DUCKTALES Fanfic Review: "The Sincere Fraud" by "Commander"

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. -- Robert Frost

Of course, what happens AFTER they take you in is often the most interesting part...

I'm back with another DuckTales fanfic focus... and the angst is STRONG with this one!  Thankfully, DuckTales doesn't appear to have inspired nearly as many of these soul-sucking fics as, let's say, Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers (does anyone remember the concept of "Gadget-gouging"?  If not, then be thankful) or Darkwing Duck (the Gosalyn-Drake relationship was always rife with potential for emotional exploitation, and numerous writers have taken advantage).  The TV series simply didn't provide sufficient raw material for the introduction of soap-opera elements.  With THE LIFE AND TIMES OF $CROOGE McDUCK still well in the future, the show's explorations of Scrooge's past were comparatively straightforward, and they focused almost entirely on his individual exploits.  The Nephews and Webby were too young to enter "the dating zone" and similar locales where adolescent Weltschmerz might have a chance to get its hooks into them.  As for Launchpad, he was primarily concerned with where his next crash was coming from.

Of the main cast of DuckTales, Fenton Crackshell came the closest to experiencing some legitimate angst, thanks to his occasionally rocky relationship with Gandra Dee, the demands of his "M'Ma," and his struggles to reconcile his "normal" and superheroic identities.  However, these experiences  were generally played for laughs.  The mere fact that such stories were attempted with Fenton indicates just how promising a character he was... and what a shame it was that he was left abandoned on a metaphorical siding following the TV series' shutdown, with no further opportunities to build upon the ideas that had already been introduced.

The prolific fanfic writer "Commander" appears to have reasoned, logically enough, that, in order to introduce any heavy-duty emotional dynamics into the world of DuckTales as a whole, the characters would have to be pushed forward in time.  OK, I know what many of you must already be thinking...

... and, yes, HD&L are thrust into middle school in the epic under discussion here, but there's little indication that "Commander" was influenced in any meaningful way by Quack Pack.  During the traumatizing events of "The Sincere Fraud, " the boys are anything but ironically detached snark-dealers. 

"Commander" apparently planned to write a whole series of fics set in his personal version of the DT "universe" -- which turns out to be a mixture of the world of the TV series and his own take on Don Rosa's LATO$M timeline -- but "The Sincere Fraud" turned out to be the only major product that survived the vagaries of time and the demands of "real life."  He did, however, manage to set the table for the story in the reminiscence tale "Sepia Tone," which basically consists of the seven-year-old Louie finding an old family album and asking Scrooge to tell him about some of his and his brothers' "foreducks."  It's a pretty quick read, and I encourage you to give it a look if you get the chance, but here's a summary of the significant takeaways.  Some of them will be quite familiar, some not so much.

(1)  The McDuck siblings, in order of age: Scrooge, Matilda, Hortense (as per Rosa).

(2) Matilda married Ludwig Von Drake (as per the Rosa Family Tree) and died young.  Scratch "A Letter from Home" (preferably, while shedding a silent tear or two).

(3) Hortense married Quackmore, and they had Donald and Della two years apart.  That is, Donald and Della were not twins.  This fact actually turns out to be rather significant.

(4)  Quackmore joined the Navy during World War II and died in action when Donald was nine years old.  Since Donald was a "Mama's boy" and never really that close to his Dad, that was what really motivated him to join the Navy... AND, more than that, to make the service an actual career.

(5)  Della was the proverbial "bad seed," getting into repeated, and increasingly serious, trouble as a youngster and developing a knack for conning people into making them do what she wanted them to do.  In the process, she also developed a bad feud with her older brother Donald.  Don's original intention, to keep her from running completely off the "road of life," was actually a good one, but he ultimately got so angry at her that he came to believe that he had always hated her.  For her part, Della resented Donald trying to butt into her life, and he similarly assumed the role of a monster in her own troubled mind. Della ultimately got knocked up by someone or other -- I'm guessing that the picture of Della's anonymous mate on the Rosa Family Tree is meant to be a generic composite; if so, then it's probably an overly flattering one -- and had her triplets, Huey, Dewey, and Louie.

 Idealized portrayal of Duck relationship #1

(6) Incapable of supporting herself, yet desperate to provide for her kids, Della tried to rob a bank and was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison.  The Nephews, who by that time were three years old, were subsequently transferred over to Donald's care.  The famous 1938 DONALD DUCK Sunday strip that introduced HD&L is therefore in error in at least one respect: The document that was sent to Donald to inform him of the transfer was probably a lot more formal than a simple handwritten note.

