's, with perhaps an "advance party" being sent back to Gullygap to scout out potential locations for planting grass or starting a farm. But Kimba just loved using those endings of one or more characters leaving the scene while other characters bid them goodbye, so what's another such wrapup? Not a perfect episode, but pretty doggoned close, I'd say.

Up next: Episode 49, "The Sun Tree."

Comics Review: PEANUTS #1 (January 2012, kaboom!)

2012-01-21T22:01:00.005-05:00

Seems I fibbed -- in a retroactive sense -- regarding my earlier proclamation, based on the rather unimpressive PEANUTS #0, that I would confine my future PEANUTS purchases to the Fantagraphics reprint series. I'd completely forgotten that I had preordered PEANUTS #1 in PREVIEWS. When the book arrived in what has recently been a cold and bare pull box at the store, I decided to give the title one more whirl. And "one more" will probably hold good, though #1 is legitimately better than #0. The two original leads, "Music Goes Round" (which I'd probably have titled "Music in Mind," since it has to do with a popular song that gets passed around from character to character like a bad aural penny) and "Cat Cash," feature ingenious visual effects and some more than competent sham-Schulz artwork. The use of musical staves in "Music Goes Round" pays homage to a longstanding PEANUTS tradition, and Frieda and her long-unseen "amazing spineless cat," Faron, are welcome visitors in "Cat Cash," wherein Lucy tries to cash in on a promised reward for finding the lost kitty and dragoons an unwilling Snoopy to help her do it. Lucy also shows us "How to Draw Charlie Brown" (an ironic choice, since Charlie of the famously round head was always among the toughest characters for Schulz to draw) and sprinkles her demo with the expected insults. Three vintage Schulz Sunday gags (including the famous "Am I buttering too loud for you?" gag, which Schulz literally recycled many years later with different characters) round out a pleasant enough package. Pleasant, but not "special" enough to justify any further contributions to kaboom!'s coffers.

Book Review: FOR THE SOUL OF FRANCE by Frederick Brown (Knopf, 2010)

2012-01-16T19:44:00.007-05:00

Americans are by now familiar with the so-called "culture wars" pitting the "red states" against the "blue states." In late 19th century France, the divide was between the tricolore and the fleur de lis, between those determined to firmly establish a secular French Republic and those who wished France to remain true to its heritage of "throne and altar." The most notorious flare-up on this front was the Dreyfus Affair, but even works of literature, natural disasters, great feats of engineering, and expositions celebrating French progress became "cultural footballs" during this time period, as Frederick Brown relates in this engrossing work.

The book's narrative "spine," so to speak, is formed from descriptions of three famous fairs held in Paris in 1878, 1889, and 1900. The longest-lasting by-product of these events was the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 exposition celebrating the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. We think of the Tower today as the veritable symbol of Paris, if not France itself, but, for those who had never fully accepted the radical surgery that the Revolution had performed on French society, this thousand-foot spire was an unwelcome interloper in an ancient city that had already lost a good deal of its medieval character, thanks to the damage from the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War and the suppression of the Paris Commune. Insults hurled at the Tower included "a disgraceful giant skeleton" and "an odious column of bolted metal" than even uncouth Americans wouldn't stoop to create. More bizarrely, the Tower was held up as the product of a conspiracy of "cosmopolites," i.e. Jews. Just as anti-Semitism had a long history in Germany before Hitler, so, too, did French anti-Semitism predate Dreyfus. Indeed, the feelings were arguably more bitter in France, because of the longstanding alliance between French government and the Catholic Church. With powerful republicans pushing to separate Church and State in France -- and finally succeeding in doing so in the early 1900s -- traditionalists felt besieged on political, religious, and cultural fronts. The Dreyfus Affair combined all three elements, which helps explain what, to a non-Frenchman, must seem its mystifyingly lengthy half-life.

Brown does a fine job of summarizing the main points of L'affaire, but it is only one of the many featured elements here. Renan's LIFE OF JESUS is seen as an important turning point in the accelerating secularization of French culture, in addition to being a landmark in Biblical criticism. The early struggles of the ill-fated Third Republic, plagued from within by instability and corruption and from without by threats from Left and Right, not to mention the occasional would-be Bonapartist figure (cf. the dilatory General Georges Boulanger), are discussed in considerable detail, as are the financial disasters of the Union Generale and the Panama Canal Company, which at once left the door wide open for political and social corruption and stoked the fiery fantasies of those convinced that Jewish financial intrigue was to blame for the companies' downfall. The most chilling tale of all, from a modern perspective, may be the treatment of a disastrous 1897 fire that destroyed a Parisian charity bazaar sponsored by wealthy Catholic ladies. Hardly were the corpses identified and laid to rest when populists and Catholics alike were busily using them as political pawns, with the former describing the proletarians who rushed to help fight the fire as the "true heroes" of the disaster and the latter eulogizing the victims as martyrs who had died to atone for a sinful nation that had turned away from the true faith. The rapid politicization of Hurricane Katrina is uncomfortably close to this and, furthermore, suggests that, with secularists increasingly identifying themselves as members of one American political party and religious believers as members of the other, America may be headed for the same unholy combination of combined religious, political, and cultural disagreement coming to be seen as the natural order of things. If anyone believes that this is a good thing, Brown's book -- and a bit of reflection on the subsequent history of France in the 20th century -- will quickly convince him or her otherwise.

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 47, "The Cobweb Caper"

2012-01-12T20:00:00.015-05:00

"Dangerous Journey" alone excepted, "The Cobweb Caper" is arguably Kimba's finest hour in a "classically heroic" sense. It's all the easier to root for the jungle prince here because he is forced to shoulder a heaping burden of adversity, both physical and psychological. Indeed, the key to saving the jungle from the predations of a vicious giant spider (Gilbert Mack, providing a far nastier variation on his Boss Claw voice) is a suggestion that Kimba makes while he's literally "out of his head." To be sure, many other animals pitch in to help -- given Kimba's parlous condition throughout the ep's midsection, they're forced to do so -- but the day isn't saved until the feverish, palsied Kimba lends a paw under the most challenging of conditions. Kimba doesn't truthfully get to fight here, but the ordeal that he must undergo is worth at least one or two punch-ups.

The episode's effectiveness is sharpened by the fact that Kimba must duel the spider all by himself during the eerie opening sequence. Thanks to some superb visuals and a bravura performance by Billie Lou Watt, an aura of tension, terror, and stress is sustained from the start. The sense of dread and impending doom is almost that of a high-quality horror movie... and, fittingly, Kimba must fight through one particular moment of horror that's arguably one of the most dramatic of the series.

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As was the case at the beginning of "Running Wild," Kimba appears to be "tuned in" to danger menacing his subjects. By this time, I can easily believe that he's developed something of a "sixth sense" concerning what's going down around him. Speaking of senses, I have to assume that Kimba used his sense of smell to deduce that Boss Rhino and Samson were among the "web-fingered." It's not as if he were given any clear visual cues.

The spider's working methods seem a little peculiar. He seems content to leave certain animals right where they were neutralized (even unto apparently freezing them in mid-stride -- I didn't know spiders could do that), but he immediately takes Kimba to his lair. Does the spider have some inkling that Kimba is a jungle authority figure?

Whence the "sparklies" that we see when Kimba is spirited away, and, later, when Kimba is hanging upside down in the spider's den? Unless we've suddenly returned to the City of Gold or the Atlas Mountains, this is probably just an animation effect. Billie Lou almost plays it too casually when Kimba realizes that he's been caught in a spider web; the sweat pouring off Kimba at that moment suggests that he's far more scared than Billie Lou's "Well, how about that?" reading of the lines would suggest. BL will make up for this soon enough, though.

You almost have to laugh at the sight of Kimba's "inchworm" escape... that is, until you recognize that Kimba was never close to being this vulnerable when he was battling the Destroyers from the Desert or the lizards on Stony Mountain. In those cases, at least, he was fighting straight-up battles with all of his physical faculties at the ready. Even the baby Kimba tussling with the turbulent sea in "Go, White Lion!" had his entire body to work with. All that keeps Kimba from becoming an immediate canape at this juncture is sheer determination.

Sadly, we get cheated out of a chance to see how Kimba managed to escape the raging river. Not that this is anything new; remember how the scene of Kimba and the chief lizard tumbling into the gorge in "Dangerous Journey" was ruthlessly slashed? It's not as if anyone is going to "attempt these stunts" at home...

Kimba's shocked reaction to the possibility that all of his friends and subjects may have been destroyed is simply marvelous. Indeed, the pic below may be my single favorite still of the series. You can see horror, fear, and determination in Kimba's eyes as he pledges to "stop the spider" from further mayhem, even as he's grieving over what he believes to be the death of (1) his friends and (2) his whole dream of a jungle civilization. Better yet, you can hear these various emotions in Billie Lou's voice. No "Blah-la-la"-ing a la "Destroyers" here! Similarly, the "big gulp" that Kimba gives before tearing into the cave, fully prepared to fight the spider to the death, is parsecs removed from the comedic gullet-bobbing that he gave before going in to retrieve Tom and Tab from the Cavern of Goldopolis. It turns out to be a false alarm, of course, but Kimba has rarely been as unequivocally admirable as he is here. This is what true leadership is all about.

Cheshire Cat in reverse: notice how Kimba's subjects materialize in the cave, first their eyes and then their bodies! A nice trick if you can manage it.

Kimba's rather shamefaced apology to Dan'l marks the debut of a cute, albeit late-arriving, conceit: he refers to the baboon as "Uncle Dan'l." That phrase will pop up in several of the other remaining eps. I'd enjoy the phrase better if it had been used at the start of the series and then slowly phased out. Kimba honestly should not still be in an "old mentor/young mentee" relationship with Dan'l at this late stage of the game. Of course, recent eps have mixed depictions of a mature Kimba with portrayals of a childlike Kimba with no apparent rhyme or reason, so "there you go," as Greg Weagle would say. Dot, Dash, and Dinky's babyish caterwauling at least firmly establishes that they are not supposed to be nearly as mature as Kimba in this setting.

The run-up to Kimba's getting zapped by the tsetse fly nicely contrasts Dan'l's knowledge about the hidden dangers of jungle life with Kimba's still-healthy portion of civilizationally-shaped naivete. Still, it might have worked even better had Kimba been stung when he was a much younger cub, as opposed to the adolescent he is now. I certainly would think that Dan'l would have had some cause to warn Kimba about the danger prior to this. Isn't the jungle simply crawling with flies?

It strikes me that Kimba, having had no prior opportunity to develop any sort of immunity to animal African trypanosomiasis, should have been laid even lower by the tsetse's bite than he was. Kimba goes off the beam right away, which would appear to indicate that his system was completely unprepared for the shock, but, despite the loopiness and the perspiration, he never appears to be that close to death. He probably has those "hardy white lion genes" to thank for the tsetse's striking him such a glancing physiological blow.

After a pointless scene reminding us that the spider is really, really mean (was this some sort of flashback?), Kimba inadvertently provides the solution to the animals' dilemma when he gives Dan'l the idea of using spider wasps. (By the bye, those little buggers really are what Dan'l would call the spider's "pizen," and they do build mud hives, so thumbs up for the zoological shout-outs!) The others intend this to be Kimba's only contribution to the anti-spider campaign, but he ditches the humorously fatalistic Harry Hedgehog ("You're supposed to stay here and rest, but you're not going to, are you?" -- LOL!) and wobbles off to help out. Even in his poor condition, Kimba seems to realize that he's in no shape to battle the spider one-on-one; he merely serves as a decoy while the animals pepper the monster with wasps. He does, however, almost give the game away when he gives Dan'l instructions while the spider is right there to overhear them. Turnabout becomes fair play as Kimba repays Dan'l for previously taking care of him by hitching a ride when the spider appears to be bearing the baboon away to his doom. Then follows a cliff's edge climax a la "Monster of the Mountain"... and, while there don't appear to be any out-of-place piranha fish awaiting the spider in the river, even the Titan crew wasn't willing to muddy this obvious kill with any verbal qualifiers.

The ending scene could have been stronger; despite his ordeal, Kimba should certainly be able to recognize the difference between dangerous and benevolent beasties. But there's precious little to dislike here. It's a good omen for what will prove to be a rock-solid conclusion to the series.

Up next: Episode 48, "The Red Menace."

Bearing Gums

2012-01-08T20:25:00.003-05:00

On Friday, I had some plastic surgery done on the gums in the lower right corner of my mouth. Specifically, a piece of tissue was taken from my palate and grafted onto my gums to combat a receding gum line.

I have to wear a plastic, form-fitting palate cover for a while and also avoid chewing on the right side of my mouth for a couple of weeks. I'm managing OK, though "th" sounds are going to be tricky for a bit.

Book Review: HERGE, THE MAN WHO CREATED TINTIN by Pierre Assouline, translated by Charles Ruas (Oxford University Press, 2009)

2012-01-08T12:16:00.007-05:00

It won't surprise you to learn that the release of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson's TINTIN movie has been accompanied by an upsurge in publications (or reprints of publications) devoted to both the intrepid reporter and his rather unassuming creator. This particular biography has been available for several years and is a fairly decent starting point for those who want to learn more about Georges Remi and how Tintin and his "world" came to be. Numerous flaws plague the narrative, however. These include both avoidable errors of fact (such misspellings as "Charles Schultz" and "Max Sennett"; Richard Nixon's historic first trip to China being dated 1976, rather than 1972) and a somewhat shaky English translation by Charles Ruas, which, bizarrely, includes dialogue from the TINTIN books in addition to the main text. The English TINTIN translations by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner have been available for many years and are superior to Ruas' versions in every particular. It is not clear why they were not used.

Assouline is at his best when describing Herge's wartime and immediate postwar activities, which are, to say the least, controversial. While making it clear that Herge was not an active collaborator during the German occupation of Belgium -- he avoided politics in his wartime stories and "merely" published in an "officially sanctioned" newspaper that was subject to Nazi censorship -- the author extends the "gray area" of passive collaboration to somewhat wider dimensions than I have seen in other publications. Herge was very solicitous of old friends and associates who had much more involvement with the occupation regime, and he became well known after the war as a willing source of aid to those on employment blacklists. This reflected Herge's personal loyalty and stubbornness more than it did his political views, but it also left him open to similar, albeit non-government-sponsored, excommunications. (LE SOIR, the "compromised" paper for which Herge worked during the war, did not even mention his name for more than 20 years after the liberation of Belgium.) Herge's feelings of resentment and persecution are understandable, but so are the feelings of some of his critics that he managed to get off lightly and was essentially "saved" by the popularity of TINTIN.

Herge's "dark years" of the late 40s, during which he suffered greatly from depression and worked only in fits and starts as a result, also acquire a far more sombre hue in Assouline's narrative. That Herge was overworked (due to his duties as artistic director of the new TINTIN magazine and the need to reconfigure older stories for the reprint market) is well known; I did not know, however, that he felt so far gone as to seriously contemplate emigrating to Argentina (a rather questionable choice, given the famed ex-Nazi exodus to that country). Herge also tried to interest the Disney studios in his creation, only to receive a rebuff. Not until the Herge Studios became formally organized as a support group in the early 50s did original TINTIN stories resume a reasonably steady pace of production. Even then, Herge's output noticeably slowed down after 1950, as his standards for starting and executing new narratives became more and more unforgiving.

Despite the factual goofs, I would recommend this bio for those with a budding interest in Herge and the TINTIN phenomenon. A definitive critical biography, however, lies somewhere in the future.

RIP Vicar (Victor Arriagada Rios)

2012-01-05T21:59:00.005-05:00

Along with Daniel Branca, Freddy Milton, Daan Jippes, and Volker Reiche, Vicar was one of the Disney Duck artists who brought (non-reprinted) quality back to American Disney comics, thanks to Gladstone Comics' extensive use of his work during the line's first (1986-1990) incarnation. His myriad efforts remained a mainstay of all American Disney lines up through and including Boom! (cf. the stories drawn by him that were dialogued by Joe Torcivia).

The best way that I can describe Vicar's style is that it was the Duck-comics' equivalent of "comfort food." He didn't wow me with a splashy early effort, as Don Rosa did with "The Son of the Sun", or Kori Korhonen did with "Sons of the Moon". His work never possessed the slickness of Branca or Cesar Ferioli, or the cuteness and cleverness of Fecchi. The most memorable Vicar stories were generally memorable because of the extra ounces of oomph that his co-creators gave them (hi, Joe!). But he was steady and reliable, and his stuff was always high-quality. Indeed, it's thanks to him and his fellow Gladstone "creationists" that I came to expect high-quality original work in American Disney comics as a matter of course. Those with longer memories (hi again, Joe!) can attest to the fact that there was a time when the hope of once again seeing anything close to Vicar-level quality in American Disney comics seemed like a true pipe dream.

Book Review: BRINGING UP FATHER: FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA by George McManus (IDW Publishing, 2009)

2012-01-05T20:13:00.014-05:00

This particular release in the LIBRARY OF AMERICAN COMICS series slipped by me when it got into circulation a few years back. I finally got the book from my local store at a drastically reduced price.

BRINGING UP FATHER is well-known to comic-strip fanciers as a long-lived (1913 to 2000) and stylishly designed gag strip about the portly little nouveau riche Irishman Jiggs, trying manfully to maintain contacts with what the 1913 readership would call his "crowd" and the 2000 readership would term his "posse," all the while dodging the persistent efforts of his would-be socialite wife, Maggie, to force him to accept a place in high society. The ethnic angle and slightly antique sensibilities of the basic plot (which creator George McManus apparently cadged from a turn-of-the-century play called The Rising Generation) date the strip to a considerable extent. What comics fans treasure about BUF is McManus' "clear line" art style (which had a profound impact on TINTIN creator Herge, among others) and ingenious use of Art Deco details that gave a unique look to his backgrounds and decor. Later in his career, McManus would add a considerable amount of whimsy to this artistry, staging gags in background paintings, having characters play with the panel borders, etc. In the 1939-1940 time period covered in this volume, however, the artist was still playing it relatively straight, the occasional abstract background aside.

FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA collects BUF's arguably most famous version of a continuity. To call it a strict continuity is a stretch, since it's primarily a string of gags attached to a common theme, like Christmas tree lights on a cord. The theme, however, is first-rate, with McManus sending Jiggs, Maggie, their lovely and somewhat haughty daughter Nora, and Nora's new husband Lord Worthnotten on a madcap cross-country trip. This was an ideal opportunity for McManus, a natural showman and self-promoter, to drum up additional attention for the popular strip, as various American cities clamored for the honor of being included on the itinerary. The trek included not one, but two trips to Washington, DC, where Jiggs, in his time-honored manner of making high-ranking friends simply by "being himself" (just imagine, Jiggs got there several decades before such a sentiment became de rigueur on too many animated TV shows to count!), got to enjoy a friendly visit with FDR and to share his preferred repast of corned beef and cabbage with well-padded Vice President John Nance Garner. The storyline spanned both the daily and Sunday versions of the strip, and McManus let himself go in several memorable Sunday splash panels, depicting the control room and a panoramic view of Hoover/Boulder Dam, Times Square, Independence Hall, and numerous other vistas. Most of the gags, to be honest, are pretty elementary, with a lot of "isn't he stupid" laughs being had at the expense of the genial, but hopelessly out-of-his-elegant-element, Lord Worthnotten. But, in truth, this is pretty much the way the rotund McManus "rolled" at all times: frosted-cake artwork, meat-and-potatoes (or corned-beef-and-cabbage) subject matter.

The volume ramps up to the cross-country trip with a bundle of 1939 Sunday pages (under the generic title of "Love and Marriage") and a series of '39 dailies that feature, among other things, visits from (1) Maggie's narcoleptic brother, who is always seen from the back in a prone position, and (2) Jiggs and Maggie's dimwitted son Sonny, his wife, and the couple's new baby, whom the readers are encouraged to name in a contest ballyhooed by the Jiggses themselves. I'm glad that these additional materials were included; they allow those unfamiliar with BUF to become comfortable with McManus' style and approach before reaching the "main event." Essays by Bruce Canwell and Brian Walker do a fine job of sketching out McManus' career, the important contributions of McManus' longtime assistant Zeke Zekley (whom King Features Syndicate inexplicably passed over as successor to McManus following the latter's death in 1954), and the origins of the BUF concept.

I must confess to still being puzzled by one thing about BUF. I was always under the impression that Jiggs became rich by winning the Irish Sweepstakes, yet, in Walker's essay, McManus is quoted as claiming that Jiggs earned his fortune by parlaying his early career as a hod-carrier into that of a wealthy "brick manufacturer and salesman." Since Jiggs is frequently seen working at an office in the strip, the latter explanation seems to be more plausible. I still do see the "got rich quick" version in descriptions of the strip, however (e.g. the entry in Wikipedia). This issue is not a trivial one. If Jiggs really did travel the Scrooge McDuck road to wealth, as opposed to the Tommy Blurf one, then Maggie's relentless hectoring of her hubby would seem several thousand times more ungrateful, since it was precisely his hard work that gave her such a comfortable lifestyle. It would also make more sense for Jiggs to feel so strongly about being allowed to hang out with "the boys at Dinty Moore's" if wealth had suddenly been thrust upon him, leaving him no time to adjust. Did McManus selectively edit the story of Jiggs' rise as time went on? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a comic character's backstory was tweaked during a strip's run. If future BUF volumes follow -- and I certainly hope that they do -- then perhaps the disparity between these two "origin stories" can be discussed in more depth.

Happy 2012!

2011-12-29T21:45:00.005-05:00

This card from the Carl Barks estate collection was sent to Carl at an unknown date by... well, see for yourself!

Enjoy the New Year's weekend, everyone!