(7)  At the age of five -- yes, you read that right -- Donald joined the Navy, and HD&L came to live with their next closest relative, Scrooge.  Commence the events of DuckTales.  IF you can buy the idea of the Nephews being that young at the start of "Don't Give Up the Ship," then this actually explains a lot about why the characters act the way they do during the "dock scene."  As I noted in my review of that episode, it is quite clear that the Ducks of "Ship" do not know one another all that well, and it is therefore next to impossible to imagine them sharing any joint adventures between the time Donald assumed charge of the Nephews and the time he left to go to sea.  Heck, even if they had wanted to have an adventure, there was hardly enough time for them to do so!

Take a moment to consider the consequences of this setup.  "Commander"'s interpretation takes the events of "Don't Give Up the Ship," and subsequently of DuckTales, as being the TRUE Duck "canon," at least in an adventurous sense.  Any previous tales told by Barks (basically, the only Duck-bard who was relevant at the time of DT's debut) are hereby rendered null and void... EVEN THE ONES in which Donald and HD&L went on adventures all by themselves!  We're dealing with the cleanest of whiteboards here!

(8)  Webby was three years old when she and her "grammy" came to live with Scrooge and HD&L.  Despite Webby's occasionally "childish" behavior, that age also seems a little low.  Perhaps young Ducks mature at a quicker rate than humans of a similar age.  (If nothing else, then their memories improve quickly; HD&L do not have any clear memories of their mother, but, in the span of two years, their memories are suddenly working on roughly the same level as a typical adult's.)

Flash forward a decade or so.  Scrooge is older and creakier, and he now allows himself the luxury of a day off every week (gasp!), but he remains feisty and driven.  HD&L are now 14, are in eighth grade, and have developed very distinct personalities.  Webby is 12, is in sixth grade, is about to start dating, and may also harbor a secret crush on Dewey.  Mrs. Beakley, sad to say, is in a nursing home with Alzheimer's disease, and Scrooge has become Webby's legal guardian.  Donald is still in the Navy, albeit on leave, and Daisy is pushing him to finally "pop the question" (about time, don'tcha think?). 

** MAJOR SPOILERS **

THE STORY:  Having secured an early release from prison for good behavior -- or what would pass as such for a character with a temperament that's just as explosive as Donald's -- Della comes to McDuck Mansion in search of a fresh start... and, perhaps, some assistance from Scrooge to help her get her life back on track.  The Nephews have very different reactions to her.  "Troubled kid" Huey is suspicious of her motives, partially because he sees himself in her but doesn't want to end up like her. "Intellectual" Dewey tries to weigh the available evidence and maintain some objectivity.  "Optimistic, sensitive, and creative" Louie, meanwhile, embraces the idea that his Mom has returned and accepts her wholeheartedly.  When Donald proposes to Daisy and is turned down (for a presumed "lack of sincerity" -- sheesh, even Barks' Daisy never came close to being THAT fickle!), Donald has a mental breakdown that requires him to be cared for by Scrooge.  With Donald and Della now forced to be in close proximity, their long-standing feud flares up, in the manner of a particularly wince-inducing hemorrhoid.  When Ludwig von Drake calls from Europe to check in with Scrooge, the increasingly stressed tycoon jumps at the chance to invite Ludwig to his mansion, where the prof will be able to provide some much-needed therapy for Donald and Della.  Alas, Huey chooses this moment to explode in frustration at his role as the "put-upon," least favored Duck triplet, and he chooses his "cousin by adoption," the "perfect porcelain doll" Webby, as his primary target.  Events finally come to a head when Donald and Della get into an ugly fight at a restaurant at the same time that Scrooge, beset by familial dysfunction, finds himself at the mental -- and, more importantly, the physical -- breaking point.  Can this family be saved?...

PLOT:  The unraveling and subsequent reraveling of the Duck family.  That's pretty much all that happens.  (*** out of *****)

One of the problems with "angstfics" is that there is usually quite a lot going on -- of the emotional variety, anyway -- but nothing is actually happening.  To his credit, "Commander" doesn't completely succumb to this trap.  We only hear about Donald's post-turndown breakdown at second hand, from the policemen who come to tell Scrooge about the incident, but the restaurant ruckus is "on screen" and is appropriately nasty, complete with cursing and knives wielded with deadly intent.  Adding to the noxious atmosphere is the fact that Donald had been on a blind date and had been confronted and dressed down by an angry Daisy before Della even got there, making Don's reaction to Della's subsequent arrival all the more malicious.  (You may wonder why Daisy should even care that Donald has plunged back into the dating whirl, given that she had turned down Don's proposal.  Sorry, I got nothin'.)  Apart from this one ugly scene, "Commander" basically sticks to dialogue scenes (frequently involving arguments) and uses very little action. 