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 46, "The Return of Fancy Prancy"

2011-12-29T18:24:00.022-05:00

It's been almost exactly eleven months since I announced this series of posts. We're headed down the home stretch with only seven episodes to go. Six of them are good to outstanding. Unfortunately, we first have to vault over this stinker in order to get to them.

Like "A Friend in Deed," "The Return of Fancy Prancy" seems to be radically out of place in the "official" Kimba episode order. The Kimba we see here is explicitly presented as a juvenile, but that's not the worst of it. The jungle prince's authority over the other animals also seems to be in a nascent stage, which it clearly should not be by this time. In no other episode are Kimba's prerogatives as jungle leader repeatedly questioned on the basis of youth and (apparently) nothing else. Even when Bucky scolded "pupil" Kimba at the end of "The Troublemaker," he qualified his disciplinary action by saying that Kimba was a wonderful leader in spite of his behavior. Here, by contrast, Bucky is among the characters who give Kimba the "hey, kid, stay off my lawn!" treatment. To say that such an attitude doesn't ring true at this stage of the game is to state the obvious.

Unfortunately, Kimba comes off nearly as badly as some of his subjects here. As the jungle community tears itself apart following the homecoming of the "citified," self-absorbed Prancy Cheetah, Kimba essentially stands aside and lets it happen... at least, until he washes his paws of the whole mess and goes off to sulk in his lair. Then, when an invading army of ants threatens the safety of the jungle, Kimba basically pooh-poohs the disappearance of one of his best pals. To accept this level of indifference from the hero of "Jungle Thief" and "Dangerous Journey" is to demand the absolutely impossible. To be sure, Kimba redeems himself in a grand spasm of last-minute valor that manages to nudge this ep over the "low bar" of "Running Wild," but it's hard to ignore what came before. Internal evidence suggests that the Titan crew dubbed this episode sometime in the Summer or Fall of 1966; I wouldn't be surprised if they were a little taken aback at its profoundly retrograde approach.

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The kids' tree game (with no apparent safety precautions -- tsk tsk!) immediately alerts us to the fact that we're in "Kimba the Kid" mode. Perhaps the tykes are also playing "Character Mash-Up" in that Dot suddenly has a masculine voice, Wiley Wildcat has changed his name to Lynxie, and, most significantly, Dash is taking the role of "Speedy Cheetah" for the duration. Perhaps I should call Wiley "Wynxie" and Dash "Spash" the rest of the way?

It's a shame that Sonia Owens had to waste her delightful Southern accent (for Prancy) in an ep like this. Might the accents of Prancy and her former owner indicate that Prancy was brought up in... South Africa? (Ba-dump-bump!) Prancy's ex-missus makes a clear reference to the movie Born Free, hence my remark about "internal evidence" above.

Strange that "Wynxie" should be the character complaining about Prancy epitomizing a "citified" wild animal. If anything, Kimba, with his extensive experience in the human world, should have been the one to make that comment. But then, Kimba seems almost willfully obtuse in the early stages of this episode.

The old definition of a "Southern belle" as "a bulldozer disguised as a cream puff" certainly applies to Prancy. What's more, Prancy's wilfuness immediately appears to rub off on "Spash," who commences his own nose-in-the-air routine. It is this one-off moment, we'll ultimately learn, that apparently convinces Kimba that "Spash" deserves to be bitten to pieces by the ants. But did "Spash" actually do anything specific to rate such treatment?

Scarlett O'Hara would probably have killed for the "powers" that Prancy starts to exert once she determines that she wants to live in her own home. Holding a mystical attraction for other leopards/cheetahs/?? is one thing, but Prancy's "siren song" proves to be irresistible to other animals as well. Even if you grant that he was partially under Prancy's sway at the time, Rapid Cheetah's angry demand that "you kids" abandon the tree is exceptionally maladroit, just begging for a forceful Kimba to set things right. Kimba, instead, folds up like an accordion at a single wink from Prancy. Then, Kimba quietly acquiesces in Dan'l's decision to try to settle the bad feelings kicked up by Prancy's presence himself. Is Kimba a lion or a RINO in this episode?

The jungle's division into pro-Prancy and anti-Prancy factions is no doubt the silliest internal conflict that Kimba's kingdom ever experiences. Dan'l's claim to Kimba that "This is bigger than the both of us!" is, however, even more laughable. This situation is just screaming for something akin to the "open your borders some of the time" resolution of the Speed Racer episode "The Fire Race," yet Kimba refuses to exercise even the faintest sign of leadership -- passing over in silence Bucky's numbskulled comment about not getting involved in "grown-up matters," letting himself get dragooned into Dan'l's army, and finally blowing the whole conflict off with a childish "I don't wanna fight." He gets one final chance to put his paw down and stop the madness when Dan'l comes to tell him that he's been selected to face Rapid Cheetah in the "trial by combat," but he passes it up. We don't get a single "breakdown moment" akin to the one that disfigured "Running Wild," but this "death by a thousand cuts" is almost more distressing.

The dramatic ant invasion -- accompanied by a legitimately creepy musical motif that wouldn't have seemed out of place in a 1950's sci-fi movie -- gets everyone back on the same page. Even here, though, Kimba just seems like "one of the guys," cowering in the tree along with all the other animals. Strangely, everyone seems to be concerned with saving themselves, while the danger to the farm is not mentioned. Wouldn't this threat to the farm be just as dire as "The Insect Invasion"?

Prancy finally acquires some lovable qualities (those not impregnated into others by song, that is) when she panics over the absence of "Spash." Alas, we then get the painful sequence in which Kimba essentially writes poor "Spash" off. Dan'l's wrong; this is far worse than simply being "snooty." Indeed, Kimba probably deserves a brisk thwacking here even more than he did in "Running Wild." This whole sequence ONLY works if one posits the Kimba of "Fancy Prancy" as a very tentative, inexperienced leader who has not yet internalized the important truth that every animal under his rule deserves to be protected, no matter what the cost or risk may be.

To his credit, Kimba clambers over the "tipping point," sees the light, and just as quickly clambers down the rock face to rescue "Spash." A dramatic scene, and well played by Billie Lou Watt, who is in superb form the rest of the way... but again I ask, what is this "Road to Damascus" moment doing so late in the series?

The "salvation by burial" scene was also cadged from the manga; it was Kitty doing the burying and an unconscious (and considerably older) Kimba serving as the bury-ee. For me, however, the ultimate comics version of this scenario will always be from this story. (Oddly enough, in Episode 48, "The Red Menace," Kimba and his friend Pee-Wee the elephant brave a fiery ordeal similar to that faced by Donald and the boys. In that situation, however, they are more passive would-be victims than anything else.) Kimba's dramatic leap from the precipice -- with the ants trailing behind like so many spooked antelope -- almost makes up for his poor showing earlier in the ep. Almost, but not quite. It'll take more than one bath to wash that particular stink off.

The precise location of the reunion scene is a lot more confusing than it needs to be. Since Prancy locates "Spash" right away, we're presumably back in the jungle, at the place where "Spash" was buried. Kimba's "return" and Dan'l's claim that Kimba is "coming back," however, suggests that Kimba returned to where the rest of the animals had been waiting. So what happened? Did all the animals come back to the jungle, or did Kimba come back to them? This problem is present at the creation, not a product of Titan dubbing, so I don't know how it could have been repaired.

I have to admit, I got a chuckle out of the concluding bicker-thon between Dan'l and Prancy. Having met the Owenses, I can appreciate how far OUT of character this was for them. It does rather queer the mutual forgiveness of the previous scene, though. But, then again, it seems fitting that this particular "chamber piece" should end with a blown note. From here on in, though, Kimba will make plenty of sweet, sweet music.

Up next: Episode 47, "The Cobweb Caper."

Movie Review: THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN (Paramount/Columbia, 2011)

2011-12-27T20:06:00.010-05:00

This movie, for all of the mega-name cachet lent by the team of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, is apparently finding it difficult to draw anything much beyond gnats at the American box office. It is a crying shame. Though it emphasizes frenetic action at the expense of subtlety and mashes together several of Herge's TINTIN albums in a somewhat cavalier manner that is sure to distress the more demanding of Tintinologists, The Adventures of Tintin is a marvelous distillation of many of the elements that have made Herge's creation one of the most popular and easily recognized comics icons in the world. With or without the assistance of 3-D (Nicky and I chose to experience the film sans glasses), the motion-capture technology that the film uses to create the look of Herge's characters and "universe" does nothing less than bring the distinctive world of Tintin to life. What the characters actually do in said world is a little more problematic... but only a little.

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In order to provide proper introductions to Herge's main characters, Adventures combines elements from THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN (the quest to find a sunken treasure) and THE CRAB WITH THE GOLDEN CLAWS (the introduction of Captain Haddock, Tintin's perpetual partner in adventure). This is a natural pairing in that the sunken treasure was being carried on a ship helmed by Haddock's equally blustery, equally bibulous ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock. The movie goes one step beyond this by turning the conniving antiques collector Sakharine (Daniel Craig) into an outright villain and a descendant of the pirate Red Rackham, who put a curse upon all Haddocks after Sir Francis blew his own ship to kingdom come rather than let the buccaneer get the treasure. This allows for a key element in the original UNICORN -- Captain Haddock's lengthy telling (and acting out) of the tale of Sir Francis and Red Rackham to Tintin -- to be integrated into the story proper in a more imaginative manner. Likewise, the decision to change the coordinates designated by the three scrolls hidden in the masts of the model Unicorns from the location of the actual treasure to that of the ancestral Haddock estate, Marlinspike Hall, allowed Tintin and Haddock to finish what was originally part one of a two-album adventure (the second part being RED RACKHAM'S TREASURE) on a satisfying "up note" (finding the small portion of the treasure that Sir Francis had managed to salvage) and open wide the door for this movie's planned sequel. The purists may wince, but I thought that these changes made more sense than, say, some of the additions and deletions that Peter Jackson made in his version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

As regards the sheer amount -- and the nature -- of the action packed into Adventures, I'm inclined to side with the purists. To be sure, Herge included plenty of derring-do in his albums, but he never went so far as to feature a battle between a hero (Haddock) and a villain (Sakharine) using ship's winches. (Spielberg is a well-known Carl Barks fan, so I wonder whether he might have had Donald and Scrooge's famous steam-shovel fight from this story in mind.) Likewise, Spielberg isn't content to mount a mere "chase scene" during which heroes and villains scrap for the scrolls in the streets of the Moroccan port of Bagghar; no, the sequence must include Tintin literally flying through the air in hot pursuit of Sakharine's pilfering pet falcon and a local hotel literally being dragged down to the dockside (whereupon the proprietor puckishly adds an extra star to the place's Michelin rating). Most disturbingly, the mania for action allows for the inclusion of wildly improbable stunts that Herge, with his keen sense of the difference between the plausible and the implausible, would never have countenanced. Thus, the desert plane crash from THE CRAB WITH THE GOLDEN CLAWS is presented with computer-enhanced panache, but it ends with Haddock literally being whipped around and around by the propeller and an unconscious Tintin lying directly on top of the plane's engine without having his face burned. Viewers who are encouraged to read the original albums may be surprised to learn that such Perils of Pauline-style close shaves were the exception, rather than the rule, and that most of the actual physical danger was of the "someone knocks you out from behind with a blackjack" variety. (Not that we don't see some of that in the movie, as well. Spielberg is nothing if not thorough in his overkill.)

I was originally dubious when I heard that Adventures was going to rely on "mo-cap," with its inherent quotient of creepiness. But Adventures is nowhere near as weird-looking as, say, The Polar Express. Those unfamiliar with Herge will need a bit of time to get used to the stylized looks of the characters, but the decision to "start slow" (with the flea-market scene from the beginning of THE SECRET OF THE UNICORN) allows "newbies" to settle in a bit. Thankfully, no attempt whatsoever is made to include any modern technology or slang -- the forbidding opera singer Bianca Castafiore's reference to Bagghar as part of "The Third World" is the only true misstep -- and, though the characters are made to sound British, the setting and atmosphere of Tintin's home town are those of the somewhat generic "Europeville" so familiar to Herge's readers. The depictions of the main characters are also straightforward, eschewing cheap attempts to make them seem "relevant" or "cool" for the 21st-century audience. Tintin (Jamie Bell) remains his trademark bland, albeit courageous and admirable, self. Haddock (Andy "Gollum" Serkis) gets a noncanonical Scottish accent that, it must be admitted, seems to fit the character's bombastic nature quite well, and Haddock's trademark weakness for drink is, thankfully, not glossed over or eliminated. And Tintin's faithful terrier Snowy is... well, simply adorable. One does miss the verbal asides that Snowy tossed to the audience (like a bone??) once in a while in the albums, but Snowy gets plenty of funny, character-building bits anyway, mostly relating to his loves of (1) food, (2) bones, and (once he is introduced to it) (3) whisky.

The Adventures of Tintin, on balance, fully justifies Herge's wish (expressed shortly before the artist died in 1983) that Spielberg should someday get the chance to work with his characters. The failure to "prepare the groundwork" for the movie's American debut, however, is to be sincerely regretted. The movie is doing extremely well abroad, so we're bound to see the search for Red Rackham's treasure reach American theaters at some point. Perhaps by that time, positive word of mouth will have done the job that Paramount, Columbia, and other involved parties failed to do here.

Book Review: DONALD DUCK: LOST IN THE ANDES by Carl Barks (Fantagraphics, 2011)

2011-12-27T19:13:00.011-05:00

If this first volume is any indication, Fantagraphics' "THE CARL BARKS LIBRARY: The Next Generation" (my designation, not theirs) bids fair to become the CARL BARKS LIBRARY for not one, but several, generations of delighted readers to come. Impeccably produced in a sturdy, reader-friendly, slightly-smaller-than-comic-book-size format, intelligently organized and supplemented, these books will appeal to both the young reader who "just wants to read the stories" (or, for that matter, have the stories read to him or her) and the serious adult collector who wants some analytical "food for thought" on which to nibble after perusing each tale. Giving it to a family with an interest in comics but no prior exposure to Barks might therefore be an ideal way to get everyone in the family interested in Barks' world.

Another Rainbow's oversized black and white CBL was organized chronologically according to publication (WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES, DONALD DUCK FOUR COLOR, UNCLE $CROOGE, etc.). FG's approach -- using a mixture of adventures, short stories, and gag pages in each volume -- is less rigid and more "modular" in nature. While stories will still be published chronologically -- LOST IN THE ANDES is volume #7 of the planned 30-volume set, covering material that originally appeared during the period December 1948-August 1949 -- they will be rearranged to give pride of place to the most noteworthy story in each individual volume. Thus, "Lost in the Andes," the third of this book's four adventure tales in order of original publication date, gets the leadoff slot it so richly deserves. It's not yet clear whether the same practice will be applied to the short tales. They're printed in original pub. order here, but that could easily be adjusted as circumstances warrant. Barks' "ten-pagers" were at or close to their peak of quality at this time, so I can readily believe that FG found it hard to identify one short tale as markedly superior to the others.

The "Story Notes" here land on the good side of what might be called the "Donald Phelps Line," the marker separating straightforward, WSYIWYG analysis from incomprehensibly muddled quasi-academic musings. Happily, FG didn't simply reprint essays from the Another Rainbow CBL but instead commissioned entirely new comments from American and European Barks scholars. And, yes, even the one-page gags get a once-over. Indeed, the most insightful comment in the "Story Notes" section comes from Jared Gardner in his discussion of "Tunnel Vision" (aka: "The One Where HD&L Fight Over A Good Seat From Which to Watch TV, Forcing Donald to Drill Peepholes in The Wall"). It had never occurred to me before that Barks was so far ahead of his time with this gag, which originally appeared in the Spring of 1949, well before television itself, much less the "watching etiquette" of same, had been established in more than a relative handful of American homes.

If you think that this series of albums is just another excuse to peddle the umpteenth reprint of Barks stories, then you've got another think coming. They are "must" buys.

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 45, "Such Sweet Sorrow"

2011-12-23T13:34:00.023-05:00

"Such Sweet Sorrow" ranks as one of the best Kimba episodes in terms of sheer level of accomplishment alone. Somehow, the intertwined stories of Roger Ranger, Mr. Pompus, and Mary/Captain Tonga are disentangled and neatly retied in a way that, if it doesn't make entirely coherent sense in terms of what has gone before, at least presents the viewer with a reasonable approximation of a thematically consistent denouement. The "retconning" comes at a fast and furious pace, to be sure, but it seems almost low-key compared with what Marvel and DC comics fans have had to endure over the years.

The episode's script borrows liberally from a similar sequence in JUNGLE EMPEROR, albeit one that takes place considerably later in the narrative, at a time when Kimba is a grown lion and Kitty is his mate. In both the manga and animated versions, we see the "reunion" of Roger and Mr. Pompus, an attack on Kimba's kingdom led by Mary (who is the queen of a jungle tribe in JUNGLE EMPEROR, as opposed to the head of a hunting ground), the second appearance of the Mammoth of Mt. Moon, the "final dispensation" of Mary's jungle m.o., and the permanent departure of Roger and Mary from the jungle. Numerous individual moments, both dramatic and humorous, are transferred intact or quasi-intact from page to screen. Perhaps the most significant change -- one that was initiated by Mushi Studios, it must be noted, rather than the Titan dubbing crew -- concerns the whole matter of how Mary turned into Captain Tonga. In Tezuka, Mary, who's already been established as being an even bigger bitch than she seemed to be in the animated series' "A Human Friend" and "Fair Game," steals a page from Sean Connery and Michael Caine and uses "incomprehensible technology" (to wit: a fountain pen!) to manipulate the gullible primitives into thinking that she is some sort of goddess:

A real charmer, eh? By contrast, Kimba's Mary turns out to have literally lost her memory from grief after Rainbow Bridge collapsed in "A Human Friend" and she thought that she had "lost" her beloved Roger for good. Belated sympathy for the ruthless Tonga -- who'da thunk it? But it still works, provided that you're willing to accept one of the hoariest fictional tropes known to man or beast. Given that the Mary of JUNGLE EMPEROR doesn't appear to face any future legal or moral consequences for her consciously ruthless treatment of natives and jungle animals, I actually prefer the fictionally cruder, yet more emotionally satisfying, demise of Kimba's Tonga.

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That l-o-o-o-o-o-n-g opening camera pan is nothing if not langorous. It's evidently meant to pump up the idea of this episode being a meaningful epic, but it's the content that makes the ep special, not the presentation.

In leading the hippo-tank invasion of Kimba's kingdom -- a much lower-tech incursion in the manga, BTW -- Tonga initially doesn't mention any particular interest in Kimba. What would be the purpose of "occupying" the entire jungle? Is the hunting ground that hard up for firearm fodder? Tonga will change her tune to an obsessive quest for the white lion soon enough, but only after the initial invasion is defeated. It might have been a better idea to have snuck in a reference to Tonga's longstanding hatred of Kimba right at the start, in order to reorient the audience to the status quo ante of "Catch 'Em If You Can" and "The Hunting Ground" (not to mention write right over the top of the later "Too Many Elephants," in which Tonga didn't appear to recognize Kimba).

The Titan crew wisely seized upon Tonga's meeting with Mr. Pompus on the riverbank as an ideal place to let the "retconned" backstory begin to flow. I'm not going to try to piece it all together just yet, since some additional backstory is coming, but it's immediately clear that Roger, Mr.P., and the newly-acquired Kimba must have picked up Mary after the hotel bill had been settled ("A Friend in Deed") and before they headed for Paris as part of their round-the-world trip. (Presumably, Roger and Mr.P. stopped going to "girlie shows" after Mary joined the party. At least, I would hope so.) Mary's belated participation in the trip may explain why she seemed so resentful in "Fair Game." Having just acquired Kimba, Roger was naturally devoting a good deal of attention to his new pet, and Mary didn't appreciate it. So far, so good.

Methusaleh makes a much better impression here than he did in "Running Wild"; he seems to be legitimately concerned about Kimba's ability to protect the jungle by himself once Roger is no longer on hand to help (can't you just smell the foreshadowing here?). Of course, he's neglecting to mention the large number of eps in which Kimba has shown such leadership qualities in Roger's absence. Even in the case of Tonga's tank attack, the animals were performing reasonably well with their defensive measures before Roger showed up; Roger's advice about attacking the tanks from underneath was more of the "tipping point" of the encounter, and it was Kimba who dreamed up the actual plan of counterattack that put Roger's brainstorm to use.

Mr. Pompus' escape from the hunting ground, and his and Roger's subsequent battles with the alligators, are "inspired" by events in JUNGLE EMPEROR more than they are direct copies of those events. The only direct swipe is Roger's "twirl-a-thon" when he's fighting the gator underwater. The animated version slathers on a much heavier layer of slapstick; Mr.P. may have fought the gators rather ineptly in the manga, but he certainly wasn't knocked koo-koo by falling logs at the time. Gil Mack makes the most of the opportunity for wackiness with his funny riff on the Popeye theme song. Was he inspired by memories of his turn as "The Hungry Goat" when he did so?

First a Maginot Line of defenses (as seen in "Catch 'Em If You Can"), now a ring of bulldog-shaped defensive structures (which later turn out to be mobile)?! Between her apparently unrestricted power to detain "suspects" and the arsenal of weaponry at her command, one has to wonder why Tonga stopped at "merely" running a hunting compound. There must have been at least one "Unsteadystan"-ish country in the vicinity that she could have taken over...

Tonga's origin story, as related by Tonga's hirsute adjutant (Ray Owens this time), ties in quite nicely with what we learned about Tonga's "Daddy," Mr. Triggerman, in "Too Many Elephants." The picture-book-like stills used to illustrate the story give the fanciful encounter a mock-legendary feel. I wonder what happened to "the former boss." Did he die and will the hunting ground to Tonga? (I didn't know that such government positions were hereditary.) Or did she *ahem* "get rid of" him at some point? Given the adjutant's claim that Mr. Triggerman "was very impressed [*cough cough*]" with Tonga "but [knew] that he was old enough to be her father," I can think of some very unsavory scenarios that might have led to Triggerman getting a "one-way ride" into the jungle, or into some hungry animal's cage.

Note below that Mary appears to have changed her wardrobe after the events at Rainbow Bridge; she was wearing a worn brown hunting outfit in the Bridge scene. She may have lost her mind, but she apparently didn't lose her fashion sense.

More "retcons" incoming! Based on Roger's brief flashback to the Rainbow Bridge collapse, we must now wipe the events of large portions of "A Human Friend" and "Too Many Elephants" from our memory banks. If Roger and Mary's trip to the jungle in "A Human Friend" was to deliver Kimba, then, obviously, we have to ignore Kimba's saving them from the snake, Roger and Kimba's meeting at the Bridge being a "reunion," etc., and limit the "real" events of "A Human Friend" to (1) Roger and Mary's delivering Kimba, (2) the Bridge disaster, (3) Mary's crack-up, and (4) the stranded Roger's deciding to stay and teach the animals to speak human language. Likewise, Mr. Pompus' first attempt to get Roger to leave the jungle in "Elephants" never took place; only Kimba's meeting with Pee-Wee, and Kimba's attempts to save Packer Dermus and his elephant herd from being exterminated, did. Got it. Considering how mucked up the storyline had gotten, I don't think that these sacrifices are too much to accept.

Having tidied up the narrative, we now get a beautiful scene that is drawn straight from JUNGLE EMPEROR. Well, that's not strictly true; Mr. Pompus does the piping in Tezuka, and he's not in a cage at the time. But the sentiments and emotions involved are identical.

I prefer the shot of Tonga silhouetted against the starry night sky, myself. But it's strictly a personal choice.

On to the Big Battle sequence! But where would Tonga have gotten a giant flag with Kimba's face on it? Must we now posit the existence of an Omniscient Portrait-Maker Guy, as well?

Relative to JUNGLE EMPEROR, the second invasion, like the hippo-tank attack, involves the use of heavier-duty technology (those bizarre-looking bulldog attack... thingies; given the presence of hound-dog-shaped police cars in Astro Boy, perhaps Tezuka had some sort of bizarre fetish for canine-shaped conveyances). But the participation of Tonga's animal minions is an exact replica of what is seen in Tezuka, right down to the "Noah's Ark in reverse" scenes of identical animals fighting one another and the violent collision, followed by a dizzy Alphonse and Gaston routine, between Pauley Cracker and a much larger beastie. So, too, does Tezuka include the dramatic scene in which Kimba's defeated legions are forced to take shelter on the island in the midst of a rainstorm:

But here is where Kimba actually gives its title character more credit for leadership than does Tezuka. Kimba's vocal lead-in to "Sing a Happy Song" may be feeble (though I do accept that Billie Lou was trying to get across Kimba's depressed mental state by making him sound pathetic), but the manga featured nothing like Kimba's determined dash for the shoreline following the reappearance of Mt. Moon and the Mammoth. In Tezuka, at the animals' moment of deepest despair, the Mammoth appears and starts fighting back against the natives -- a far cry from simply "taking a little stroll," as she does here. Rather than simply pitching in to help the Mammoth fight, Kimba draws strength from the simple fact of his "guardian"'s return and takes it upon himself to lead the counterattack. Need I say that I vastly prefer Kimba's version of these events? The use of the ethereal "Mt. Moon music" in the absence of any additional sound effects gives the whole sequence a dream-like, quasi-mythological feel.

The sphere of Mt. Moon's influence appears to have expanded considerably since the events of "The Hunting Ground." It now includes the hunting ground itself, leading to another adaptation of a scene from Tezuka, that of the bonfire and the rebellion of Mary's long-put-upon animal charges. The animated scene is toned down in one important respect; in JUNGLE EMPEROR, before Mary is subdued, she engages Roger in a vicious knife fight. Plus, of course, Mary breaks down and drops the "Queen of the Natives" facade, as opposed to simply striking her head against a rock and regaining her memory.

The Mary-Roger reunion is almost, but not quite, ruined by the cheesy, tinkly piano-lounge music in the background. For a moment, I thought that a soap opera had suddenly broken out. Perhaps Mr. Pompus' sneeze was meant as a subtle meta-comment on the tackiness of the presentation. Or, perhaps he really was just cold.

The admirably underplayed grand departure scene -- the "ultimate" version of a very familiar Kimba narrative trope -- includes one unusual moment. What does Roger referring to when he "thanks" Kimba for everything the latter has taught him? It seems to me that Kimba should have immediately said the same thing, if not actually spoken the words first. Perhaps Roger is referring to the fact that Kimba has shown how one creature can literally make a world of difference, and that, therefore, the same may be true of the human world. That's a sentiment in which Dr. Tezuka -- and the Muse of History -- would have heartily concurred.

Up next: Episode 46, "The Return of Fancy Prancy."

It's a Titan Crew Christmas! THE FLYING HOUSE, Episodes 1 and 2

2011-12-22T14:29:00.010-05:00

The Flying House (1982-83) represents the "last bow" of the crew of talented voice professionals who brought us Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion. It's at once a "sequel" of sorts to Superbook and a "leap forward" from that earlier series, both aesthetically and thematically. Indeed, I think it's one of the better animated series of any stripe from its early-80s time period -- a pretty fallow period, to be sure, but there's a considerable amount of entertainment value to be found here.

The "blowback" that Superbook received for thrusting its young protagonists directly into Old Testament storylines -- a backlash that led to the rejiggering of the series' premise into what I consider to be an inferior format -- evidently dissipated very quickly. One would think that, if making modern-day interlopers prime movers in Old Testament tales were a no-no, then doing the same with the story of Jesus Christ and His ministry on Earth would be absolutely verboten, especially for a show telecast on the CHRISTIAN Broadcasting Network. CBN bigwigs, however, evidently decided that it was "no big" for bungling Professor Humphrey Bumble's (Hal Studer) time machine to transport Justin Casey (Billie Lou Watt), Angela Roberts (Sonia Owens), and Corky Roberts (Helena van Koert) into "extremely close and incredibly extensive" contact with Jesus and His disciples. Fer corn sakes, when the gang lands in ancient Israel, the shepherds immediately mistake Justin for the Messiah... and the interaction only "ramps up" from there. I think we really have to salute CBN for its open-mindedness in sanctioning this show for American consumption. Put it this way: I rather doubt that a similar show depicting young Middle Eastern children traveling back in time to hobnob with Mohammed will be appearing on Al-Jazeera anytime soon.

The series' first two eps, "Blast off for the Past" and "Star-Spangled Night," introduce us to the characters and take us through the events of the Nativity and the flight to Egypt. Enjoy, and we'll touch base on the "other side."

The flaws of The Flying House are present at the creation (sorry if I'm mixing Testaments on you there). You hear many of the same basic musical themes over and over and over again in episode after episode, which gets real old real fast. Yeah, I know that the earliest Disney TV series used stock music as well, but nowhere near as unimaginatively as The Flying House tends to. I'm also sorry to say that the annoying Corky doesn't improve that much upon further acquaintance. But the characterization of the robot SIR (George Gladir) is a distinct improvement upon that of Superbook's Gizmo, and Professor Bumble provides a humorous adult presence that Superbook did not have. Professor Peeper's prickly relationship with his son Christopher in Superbook may have given the adult-child relationships there an extra layer of realism, but Peeper could not be classified as endearing by any stretch of the imagination. Professor Bumble, by contrast, with his innocently inflated ego and deviated-septum-influenced voice, is a hoot. Here is where Hal Studer really came into his own as a good voice actor.

Though it's not apparent in these first couple of episodes, The Flying House also took some interesting stylistic chances in its narratives. Entire episodes were devoted to "expanded versions" of Jesus' parables, and, as if to emphasize the "story within a story" nature of these tales, the parables were generally animated in a highly stylized, almost two-dimensional fashion. In many cases, the look was almost that of a more serious version of Jay Ward's Fractured Fairy Tales.

The Flying House's core voice cast of Watt, Ray Owens (the adult Jesus), Studer, van Koert, and Gladir is supplemented by a rotating group of old pros that includes Gilbert Mack, Corinne Orr, and Peter Fernandez. (I suppose that this is why Hal Erickson, in his slightly sniffy entry on The Flying House in TELEVISION CARTOON SHOWS, complains that the show's supporting players, in particular the antagonists, tend to sound like Speed Racer villains.) Billie Lou Watt's "Astro Boy/Kimba" voice for Justin is getting a bit on the thin and strained side by this time, and van Koert's Corky will occasionally "scrootch" your inner ear with his wailing, but, by and large, the voice performances are sturdy enough. Amazingly, no end-of-show credits are given for writing, voice-acting, or anything else, for that matter -- a serious oversight, but certainly no more of one than the absence of any reference whatsoever to the show's New Testament setting in the opening sequence (which would have been a "title sequence" had a title card actually been shown at any point).

All 52 Flying House episodes are available for viewing on CBN's Web site. Give them a look!

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 44, "A Friend in Deed"

2011-12-20T19:58:00.030-05:00

Boy, that was some extended field trip! Not since Episode 29, "The Nightmare Narcissus," have we seen Roger Ranger. The next two episodes, "A Friend in Deed" and "Such Sweet Sorrow," will more than make up for Roger's lengthy absence, though. Indeed, they represent the Titan crew's belated, last-gasp, "Hail Mary" effort to make some coherent sense out of the hopelessly snarled series of events that originally brought Kimba and Roger together, later brought Kimba and Roger to the jungle, and created the fearsome Tonga from the psychic ruins of "sweet, lovable" (not!) Mary. With "damn the torpedoes" brashness, the Titanistas essentially "retcon" the events of "A Human Friend" and (I guess) hope against hope that no one will notice. In "Such Sweet Sorrow," which borrows quite liberally and imaginatively from Tezuka's JUNGLE EMPEROR, the subterfuge is carried off brilliantly; in "A Friend in Deed," not so much... especially since it is painfully clear that the latter ep belongs to a much earlier point in overall Kimba continuity than Episode 44.

To call the setup of this episode "contrived" would be an insult to soap opera writers and impresarios of stage melodramas everywhere. Indeed, I would have found it more believable had Kimba taken a hint from the writers of the old DONALD DUCK ALBUM series (or whoever wrote the 101 Dalmatians: The Series episode "The Making of...") and illustrated the lengthy flashbacks that make up most of the running time with "illustrative photographs" taken by some omniscient entity. Aside from providing a bunch of "jungle cubs" with a patently absurd physical challenge, the framing device literally doesn't make sense unless you posit than Kimba is a young, untried, and inexperienced leader -- which, at this point, he obviously should not be. Then, when you consider the fact that some of the events in the flashbacks completely fly in the face of what an extremely young Kimba should know or should be able to do... well, you're talking double-dipped disaster. "Friend" isn't quite that bad, but it definitely gets within shouting distance.

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Right away, we can sense that this is an "early" episode, thanks to the i.d.'s of the kids who make up Kimba's posse: Dot and Dinky nowhere to be seen, Geraldine, Dodie, and... um, some generic monkey among the chosen few. Geraldine's expressed wish to "live" in Rainbow Valley (indicating that the animals have not yet fully committed themselves to staying in their present location), Kimba's lack of familiarity with the elephant graveyard, and Kimba's willingness to let Roger independently negotiate with the elephants also suggest that Kimba's claim on jungle leadership is still somewhat tenuous.

Kelly Funt (Gilbert Mack) is both more Irish-sounding and more truculent (coincidence?) than he was in "Restaurant Trouble." Is it likely that he would have been this blustery and unreasonable with Kimba had this ep postdated "Restaurant Trouble"? Kimba's unimaginative replies to Kelly -- "What's so funny?", "Which way is that?", "What swamp test?" -- infantilize the scene terribly and make Kimba seem very weak compared to the imperious elephant chieftain. This episode is not off to a good start, and Kelly's reference to the swamp "suckin' ye down" seems disturbingly apropos.

Notice how small Kimba looks when he's standing next to Dash on the bank. When you compare this shot to the one seen at the end of "The Balloon That Blows Up," it becomes all the more apparent that Kimba is very young in this episode. (I hope you're catching my drift here.) Nevertheless, Kelly thinks it's perfectly OK to challenge the youngsters to swim nonstop in the swamp for 10 days. Why do I think that the length of time was just a scoche more reasonable in the Japanese original?

The kids appear to have little trouble skimming across the surface of the swamp -- indeed, in the first few swimming shots, it's not clear that they're making any unusual effort at all -- but I still find it a little strange that Kimba would be willing to tax his lungs to the extent of spinning a long yarn about his past. Given that Speedy doesn't appear to realize that not all humans are bad, I think that we can safely assume that this ep predates "Fair Game." After "A Human Friend" and before "Fair Game" doesn't leave us with much room to work with, apart from figuring out when the swamp-swim occurred in relation to the events of "Great Caesar's Ghost."

With the brief, but very effective, flashback to the storm scene of "Go, White Lion!", we literally and figuratively lift our heads out of the muck. No romantic scenes of talking constellations or butterfly guides here -- just a short, dramatic glimpse of a helpless baby Kimba floundering in the face of danger before he rallies and swims for shore. Great voiceover by Billie Lou, too.

The incident that brings Kimba, Roger, and Mr. Pompus together is a very mixed bag. It's creditable, and charming, that Kimba would think that the coastal city is part of the jungle, but how would he have gotten the idea to bite the crooks' car tire and let the air out? The delightful cameo by the unnamed dachshund (Sonia Owens, using a version of the "Southern accent" she'll later employ for the title character of Episode 46, "The Return of Fancy Prancy") is neatly cancelled out by the buffoonish antics of the robber trio, who might as well be carrying SPY VS. SPY-issue cartoon bombs. (Actually, the Spies would probably kill in order to master the crooks' ability to teleport from their wrecked car to a "perp walk" in the blink of an eye.) The Titan script calls the place where Roger and Mr. Pompus are attempting to get money a "post office," but how many p.o.'s do you know that accept cash deposits and have piles of money lying around in safes? Perhaps this really was a bank and Roger and Mr.P. were trying in vain to get an emergency loan. As we'll learn in "Such Sweet Sorrow," they were engaged in a trip around the world at the time (a jaunt that presumably included the sojourn in Paris depicted in "Fair Game"). Remember, folks, Travelers' Checks really are your friends.

M'sieur Meanly's (Ray Owens) unilateral decision to sell Kimba to the zoo (which is initially sold as straight, greed-based villainy, making Meanly's later confession to Roger more confusing than it needed to be) leads us to the ep's one significant swipe from Tezuka's manga. As presented on screen, however, Kimba's "proclamation of impending liberation" to the zoo animals is transparently absurd. For one thing, both the animals AND the humans seem to understand what Kimba is saying, else why would the humans start to panic at the thought of the animals being let loose? Obviously, this is happening well before Kimba started to learn how to "speak human language" in "A Human Friend." In Tezuka's version, the humans seem to be reacting, not to Kimba's words per se, but to the (presumably frightening) noises that the animals are making. At least, such is my impression; I don't have a translation.

Evidently, even the "God" of Japanese cartoon culture couldn't resist supping from the "lion escapes from the zoo" trope-trough. The standard authority overkill ensues, as what appears to be an entire battalion of troops and tanks (including men in Cossack hats?) threatens the peace and safety of the city far more than a frightened little lion could ever hope to. We get more teleportation magic as Roger and the betoweled Mr. Pompus pop into the alley just at the moment when the soldiers fire at Kimba (so where did those bullets go, anyway? Were they literal "magic bullets"?). Thankfully, the silliness stops for a while at this point as we segue into the most touching and effective sequence of the episode, the one that firmly bonds Kimba and Roger together.

I like the little flute theme that accompanies the distrustful Kimba's dash away from Roger and Mr.P.; it's a believable indicator of the state of flux that Kimba's mind must be in at this point. The brief glimpse of rising wind as Kimba enters the park is another nice touch, a clever bit of foreshadowing. The "collapsing tower" scene delivers the goods in terms of tension and sentiment and leads smoothly into the swamp-scene of the youngsters renewing their vow to keep swimming for Roger's sake.

As dramatic as it is, I find the "tenth-day pep talk" that Kimba gives his flagging mates to be a little problematic. To start with, there are some "technical difficulties." According to Kelly Funt, you're doomed if you stop swimming "for even an instant." Shouldn't all of the kids sink once they stop to watch Kimba try to revive Geraldine? (Said revival includes Kimba whacking Geraldine around in order to "bring her to." I don't know which is more jarring, watching that or watching Mr. Pompus beat up the robber.) The "pep talk" scene also provides additional evidence of Kimba's comparative youth in this episode. Imagine how much more forceful Kimba's oration would have seemed had it been one of the very first displays of his leadership skills -- to a group of young'uns who "represent the future of the jungle," no less! If Kimba were a well-established jungle prince at this point, then Speedy and the others would no doubt already know and appreciate what Kimba expected them to accomplish. The fact that Kimba felt the need to address Speedy's complaints at such length bespeaks an inexperienced leader who doesn't quite have his paws firmly planted on the ground as yet.

The flashback involving Kimba's liberation of the zoo animals and their subsequent trashing of the hotel doesn't accomplish much in and of itself, apart from making me nostalgic for the job that the monsters did on McDuck Mansion in DuckTales' "The Ducky Horror Picture Show." Roger certainly showed admirable understanding in forgiving Kimba's attack of near-terminal naivete, but I hardly see how this incident qualifies as one of the "many times" that Roger "saved" Kimba's life. The worst peril that Roger probably braved here was a severe case of dishpan hands after M'sieur Meanly had added the damage charges to Roger and Mr.P.'s hotel bill. The real significance of the event, of course, lies in Kimba's claim that Roger subsequently "made up his mind" to bring Kimba to the jungle to help the latter work out his true destiny. I guess that this shunts "A Human Friend," or a major portion of it, onto the list of "imaginary episodes"... unless one believes that Roger and Mary subsequently came back to the jungle to, presumably, find out how Kimba was getting along with that whole civilization-building thing. That would explain why Roger reacted with such shock and surprise to Kimba speaking to him in "A Human Friend," though not why Roger failed to recognize the fairly easily identifiable Kimba from sight alone in the first place. "Such Sweet Sorrow," as noted above, will take another -- and, this time, definitive -- whack at straightening out this muddle.

The kids' paddle-peril ends in a thoroughly conventional manner, complete with the obligatory ending "fellowship shot" in Rainbow Valley. The latter almost makes one forget the untidiness of the previous 20-plus minutes. In all significant particulars, however, this is literally "an episode out of its proper time." Hang on, though... redemption is on the way.

Up next: Episode 45, "Such Sweet Sorrow."

Book Review: POGO BY WALT KELLY: THE COMPLETE SYNDICATED COMIC STRIPS, VOLUME 1 (Fantagraphics Press, 2011)

2011-12-20T18:37:00.007-05:00

After more "false starts" than a typical (fill in your least favorite NFL team here) game, Fantagraphics' long, long, long promised hardback POGO reprint collection is well and truly underway. The opening Editor's Note by Kim Thompson and Carolyn Kelly promises us a dozen volumes, each of which will hold two years' worth of daily and Sunday strips. The X factor, of course, is the frequency of the releases. If FG can manage two volumes per year and close the deal before I turn 60, I'll be more than content... but I'll continue to keep at least a couple of fingers crossed until we move beyond the period 1953-54, which was the unfortunate stopping point for both the 1990's FG paperback reprint series and the chronological daily reprints in the Simon and Schuster paperback series which began with THE BEST OF POGO (1982).

The quality of Walt Kelly's work, even at this early and comparatively rough stage, goes without saying. The ancillaries, however, will definitely have to improve in order for this series to match what FG is presently providing in its first-class "Disney Masters" collections. Steve Thompson provides a decent general overview of Kelly's life and career, while R.C. Harvey's "Swamp Talk" gives a potted summary of some of the notes Harvey wrote for the 1990's reprint series, but there could have been so much MORE immediately relevant table-setting matter included here. Where is the discussion of Kelly's development of the POGO concept in ANIMAL COMICS, for example? If the FG folks were unable to whip up a new one from scratch, then perhaps they could have prevailed upon Craig Shutt to reproduce or expand upon his article on the early POGO in HOGAN'S ALLEY, or R.C. Harvey could simply have modified his comments on ANIMAL COMICS from the 90's FG series. Perhaps an ANIMAL COMICS discussion is planned for a future volume, but the point is that it belonged here. For a project four-odd years in the making, its absence troubles me a bit.

I must admit to getting a chuckle or two out of the poker-faced "table of contents" that followed the Editor's Note. POGO is a "continuity strip" only in the loosest sense of the word, so trying to pin down what passed for plots in these early strips is not unlike nailing jello to the wall. The heavy-duty slapstick, chase scenes, mistaken identities, etc. that clutter these early dailies would, for the most part, get shunted over to the Sundays as the dailies devoted more and more space to political riffs.

If they ever gave away a prize for "not throwing things away," then the Kelly of 1949-50 would be one of the finalists. Virtually all of the material that Kelly produced for the NEW YORK STAR gets recycled in the syndicated POGO during the first year-and-a-half, sometimes at a considerable remove from the time at which it originally appeared. For example, the gags with Pogo having a butterfly as a "bow" on his head, originally used in October 1948, didn't show up in the syndicated strip until August 1950. (I would have thought that such a simple gag would have been fodder for one of the very first syndicated strips.) Kelly didn't simply repeat old business here, but apparently gave quite a bit of thought to reformatting the gags in light of decisions that he had made about his characters. Though Pogo is still a butt of a good deal of physical humor in the early syndicated strips, his transition into the calm center of the strip is clearly underway, much as Walt Disney gradually honed the sharper edges off of Mickey Mouse in the short cartoons of the 30s.