I know that there are those who love this sort of thing.  I typically don't count myself among their ranks.  At least "Commander"'s dialogue scenes are usually well-written and, given the characterizations that he has chosen to use here, generally believable.  They're just somewhat painful to read through at times.

CHARACTERIZATION:  "All over the map" doesn't begin to cover it.  (***1/2 out of *****)

There's no denying it... some of "Commander"'s decisions on characterization here are a little tough to stomach.  Take Huey, now... he's basically a complete asshole.  He "acts out" in school, breaks curfew, bullies the more passive Louie into spying on Scrooge and "his mysterious visitor" (Della), and pelts Webby with crudely sexist insults even before he verbally attacks her (and is apparently also ready to SLUG her!!) for being the cute little "favored child."  He's like the egocentric Huey of Quack Pack with the amp set at "11."  It's hard for me to believe, as "Commander" suggests (through the medium of Huey's thoughts), that Huey got to be this way because of some school pranks that just got out of hand.  There's a definite suggestion of something uglier having been there under the surface all along.  That thought kind of disturbs me.

Donald and Della, whose feud is sufficiently nasty to render them both as contemptible as Huey from the start, nonetheless wind up faring a bit better in the long run.  We all know about Donald's legendary (and supposedly "hilarious") temper, and Don did have a few minor blowups during his infrequent appearances on DT, but his outbursts here seem uncomfortably... realistic.  We are led to believe that the authorities may have had a point in examining Don at the psychiatric hospital before releasing him into the care of Scrooge.   To his credit, though, Donald rallies after Scrooge's cardiac event, pulls himself together, and even manages to make up with and become engaged to Daisy before the end.  (Daisy... fickle.  Just saying.  Actually, the reconciliation is handled very well, with both characters admitting that they will inevitably have arguments as husband and wife, yet deciding to get married anyway.  That's what makes a marriage work... the partners recognizing and accepting one another's flaws while, at the same time, cherishing the more meaningful feelings that drew them together in the first place.)

"Commander," of course, has more direct control over the characterization of Della, and he basically opts for the "female version of Donald" notion... the difference being that Della's temper has tended to have much more serious consequences in her life than Donald's has had in his.  This is why Della suffers through such despair after her fight with Donald at the restaurant gets them both tossed in jail.  She had been making some progress with Ludwig's help and now appears to have tossed it all away.  This was the first moment at which I legitimately felt bad for Della and hoped that she would, indeed, get control of herself and reform.  She subsequently earns additional points by deciding to leave Scrooge's mansion, move into a homeless shelter, and pick up the pieces of her life without being a burden on others.  (In response, Scrooge allows her to keep her job as a janitor at the Money Bin, despite all the problems she's caused.)  The change of heart comes very late in the game, and after Della had amassed a pretty sizable likability deficit, but at least she winds up making some progress, and I do appreciate that.

Idealized portrayal of Duck relationship #2

The rest of the gang is characterized fairly well.  Scrooge is Scrooge, albeit with a few thousand miles extra on him, and Webby is a reasonable advancement of the DT character to the lip of adolescence.  (Webby's "desperate" desire to be accepted at her new school does strike me as a little extreme, though.  Why haven't all of those adventures with Scrooge and the boys given her more self-confidence?)  Ludwig von Drake's bubbly enthusiasm provides a nice counterweight to all of the troubles swirling around him.  He can't completely escape the imperatives of an angstfic -- he is still clearly affected by Matilda's early death -- but he serves as a welcome voice of reason, and his psychiatric dissection of Donald and Della is far more adept than, say, his semi-comical analysis of Launchpad in the DT version of "The Golden Fleecing."  In a sidebar, "Commander" says that Ludwig is one of his favorite Duck characters, and his affection for the loquacious polymath is on clear display.

I also admit to being quite taken with the characterizations of Dewey and Louie.  Dewey is an intellectual with a heart; he wants to be supportive of others but prefers to get as many facts as he can about the case before committing himself.  Thus, he learns that Webby's "big first date" was a disappointment and immediately moves to comfort and counsel her, but he reserves passing final judgment on Della until he becomes more familiar with her.  Louie, meanwhile, is akin to the sensitive-souled kid of Quack Pack who wanted to protect "pugduddies" and such.  The difference is that he is even more trusting and optimistic.