The inclusion of the Sunday strips affords us a clearer picture of how Kelly's art style developed during this period. It's still a little on the inconsistent side; Rackety Coon Chile looks pretty much like his cute li'l future self at some points, like a wind-up toy at others. But compared to how, say, the PEANUTS characters changed in appearance, Kelly preserved his early character templates with remarkable faithfulness, adding only refinement in the future. The main exception would be Miss Ma'am'selle Hepzibah, who is actually shaped like a petite skunk (and acts like a flirtatious Minnie Mouse) in her earliest appearance but got better and better looking over time.

The heavy-duty political material, of course, is still to come. The "trial of Albert for 'eating' the Pup Dog" sequence of mid-1950 is just vague enough, and zeroes in on targets sufficiently absurd (the well-past-it Colonel Robert McCormick and William Randolph Hearst), that it's not surprising that Kelly apparently received little negative blowback from it. The idea of a comic-strip artist caricaturing real human personages in animal form was so new that it may simply have zoomed over many readers' heads. Just one year later, a similar storyline involving Churchy La Femme would have a much darker tone, and, from there, it was but a short bound to Simple J. Malarkey and all that such a move implied.

All in all, a decent start, but one that could be improved upon.

RIP Jerry Robinson, Joe Simon, Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel

2011-12-18T11:59:00.011-05:00

I have Jerry Robinson -- creator of Robin and, according to some accounts, creator of The Joker -- to thank for a healthy chunk of my comics education. In the 70s, the library at my junior high school had a copy of the original edition of THE COMICS, Robinson's 1974 history of newspaper strips. Les Daniels' COMIX: A HISTORY OF COMIC BOOKS IN AMERICA (1971) was on the same shelf, and I enjoyed that book as well, but I learned considerably more from Robinson's survey. I have always enjoyed newspaper strips every bit as much as comic books, dating back to my youthful infatuation with PEANUTS, and THE COMICS played a major role in getting me up to speed on some of the classic creations -- many of which, thankfully, are now being reprinted in full.

Joe Simon is, of course, best known for his partnership with Jack Kirby, which led to such immortal creations as CAPTAIN AMERICA and, basically, the invention of the entire romance-comics industry. Simon seemed to have a healthy appreciation of the "comic" side of comics that was relatively rare in an industry pioneer. As early as the 1950s, with FIGHTING AMERICAN, he and Kirby were semi-lampooning Captain America in an exaggerated Cold War context, but that was practically normal compared to what would follow. Simon's "Harvey Thriller" line of superhero books, and such funhouse-mirror reflections of youth culture as BROTHER POWER, THE GEEK and PREZ, were gloriously off-the-wall notions that also turned out to be aesthetic failures. As a pioneer, however, Simon could shrug off the embarrassment.

If George Orwell had a proper successor, it was probably Christopher Hitchens -- who, fittingly, counted Orwell among his inspirations. In an era of "sock puppet" partisans, it was extremely refreshing to listen to Hitchens, as I often did when he was a guest on The Michael Medved Show. He had the ability to be polemical without being off-putting and without denigrating his adversaries. Above all, he was intellectually honest enough not to permit his leftism to trump his love of liberty. Read Pete Fernbaugh's blog for a very fine tribute.

As well-known and "plugged into" contemporary events as Hitchens was, Vaclav Havel, the Czech playwright who spearheaded opposition to the Communist regime and later became president of a new Czech democracy, will unquestionably go down as a far more significant world-historical figure. It strikes me that Havel, had he been born in this country or in Western Europe, is exactly the type of pacifistic creative type who would have defended the regime that crushed the '68 Czech uprising -- albeit from afar, where direct consequences were lacking. But the up-close experience of tyranny has a way of clearing the mind of illusions. Just ask any Cuban-American -- or, for that matter, my Dad.

Empty Boxes for the Holidays

2011-12-16T20:44:00.003-05:00

The reality of kaboom! Disney's "kaput-ness" is finally starting to sink in in the most tangible possible manner... no pickups for me at the comic-book store the last two weeks. I'm also starting to be troubled just a bit by the long delay in the appearance of RICHIE RICH #5 from Ape Entertainment. I've not seen any online evidence that RR #5 (or the first Ape issue of RR GEMS, for that matter) has been released. If someone has info to the contrary, then I'd appreciate him or her letting me know.

I do have a couple of collections "on the stack" and will be getting to them during the holiday season.

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 43, "Monster of the Mountain"

2011-12-15T19:28:00.019-05:00

"Monster of the Mountain" is at once an "ethical dilemma" story in the classic mold of "Jungle Thief," a vest-pocket African travelogue (with, it must be admitted, some truly peculiar geography and zoology to contend with), and the closest that Kimba ever comes to a true "solo effort" by its star. Above all, though, it's a textbook lesson in how outstanding writing and characterization can paper over a plot twist that seems altogether too obvious in retrospect but catches one by legitimate surprise upon initial exposure. Would it be too much to call this episode Kimba's version of The Sixth Sense? Probably, but I'm going to give out a big, fat SPOILER WARNING right here and now. You have been warned.

In "Destroyers from the Desert," Kimba arguably faced his sternest physical challenge. In "Monster," by contrast, it's the well-packed space between his perked-up, white-furred, black-tipped ears that gets the main workout. Unlike his counterpart in "The Balloon that Blows Up," the Kimba of "Monster" is obviously a fully mature adolescent (a contradiction in terms, to be sure, but this is KIMBA we're discussing) and fully in charge of his kingdom -- so much so that he's palpably feeling his oats as the curtain goes up. Why else would he insist on going alone to confront a legendary creature hundreds of miles from his jungle? Kimba seems uncomfortably close here to coming down with a bad case of hubris. No tragedy of an Oedipean nature awaits Kimba in the Atlas Mountains, but he does wind up getting impaled upon the horns of a devilish dilemma, to wit: what happens when his well-honed ideals clash with the needs of another creature? Unsurprisingly, the jungle prince struggles for an ethical paw-hold before the timely appearance of a good, old-fashioned physical challenge helps to propel him onto the proper path.

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The "chimera"'s moonlit attack on the village makes for an arresting opening that even that flapping terror Darkwing Duck might appreciate. Right away, though, we get some highly problematic "local color." The Atlas Mountains, where all the action is taking place, are in extreme northwest Africa, so you'd probably be more likely to see the stone homes of North African Muslims than the stereotypical "grass shacks" of equatorial black Africans. Not that it really matters, because the inhabitants of said "shacks" turn out to be... white guys clad in striped PJ's that look as if they came right off the rack at Marshalls.

If you're scoffing at this point over the whole notion of an African bear, even "the last of an almost extinct breed"... well, it just so happens that a now-extinct species of bear did "[roam] the mountains of the north" (i.e., the Atlases) during ancient Roman times. The Atlas Bear apparently furnished the ursine action in those "bear-baiting contents" featured at the finest Roman colossi in between the Christian-chomping lion acts. There's only one hitch: the Atlas Bear was apparently not carnivorous. So the frankly amazing feat of oral strength performed by the "chimera," that of carrying away a full-grown cow in its maw, was probably beyond it. I can see where this kind of troublemaker might have come to the attention of Kimba, even so many miles away.

Kimba (sounding a bit nasally -- maybe Billie Lou was getting over a recent cold) now appears while engaged in his most impressive "construction job" to date, one that makes the simple raft of "Volcano Island" look pretty shabby. Not only that, but the boy can converse with crabs! Is there nothing he can't do? Well, aside from taking on the responsibilities of a freelance, off-site trouble-shooter. Judging by the initial reaction of Cheetah (Ray Owens) to Kimba's announcement of departure, Kimba didn't even think it necessary to tell any of his subjects that he was going off on a potentially dangerous mission. Does he think it's a mere overnighter? Kimba's maturing self-confidence seems to be tipping over into cocksuredness here, and his laughing dismissal of Cheetah's verbalized worry that the "chimera" may destroy him queers the scale even more. You just know that Kimba is riding for some sort of fall at this point. It's strange -- what would normally seem to be admirable initiative, pluck, and enterprise acquire a negative spin in this scene, precisely because it has been so well-established in previous episodes that Kimba's bravery is balanced by his sense of responsibility. That's what carefully honed characterization will do for a series.

I can't for the life of me guess the identity of the (apparently extensive) body of water that Kimba and Cheetah travel over to get to the Atlas Mountains. Given the putative location of Kimba's jungle, I don't think that it's the Atlantic Ocean, but, given that a part of the Sahara Desert would block the duo's progress on land, what else could it possibly be? Whatever it is, the waterway winds up being forbidding enough to justify the gratuitous insertion of a ferocious storm (which Kimba greets with that classic Watt-ism, "Rain, rain, go 'way!") with a wailing, demonic chorus in the background. After the big blow blows itself out, we then are asked to consider the possibility that Kimba and Cheetah were traveling on the Amazon. Piranha fish?! Nope, not even an ancient African piranha fish can be used to justify the little devils' appearance here. All of this seemingly pointless, time-wasting action, however, may have an ultimate point: that of diverting our attention from memories of the opening scene and softening us up for the appearance of Mama Bear (Sonia Owens) and Teddy Bear (Gilbert Mack) in the "diamond cave." (That last is another "literary embellishment," BTW; Wikipedia lists "iron ore, lead ore, copper, silver, mercury, rock salt, phosphate, marble, coal, and gas" as the major natural resources found in the Atlases.)

We get served additional "suckerage" when the appearance of the "chimera" is teased by a properly "frightened" Kimba before Teddy finally appears. The voices of Mama and Teddy -- matronly and cutesy-poo-ish, respectively -- couldn't have been better chosen. The two bears win our affection right away, and the attachment only gets stronger when we see Kimba get rag-dolled by little Teddy. If you're not going "Awwww..." by the time this introduction scene is finished, then you have a heart as hard as one of the not-supposed-to-exist diamonds in that cave.

If you remember that the Atlases are in northwest Africa, then the sudden appearance of the desert landscape doesn't seem quite so surprising. (The appearance of cacti that wouldn't seem out of place in a Western movie is another matter, since such cacti aren't native to Africa.) By the time spine-covered Cheetah and "tar baby" Kimba have concluded their slapstick pas a deux, we are thoroughly softened up. The scene in the bears' treetop home finishes the job, with Mama channeling no less than Winnie-the-Pooh by the offering of a "little something," the hiccuping Kimba being reduced to helpless protestations of "Aw, shucks!," and the wah-wah trumpet delivering something of a knockout blow to our wobbling natural suspicions...

... And then, we learn the awful truth.

Was this revelation set up beautifully, or what? Honestly, the first time I saw this episode, it came as, if not a complete shock, then at least a partial shock.

Now, given his well-established m.o., I can fully understand why Kimba would be so terribly taken aback by the notion of Mama battening on helpless cattle. But I think that there is an additional reason why Kimba, in particular, looks so aghast here. In my review of "The Insect Invasion," I noted that the Caesar of JUNGLE EMPEROR, far from "liberating" domesticated animals as was suggested in "Go, White Lion!", actually used them as a source of food, as opposed to letting the jungle animals fight it out amongst themselves. If the original Japanese script of this episode preserved the manga's backstory, then Kimba is now coming face to face with the harsh reality of what his father actually did "for the greater good" -- and "he can't handle the truth." Kimba's shocked realization of his wild-animal nature in such episodes as "The Trappers" and "Jungle Fun" was a gentle love-tap on the shoulder by contrast.

The use of Cheetah as the "voice of reason" actually makes a good deal of sense, precisely because he's a "generic" character. The use of the far-better-established Bucky, Pauley, or Dan'l as the sounding board would have confused the issue and put less of the onus on Kimba for working out the dilemma. For sure, Bucky, Pauley, or Dan'l probably wouldn't have simply tried to browbeat Kimba into helping Mama and Teddy. Well, perhaps Pauley would have, but he wouldn't have made such an, er, impression.

The appearance of the giant lizard (Gilbert Mack) plops the cherry on top of all of the ep's "strange sights." I'd sooner believe that Atlas Bears still exist than quietly acquiesce in the reality of this particular puppy. Just when we're getting used to the lizard's presence, we're asked to accept that he would have designs on a baby bear. Mama appears to be unprepared for such an unexpected visitor; despite her application of the Stegmutt approach to villain-busting, not to mention her ferocious nocturnal rep, she finds herself hard-pressed to prevail. One could perhaps criticize Kimba here for being a little slow to finally ditch his "foolish pride" and help Mama out -- he could certainly have helped Cheetah out by taking the hint and cutting off the latter's breathless monologue after a decent interval -- but pitch in he ultimately does, using brains rather than brawn to dispatch the lizard. Kimba's use of cave-shadows to knock the overgrown salamander off-stride is a nice call-back to the scene that introduced Mama and Teddy... and, yes, I think we can safely say that Kimba's unnecessary voice-over was explicitly meant to take some of the edge off of the piranhas' "getting rid of" the lizard. I think that even the smallest kids understood what happened here, though.

How very convenient that it starts to snow just as Kimba and Mama have buried the hatchet. The bears will now hibernate, Mama won't be tempted to steal any cattle, and the problem of not being able to start a farm in the winter has been solved. (Where will the farm be located, though? In the desert?) As in "The Balloon That Blows Up," the existence of some sort of animal GPS is posited by the clear suggestion that Kimba and Cheetah will be able to run back home from a location that they reached only via an exceedingly perilous sea voyage. Yes, you do indeed need to grant "Nature's needle-eye" a very generous diameter in order to let this episode pass through. It's so superbly done, though, that one hardly feels the squeeze.

Up next: Episode 44, "A Friend in Deed."

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 42, "The Balloon That Blows Up"

2011-12-09T19:44:00.019-05:00

A cute, charming, somewhat rickety, and generally sweet-natured episode that doesn't pretend to peddle any sort of grand, overarching theme of civilization-building, "The Balloon That Blows Up" delivers Kimba's most consistently realized portrait of "our hero as a youth." Kimba's more of a playmate to his pals Dot, Dash, and Dinky here than any sort of authority figure, and many of his actions are inherently childlike; he reacts in exaggerated fashion to outside events and suffers "endearingly cute" lapses in his logical circuitry. Kimba does get to initiate what passes for an "action scene" at story's end, but he gets considerable assistance from D-cubed in the process. For those of you who remember the Disney TV Animation series Jungle Cubs, "Balloon" has that exact same sort of breezy, carefree feel. Why the Tezuka organization insisted that this episode actually was meant to FOLLOW "Destroyers from the Desert" in time order, I couldn't begin to tell you. Perhaps "Balloon" exists in some sort of temporal wormhole in which the adult Kimba's son Rune, who appeared in the Kimba sequel series that didn't get to North America until the 80s, was allowed to stand-in for his too-busy-with-ruling Dad?

The AnimeCrazy video of "Balloon" runs a part of the episode out of order, so I'm sourcing a different link this time.

Watch episode at DubbedZone

And Tom and Tab continue to insist on their relevance. They're showing some initiative in snooping around a human camp, I'll grant them that much. Tab isn't even repeating Tom's words anymore. But what is Kimba doing in that tree in the first place? I assume he's "patrolling the perimeter" and keeping tabs on the humans (who, as we'll learn later, are nogoodniks, though Kimba doesn't have that "inside infor"). But, if so, then why bring Dot, Dash, and Dinky along?

Having thrown his weight around in more-or-less standard fashion in order to scare T&T away, Kimba quickly goes all "widdle kid" on us once he hops inside the balloon basket. Remarkably, HE'S THE FIRST ONE to make with the "bouncy-bouncies." So what was that about not wanting to damage other people's property? Dinky may strike the fatal blow by jumping on the control panel, but let it be noted here that D-cubed were just basically standing there until Kimba began to roll around. So what follows is, at its heart, Kimba's fault.

Mother Nature is soon doing her worst to (1) scuttle the aerial trip and (2) scare the kids out of their wits. This leads us into what, for Kimba, is a remarkably good singing sequence. The words to "Fly High" are very clever (though whoever wrote the words apparently ran out of workable "eye-rhymes," as indicated by the rather desperate use of "ball on a jai-a-lai"), and the Titan crew's singing performance is very good. (It's the exception, though, Billie Lou, the exception.) The African scenic eye-candy is icing on the cake (mixed metaphor alert!). It's impossible to tell in which direction the balloon is going, however. I'm guessing north, for reasons which will become clearer in just a second.

Even KIMBA wasn't above some product placement (though the
location details are a bit inaccurate).

Following the crash landing, we meet Old Jeroboam (Gilbert Mack), who would probably be less "shortsighted" if he opened his eyes. Seriously, though, I think that the old farmer is supposed to be blind, or close to it. From his appearance, and the generally desert-y look of the surrounding fields, I gather that we are north of the equator and getting into some territory that is more Muslim than black-African, though still south of the Sahara Desert.

Out of what dusty recess of his childhood did Gilbert Mack pull Dinky's wildly anachronistic reference to "1, 2, 3 O'Leary"?! He couldn't have been inspired by this contemporary single, could he? The next thing you know, the jungle animals will be playing mumblety-peg and "keepsies." The "extreme home re-make-over" sequence is all of a tumbledown piece with the light, childish nature of most of the episode; the moles' busywork below the surface is to no apparent purpose, since all of the structural damage was to Jeroboam's house, and they wind up making things even worse before everything is finally fixed up.

The episode suddenly takes on a rather wistful tone when Jeroboam tells the youngsters about his absent son Half-Pint (a clever gag for the vinologists among the viewership -- which, given the intended target audience of 1966, probably numbered exactly zero). I think that the old man may be keeping an unpleasant secret from us here. If Half-Pint is such "a good boy," then why would he think of joining "a bad bunch" like The Flying Horsemen? I have a sudden vision of a very nasty father-son parting, with Half-Pint so desperate to get away from the dead-end life on the farm that he'd be willing to throw in his lot with a rebel army.

So when did Roger Ranger teach Kimba to WRITE?! That feat goes well beyond any ability to speak the human language, especially when you consider that Kimba (1) doesn't really have the physical equipment to take pen in hand and (2) probably doesn't get many chances to practice writing due to a lack of raw materials. I don't know about you, but I'm doggoned impressed with this.

Ah, now I see why Half-Pint (Mack) found the Flying Horsemen's offer so tempting -- he must have qualified for some sort of affirmative-action bounty. How strange it is for an African rebel army to apparently have one person of color in it. The blustering General Horsefly (Ray Owens) should really have told the Horsemen who were guarding the balloon that it had a bomb in it, else they might have gotten a terrible surprise when they shot at it after Kimba and friends took off. It's not at all clear what the Horsemen and the balloon were doing in Kimba's jungle in the first place. If the Goonies are the Horsemen's "neighbors," then what good would the balloon be so far afield?

Yes, Kimba, you have every reason to feel chagrined at that logical goof. No permanent damage done, though... for, almost immediately thereafter, all of the kids have suddenly dropped the excess weight. I do NOT want to know the details of that operation, thank you. Perhaps Kimba literally burned off the calories when he turned bright red in rage after the Horsemen attacked. This is yet another indication that Kimba is in full-fledged "kid mode" here; in no other episode apart from "The Nightmare Narcissus" does Kimba react in such a cartoonily exaggerated fashion to an outside threat, and he adds a lot more theatrics this time around.

What's black, and white, and red all over? No, it's not a newspaper.

We now get a mad-dash sequence that seems to be trying to make the episode a "serious adventure" in one frantic, final sprint. Dot, Dash, and Dinky actually get to do the heavy labor for once, delivering their finest team fighting form of the series; it even tops their rescue-charge at the start of "Jungle Fun." Seeing as how D-cubed are the series' most consistent representatives of the jungle's younger generation -- the group whom Kimba most needs to persuade of the importance of helping to preserve the civilization that he has begun to build -- I almost wish that they had had more opportunities to show their support for Kimba in this manner. Not that Kimba doesn't display considerable courage as well in his "drag and drop" operation, which predictably leads to the complete destruction of ALL of Camp Bongo (were those huts all filled with plastic explosives?!).

After the obligatory "our work here is done" scene, the gang... begin to walk back to the jungle. Given the unquestionable reality of that long balloon trip, I can imagine this taking quite a while. Say, maybe that's the secret to this episode: it took so long for the kids to return that, by the time they got home, Kimba had matured into an adolescent and put aside many of his childish ways! No? Well... perhaps they were able to hitch a ride with the crop-duster once his plane landed. A naive solution, to be sure, but a fitting one for one of Kimba's most naive -- and most good-natured -- episodes.

Up next: Episode 43, "The Monster of the Mountain."

Book Review: 1948 by David Pietrusza (Union Square Press, 2011)

2011-12-09T19:06:00.008-05:00

Could David Pietrusza's latest campaign history be falling victim to the "Law of Diminishing Election Returns"? 1920 was superb; 1960, a bit less satisfying, but still very enjoyable. With the '48 election's dramatic historical backdrop -- the earliest stirrings of the Cold War and the civil rights movement, the nation's ungainly postwar stumbles back to full prosperity, the birth of Israel and the "Red Scare" -- and four-candidate field, Pietrusza should have had no trouble at all fashioning a compelling narrative here. The book, however, seems unfocused at the start, jumping from point to point in time in a most jarring manner. Not until the conventions and the campaign itself does Pietrusza really get a grip on the goings-on. Even then, the author fails to deliver a coherent explanation of why, exactly, 1948 "transformed America" (or, as the inside title page puts it, "transformed America's role in the world"; some editors at Union Square apparently weren't talking to one another as this book went to press). In that respect, 1948 falls short of Zachary Karabell's earlier work, THE LAST CAMPAIGN, which had fewer zingy anecdotes but a considerably stronger theme.

If Pietrusza is planning another campaign tome, I'd suggest he tackle 1968 -- and pay attention to what he did better in his two previous books.

Book Review: MAYFLOWER by Nathaniel Philbrick (Viking, 2006)

2011-12-06T20:30:00.004-05:00

You've no doubt heard the old chestnut: "The Pilgrim Fathers fell on their knees and then fell on the aborigines." As Philbrick's absorbing history of the relationship between the Plymouth Colony and the Native Americans from 1620 to 1676 demonstrates, the truth was considerably more complicated than that. Taking advantage of new documentation of Native American life in New England, Philbrick treats the colonists and the natives with admirable even-handedness, avoiding falling into either the "traditional triumphalist narrative" or the politically correct modern version. The story he tells is one of a slowly-developing tragedy, in which the reasonably cordial entente between the Mayflower Pilgrims and the Indians fell to pieces upon the accession of the following generation. Greed for land and Native American rivalries proved to be the kindling for King Philip's War, a regional conflict which ranks among America's bloodiest on a per-capita basis. It has been argued that the devastation and chaos let loose by this struggle and other low-profile, high-intensity colonial wars of the time persuaded Great Britain to assume much tighter control over its American colonies, leading to "the end of American independence," at least for a century or so. After reading about the human and environmental costs of King Philip's War, I can certainly see the logic in this line of thinking.

MAYFLOWER is apparently becoming a popular choice for assigned readings in high-school history classes. I welcome this, because I honestly don't think that Philbrick has any agenda to peddle. It was gratifying to read a description of "The First Thanksgiving" that, while clearing up some of the misconceptions as to the exact nature of the affair, isn't afraid to point out that a number of the well-worn cliches about this event do, in fact, have a basis in reality. The first generation of Pilgrims, despite occasional missteps, did keep the peace with the natives for several decades and maintained reasonably good relations with local tribes. As often happens, however, those who came after them profited from the earlier generation's labors without absorbing enough of its wisdom.

From Previous Offender to Newly Rendered

2011-12-04T22:01:00.009-05:00

I'm not sure whether the trade paperback version of the collected DUCKTALES: RIGHTFUL OWNERS has actually been released yet, but I have been informed by occasional commenter Comicbookrehab that ONE of the notorious pages from DUCKTALES #3 was redrawn for the reissue. Specifically, it's the page in which Gladstone stares goonily into space and John D. Rockerduck appears to be talking to thin air. You can also see the page (and click on it for a better view than the one above) here.

The redraw (and, no, I don't know who did it) is actually a little dicey in and of itself. The eyes of Gladstone, Webby, and Cinnamon Teal in several panels look... strange. I can understand this insofar as Cinnamon goes -- she is a hypnotist, after all -- but, in the first shot of Gladstone in his car, the gander looks to be under the influence of something rather stronger than Gurgleurp Cola.

I shouldn't complain too much, however. After all, I think that I bear a good share of the responsibility for making this change happen in the first place.

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 41, "Destroyers from the Desert" (and a new KIMBA KONNECTIONS Kontribution!)

2011-12-04T19:45:00.031-05:00

Back when "Kimba scholarship" was just getting started -- specifically, in the first iteration of this pioneering article in the early 1980s -- Fred Patten and Robin Leyden flagged "Destroyers from the Desert" as the "intended" final episode of the series. Despite the Tezuka Company's correction of the episode order number, which is itself rather problematic, the ep certainly does seem to be trying for an epic feel, a mounting of the "ultimate challenge" to Kimba's rule. The stern test provided by a trio of legendary marauding beasts from the wastes almost proves too much for our jungle prince, who undergoes another crisis of confidence -- a sort of adolescent version of the doubts that dogged him in "The Insect Invasion," "Jungle Thief," and (to a frankly absurd extent) "Running Wild" -- and must undergo rigorous physical training before he can bounce back and save the day. Along the way, Kimba takes a horrific physical beating, Kimba's subjects plan and at least partially execute a mournful exodus from their long-fought-for home, and Pauley Cracker enjoys his most admirable and, yes, even heroic moments of the series. With all of these ingredients, this should have been one of the series' very best adventures. Somewhat surprisingly, though, my opinion of the ep has actually declined a bit since the first time I watched it.

As has been the case with several of our recent entries, I think the problems with this episode are primarily a matter of tone. The Destroyers -- wildcat Chiller (Hal Studer), monkey Butcher Boy (Gilbert Mack), and near-mute elephant Nero (Ray Owens) -- are introduced and ballyhooed as something akin to unstoppable forces of nature, and there they should have stayed. When they start giving off quips and comments that could have done equivalent duty for a school-hallway bully or a Mafia underboss, the severity of their challenge is undercut just enough to take some of the starch out of the "epic." Atypically, the Titan's crew's voice-acting also lets the project down at times. Aside from Chiller and Butcher Boy's highly problematic voices, Billie Lou Watt and Gil Mack all but sabotage what should have been a truly memorable and powerful "crisis of confidence" scene with some of THE worst "cry-acting" I've ever heard. In a sense, the most distressing fault of all -- especially for an episode that is supposed to take place late in the game -- is that Dan'l Baboon and the other animals, upon hearing of Kimba's defeat by the Destroyers, crack like chicken bones and quickly surrender to the villains' demands. They've already fought, both literally and metaphorically, for Kimba's vision of civilization against the not-inconsiderable threats of Claw on several occasions. By this time, they should be at least a bit better prepared to react to a challenge of this magnitude.

I shouldn't really go overboard on the criticism of "Destroyers" -- on balance, there's much, much more good here than there is bad. It could, however, have been even better than it is. This is one instance in which the more "realistic" tacks taken in the various modern (and less-beloved) Japanese incarnations of the Janguru Taitei series would probably have handled the plotline better.

Watch episode on AnimeCrazy

Oh, how close this dramatic, superbly-mounted opening sequence came to being perfect! We know that something unusual is afoot when we open without the usual scene-setting panorama shot and soaring symphonic music. Instead, it's off to the desert in silence, though apparently not to check on the present condition of James Brawn and the Super Miniature Bomb. The lack of music makes even Dan'l's bug-eyed reaction to the initial appearance of the "devil wind" seem less like a channeling of John Phillip Law's skull-straining histrionics in the infamous Space Mutiny and more like a wholly appropriate reaction to what is initially sold as something akin to an other-worldly phenomenon.

Ray Owens really outdoes himself with the opening narration, and the writing is impressive as well. "This will be a sign for all to see" takes us into the realm of the Scriptural, and you've got to love the way Ray's voice trails off, ever so slightly, after "nothing grows..." (well, except for that ever-pesky baobab tree). The gang stays frozen in place as the shadowy Destroyers come into view, further amplifying that Something Really Big is Going Down...

... And then Butcher Boy opens his mouth, and a portion of the tension and awe is kissed goodbye. The Titan crew had to give these characters some kinds of voices -- they spoke in the original version, after all -- but Mack and Studer's voices for Butcher Boy and Chiller simply aren't, well, special. (Studer does give out with a pretty nasty growl during the initial charge at Kimba, I will admit.) Something unusual on the order of a Gollum-like or Voldemort-like voice was called for here, and apparently the actors couldn't, or wouldn't, create one. The dialogue is also somewhat problematic; all-powerful destructive beings shouldn't feel it necessary to bait their foe by calling him "Princie." That being said, this fight sequence is the closest that Kimba ever comes to being legitimately grisly. We do get the chopsocky-flavored "slow-motion takedown" of Kimba by Butcher Boy, which seems a little out of place in such a "hammer-meets-anvil" beatdown, but Kimba almost seems to be sweating blood at 4:55, and the aftermath of his final fall, framed against a lowering, muddy sky, is painful to behold:

The Destroyers then head for the jungle and commence to... eat the available food. Another problematic bit. I should think that any Destroyers worthy of the name would have immediately pitched into living animals and tried to consume them. Pauley quickly demonstrates that he'll have to be reckoned with by daring to challenge the great Nero (whose silent flipping of the stone with his trunk, a la George "Scarface" Raft and his coin, is an inspired ominous touch, much more intimidating than any of Chiller and Butcher Boy's baiting). Still, the alacrity with which the other animals stoop to serve the interlopers is disheartening. I'd have either (1) rushed off to aid Kimba or (2) hightailed it for the depths of the jungle, leaving the marauders to fend for themselves. As things ultimately shake out, Kimba's entire kingdom will ultimately opt for "neither of the above."

Chiller's mobster-inflected "[Kimba] had a pretty bad accident" is definitely cringe-worthy. So where would one be taken in the jungle if one were being taken for a "one-way ride"? And in what would one be riding at the time?

The sulfur springs to which Dan'l and Bucky bring the wounded Kimba may be connected in some way to the steaming springs seen in "Gypsy's Purple Potion." It's a suitably spartan location for Kimba to begin putting his physical and mental selves back together. It is rather strange, though, that Dan'l doesn't post a guard or something similar to make sure that Kimba doesn't try a premature comeback, which he certainly seems willing to attempt.

Pauley now really comes into his own, as he seems to be the only member of the jungle community who hasn't completely knuckled under to the Destroyers. His attempts to get a drink while Nero is emptying the pool are meant to be comic relief -- as is a later bit in which he gamely tries to nab the one lonesome water-driblet that the Destroyers have left behind, leading to the standard "driblet taunts Pauley as if it were alive" shenanigans -- but they also serve the grander purpose of setting up his refusal to heed the fatalistic Dan'l's litany of gloom and despair and the beginning of his effort to help Kimba master some new fighting tactics. (BTW, we never do learn where Pauley picked up this knowledge. I can understand him learning about restaurants by living in a hotel and about stalking a suspect by watching detectives on TV, but where in his experience in the human world would he have learned about what seem to be animal equivalents of martial arts?)

As with the opening scene, the first training sequence is an "incomplete success," tone-wise. The seriousness of Kimba and Pauley's strenuous purpose is emphasized by the lack of background music and Billie Lou Watt's well-sold grunts, groans, and pants. Pauley's pleading with Kimba not to give up sounds 100% sincere and heartfelt, albeit with some standard-issue Pauley over-exaggeration:

But then, when Kimba crashes yet again and despairs of his abilities, it all goes to pot. A weeping Kimba -- for example, the Kimba who thinks that Claw has finally bested him in "The Pretenders," or the Kimba who cries at the thought of making peace with Viper Snakely and Tubby in "The Trappers" -- would have been entirely appropriate here, and, indeed, Billie Lou starts out that way. After that, though, Billie Lou and Gil seem to be competing to see who can provide the most ludicrous-sounding wails. Suffice it to say that I DON'T see this as being a "Whaaaa-la-la-la-la!" moment.

To his everlasting credit, following this breakdown, Kimba "turns on a dime" and apparently partakes of a good, stiff belt of self-motivation. No spanking and/or talking-to required here, as in "Running Wild." When she arrives on the scene, Kitty practically seems in awe of the punishment her love is going through to prepare to face the Destroyers once again. But is the phrase "Let's go home" meant to suggest that Kitty is living in Kimba's jungle? We know that's not correct, so I suspect another intervention by the "mail stork" here.

Dan'l's independent decision to haul up stakes and lead the others to quit the jungle is, for all the haze of defeatism that surrounds it, arguably just another way of trying to fulfill Kimba's dream -- one that seems quite believable coming from an elderly denizen who's seen "The Law of the Jungle" in action too many times to count. It still bugs me, though, that Dan'l didn't have this idea right from the very beginning, when it became glaringly apparent what the Destroyers intended to do. The exodus also militates rather strongly against this being the final episode of the series. If Kimba's kingdom had been firmly established at this point, beyond all gainsaying, then the other animals would probably have opted for retreating deeper into the jungle, rather than completely abandoning ground that they had defended so many times before. After all, Kimba's legacy is Caesar's as well.

Carefully planned Dan'l's rearguard action may have been, but flawless? Not when Dot, Dash, and Dinky -- who merely represent, at least in part, the jungle's future -- get left behind to serve as waitstaff/potential snacks. Were the trio SO buffaloed by Butcher Boy's imperious command to "Smile when the Great Nero passes!" that they subsequently lost all capacity for rational resistance to the Destroyers' demands? Geez, you'd think that the Destroyers were "Mary Sue" characters.

"Yes, sir, Leviathan, anything you say, Leviathan!"

Just when Nero is apparently ready to fulfill Bob Dylan's command that "everybody must get stoned," Pauley dive-bombs the bad guys and rescues D-cubed. Did the parrot come up aces full in this episode, or what? Pauley even appears to make the supreme self-sacrifice as Dan'l clues Kimba in on his decision to lead the exodus. Coincidence elbows its way into the room here; what if Kitty had not arrived just at that moment to tell Kimba about Pauley's capture? Would Kimba actually have agreed that Dan'l had done the right thing and opted to avoid fighting in favor of starting over somewhere else? The point is moot, of course, since Kimba is not about to let his staunchest ally in this episode down... and off we go with what I suppose might be considered the ultimate "Kimba Runs to the Rescue!" sequence, in which we get all the standard running-Kimba poses (and, yes, Joe, the infamous "moving ground" can be seen as well).

I speculated during my review of "City of Gold" that Kimba's tail must be made of some super-strong substance. Here, we get incontrovertible proof of that fact. Kimba doesn't even hit Chiller in the eyes, yet Chiller is sufficiently blinded and/or panicked to react to Kimba's attack by running straight into a rock formation. Then it's "down goes Nero" in fittingly melodramatic style. The most memorable moment in the battle, IMHO, has nothing to do with tail-lashing, or even trunk-nipping; it's when Kimba makes clever use of sunlight and shadow to throw Butcher Boy off guard just long enough to make his decisive strike. It took a little doing to get this screen grab of Kimba's shadowed face -- which is immediately followed by a blinding flash of white light -- but it was worth it for the neat effect it produces. (The subsequent "Madonna" shot of Kimba surrounded by a halo of white light, by contrast, seems a bit like overkill.)

Kimba shows his true qualities as a leader, as opposed to a "mere" warrior, in the last couple of scenes. He displays his strong sense of responsibility to his kingdom -- the same sense that drove him to undergo all that training and to decide to face the Destroyers again rather than abandoning the jungle -- by reacting angrily to Dan'l's decision to bring the other animals to see the battle. Then, he performs the "ultimate act of forgiveness" and invites the Destroyers to become jungle citizens. "There's no place here for the Destroyers," responds the silence-breaking Nero... such could be said of "The Law of the Jungle," the plots of man and beast, and any number of additional threats to Kimba's domain. Given that the Destroyers merely retreat -- presumably to find another jungle to despoil -- Kimba might actually have been justified in being a little more forceful here, especially since other animals may be put in danger as a result of the Destroyers' defeat. The phrase "Compel them to come in" does not seem out of place in this instance.

As they say in the debt-consultation advertisement, "the feeling of relief" at the end of this episode is indeed "real." Sure, it's not all it could have been... but it seems to me to be a heck of a lot better putative final episode than the one belatedly designated as such by the Tezuka organization. Perhaps Robin Leyden and Fred Patten were right all along.

Up next: Episode 42, "The Balloon That Blows Up."

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Over at kimbawlion.com, Craig Andersen has let loose another goodie from his stash... this one, an audiotape from a 1977 fan gathering in which the Kimba crew (sans Gilbert Mack) discuss some of their best-known roles. I came along too late in the game to attend this, more's the pity...

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 40, "The Troublemaker"

2011-11-28T20:21:00.015-05:00

"The Troublemaker" is an exquisitely exasperating episode of Kimba. Many of the series' episodes, good, bad, or indifferent, dote on mixing frequently serious subject matter with slapstick-style humor. In this ep, however, the two strands don't just clash, they positively annihilate one another, in the manner of matter and anti-matter. Remember how "Volcano Island" divided neatly into a lame, slapstick-y prequel and a dramatic, adventurous wrap-up? "The Troublemaker" is a 21-gun salute to that ep's cherry bomb. (Have I used enough strained metaphors already?)

Two pictures will sum up the problems I have with this episode:

The tone of the early, supposedly "humorous" material is much too strident and shrill. Most of the blame can be laid at the feet of Benny the ostrich (Hal Studer), the "cute" sower of discord amongst our happy band. Benny can actually be seen in numerous episodes before this one -- which begs the question of where in "true" Kimba continuity this ep should be placed -- but, in all of those instances, he kept blessedly silent. Suffice it to say that Studer does as much here to make Benny a loathsome pest as he did to make Wiley Wildcat a quasi-likable rogue. Benny's grumpy grandpa Big Ben (Gilbert Mack, using his standard-issue old-man voice) isn't quite as irritating as his grandson, but he sure as shootin' has his moments.

In previous episodes, Kimba occasionally displayed "paws of clay" in terms of judgment. Here, for what amounts to the most minor of peccadilloes, he is made the "fall guy" to a positively painful extent. Since Kimba is quite clearly presented as a "minor," in a manner akin to such "school-based" episodes as "City of Gold," a number of the gags are evidently meant to reduce him to the "junior-league level" of Dot, Dash, Dinky, and Kimba's other young peers. But when the (supposed) adults start to pile on... well, that's a lot more problematic, particularly when Kimba snaps back into hero mode later in the episode when fighting a vicious bunch of wolves. The violent jerks and jolts in tone here go well beyond the standard boundaries and make for, IMHO, a less than satisfactory whole.

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Pretty brutal opening, no? The zebras' fate at the paws of the wolves here is far grimmer than it seemed to be during the brief flashback sequence in "Jungle Thief." The wolves (or wild dogs, for the nostalgic among you) seem a much more formidable threat here than they do at any other time, because they display intelligence (cf. luring the zebras into the trap at the water hole) in addition to the usual ferocity. They come off as much more than just a bunch of scavengers. Indeed, they might even have deserved a continuing role as an "outside-the-lines" menace to counterbalance Claw's jungle-focused scheming.

The gang's decision to camp near the water hole despite the warning signs is NOT a good sign for the episode. Does Kimba have "rocks in his head" to match the ones he piled together to make that egress-less shelter? More so than in "Volcano Island," this "school field trip" seems like a Junior Woodchucks-style campout, complete with specific tasks for the small fry to perform.

Kimba's sparring with Dinky, messing up his own picture, lazily rolling away, and then letting the eager Benny do his work for him sets up the premise: Kimba's "supposed to be a kid" here. All well and good, but Kimba will come to pay dearly for what amounts to a very minor sin. If he'd picked a fight with Benny, now that would have been truly childish. Notice that, from almost the very beginning, Studer has trouble giving Benny's voice a consistent sound.

Big Ben's constant bellowing of "BENNNNY BOOOOYYYY!" may cause some viewers to tear out their hair (or the plumes from their tail feathers?) before the ep's conclusion. Even more bothersome to me is the old goat's immediately deciding that Kimba must be up to no good. Even Boss Rhino wasn't that bull-headed. In a sense, Big Ben's funny proclamation, "I won't allow anyone to tamper with my grandson's ignorance!" rates as a joke told on himself -- if he had any sense of humor, that is.

We start to sense that "the fix in in" regarding Kimba as "fall guy" when Bucky doesn't seem to comprehend that it was Benny's mere presence, rather than Kimba's work-shirking, that caused Big Ben to come a-running. Big Ben didn't even find out about Benny's desire to become an artist until after the ostrich chieftain had arrived and trashed the camp. Then, after Kimba avoids further trouble by returning the recalcitrant Benny, he gets dunned for "causing [a] commotion" that was essentially nonexistent. I honestly don't blame the embarrassed Kimba for dropping the ear-shutters over his eyes at this point.

After Benny returns again and sustains his not-particularly-gruesome injury, we devolve to something between farce and "pathegy." Benny squalls in chalk-screeching-on-blackboard fashion, Bucky and Pauley irrationally blame Kimba for everything (I don't think that even "Dubya" got this much undeserved opprobrium), and the jungle prince is reduced to the role of "bootlicker." The other kids, at least, do not merely parrot the "all Kimba's fault" meme, as Dot says that Benny's injury was due to his own carelessness. So what excuse do the supposed "adults" Bucky and Pauley have for piling on?

The "blame game" is finally called -- and none too soon -- when the gang agrees to help Kimba return Benny after the latter is found in Kimba's jungle. Kimba rightfully looks relieved at this turn of events. Now, we kick into high-gear action as the wolves attack and our friends are forced into Fort Apache mode. Dot nails down the change in tone as she verbally slaps down Benny's previously "cute" squalling and directly (and entirely correctly) blames him for causing all the trouble. I'd like to think that Benny's subsequent disappearance to get help from the ostrich herd was motivated by this long-delayed comeuppance.

We now get, in quick succession, one of the series' most effective uses of weather to build drama (the sudden storm and flash flood literally washing our heroes out of hiding; the sodden chase; the abrupt return of sunshine) and one of the most vicious one-on-one fights of the series (Kimba vs. the leader of the wolf pack). It's all very impressive, and yet... and yet... I'm still smarting from the load of laugh-out-loud (not!) silliness dumped on us in the episode's first half. I do wish that Mushi had toned down the slapstick a bit and set up the dramatic scenes with more finesse. Then, the eye-popping scene of Kimba suddenly acquiring "spider-sense" and running on the side of a wall might have seemed more like the display of a hitherto-unrealized new power and less like another bit of random, off-the-wall goofiness. I will give full marks to Dot, though, for flashing some "grrrrl power" and pitching directly into the wolves to help Kimba while Dash and Dinky apparently hung back to kibitz, or something. At least one character in this ep improved her overall standing with the audience.

The ostriches' run to the rescue has always bugged me for a very simple reason: why should Big Ben, who hasn't evinced an iota of concern for Kimba and friends up until this point, suddenly want to come to their aid? Could Benny possibly have been so persuasive that he was able to overcome all that antagonism so quickly? Unfortunately, the dialogue between Benny and Big Ben is not one of the "deleted scenes" of Kimba, but, in a sense, it should have been.