HOMEWORK:   Only relevant when it comes to Duck Family Tree material. (N/A out of *****)

These are basically "Commander"'s own future versions of the characters, so it's not all that surprising that he does not refer to any of the TV episodes.

WRITING AND HUMOR:  The story is very well-written.  The humor is... well, quirky, for lack of a better word.  (***1/2 out of *****)

"Commander" has an odd way of slipping humor into unlikely places in the narrative.  When two policemen come to inform Scrooge of Donald's breakdown, one of them inexplicably starts acting like a character in a goofy cop comedy:

"Can I tell the story, officer?" asked the other policeman, younger and more hyper than his supervisor.

The older one sighed.  "Go ahead, Korwitz..."

Korwitz spread his arms out dramatically, as if about to begin an epic tale.  "Dateline, Duckburg, eight o'clock last night!  Location, the Dragon's Head restaurant, 825 L Street!  Incident, a broken-hearted Duck goes crazy, overturning tables and eating napkins!  Cloth napkins, not the paper kind!"

Considering that Scrooge, because of the return of Della, is already on edge as this scene begins, this strikes me as not exactly the most opportune time to shoehorn in some (rather forced) comedy relief.  Later, when HD&L and Webby visit Scrooge at the hospital, we get an awkward exchange that I think was supposed to pass for some manner of humor, in which Scrooge teases the youngsters' assuming responsibility for his hospital bill... or, barring that, his insurance premiums. Unnecessary cheapness gags during a family-wide crisis?  Not a smart editorial move.

QUESTIONABLE MATERIAL:  Occasional curse words, though none of the REALLY bad ones, and argument scenes that are sometimes difficult to endure.  Plus, one fairly nasty fight scene.

OVERALL:  ***1/2 out of *****.  RECOMMENDED, BUT WITH RESERVATIONS.

This one is definitely a matter of taste.  If you don't like watching the Ducks -- even slightly altered versions of same -- bickering like a hypercaffeinated version of The Fantastic Four, then I would suggest that you avoid.  If you're curious, or if you're indifferent to the notion of mutual Duck-breaking, then you're extremely unlikely to find a better version of the DuckTales angstfic anywhere in Googleworld captivity, so have a look.

NEXT FANFIC UP: Time for the Big Kahuna, the Top Boss, the Meat Grinder.  "DuckTales: 20 Years Later."  You'll definitely have to be patient with me on this one.  It's 125,000 words long, it features multiple crossovers, and a WHOLE honkin' load of stuff -- some of it quite untidy -- comes down in the process.  I may even have to break the review into several parts: one setting the stage by describing the world in which the story takes place, the other examining the story itself.  So as not to tease my reading public unnecessarily, I will not announce the review's impending arrival(s?) until I am just about finished with the project.

POST-DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE PERSPECTIVE: Sometimes It's Better to be Lucky...

The Internet really is like the Wild West.  If you wander into the wrong place at the wrong time, you can figuratively be "blasted full o' holes" for looking at someone funny... BUT, you can also run across the most unlikely treasures in the most unexpected places.  Take the case of the long-rumored "Making of DuckTales" documentary.  The Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers documentary is readily available, and you'll occasionally run across images from the Tale Spin equivalent of same...

... but a behind-the-scenes look at DuckTales, the series that started WDTVA's syndicated ball rolling and led to The Disney Afternoon?  Not a trace... THAT IS, until I accidentally ran across this the other day:

As best I can tell, this promo ran as part of something called "Disney Day Off," a Disney cartoon marathon that ran on a local station.  (Note the occasional display of the air time of the syndicated series.)  It makes sense that Disney would use the opportunity provided by buying time on a local channel to spread the word about its new series, especially since airing it exclusively on The Disney Channel would have reached only a small portion of the potential audience. 

It's amusing to note how blithely Disney uses the names of such Carl Barks supporting players as Gyro Gearloose, Magica De Spell, and the Beagle Boys as "hooks" to snare viewers' interest.  How many kids in 1987 could have been expected to know who those characters were?  Evidently, the company was figuring that the "lure" of the supposedly better-known Scrooge and HD&L would be enough to entice eyeballs.  Even that seems something of a stretch, despite the then-recent revival of American Disney comics.

The obvious followup question here is, are there any more of these featurettes floating around?  Perhaps one focusing on Scrooge, or one focusing on the Nephews?  It wouldn't surprise me.

Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S MICKEY MOUSE, VOLUME 6: LOST IN LANDS OF LONG AGO by Floyd Gottfredson (Fantagraphics, 2014)

We've finally hit the mother lode of the early-modern (read: "post-pie-eyed" and "pre-all-gags-all-the-time") MICKEY MOUSE strip.  If I had to choose a single era of Floyd Gottfredson's prime creative years in which I felt the strip was at its very best, it would be 1940-42, the years covered in this volume.  No single story jumps up and presents itself as a "smack-you-across-the-face" classic on the order of "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot," but all of them are, at the very least, good.  Merrill de Maris' imaginative verbal interpretations of Gottfredson's plotting is at its best, while Bill Wright's inking is slick and confident.  The locations of the stories spreadeagle the map; to take the most head-spinning example, Mickey jumps from a bloody, near-deadly encounter with the primitive inhabitants of the "Lost World" of Cave-Man Island ("Land of Long Ago") right into the catty "drawing-room comedy of manners" (so saith yours truly, in an introductory essay) that is "Mickey Mouse in Love Trouble."

A fan's appetite for revisiting (or, in such rarely-reprinted cases as "Mystery at Hidden River" and "Mickey Mouse, Super Salesman," making initial acquaintance with) these tales is made all the keener by the knowledge that major changes in the strip were just over the horizon.  De Maris departed the scene in 1942, Dick Moores assumed the inking chores soon after, and we would have to negotiate several long stretches of gag strips before Bill Walsh took firm control of the plottery... and promptly steered the stories into very different, though still highly entertaining, channels.  Thad Komorowski has a good point when he fingers "Hidden River" as the last adventure that could be said to fit the "prewar Gottfredson adventure model." (This is quite literally true: Pearl Harbor was attacked just as Mickey was riding down a log flume, heading for the end of the North Woods encounter with a newly pegless Peg-Leg Pete.)  The happiest thought that one can take away from these tales is that the "prewar model" rolled out of the shops in first-class condition, rather than gasping to the finish line.

** SPOILERS **

The best story herein?  Well, I'm kinda prejudiced in favor of "Love Trouble," but even I would admit that an actual adventure needs to take pride of place, and I'm perfectly fine with Byron Erickson's praise of "The Bar-None Ranch" as an ideal story to show a "Gottfredson newbie" so as to pique his or her interest in seeking out more of the strip.  The story has very few plotting problems and a good mix of humor, action, and "forward thinking" (Peg-Leg Pete's use of a scientist's "dinguses" to create the illusion that he is an unstoppable master crook).  In addition to being a bit more sedate -- not to mention a bit dated in its portrayal of feminine "wiles" and overall bitchery -- "Love Trouble" also contains an annoying flaw, one that I did not mention in my essay but have always found irritating, nonetheless.  In order to get back at Minnie's stepping out with the caddish, superficially debonair Montmorency "Rodawn," Mickey calls on his cousin Madeline to play the role of visiting debutante Millicent Van Gilt-Mouse, who becomes smitten with him.  At one point, though, when we see Madeline call Mickey on a house phone, Mickey answers and refers to her as "Millicent."  What, does he think Minnie has the phone tapped?  They're conversing in private, so why just call Madeline by her real name?  And it would have been so easy to have fixed the problem, too, by having the two meet at a cafe or something.  OK, it's not as obvious a flaw as the sudden change of the mysterious ghosts in "Bellhop Detective" from three-dimensional spooks to 2-D projections on a wall... it's just that this story came SO close to stone perfection.  I can't help but be just a LITTLE resentful.

Insert "beach/bitch" gag here.

We begin to get inklings (and even a few overt mentions) of the war era in "Hidden River" and "The Gleam."  One possible essay feature that I would like to see in the next volume -- which will take us deep into the war years -- is how depictions of the conflict in the MICKEY strip changed over time.  I've only had extensive exposure to the Walsh-scripted continuities from 1944 and 1945, and some of those stories could certainly be considered more or less escapist.  I seem to recall that there was far more actual war-related material (including war-themed gags) in the strip during the first few full years of the conflict.  At least we won't have long to wait to test my theory.

Feature material in this volume includes a cartoon tribute by Stephen DeStefano (of Disney Comics peak-years fame), reprintings of several panels' worth of examples of the Gottfredson "redraws" that appeared in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES in the late 40s and 50s, and an "Heirs of Gottfredson" piece on Carl Barks that includes a color reprinting of Carl's one MICKEY adventure, 1945's "The Riddle of the Red Hat" (FOUR COLOR #79).  For something that Barks claimed to not be his "cup of tea," this story is surprisingly good.  Barks certainly didn't mail it in; he does a particularly good job of writing Goofy. 