Kimba absorbs a final jab in the closing scene as Bucky (rather implausibly) plays disciplinarian in the classroom. Here, however, Kimba was acting like a child, and the admonition is much milder in tone than the unfair abuse that he was obliged to swallow earlier in the episode. This moment presages the much more charming, and much more thematically coherent, "Kimba the Kid" episode "The Balloon That Blows Up," which is right around the corner. If this episode proves anything, it is that balancing the twin notions of Kimba as jungle prince and Kimba as callow youth is an exercise in equipoise worthy of Karl Wallenda... and it's all too easy to slip.

Up next: Episode 41, "Destroyers from the Desert"

Book Review: THE COMPLETE PEANUTS 1981-82 by Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Press, 2011)

2011-11-25T19:45:00.007-05:00

PEANUTS edges into the Reagan years with a few quasi-classic storylines and a distressingly high "chaff" quotient. The best of the former show a creator who is still very much capable of sniffing the wind and sensing the Zeitgeist without becoming a prisoner to its trendy fads and fashions. The justifiably famous sequence in which Peppermint Patty "runs with" Marcie's fanciful claim that a butterfly "turned into an angel and flew away" after landing on Patty's generously-sized nose gives Schulz an opportunity to take on religious hypocrisy and annoying talk shows (was "Sparky" channeling the future here, or what?). Schulz also takes a poke at the emerging regime of political correctness when Charlie Brown's baseball team is forced to temporarily abandon its sandlot home due to some well-meaning adults' imposition of newly-defined "safety standards." But, for every first-class story line like this, there are a string of scattershot gags about the Beagle Scouts, Peppermint Patty and Sally's schoolhouse stupidity, Linus' legal quotes, Lucy's beanbag sulkage, or those consarned Snoopy relatives. The latest addition to the "Snoop Pack" is Marbles, the naive, clueless brother who reacts with disbelief to Snoopy's World War I Flying Ace playacting. Seeing as how both Spike (as an infantry "blighter") and Belle (as a Red Cross nurse) actually get roped into a World War I adventure here, perhaps Marbles should count himself fortunate that he was merely cast as an "observer."

Schulz must have been one of the very few Americans who felt pangs of nostalgia for the late 70s at this time, judging by his decision to resurrect some plot ideas and characters that we thought had been left for dead alongside the twitching corpse of Jimmy Carter's "killer rabbit." Peppermint Patty and Marcie again take jobs as caddies, while Snoopy gets to play a mixed doubles tennis match with a somewhat porkier Molly Volley against the perpetually whining "Crybaby" Boobie. Meanwhile, Peppermint Patty revisits her humiliation at the "Ace Obedience School" by bidding her school goodbye and switching to the "Ace School for Gifted Children," where she thinks she'll get armloads of gifts. Not all of Schulz' digs back to the past are quite this desperate; "Pigpen" and Violet unexpectedly pop up a couple of times.

Lynn Johnston's introduction is a real bright spot, probably the best of the entire COMPLETE PEANUTS series. This isn't surprising in light of Lynn's close friendship with Schulz and the fact that FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE began to take off as the strips in this volume were first seeing the light of day. Since Johnston made the decision to retire her strip a couple of years ago, I might have liked to have seen a few of her thoughts on why she chose to do so, given that her main creative mentor, Schulz, refused to quit until he had no other choice.

Book Review: CHESTER GOULD: A DAUGHTER'S BIOGRAPHY OF THE CREATOR OF DICK TRACY by Jean Gould O'Connell (McFarland Press, 2007)

2011-11-25T19:03:00.006-05:00

The title pretty much says it all, but the accompanying illustrations make the package worthwhile. O'Connell, the founder of the DICK TRACY Museum in Woodstock, IL, where Gould dwelled for most of his working life, sketches a heartfelt and loving tribute to her father that perhaps spends a bit too much time on describing the building of and renovations to Gould's rural homestead but makes up for it with many other interesting anecdotes. The real treats are the many vintage photographs, drawings, strips, and other matter that give the TRACY fan a more thorough glimpse into Gould's early career than has previously been available. Here you will see Gould's drawings for various college publications at Oklahoma State University, his charming panel feature IN THE SPORT SPOTLIGHT for an Oklahoma City newspaper, several examples of his oddball 1924 "talking animal" strip THE RADIO CATTS (including the one in which the Catt family permanently "morphs" into human beings right before your eyes), and several of the sixty (!) different strip ideas that Gould fired off to Captain Joseph Patterson before the legendary TRIBUNE/DAILY NEWS syndicate chief famously wired him that "your Plainclothes Tracy [sic] has possibilities."

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA: Episode 39, "Running Wild"

2011-11-23T19:12:00.018-05:00

I got yer Thanksgiving turkey one day early, folks!

I'll never forget the first time that I saw "Running Wild," no matter how hard I try... and in this instance, you'd better believe that I've tried! This was one of the last eps I was able to track down during the "bootleg VHS" era, so you can imagine how delighted I was to locate it. Without having watched it first, I screened it for both myself and my longtime friend Joe Torcivia. Even as Kimba and company struggled to stop a mystifying antelope "stampede" (you'll understand the use of the quotation marks soon enough), I had no reason to doubt that the doughty jungle prince would ultimately save the day. It was, after all, what he did. Then the "crisis" came... and Kimba, to my utter horror, fell apart like a certain, long-forgotten Bonkers spear-carrier.

Every time I watch "Running Wild" now, I feel like channeling the Carl Barks Nephews during the sing-song, complete-the-sentence era: "Oh, the mortification! Oh, the humiliation! Alack! Alas!" As for Joe, I don't think that his opinion of Kimba has ever been quite the same. (Or perhaps my episode commentaries have swayed him on this matter. He can certainly enlighten me if that's the case.)

Believe me, I'd love to pass off Kimba's behavior here as being the result of an early episode being recorded out of order. In fact, there are a handful of hints that the bawling Kimba who lit out for the hills here was, in fact, supposed to be a fairly young cub. Still, there is no getting around the fact that the animals' farm, the restaurant, and even the new spirit of cooperation between Kimba and Boss Rhino are all clearly referenced, so it would be a stretch to regard the Kimba of "Running Wild" as being an insecure neophyte.

I don't know when the Titan crew got their paws on this episode, but it's apparent that they, too, didn't quite know how to handle the negative portrayal of their series' hero, or the undeniable fact that Kimba's last-ditch effort to save the antelope herd from self-slaughter was an "incomplete success" in the ignoble tradition of the failed attempt to rescue the Iranian hostages. A note of desperation can clearly be heard in the use of unnecessary narration and Dan'l's well-meaning, but frankly false, claim that "just a very few" antelope went to their doom as a result of Kimba's breakdown and the subsequent delay in sending out a "mass rescue mission." The ending is pure slapstick, which makes what has gone before all the harder to stomach. The worst episode of Kimba? Admittedly, it's hard to under-perform the likes of "Catch 'Em if You Can" and "Scrambled Eggs," and this ep is certainly better than those. But it leaves a much nastier aftertaste.

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All things considered, Kimba's introduction as the jungle's "danger detector" -- a leader constantly on the alert for real or potential threats -- turns out to be ultra-ironic.

The impressive introduction of the antelope is accompanied by a brass-driven musical theme fully worthy of a John Barry score for a James Bond film. These opening scenes are so visually arresting that I'm surprised that no amateur detective ferreting out parallels between Kimba and The Lion King has remarked on their areas of similarity to the famous wildebeest stampede in the latter film. The major difference, of course, is that the antelope technically aren't stampeding as of yet. The scenes make up for the lack of frantic action with ingenious visual effects that convey the proverbial "sense of impending doom."

Bucky gets quite a lot of screen time here, and some amusing bits of characterization as well. His rough treatment of the antelope as they trample over the farm could be considered an overcompensation of sorts for his sense of "shame" at his "relatives'" bizarre and destructive behavior. Bucky's post-passage tantrum, culminating with the inadvertent beat-down of Kimba and the anti-climactic "...Where'd you come from?", is also quite funny. During the ensuing round of bickering between Bucky and Pauley, Kimba is strangely passive -- not a good sign! Then Bucky lives up to the latter half of his writer's bible description as "a fall-guy and optimist" by rushing off to make another attempt to stop the herd. Bucky may be a bungler, but he always means well.

Methusaleh's "info-dumping" contribution here isn't nearly as impressive as it was in "Legend of Hippo Valley." The accompanying visuals aren't as clever, for sure, but I'm actually much more perturbed by Methusaleh's apparent indifference to the fates of other creatures. So, fine, Methusaleh is a sleepy old hermit and basically wants to be left alone; why is he so dismissive of what might happen to one of Kimba's staunchest (albeit highly fallible) allies, to say nothing of the thousands of antelope that are headed for a watery death (in Lake Victoria, perhaps)? Show some frickin' empathy, you senile old furball.

The ep now marks time in rather infuriating fashion, with the "rescue" of Bucky taking entirely too long -- or weren't you hoping for a few more "herd-surfing" scenes besides the nine or ten Bucky gave us here? The rescue scenes don't do a very good job of logically leading us up to Kimba's breakdown. It's very difficult to see how the actions of Kimba, Boss Rhino, and others specifically caused the antelope to begin to stampede (in a rather genteel manner, but still...). Had Kimba done something in particular to spark the degringolade, then the resulting "shock" might well have been "terrible" enough to cause him to snap, and we would have had a bit more sympathy for him. Instead, Kimba's crash lands awkwardly somewhere between "hissy-fit" territory and "self-pity" land.

The subsequent visuals in Kimba's lair are very peculiar (not to mention positively painful to watch). For one thing, Kimba seems to shrink before our eyes, and not just psychologically:

Dan'l is later able to pick him up by the tail and paddle him with no apparent effort whatsoever. So what is being suggested here? That this is supposed to be taking place during the earliest days of Kimba's reign? Then why did he previously have his larger, more adolescent bodily form? Perhaps the Mushi artists were literally trying to show that Kimba's failure of leadership has "reduced" him in the eyes of others (think of the many American cartoons and comic strips in which an embarrassed character is depicted as pint-sized). If so, then their symbolic "joke" flew about 10 feet over most people's heads.

If Kimba's body is smaller in the lair scene, then his actions suggest that his soul has shrunk to the size of a pea. Snidely dismissing the fate of the antelope as no longer his business? Spitefully pitching into Dan'l for "daring" to be so "bold" as to punish him? Humiliation piled atop humiliation. Even Kimba's resulting recovery and rededication to the task at hand are partially blighted by (1) his inexplicable decision to make a pit stop at the restaurant for some sustenance and (2) his subsequent tearing off by himself without stopping to call upon the aid of other animals (luckily for Kimba, they followed him anyway). Unless Kimba specifically ordered some Super Goobers, I don't see the point of any of this.

Giving the phrase "tarrying at the flowing bowl" a whole new meaning.

The episode now tries to make up for lost time -- and face -- with a frantic finish. Even Ray Owens' superfluous narrative description of the goings-on smack of a carnival barker's strenuous efforts to convince passers-by that big doings are afoot. The construction of the last-ditch barrier (which, despite its apparent construction by means of throwing random boulders and logs into the canyon, winds up having a remarkably coherent appearance), the build-up to the arrival of the charging antelope, and the dramatic "structural failure" are all well-choreographed, lending a genuine sense of tragedy to what had so recently seemed like farce. Still, there's no way that the hordes of antelope who hit the water qualify as anything like "a very few" of the total herd. Kimba and friends are ultimately reduced to literally throwing objects on top of the remaining antelope in order to chase them away from the water's edge. More than a few antelope lives were probably snuffed out as a result. Hardly the climax of a triumphant, exquisitely executed rescue effort.

We get a few yukkity-yuks at Bucky's expense to close matters out, but the pitifully small number of antelope who are even on hand to participate in the farming lesson is anything but a joke. In a sense, the "downer" ending of "Running Wild" is an admirable reflection of Kimba's willingness to craft a story in which the good guys don't score an unequivocal victory. The problem here is that Kimba, thanks to his mid-course spin-out, didn't actually deserve such a victory. You'll forgive me if I don't exactly find that comforting.

Up next: Episode 40, "The Troublemaker."

Comics Review: DARKWING DUCK #18 (October 2011, kaboom!)

2011-11-19T20:07:00.014-05:00

Strangely enough, there hasn't been a lot of reaction to the windup of the story that concludes in this final kaboom! Disney release. Far more attention, it seems to me, has been directed to the peculiar conditions under which "Dangerous Currency" was created. Go read the comments on The Old Haunt (the Darkwing Duck message board) if you don't believe me. I'll put that squabble aside and concentrate on the tale itself. That is, if I can ever get over the terrific headache that DARKWING #18 gave me...

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This issue bears the artistic earmarks of a rush job. James Silvani does stick in a characteristically large number of character cameos, but they are all concentrated in one scene (or, to be completely accurate, a succession of brief scenes within a larger scene) and are not augmented by the many massive, detail-laced crowd scenes that graced "The Duck Knight Returns," "Crisis on Infinite Darkwings," and at least a few portions of "Campaign Carnage." Were it not for a sprinkling of background figures here and there and the presence of Scrooge's Money Bin, I would have thought that Duckburg was the Darkwing TV show's empty-streeted version of St. Canard. Come to think of it, the bare-bones TV version of St. Canard does make a cameo appearance of sorts here... but it's not THE "Regularverse" St. Canard. (Confused yet? Just wait.) The final two pages, which ought to have been a triumphal wonder, are clunkily staged and seem almost tossed off. They indicate that Duckburg and St. Canard are quite literally right next to one another, which makes that Thunderquack trip that the gang took in DT #6 seem rather unnecessary. Or maybe this was meant to be some sort of metaphorical scene, with Duckburg in daylight and St. Canard in darkness (for the "terror" to "flap in")?

Right off the bat, we get the obligatory Negaduck meme explaining how he was the ultimate fountainhead of the evil-establishing slime. There's a nice tie-in here to Negs' "Tron-split" fate at the conclusion of "Infinite Darkwings"... but why would he and Morgana both have been sent to an eerily sterile version of St. Canard? Perhaps this is the "Multiverse"'s version of Limbo? I'd personally have liked it much better had the duo simply been left floating in the object-choked "tweener-space" that we saw in "Life, the Negaverse, and Everything." As things turn out, the only real reason for the creation of the "holding city" is to give the good guys a place to dump the baddies when all is said and done without actually destroying them. Not that that action doesn't come without its own set of difficulties...

The best moment of the issue comes when Darkwing yanks Morgana back into the "real world" (which one?? I'm losing track), knowing full well that this will also allow Negaduck to escape the nether-dimension (or whatever). It's also a pleasant surprise -- to the reader, that is -- to learn that Magica De Spell had used a slime-flavored "foof bomb" to put The Phantom Blot under her power from the beginning. This may just be Magica's "proudest" moment ever, manipulating a villain for whom even Negs evinces a certain amount of respect (which is reciprocated -- The Blot refers to Negs as "Mr. Negaduck" at one point). Remind me again why this uber-Magica needs Scrooge's Old #1 Dime -- much less the help of the rest of the "League of Eve-il," who contribute absolutely nothing of note to the proceedings?

The reason for the exceptionally contrived "yell at the slime and it's neutralized" idea suddenly becomes clear when Donald is revealed as Scrooge's mysterious Agent 44. The discipline of the Navy (heh...) falls away as Donald implores the citizens of Duckburg (including such welcome figures as Glomgold, Bubba, Gandra Dee, Doofus, Duckworth, Gladstone, and even the transformed Genie of DuckTales: The Movie) to rabble-rouse and beat back the glop. A fun excuse for a slew of cameos, but savor the moment -- the rest of the issue is, quite literally, a mess, and not just because the villains literally decide to pool their resources and congeal into a single pool of slime, leading to a series of chaotic fight panels. Incredibly, Darkwing gets Negaduck to put his guard down by summoning up the power of "nice" and telling the latter that his real weakness is that he's never had any friends. I can imagine a certain purple-clad character using that approach, but it ain't DW. That giant sucking sound you hear isn't just the weakened Negs and his "partners in slime" literally being "drained away" into the conveniently available "wasteland city" of St. Canard; it's the last shred of dignity that was left in this well-meaning, but horribly constructed, story arc gurgling down the toilet. At least Scrooge and DW get to exchange a "heartfelt handshake" at the end. Imagine the two inhabiting this picture, with the body of the kaboom! Disney line at their feet, and you've about got it.

I can't help but think that the fate of Negaduck, Magica, The Beagle Boys, The Blot, and the "League of Eve-il" may have been intended as a big ol' bird-flip to someone. Despite my fervent wish that the end of "Dangerous Currency" not leave any loose ends behind, we close the books on the kaboom! era with a whole bunch of important villains... um, where, exactly? At least the rest of The Fearsome Five didn't get dragged along for the ride. Ironically, their defeat and "depowerizing" at the end of DT #6 apparently saved them from a fate that may actually BE worse than death... that is, if American Disney comics don't get back up off the canvas from yet another would-be knockout blow.

I may post some wrap-up comments on the entire Boom!/kaboom! experience in the near future. I do want to thank all those responsible for the DARKWING comic for a clear, if ultimately blighted, aesthetic triumph that was one of the highlights of Boom!/kaboom!'s all-too-brief moments as a first-class Disney comics operation. Perhaps we can do it again sometime? Or, at least, some of us?

Comics Review: PEANUTS #0 (November 2011, kaboom!)

2011-11-19T19:47:00.005-05:00

My reaction to kaboom!'s PEANUTS graphic novel HAPPINESS IS A WARM BLANKET could charitably be described as lukewarm, and I was hoping for better when I decided to sample this $1 preview issue of the line's new PEANUTS title. No such luck. "Carnival of the Animals" and "Woodstock's Nest," the ish's two original stories, pale in comparison to the vintage Charles Schulz Sunday strips that accompany them. What I was hoping for here was a melding of the admirably faithful artwork of WARM BLANKET with the more adventurous story sensibility of the old Dell/Gold Key PEANUTS title, in which the characters frequently got put into situations that would never have occurred in the newspaper strip. The only glimmer of Dell/GK-style daringness comes in "Carnival of the Animals," when Charlie Brown, offended at Violet's cutting comment that he doesn't possess Snoopy's sense of imagination, imagines himself doing "lots of things... great things... important things," including conquering a mountain and flying a jet. The problem is that this is used as a throwaway moment; during the Dell/GK era, Charlie might actually have gotten to fly (or at least sit in) a real jet. We don't even get residual fancifulness in "Woodstock's Nest," which could just as easily have been lifted from several weeks' worth of connected Sunday strips. Irritatingly, four precious pages at the end of the book are wasted on a "preview" for the long-since-released WARM BLANKET. Much as I hate to say it, I think that I'm going to stick strictly with Fantagraphics' COMPLETE PEANUTS series.

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA, Episode 38: "Volcano Island"

2011-11-17T19:23:00.014-05:00

With the next three episodes of Kimba, the sledding gets a little rough... though we only have to endure half-an-episode's worth of lousiness here before the day is somewhat saved in the "second act." For its first 12 or so minutes, "Volcano Island" is a muddled mess of terrible puns, unsatisfactory slapstick, contrived conflict, irrelevant historical asides, and, arguably, the most senseless fight that Kimba will ever have to wage. Then the mountains start belching fire and brimstone, and the story becomes a straightforward, well-staged rescue mission, during the course of which Kimba and the recalcitrant Boss Rhino finally reach what appears to be a permanent modus vivendi. The breakthrough moment would have been even more meaningful had the duo's physical battle not been used to "re-establish" a conflict that had already been simmering for some time and did not really need to be "ginned up" in any way.

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Once again, "teacher" Bucky plays the role of camp counselor, with Kimba as one of his charges. Reminds me of the opening scene of DuckTales' "Superdoo!". Admittedly, Bucky isn't the most effective leader, but this ep shakes him off with surprising swiftness. He hardly appears after the opening scenes at the island.

An island where amphibious fish evolved from... non-amphibious fish?! Amazing. Unfortunately, the startling biological implications of the fishes' abilities on land are ignored in favor of a torrent of fish puns. Ever willing to see the good in all jungle fauna, Kimba sticks up for the fish even after all the drowning attempts, with Bucky's angry suggestion to catch them "with a hook" (where would he get one?) calling forth one of the most peculiar facial expressions that the jungle prince will ever pull:

Maybe I should throw this open for a caption contest. What IS Kimba trying to "say" here?

I wonder whether the kids' idea to build a playground was influenced by the recent construction of the "amusement center" back home. They even build a water slide. Cubs and fish bond, fight off the moonlighting Tom and Tab's abduction attempt... and run smack into Boss Rhino's bullheaded (rhino-headed?) demand that his cousin (Gilbert Mack) needs the whole damn island in order for the latter's missus to have her baby in peace. The solution to this "dilemma" is SO ridiculously obvious: find a secluded spot on the other side of the island (which is large enough to accommodate several volcanoes, it should be noted) and let the kids play in peace. (That is, if you can find elbow room next to Gusto Gummi trying to carve his masterpiece of a statue.) Fer gosh sakes, Kimba even offers to pull the kids off the island until the baby arrives! So what is there to fight about?! But the challenge is duly delivered.

As can be seen from his dejected appearance following his talk with Dan'l, Kimba clearly understands that his upcoming struggle is completely senseless. He does perk up a bit after the chief fish (Mack) tells him about Aeslop the Smart, though it's hard to see how the tale is directly relevant to Kimba's situation. Kimba, after all, has already demonstrated (in "Restaurant Trouble") that he can best Boss Rhino in a one-on-one fight, and so wouldn't necessarily have to depend upon "trickeration" to defeat his adversary, as Aeslop did. I think that the intent here was to set Kimba up as facing "impossible odds" against Boss Rhino, but the existence of that earlier fight undercuts the message.

I love the brief but charming scene in which Kimba awakens, yawns, and stretches at the cliff's edge at dawn. Not that it makes the ensuing set-to any more palatable. Boss Rhino's desire to make this silly quarrel a "fight to the finish" simply applies another twist of the knife. After the pair have beaten on each other for a while, Kimba summons the spirit of Aeslop by... spotting a chance to call off the fight and trying to take advantage of it. Not that Aeslop actually did that, or anything like it, during his tussle with Goblin, but, amazingly enough, Boss Rhino not only "calls" Kimba's bluff, he folds completely! I guess that Boss meant to say "no FOLDS barred." So what was the point of all this, again??

"The rhino is cut! He's cut, he's cut!!"

...While Kimba discovers the disadvantages of trial by combat.

Mercifully, nature now intervenes (actually, I'm surprised that Dan'l didn't initially attribute all that rumbling to the Devil), and Kimba whips his jungle charges into rescue mode. Judging by what will ultimately happen to the island -- and by how close Kimba's jungle apparently is to the island -- I'm actually surprised that Kimba's kingdom didn't turn out to be the object of a rescue mission itself. Kimba evinces a clear sense of responsibility towards the creatures who live in the danger zone. I wonder whether he would have done so had the kids not visited the area recently. Perhaps one of the "lost episodes" of Kimba (yeah, I wish...) concerned the animals' first visit to the island and their initial encounter with the fish, of whom they are clearly aware at the start of this ep.

At 16:45, Kimba displays his tool-making skills (and not for the last time) as he quickly puts together the rescue raft with no help whatsoever from the Unseen Omniscient Builder Guy. Now the visuals really start to become quite spectacular, so much so that you can almost ignore the repetitive "pew-pew-pew" of the falling chunks of flaming debris. This shot is particularly splendid:

The unusual cast of Kimba's iris is a nice touch, amplifying what must be an impending panic attack. Kimba fights it off, though, and joins forces with Boss Rhino to bring the Cousin Rhino family to safety. Boss Rhino appears to fall back into jerk mode when he snaps at Kimba for touching the baby, but this is actually just the flip side of Boss' stubbornness; he is fiercely loyal to his charges.

After a lengthy trial by fire and about five climactic, "I REALLY mean it this time!" eruptions (one of which includes some red-tinted footage from a real eruption), Volcano Island finally goes the way of Gusto's, and we get the obligatory "everyone bonds in the end" conclusion -- though Boss Rhino, of course, has to have the last word, albeit a humorously forceful one. This would have been a classic had we not wasted so much time with that battle that should never have been fought; a simple squabble over territorial rights would have set up the cooperation angle just as effectively and not left us shaking our heads at the absurdity of it all. At least the episode redeemed itself at the eleventh hour. The next two eps won't be so lucky.

Up next: Episode 39, "Running Wild."

Comics Review: DUCKTALES #6 (October 2011, kaboom!)

2011-11-14T19:58:00.011-05:00

Why, oh why was this snazzy James Silvani cover relegated to the "B" leagues? The "A" cover, also by Silvani, shows a mixed bag of DuckTales and Darkwing Duck villains (including Glomgold -- and where's HE been?) treating Scrooge's Money Bin as a swimming pool. At least the "B" has an image that's at least tangentially related to the main storyline of "Dangerous Currency," though I'm beginning to wonder whether Magica even needs the Old #1 Dime, given what is revealed herein about her suddenly burgeoning powers.

DT #6 is pretty much S.O.P. for this concluding arc -- spasms of wild, magic-flecked action interwoven with "meaningful," often heavy-handed dialogue between the principal stars. Oh, and we mustn't forget the obligatory "groan-inducing continuity gaffe." Sadly absent is the funny, character-driven repartee that made the first half of DARKWING DUCK #17 so fun to read until the bottom fell out of the barrel in the latter stages. Some absent friends (well, one foe-turned-friend and one foe, to be specific) finally reveal themselves at issue's end, but so much of DT #6 is so over-the-top that the reappearances actually have less impact than I would have hoped. Toss in a heapin' helpin' of "What th' --?" moments, and that overall "Marginal" grade is definitely teetering on the brink as we head to DW #18 and the "we-sure-hope-it's-grand" finale.

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OK, Negaduck ultimately being responsible for the slime, I can believe. But dragging a seemingly drugged Morgana back into the "Regularverse" behind him? Is Morgue in his power now?

In the first several pages of DT #6, Darkwing acts like, pardon the language, an utter jackass. Bitching about the "common" appearance of Gyro's lab? Has regular interaction with unusual sources of technical miracles (read: Honker) taught him nothing? And then, when Scrooge shows his guile by displaying a container of captured slime (how Scrooge got it, I have no clue, but he's nothing if not resourceful), DW explodes, "You old fool! You've doomed us all!!" Um, no, he hasn't, DW; you did make it safely back to Duckburg with the slime in tow, after all, so doom does not necessarily follow. This would have been a great moment for Launchpad to have "dialed back" to an earlier part of the story and seriously questioned his loyalty to DW, as opposed to Scrooge, more fervently than ever before. But LP does nothing of the kind. Nor do we see another hint of the clever byplay between Gosalyn, Webby, HD&L and Honker (the latter four happily restored to themselves, that's one comfort) that so brightened DW #17. At least the kids fared better than Mrs. Crackshell, who, after returning to Duckburg with the gang, abruptly disappears -- but not before revealing the slime's one weakness. It loses its potency if you yell near it. Yes, really. So what happens if a villain has it, or is near it, and proclaims victory in a loud and strident voice, as we have already seen on several occasions? And if you think THAT'S contrived...

The "cleaning R2D2, only to reveal a secret message" scene in Star Wars will never look "forced" to me again after reading the clumsy-beyond-belief revelation of Magica's "master plan" (what, and she didn't clue in Xanatos while she was at it?). Why would Magica need Fenton to "authenticate" the Old #1 Dime -- the same Fenton who once used the dime for an "emergency phone call," let us not forget -- much less drag him with her into the boundless corridors of time? How did the slime "bond" with the Gizmosuit in the first place, and why would said "bondage" allow the suit to broadcast what appears to be a computer projection of The Plan? And, judging by the Ducks' reactions, HD&L apparently knew that Fenton was Gizmoduck all along. Sigh. I hate those "What the hell, I'm only writing about cartoon ducks!" moments.

The rest of the ish is a mishmash of an awkward conversation between DW and Scrooge (about the propriety of bringing the kids along on adventures, this time) and a monster mash-up on the streets of Duckburg, culminating in the villains' "sliming" of Scrooge's Money Bin (with all this power at their fingertips, why bother stealing mere money anymore, guys?) and Negs' and Morgue's descent from a sky-portal that Matt Plotecher is probably regretting not copyrighting at this point. There is a level of budding apocalypticism here that worries me, and we haven't even begun the final chapter yet. Please don't tell me that there's going to be some mega-event in DW #18 that will throw both series' continuities into hotchpot and leave us poor fans high and dry just as the kaboom! era expires? At this point, I'm simply hoping for a "safe landing." Unfortunately, Launchpad's at the controls.

Book Review: RATIFICATION: THE PEOPLE DEBATE THE CONSTITUTION, 1787-1788 by Pauline Maier (Simon and Schuster, 2011)

2011-11-14T19:31:00.005-05:00

There are many, many books on the shelves about the writing of the U.S. Constitution, but surprisingly few on the contentious process by which the document was ratified by representatives in the various states. Maier's book admirably fills that gap, managing to make the lengthy, and frequently dry, debates in the ratification conventions come to life. In the course of winning the war of words, the pro-Constitution forces were forced to achieve a higher level of understanding of the meaning of the historic document, a vantage point that would serve the new United States well, most significantly in the adoption of amendments which would ultimately become known (though not until a while later) as the Bill of Rights. They also learned that simply relying on an urban-dominated majority to quickly ram ratification through (as was the case in Pennsylvania) could not serve as a global strategy. In the tense, near-run ratification fights in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York, in particular, argument and persuasion, plus a healthy respect for the legitimate points raised by the "Anti-federalists" -- points that managed to breach the dike of a largely biased and hostile popular press -- were required to carry the day. Maier is at her best when describing the struggles in these three key states, in which old Revolutionary War allies frequently found one another on opposite sides of the debate. She also explains in some detail why the proponents of ratification found the sledding to be the toughest of all in Rhode Island and North Carolina, both of which took a while to accept the reality of the Constitutional regime. This is a highly readable and important contribution to the historiography of the early American republic.

Foot Fault

2011-11-12T20:54:00.004-05:00

On Friday morning, I fell down the front steps of our house and sustained a badly sprained right ankle. I'm supposed to stay off my right foot as much as possible for the next two weeks. After watching my game, but spastically inept, efforts to manipulate a set of crutches, Nicky went out this morning and rented a "knee-walker" that will enable me to scoot around campus a little more easily. It'll be a bit dicey, but I'll manage...

Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S MICKEY MOUSE, VOLUME 2 by Floyd Gottfredson (Fantagraphics Press, 2011)

2011-11-12T19:50:00.007-05:00

Volume 2 of Fantagraphics' GOTTFREDSON LIBRARY, which takes us up through the beginning of 1934, maintains the high production standards and copious ancillaries of the first volume. Its most signature achievement, however, is the delicacy with which it defuses the explosive racial stereotypes that litter "The Great Orphanage Robbery" and "Treasure Island," the two lengthy stories that take up much of 1932. "Presentist" hand-wringing and moral preening is kept to a minimum, and the black caricatures -- the "Uncle Tom" costumes that our heroes don to raise funds in "Orphanage Robbery," the incongruously Southern-accented cannibals of "Treasure Island" -- are "explained" and placed in historical context in a straightforward fashion.

As GeoX's exhaustive analysis of "Orphanage Robbery" makes clear, that story's cachet has mostly to do with the "notorious" blackface bits; the story itself is "bitty" and constructed in a rather ramshackle fashion, with a bizarrely cruel edge to boot. (It'll be hard for me to rip on the ineptitude of the police forces of Duckburg and St. Canard in the future after seeing what passed for "justice" in 1932 Mouseton.) "Treasure Island" isn't much better, but, as that story draws to an end, the classic MICKEY strip of the 30s literally begins to take shape with the arrival of Ted Thwaites as Gottfredson's inker. For some reason, Thwaites has not yet been included among those creators who rate mini-bios in the back of the book. I certainly hope that this oversight is remedied in the next volume, for the "slicker" look of the post-1932 MICKEY owes quite a bit to Thwaites.

"Blaggard Castle," with its ante-upping themes of mind control, madness, murder, and would-be world domination, is rightly flagged as a turning point in terms of the strip's being able to handle more "serious" themes. A few seams, like those in the Frankenstein monster's neck, still show; what good would it do for mad Professors Ecks, Doublex, and Triplex to sanction widespread homicide after receiving their "food, and jewels, and gold"? Have the crack-brained schemes of Big-O and Claw taught us nothing? As effective and chilling as this Gothic tale is, the classy "The Mail Pilot" has echoed more insistently down through the years, featuring as it does (1) the debut of Mickey's aerial ally Captain Doberman, (2) the birth of the surefire theme of Mickey getting into a great adventure while trying to master a risky trade, and (3) the first use of the "sky pirate" theme in a Disney context (cf. Tale Spin and Treasure Planet). I'd put this tale up against any of the stories in the "daring aviator" strips of the time insofar as quality and excitement are concerned. "Mickey's Horse Tanglefoot" and "The Crazy Crime Wave," the last two stories in this volume, are similarly polished and professional, with the latter introducing Dippy Dawg (Goofy) as the "Perfect Fool Foil" who will tag-team with Mickey throughout most of the rest of The Mouse's comics career. To be sure, Dippy isn't as endearing in "Crime Wave" as he would become -- an indignant Mickey literally boots him out of doors at one point -- but the classic cast is now rounding nicely into shape. Even the mini-continuity "Pluto and the Dogcatcher," which bridges the gap between "Blaggard Castle" and "The Mail Pilot," contains more than its share of interesting features: to wit, a Pluto who "thinks out loud" (was Gottfredson the first creator to show a dog doing this?) and a dogcatcher who resembles a lower-class version of Pete (as if such a thing were possible).

Tom Andrae's opening essay emphasizes, with good reason, how Gottfredson "spun off" many of his early narratives from the plots of animated cartoons. IMHO, however, the MICKEY strip truly became "great" once Gottfredson gained the confidence to craft his own plots. In that respect, "The Crazy Crime Wave" may be the single most important story in this volume. Unlike some of the earlier, choppier "original" stories, "Crime Wave" doggedly follows a single throughline to an amusingly clever payoff, and the gags sprinkled throughout are character-based (Mickey vs. the arrogant big-city detectives Barke and Howell; Mickey in "wars of wits" with his unarmed ally Dippy), as opposed to being inspired by animated slapstick. Having established to his own satisfaction that he had found a winning formula that would work on the printed page just as well as Mickey's rowdy early cartoons worked on the screen, Gottfredson leaves "Crime Wave" well positioned to move confidently into his -- and the strip's -- golden years.

The Mustang Band's Last (Football) Bow

2011-11-08T21:05:00.003-05:00

Stevenson's home football slate is now complete. While the growing pains are more than evident in the team's current 2-7 record, the trajectory for SU's fledgling marching band has been up, up, up. The band has maintained a consistent core routine throughout the season but has steadily embellished it, leading up to this 10-minute performance in last Saturday's final home game against Albright.

Plans are afoot to have a pep band at the basketball games this winter, so the band members should be able to maintain their chops in preparation for 2012. Great job, guys!

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA, Episode 37: "Legend of Hippo Valley"

2011-11-06T20:15:00.021-05:00

If I were a philosophy professor and taught an ethics class, I'd want to use this episode as fodder for discussion. It's that good -- a fascinating "ethical dilemma" story packed to the brim with more "serious" content than just about any TV-cartoon ep I could name. Among the issues tackled here are: (1) the nature of good public policy -- specifically, whether the dire needs of the many should outweigh the desires and beliefs of the few; (2) the corrosive effects of religious hypocrisy; (3) the clash of mutually uncomprehending cultures; (4) the nature and importance of forgiveness. Lest you think that the "thinks" being "thunk" here are wholly highfalutin, Kimba and his subjects are also faced with executing a daunting task of engineering. Put it all together, and it's essentially the Kimba version of Bridge on the River Kwai. And I'm not just pulling that particular analogy out of my ear; I first got the idea that this ep could be used as an instructive tool when I remembered a sequence from the Alec Guinness classic (specifically, the business where Guinness has his war of wills with Sessue Hayakawa's Japanese prison commandant over the matter of officers performing manual labor) that I saw in a high-school theology class.

Much as I'd like to, I can't classify this episode as flawless, primarily because Claw makes an appearance after suffering his "definitive defeat" in "Jungle Fun"/"The Pretenders." Granted, Claw cooks up most of his villainy behind the scenes, which would make sense if he no longer felt capable of directly challenging Kimba one-on-one after the events of the two-parter, but the scenarists can't resist just one more tussle between Kimba and Claw -- and to call it perfunctory would be giving it too much credit. The opening and closing scenes are a little draggy (though the opening at least does a good job of establishing mood), and the plot's logic isn't completely airtight. That is about all that there is to rue here, however, and it's more than outweighed by the massive amount of good in this highly memorable ep.

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We never do find out exactly WHY the monkeys are jumping up and down on the hollow log. Is this meant to be an equivalent of the Ben-Hur galley-slave scene, with the monkeys setting a work tempo? Then why isn't anyone following it?

The animals' attempt to alter the river's course for purposes of irrigation demonstrates just how sophisticated Kimba's kingdom has become since the days of "Jungle Thief," when the only responses to a drought were to turn to subsistence agriculture and otherwise pray for rain. The alteration of a natural landscape (for better or worse) is a sign that civilization's grip on the jungle world has become secure.

The scene in which Kimba and Dan'l explore Hippo Valley is creepy and effective, though that interminable "side-to-side-swinging shot" of the "crumbling" cliffs bespeaks just a bit of visual cheapskatery. There's nonetheless something bothersome here; surely, the duo must have visited the valley, even in passing, long before this? According to the maps that the ep helpfully provides for our convenience, the place is immediately adjacent to Kimba's kingdom. I call Kimba and Dan'l's unfamiliarity with the terrain a "security lapse," even though the hippos who give the valley its name are not antagonistic. At least, not most of the time...

Hippo Boss has a different voice (by Hal Studer) here than he did in his most recent star turn in "Jungle Justice," but he still sports the same laid-back attitude. As in his dealings with Clunker in the earlier episode, he "doesn't want any trouble," even to the extent of treating Kimba's accusation of a hippo attack with considerable restraint. Boss' attitude is a little more problematic here, though, because Tusker (Ray Owens) appears to be (1) a regular herd member, unlike the "newbie" Clunker, and (2) a past source of trouble (notice how quickly Boss calls out the sneak after Kimba and Dan'l have left the premises). Were Boss any kind of proactive leader, his next move would be to let Kimba know that Tusker's gang was responsible for the attack, but no such admission is forthcoming (a good thing, too, otherwise we'd have many minutes of dead air on our hands). Boss' responsibility for the coming trouble is therefore considerable. This is one case in which the "in, but not of" dwelling-apart nature of the hippos' relationship with the rest of the jungle shows to distinct disadvantage.

Old Methuselah (Gilbert Mack), the former "Bushdaddy" of "The Wind in the Desert," now makes his first appearance as the living, breathing repository of jungle history, and the tale he spins is a good one. Certainly, it's the series' best use of an "African tribal" motif; in its use of semi-stylized figures, the scene bears a certain resemblance to the opening El-Ahrairah sequence of the cinematic Watership Down. The sudden refreshing of the well when the old hippo (Studer) arrives is, however, problematic. The well presumably dried up because the Kurdus refused to share their water with a stranger, and, as we'll see, the valley's "curse" can only truly be broken by what is in effect an atonement for that "original sin." By contrast, the sudden interposition of a "miracle" that saves the old hippo -- the event that turned the valley into the hippos' "sacred place" -- seems to happen simply because it needs to in order to set the plot's main conflict in motion.

One could get a great debate going, not on Kimba's laughing dismissal of the "curse" of Hippo Valley -- his disdain for supernatural phenomena has long since been established -- but on his apparently casual off-the-paw decision to continue trying to flood the valley, which would essentially flush the hippos' holy ground to hell in order to bring on high water. Should Kimba have been more sensitive to the hippos' feelings here? Does the "for the greater good" argument, um, hold water? Would Kimba's decision have looked better had he made a more strenuous effort to establish a closer "governing relationship" with the semi-autonomous hippos? There is plenty to chew on as we swing into the "action-oriented" portion of what has, up to now, been a very "talky" episode.

Evidently fully convinced that he's on the right course, both logistically and morally, Kimba flashes an unusual amount of "attitude" in the ensuing scene. Giving his subjects a serenade on the "birdophone" is not exactly S.O.P. for our normally proper jungle prince. Then, when Kitty arrives (how did she find out that Kimba needed help? Did the "mail stork" intervene here?), Kimba essentially uses sarcasm in order to shame the other animals into helping him and his lady love tote them rocks.

Hippo Boss' recognition that "the greater good" may require the use of the "sacred valley" comes too late as Tusker forcibly takes command of the herd and, full of apparent righteousness, calls the other hippos to a holy crusade. (Tusker must have felt himself possessed of a sudden spasm of "divine" strength here, else how could he have drubbed Kimba and Kitty so easily?) The truth then dribbles out as we learn that Tusker's "hippopietistic fidelity" is basically a cover for a supposed alliance with Claw. Move over, Tartuffe, you have company. Cassius sounds even more sinister in this scene than is his normal wont; he almost sounds as if he's channeling Mephistopheles. It seems fitting under the circs, given Tusker's religious posing.

Give Claw at least a tiny bit of credit; he must really like (or lust after) Kitty a lot in order to completely blow his scheme in favor of a mad "heroic" dash to save her. The best thing about the ensuing "fight," by far, is the little butt-shimmy that Kimba gives us before pitching into his arch-enemy. He's an "old paw" at this sort of thing by now. Alas, the sound then mysteriously snaps off (was there a problem with the original soundtrack at this point?), and the ensuing chase sequence looks more like a level of Donkey Kong. I half expected to hear a "Pew-pew-pew..." sound effect when Claw fell into the river and drifted out of our lives.

The exchange between Dodie and the defeated, but newly repentant, Hippo Boss is my favorite scene in the episode. The imaginative lighting effects behind Dodie are a particularly classy touch... and thank goodness that the soundtrack stayed away from an intrusive musical underscore. There was no need to hammer the point home. The same understated drama is on display when Boss decides to sacrifice the valley in order to help the other animals and save the farm. The good he does pays off, as the "curse" is definitively shattered once and for all. The episode... well, just sort of peters out from there, but in a pleasant sort of way, so I don't mind the shapelessness too much.

No doubt you're wondering, "What became of Tusker?" Good question. Did he have to pay for his treachery, face a little bit of "Jungle Justice"? This isn't the same as forgetting about Mr. Potter at the end of It's a Wonderful Life; Tusker actively conspired with Kimba's main adversary, fer gosh sakes. Given Kimba's generous nature, Tusker probably stood a chance of being forgiven, but the hippos would have had just as much to say about Tusker's fate, and I doubt that they would be as willing to acquit him. Here is where the larger theme of the ep may have come into play. Might Hippo Boss, having now recognized the virtue of forgiveness, have convinced his fellow hippos to let Tusker off lightly, or at the very worst banish him? If so, then the lesson really did take -- and the animals of Kimba's kingdom would have proven themselves to be more "civilized" than many of the human societies that they are striving to imitate. Sounds like a good note on which to dismiss the class...