One comment of Gottfredson's concerning this era that probably should have been mentioned somewhere in here was his claim that the revenue from the MICKEY strip and the other ongoing Disney strips was literally keeping the straitened Walt Disney Studios above water in the early 40s.  (Recall that Pinocchio [1940] had been a box-office disappointment, the first release of Fantasia [1940] was an out-and-out bomb, and the war had cost Disney the overseas market.)  How about a statistical report at some point on how successful the MICKEY strip actually was?  Do those data even exist any more?  It's worth a dig through the appropriate archives, if you ask me.

DUCKTALES Fanfic Review: "The Lost Tomb of Pharaoh Sedqaduck" by "Stretch Snodgrass"

And so, we trudge back into the DuckTales fanfic salt mines... or, should I say, the sand dunes!

 

Needless to say, adventure in desert settings are nothing new to our feathered Disney friends, either in print or on screens both small and large.  Carl Barks' first full-length solo adventure story took Donald and HD&L to a reasonably authentic Egypt, and, when Disney Movietoons decided to mount a DuckTales feature film, writer Alan Burnett spun the plot out of Scrooge's quest to find the lost treasure of Collie Baba.  There are, of course, numerous other examples of the "Ducks in Egypt" trope in both media.

I bring this up because our "writer of interest," one "Stretch Snodgrass," picked a surprisingly well-worn trail on which to follow his muse.  He's not trying to do anything Earth-shattering in "The Lost Tomb of Pharaoh Sedqaduck" -- just tell an entertaining comedy-adventure story in the classic DT tradition, complete with copious references to DT episodes past.  He succeeds rather well, particularly in the clever manner in which he stirs an unexpected guest-star character -- one who (1) had only one featured role in the TV series and (2) has rarely featured in adventures of any stripe -- into the mix.

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*MAJOR SPOILERS (duh)*

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THE STORY:  With "long-lost map" in hand, Scrooge travels to Egypt to seek out the titular cenotaph, the last resting place of Sedqaduck, the "unlucky" 13th Pharaoh of the 13th Dynasty, and his "greatest treasures."  His companions on the journey are HD&L, Launchpad, and... "Uncle" Gladstone??  (Yep, that's what the boys call him.  Personally, I take the idea of Gladstone being the Nephews' uncle as seriously as I do that of Daisy being the boys' aunt.)  Unsurprisingly, Gladstone isn't initially keen on the idea...after all, it sounds too much like work.  Scrooge ultimately convinces Gladstone to come along by challenging his ganderhood, or something close to it, and away they go.  Flintheart Glomgold and Bankjob and Big Time Beagle get wind of Scrooge's destination in "Master of the Djinni" fashion -- via a newspaper photograph that reveals the details of Scrooge's map ("When will Scroogie learn not to leave his map in plain sight?" cackles Flinty) -- but, after a half-hearted attempt at attacking Scrooge's party at an oasis literally blows up in their faces, the baddies (somewhat surprisingly) drop clean out of the story.  Instead, we simply follow Scrooge's party as they reach and explore the long-hidden, seriously eerie Valley of Pharaoh Sedqaduck.  But why has Gladstone's luck suddenly turned sour?  And why is Scrooge so heck-bent on convincing Gladstone that his luck isn't bad, all the while scotching any overt mention of "thirteen," "luck," and similar words freighted with intimations of good or bad fortune?...

PLOT:  Pretty doggone solid, with some effective suspense and scares, though some of the plotting could have been improved. (**** out of *****)

If you choose to read this story, don't be initially put off by "Stretch"'s staccato style, or the manner in which he tells the reader some fairly basic information about the characters (e.g., that Huey, Dewey, and Louie wear red, blue, and green).  Stick with it, and you'll be rewarded, especially once the gang starts the actual pyramid hunt.  This is more of a straightforward "there and back again" storyline than the plots seen in "Master of the Djinni" or even DuckTales: The Movie.  It has some longueurs, but "Stretch" keeps up some good, in-character banter between the Ducks, though his funniest material is unintentionally so (see WRITING AND HUMOR below).