Up next: Episode 38, "Volcano Island."

Book Review: DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC by Candice Millard (Doubleday, 2011)

2011-11-03T20:22:00.005-04:00

Following up on THE PRESIDENT IS A SICK MAN and THE PRESIDENT AND THE ASSASSIN, we plunge back into the 19th century for another little-told tale of what used to be called the "Chief Magistracy." This one covers arguably the most pointless Presidential assassination in history, Charles Guiteau's 1881 shooting of James Garfield just a few months into the latter's term in office. The standard historical outlay for this affair concerns the unique fact that Garfield lingered on for several months after the shooting before finally succumbing. But, as Millard makes clear in her absorbing book, Garfield's death was anything but inevitable -- and the country may have lost a potentially outstanding President as a result.

With the exception of several digressions into the career and life of Alexander Graham Bell, who used a mechanism called an "induction balance" to try to locate the bullet that had lodged behind Garfield's pancreas, Millard gives us a straightforward narrative. The Garfield she describes was a self-made man who rose from grinding poverty through education and hard work, a classic American tale. But there also seemed to be a touch of genius about the man; what other prominent American politician can claim an original proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, for example? A Civil War general and a strong advocate of equal rights for freed slaves, the well-liked Garfield might have made a more effective fight against the late-19th-century "Jim Crow" clampdown in the South had he been permitted to live out his three-score-and-ten. Unfortunately, no sooner had Garfield braved the demands of waves of office seekers (this was still the era of the spoils system) and batted down some strong-arm tactics by a would-be power behind the throne -- Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York, the patron of Garfield's Vice President, Chester Arthur -- than Guiteau's bullet cut him down.

Garfield's major wound was not actually life-threatening -- and the sad fact is, as Millard relates in sometimes sickening detail, that his doctors were more the cause of his demise than the bullet itself. The American medical establishment of the day scorned the theory of "antiseptic surgery" practiced and promoted by Britain's Dr. Joseph Lister, relying instead on such "heroic" measures as sticking unsterilized fingers and other objects into the wound. Even had Bell succeeded in locating the bullet, Garfield would still probably have died of septic poisoning. The stubborn unwillingness of American doctors to adopt Lister's theories seems rather strange to me; after all, aren't we the "innovator nation"? (Lister himself, in a fruitless attempt to convert skeptics during a lecture at the 1876 Centennial Exposition, pointed out that America had given the medical world anesthesia.) The problem seems to have been the overwhelming importance of seniority (and, hence, a certain hideboundedness) in the medical pecking order at the time. The incompetence of senior medical officers was a problem during the early days of the Civil War, giving rise to the creation of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, but evidently the problem also extended into the civilian sphere.

Guiteau gets plenty of attention here as well. He appears to have been the ultimate example of "the lights being on but nobody being home" -- a seemingly rational individual who was nonetheless the prisoner of all sorts of delusions, the most infamous of which was that he had helped Garfield win the Presidency and therefore "deserved" a government sinecure. Sadly, "watch lists" were not a common security practice in 1881 -- nor, in fact, was any sort of formal protection for the President, since John Wilkes Booth's killing of Abraham Lincoln was thought to have been a one-shot (no pun intended) affair stemming from the Civil War atmosphere -- and Guiteau was given the opening he needed to gain infamy. Guiteau's execution is a matter of some controversy due to his apparent insanity (the "insanity plea" was new at the time, but it did exist); my own opinion is that anyone who skipped out of paying hotel, boarding house, and restaurant bills as often as Guiteau did must have had some rudimentary notion of the difference between right and wrong. He just chose not to act on the impulse.

A quick and enjoyable read -- apart from the frequent incidents involving oozing pus, that is -- DESTINY OF THE REPUBLIC is another excellent example of a recent book shedding new light on an obscure but significant incident in American history.

Book Review: THE BIG ROADS by Earl Swift (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011)

2011-11-01T20:36:00.004-04:00

You may have noticed that I have links to Web pages on the histories of the U.S. and Interstate Highway systems in my "Miscellaneous" section. It won't come as a surprise, therefore, that this well-written, even-handed book tracing the development of the modern American roadway grid was an easy sell for me. Swift gives space to both the architects and the critics of the Interstate network and clears up some misconceptions concerning the development of the Interstate system along the way. One such mistaken belief is the idea that the Interstates were originally supposed to be rural highways and were only diverted into and through big cities -- often to the cities' detriment -- because of greed and political maneuvering. Swift makes it clear that, from the time the Interstates were conceived, urban routes were part of the plan, on the theory that the highways would make it easier to ship goods to and from population centers and could be used as an excuse to wipe out unsightly "slums." Only gradually did local activists begin to push back against the incursion of the I-behemoth. One of the bitterest battles, which Swift discusses in detail, took place here in Baltimore, where a diverse group of neighborhood residents resisted plans to send I-70 through the downtown area, within a stone's throw of what is now the Inner Harbor. The challenges lasted well over a decade before the would-be highway-builders finally conceded defeat. Swift concludes with a review of the challenges faced by the Interstate system today, the largest of which is a rapidly deteriorating infrastructure under the pressure of ever-increasing traffic. We can debate all we want to about the proper role of government in our lives, but I think we can all agree that the maintenance of the transportation grid is something on which we don't want to skimp.

Book Review: THE JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY: NANCY VOLUME 3 by John Stanley and Dan Gormley (Drawn & Quarterly, 2011)

2011-10-30T20:11:00.006-04:00

John Stanley continues to exude a sense of "liberation" in these stories from Dell NANCY #170-173. Evidently attempting to make a point, he leads off each issue with a wildly fanciful story in which Nancy, despite her own best efforts, is forced to brave bizarre perils in her friend Wednesday Addams', um, Oona Goosepimple's creepy mansion. This is the sort of stuff that Stanley had previously been obliged to run only in the backs of his issues of LITTLE LULU, plus a handful of issues of the TUBBY title. The weirdness seems to leach into other stories, as well; Nancy and Sluggo play ring-toss with hula hoops and a flag pole in #171's "The Hulahoops," Nancy's cat and bully Spike's dog converse with each other (in thought balloons, to be sure) in #173's "The Kitty's Collar," and a teeth-grindingly self-pitying Nancy literally clads herself in "sackcloth and ashes" in an effort to move an unyielding Aunt Fritzi in #170's "Nancy and the Cold Dinner." There is a zaniness here that many of the later issues of LITTLE LULU conspicuously lacked. Great fun, especially for those who've ever nodded their way through a series of Ernie Bushmiller's stultifying comic-strip gags.

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA, Episode 36: "Monster of Petrified Valley"

2011-10-30T18:25:00.009-04:00

This episode has gradually grown on me over time. Watching it cold, you're likely to find special guest star Colosso the Brodo Bird (Ray Owens) more than a little irritating, rather like an oversized Bubba Duck without the latter's childish charm (or all those pop-culture references). Despite the effort to put something of a "smiley spin" on it, the ep's ending is definitely a downer. With repeated viewings, however, you'll begin to notice, and appreciate, some good voice-acting performances and to become intrigued by the ep's slightly different "take" on the overarching theme of Kimba's introduction of "civilization" to the jungle. Kimba has nothing but good intentions here, to be sure, but Colosso might legitimately be considered one of the "victims" of the the former's determined push for a "new jungle order." If you squinch up your eyes long enough to "see red," you might even catch a glimpse of an inherent critique of cultural imperialism, of the nasty fallout that often results from a "clash of cultures," especially when one side holds all the important cultural advantages. "Petrified Valley" isn't a classic, but there's more substance than one would expect in what basically amounts to a series of (theoretically) comical misunderstandings.

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In eps like "Petrified Valley," "City of Gold," and the upcoming "Legend of Hippo Valley," Kimba appears to be completely unaware of certain "local myths and legends." You'd hope that it would take something less than a crisis (the danger to peril-braving Charley [Ray Owens] and Harley [Gilbert Mack] Cheetah, who appear to be "splitting the difference" of the standard "Cheetah" character between them) to get Kimba up to speed on what are, after all, potential sources of trouble and rancor in and around his kingdom.

Kimba's typical reactions to stories of monsters, spooks, and legends are relentlessly rational. It's amusing to note, though, that he's at least willing to accept the possibility that a monster of some sort might be menacing Charley and Harley. Dan'l, by contrast, immediately ridicules the notion -- a rather amusing face-turn coming from a character who was so quick to attribute earthquakes to the Devil in "The Gigantic Grasshopper."

So who told Kimba how to get to Petrified Valley, anyway? Did Pauley impart the info between sneezes but we somehow missed it?

The voice of Harvey Hedgehog (Billie Lou Watt) seems a little different here, a little higher-pitched than normal, though it's pretty much of a "tomato"/"tomahto" distinction. This will be one of little Harvey's biggest roles, so it makes sense to bring him on stage early in the proceedings, even if it's just for a "Chinese restaurant menu" gag.

Keep those rumbling rocks at the entrance to Petrified Valley in mind; you're seeing them for a reason. The Narrator helpfully tells us what anyone can plainly see, namely, that some sort of gas is responsible for the paralyzed state of the other animals in the Valley (who include among their number "dead ringers" for Cassius and Gargoyle G. Warthog). This makes Kimba's realization of the danger less impressive than it should have been. Perhaps the Narrator's spiel should have been replaced by Kimba doing some verbal, off-camera detective work to figure out what is going on. Not that Kimba himself seems to have much to worry about from the gas -- he does fall down for a moment, only to just as quickly right himself. Do I sense a cut here?

Colosso's sudden, and suitably dramatic, appearance on the scene begs a thunderingly obvious question -- why isn't HE affected by the gas? We learn in just a little while that he lives in a cave, but even that location wouldn't be safe, since the gas issues forth from "cracks and crevices" in the Earth, presumably including subterranean ones. It seems irritatingly convenient that the only two critters who don't seem to mind the miasma are precisely the ones we need to get the main plot moving.

Kimba's brief laughing jag is a wonderful "humanizing" moment for our jungle prince. He's flashed a good sense of humor in past episodes, to be sure, but that was always tempered by the essential seriousness of his character and the burden of his civilizing task. Here, we're suddenly reminded that he is just a kid, or at most an adolescent, and therefore prone to laugh at silly sights despite himself. (Billie Lou's performance of the laughter is great, too.) Kimba then frees the trapped, and extremely embarrassed, Colosso by nearly killing him with a giant boulder. Too funny.

Could it be that Colosso isn't aware of the effects of the gas, despite having lived in Petrified Valley for so many years? "I guess I just paralyzed [Charley and Harley] with fear"... so how does he explain all those other animals lying around? As we'll see, obliviousness is probably Colosso's most distinctive character trait. Scrooge should have saved his irritated comment re: Bubba: "I know, I know -- he does'nae understand!" for the Brodo Bird.

So what sort of critter is Colosso, anyway? We get a hint when Dan'l tells the story of the Brodo Birds and their forced exile from Madagascar. The Brodos developed in isolation, so it is quite possible that they are direct descendants of some sort of prehistoric creature. My best guess is that the Brodos are an evolved form of Archaeopteryx, the "missing link" between reptiles and birds. The episode confuses the issue a bit by showing Colosso slavering over flowers and a would-be meaty tidbit (Harvey Hedgehog), leaving open the question of whether he is a plant-eater or a meat-eater.

I am extremely grateful that the Titan crew did not try to "sing over" the chorus of children's voices during the singing sequence. In this case, it made sense to preserve the original Japanese background chorus of "Sing a Human Song" from "A Human Friend." The downside is that we get an additional earful of Colosso's maddening "Lo-Lo-Lo" song. I believe that the term "earworm" was invented for just such situations as this.

Kimba's generous but misguided attempts to "enable" Colosso's, er, eccentricities begin to backfire in a major way just as "the rainy season" kicks in. In truth, it's rather tough to assess the amount of "blame" that Kimba deserves for bringing Colosso back to the jungle with him. The problem is that we never actually saw the conversation in which Kimba made, and Colosso presumably accepted, the offer of jungle citizenship. Did Kimba, remembering Colosso's earlier lament that he "[wished he] had some friends," mistakenly take Colosso's benign (read: oblivious) indifference for acceptance of the offer? Or did Colosso leap at the chance to leave? For this to be a tragedy -- and it ultimately turns out to be one -- we really need to see the moment in which the fatal mistake was made. Barring that, Kimba's efforts to make Colosso feel at home seem like thoughtful gestures that simply don't work out the way they ought to.

Ironic, isn't it, that a representative of the very species that "felled"... er, "got rid of"... er, "took care of"... the Brodos comes to Colosso's defense when everyone else is ready to run the clueless creature out of Dodge without a second thought. Extra points go to Harvey for being so forgiving, but wouldn't landslides in the Valley in past "rainy seasons" have been an issue long before this? This reminds me of the DICK TRACY villain The Mole, who suddenly began having trouble with melting snow flooding his hideout at the exact moment when Tracy was trying to track him down.

Once you get another glimpse of the wabbly rocks in Petrified Valley, you just know what the denouement is going to be. Dan'l can "Monday-morning QB" all he wants about his belief that Colosso "would have wanted" to be "felled" on his doorstep, but Kimba's yell of despair at Colosso's fate is the true end of the ep. There's no question that Kimba feels some share of responsibility for what happened to the Brodo, that he regards the incident as one of his few outright failures. The fact that Kimba probably can't put his paw on exactly why he should feel at fault for what is basically an unfortunate accident makes his "roar of regret" all the more painful. It's another great example of how this "kids' cartoon," despite all the editorial attempts to soften the blows, was able to tackle big ideas and powerful emotions with remarkable thoughtfulness and subtlety.

Up next: Episode 37, "Legend of Hippo Valley."

THE BEST (AND REST) OF KIMBA, Episode 35: "The Pretenders"

2011-10-23T18:27:00.018-04:00

Refer to last week's entry to get caught up to speed on the first chunk of this wildly uneven two-episode tale.

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After we learn of Kimba's near-fatal accident at the end of the extended flashback, everyone seems to remain in a bit of a daze for a while. Kimba's lair is suddenly perched on the edge of a precipice, presumably to lend the long, slow tracking sequence even more drama and pathos than one would expect it to have under the circumstances. For purposes of security and safety, I can think of a whole lot of reasons not to have Kimba's home in such a place.

In all honesty, despite his shaky opening response to the faithful Kitty, Kimba doesn't seem all that badly injured. We see a bandage on his leg, a few dirt streaks, and that's about it. For sure, it won't take him very long to snap back to full strength. In their brief (and utterly pointless) dialogue following the lair scene, Bucky, Dan'l, and Pauley actually come across as far more somnolent and mind-croggled than our wounded jungle prince. C'mon, Gil, "I'm afraid he's plotting some kind of revenge" shouldn't sound so, well, wistful.

Kimba's "He must really have changed... but completely!" is a fascinating line to me. Out of nowhere, Billie Lou Watt suddenly tosses off a bit of slang that was 20 years out of date at the time this was recorded. It's like a character in a WWII-era movie suddenly breaking into a chorus of "Vo-do-de-oh-do," or a "contemporary urban dancer" abruptly adopting trash-bag pants and an open vest. (Magic shoes optional.) Then, when you factor in the odds that a lion in the middle of Africa, even one with an ultra-rare gift of speech, would come up with such a phrase independently... But if you think this was anachronistic, well, just wait until the curtain goes up on Tom and Tab.

OK, I'd almost be willing to accept T&T magically producing hats and canes out of nowhere, since they are arguably the most consistently "Toony" characters on the show. In their effort to convince the jungle youngsters that "the bad guys have all the fun," it would have been perfectly fine for T&T to have play-acted in exaggerated fashion, perhaps mutating themselves into "international objects" along the way. But I defy even the staunchest proponents of the "anything goes in Toontown" theme to explain how the hyenas managed to stage THESE "antihero animal antics" in the manner depicted.

The Wild West and Kimba do NOT mix! 'Nuff said.

Well, this sequence actually did work for me, at least a bit. I like the character design on Captain Kidd's cat a great deal; this character might even have worked as a legitimate "furry" somewhere else. But, still, we are supposed to believe that the boys were somehow able to stage a SEA battle on a stage in the middle of the jungle... and how did T&T learn of all these characters, anyway? Did they visit the Jungle Library where Roger Ranger got his reference materials?

All of a sudden, I'm nostalgic for the Al Vermin era of Bonkers.

One unfortunate side effect of this entirely-too-long side trip to "Toontown" is that we never actually get to see how Cassius, T&T, and Claw managed to lure all of Kimba's subjects into being captured. Distracting the children, I can see the logic of that, but where were all the adults while this was going on? And how did Claw et Cie. instantly manage to construct a massive rocky barricade, complete with sturdy wooden gate, around the amusement park? After this cascade of improbabilities, I can almost understand Kimba's seemingly foolish decision to try and smash the gate down himself. In such a seemingly random "universe," why couldn't Kimba pull off such a feat? Perhaps if he hadn't been so *ahem* "badly hurt," he might have done it.

In his dialogue with the wrathful-turned-tearful Kimba, Claw drops the pretense that he wants to "rule" the jungle in a manner even remotely close to Kimba's. Earlier, Dan'l reported overhearing Claw say that, with the other animals imprisoned, he "[wouldn't] have to hunt for his food." Now, every animal for roughly 75 miles around must have heard Claw threaten to "destroy" the others unless Kimba abdicates. Strangely, however, Claw will soon be trying to arm-twist Kitty into becoming the "queen" of a presumably functioning kingdom. So what would Claw and Kitty be ruling, exactly? Maybe he needed to consult with Big-O on that matter before proclaiming his enmity to the assembled masses.

Kimba's breakdown and sad, silent retreat are the first truly powerful scenes in what has, up to now, been a crazy quilt of an ep. In "Running Wild," just three episodes down the line, Kimba will suffer an out-of-nowhere emotional collapse that is so over-the-top and improbable, it's actually half-comical. Here, Kimba isn't bawling, he's legitimately weeping for what he clearly believes is the death of his dream. Also, there's a real sense of finality to Kimba's gradual, self-sacrificial disappearance into the wilderness. Not until "Destroyers from the Desert" will Kimba appear to be so thoroughly vanquished.

So, we're now officially in "action drama" mode, right? Wrong. We still have to endure one final gag-stuffed sequence in which Claw piddles away virtually all of the dignity that he had managed to earn through his fearsome performances during "Jungle Fun" and the park-gate scene. If anything, Kitty doesn't slap him down hard enough for making such an ass of himself.

And I thought tigers... I mean, Tiggers... didn't live in Africa.

If you have good eyesight, then you may have seen The Black 4 snatch Kitty and haul her under the gate and inside the park. Like their sudden appearance at the end of "Jungle Fun," what they were doing there wasn't explained. Now, following up on Cassius' whistle, we should have gotten our formal introduction, or a reasonable facsimile, to the conniving quartet. The lyrics (translated below the Youtube of the deleted scene) don't explain why the B4 are specifically working for Claw, much less what they expect to get out of the deal, but they do clearly establishes the leopards' freelance brand of villainy.

Living in the dark, we are the Black Four. Come to us and tell us what you want. We specialize in... Doin' dirty business in style! The infamous shadow of evil. Yes, we are the Black Four. Excuse us, but we have to go. We're off to do another job... We'll get it done... Piece of cake!

Or not. The B4 give a much better account of themselves in battle during "The Day the Sun Went Out," and one reason may be that they are working for themselves in that situation. Amazing how self-interest focuses the mind and toughens the sinews... just as the threat of being eaten galvanizes Kimba's subjects into putting up a much stiffer fight against Claw and his minions here than they did in "Gypsy's Purple Potion." Kitty leads the charge, flashing her most ferocious fighting skills of the series. Next in line for awards are, if you can believe it, Dot, Dash, and Dinky, who alternate stomping on Tom and Tab with treating the hapless hyenas as literal punching bags -- a little less impressive than the brave attack at the start of "Jungle Fun," perhaps, but impressive nonetheless. I only wish that more animals had been given a chance to visibly pitch in, as opposed to fighting in the "FCC-friendly dustcloud of doom" (thanks, Greg).

Characters seem to be able to "teleport" to where they need to be with shocking ease in this ep. How did the B4 track down Kimba so fast? How did Dan'l manage to find Kimba equally fast? Above all, how did Kimba locate that "weak spot in the wall" so effortlessly, after spending several minutes beating his brains out in a frontal assault? The fight between Kimba and Claw is the most vicious one of the series -- check out the bit in which Claw grabs Kimba in his maw and worries him like a Jack Russell terrier manhandling a chew toy -- but, even here, Kimba doesn't really maul Claw as much as out-wrestle him. The beaten Claw's tottering rise to his paws, however, underscores this as being the evil lion's "ultimate defeat." He would indeed appear again, but never again would he pose such a dire threat to the peace and safety of Kimba's jungle. We may also safely assume that the amusement center would endure for the duration, thereby cutting off Claw's source of food and, presumably, forcing him to ultimately "abandon the field" for purposes of survival.

Dan'l and Kimba provide a fitting end to a schizophrenic story by, respectively, spouting off a Revolutionary War-era non sequitur and channeling "Fair Catch Corby" for no apparent reason. Surely, the most "epic" story of the series -- in structure, if not in content -- deserved a better wrap-up than this rather lame coda. Or, perhaps the very pointlessness of the ending makes a point. All that Kimba wanted to do with his amusement park project, after all, was to allow the animals to enjoy a little harmless and, yes, pointless fun while engaged in the arduous task of building a civilization. Not every vestige of "human civilization" worth imitating has to possess gravitas, after all.

Up next: Episode 36, "Monster of Petrified Valley."