As is the case in so many Barks adventures, Scrooge doesn't actually wind up carting home the complete treasure.  In place of it, he gets what are for all intents and purposes "parting gifts," courtesy of the ghost of the departed Pharaoh.  Considering that these items are designed more to educate the world about the cloudy history of Sedqaduck's unfortunate reign than they are to enrich someone, Scrooge accepts them with considerable grace... which is more than one can say about, for example, his petulant reaction to "love, the greatest treasure of them all" in "A DuckTales Valentine."  True to his nature, though, he does find a way to profit in the end.

For a story rated the fanfiction.net equivalent of "E for Everyone," there is some seriously creepy material here.  The discovery of a group of skeletons from an unsuccessful expedition by medieval Arabs to plunder the valley comes as a considerable jolt.  The shock would have been more severe had the corpses been found by the Pharaoh's tomb, as they by all rights should have been, given that Scrooge interprets the map as saying that "the curse of death falls only upon those who violate the Pharaoh's final resting place."  Since the skeletons were found a good distance away from the pyramid, I sense a disturbance in the plot structure here, though it's not quite bad enough to raise the dead.

In addition to harboring dead would-be looters, the Valley of Sedqaduck is also noiseless.  Various fauna are present, but they don't make a sound.  Scrooge hand-waves away the Ducks' ability to make themselves heard by suggesting that outsiders who enter the Valley aren't affected, while Dewey appeals to "an ancient Egyptian magic spell."  Dewey's dodge works for me, especially in a world that contains Magica De Spell.

The creepiest detail of all, however, is the simple fact that Pharaoh Sedqaduck and his entire royal retinue are still present in spirit form, tending to the evergreen gardens and keeping the buildings in perfect condition.  The "curse" on anyone entering Sedqaduck's tomb is supposed to last for 13,000 years, or until the world ends (nice escape clause, that).  Presumably, therefore, the ghosts will continue to perform their janitorial services until that time.  But what happens then?  Will Sedqaduck and his people consider that to be "game over" and vanish, leaving the Valley to succumb to the elements?  That seems like an unhappy ending (for them) to me.  Or will the fact that Scrooge has peacefully brought the truth about "unlucky" Sedqaduck's reign to the outside world give the spirits a reason to rise to the heavens, in the manner of "The Garbled One" and Khufu in "Sphinx for the Memories"?

Unfortunately, "Stretch" seems to have forgotten to edit an early detail about the lost tomb's location.  Scrooge originally gleans from the map that the tomb is "inside a mountain," whereas the actual pyramid is in a valley surrounded by cliffs and "mountainous" sand dunes.  We could attribute this goof to Scrooge's misreading of the map, but, when your fact-checkers have the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook at hand, I doubt that any such slip would have slipped by.

The final scene has something of a Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea "coffee scene" ((c) Joe Torcivia) vibe, in that we find the Ducks back in Duckburg and discussing their adventure over a meal at Quack Maison. (Remember?  That was the place where Gladstone and Scrooge went to eat breakfast in "Dime Enough for Luck" and that unfortunate "clerical error" concerning the restaurant's "millionth customer" took place).  It's decent, but also something of a letdown, given that the Ducks had already had dinner at the place earlier in the story, at the time when Scrooge finally convinced Gladstone to join the adventure.  I appreciate "Stretch"'s willingness to exploit Gladstone's one DT appearance to the hilt, but bringing the Ducks back to QM might have been going a dish too far.

Perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the plot is the quick dismissal of the villains.  In truth, they don't actually get to do much of interest. However, there is a most intriguing moment when Bankjob, remembering how Scrooge saved him, Babyface, and Bugle/Bebop from the pirates in "Time Teasers," suggests that the baddies ask Scrooge for assistance in getting back to civilization.  Glomgold is having none of that, preferring a long, hot, and problematic desert trek to lowering himself to ask Scrooge for aid.  Had the bad guys actually joined Scrooge's party, the conflict between Flinty's pride and greed might have made for an interesting subplot. (Admittedly, it might also have interfered with the subplot that was already present, which I'll discuss under CHARACTERIZATION).  Instead, "Stretch" dismisses the villains with a couple of paragraphs of narrative.  I suppose that "Stretch" felt that the adventure simply "had" to include an appearance by familiar villains in order to seem "authentic."  There are plenty of examples to the contrary, though, and, all in all, I think that "Stretch" should have let the Ducks handle this one by themselves, with no opponents save the elements... and the internal conflicts.

CHARACTERIZATION:  Pretty solid, as well, with the only possible question being how we are expected to regard Scrooge's behavior towards Gladstone.  (**** out of *****)

"Stretch" does a pretty decent job with most of the basics here. The Nephews may consult the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook a few too many times -- I'm sure that their native intelligence could have helped them to figure out that pyramids were never used as homes, and that water, however brackish or distasteful, is essential for life to flourish in the desert -- but they make up for it late in the game by doping out Scrooge's scheme re Gladstone (about which more in a moment) all by their lonesomes.  Launchpad is Launchpad, 'nuff said, while Gladstone, appropriately enough, is given his slightly softer, more laid-back DuckTales persona, as opposed to the more obnoxious characterization introduced by Barks.  On the unlikability scale, whining a bit about tramping through the desert and making a couple of self-satisfied remarks about his luck seeing him through don't really amount to much.  "Stretch" even provides Gladstone with a new (and atypical) vulnerable spot, in that the gander takes umbrage at Scrooge's questioning of his bravery on more than one occasion.  Scrooge hasn't been concerned (at least openly) about others' cojones since "Christmas on Bear Mountain."  But Gladstone's determination to prove Scrooge wrong reflects another side of his overweening pride... one that is less smug and more proactive.

The big character-related question arising from this epic is how, exactly, we are expected to react to Scrooge's subterranean decision to bring Gladstone along as a kind of "anti-bad-fortune fail-safe" to sense the "curse" that is supposed to lie on Sedqaduck's tomb -- and, more significantly, his determination to keep his reasoning under wraps until after the fact.  Scrooge figures that, if there really is such a "curse," then Gladstone's luck will sense it and try to keep him and the other Ducks safe by any means necessary... including bouts of bad luck.  Gladstone's increasing gaffe-proneness as the Ducks close in on their goal, and the result of the final advance towards the tomb, tend to bear out Scrooge's theory.  But can this honestly be said to be "square dealing" by Scrooge, even though his intention was an honorable one?

Complicating our interpretation of Scrooge's behavior is a scene that occurs as the Ducks prepare to go into the Valley.  A panicky Gladstone is (understandably) worried that another "Dime Enough for Luck" scenario may be playing itself out, but Scrooge bluntly dismisses his concerns and gives Gladstone his personal promise that the gander's luck hasn't really turned bad.  The narrative presents this as an example of Scrooge's commitment to straight dealing with others, which, given the underlying subterfuge that the old miser is practicing, doesn't quite ring true.  Gladstone makes the point that Scrooge, who "[denies luck] even exists" (I guess the Old #1 Dime is just a cherished memento in this version of DT continuity?), couldn't be expected to understand how luck works.  Scrooge is obliged to rely upon sheer force of will to convince Gladstone to believe that Scrooge is telling the truth.  Our... uh, hero, ladies and gentlemen?  The jury may have a hard time reaching a verdict on that one.

Personally, I think that it would have made far more sense for "Stretch" to have had Scrooge tell Gladstone the truth up front, using logic to convince the gander that he will be in no danger precisely because Gladstone's luck will protect him by going bad at the appointed time.  That would have made for an interesting psychological conflict for Gladstone, who is so used to being benefited by his luck that he might find it hard to wrap his mind around the concept of bad luck doing him some good.  Using that subplot in place of the "Scrooge rather clumsily conceals the truth for everyduck's own good" would have been much trickier for "Stretch" to do, but it would have avoided the somewhat awkward characterization of Scrooge that the "subterfuge" angle forced the author to use.

A coda regarding Pharaoh Sedqaduck himself: The dead ruler's appearance in ghost-guise is brief but memorable.  During the adventure, we learn that the "unlucky" ruler was not a bungler so much as a ruler who had the misfortune of facing a large number of enemies without the resources to keep them at bay. Sedqaduck shows that his troubles have not robbed him of a certain sense of humor when he disses Launchpad for having complained earlier that Sedqaduck's museum of artifacts was "dull."  The greatest ruler of ancient times he wasn't, but he certainly doesn't come off as a dope on the order of Barks' spendthrift King Nutmost the Rash ("A Cobbler Should Stick to His Last," UNCLE $CROOGE #25, March 1959).

HOMEWORK:  Done to a turn.  (***** out of *****)

From the opening gong, references fly thick and fast -- and they're far from being the standard references to previous desert adventures that you might expect.  The aforementioned references to Scrooge's map-mistake in "Master of the Djinni" and Bankjob's remembrance of Scrooge's generosity in "Time Teasers" certainly got MY attention, and some other clever ones are worthy of special mention.

(1) Gladstone refers to the Ducks' near-death experience in "Too Much of a Gold Thing" as an example of how dangerous adventuring can be.  Makes you wonder: how widely did news of the Ducks' travails in the Valley of the Golden Suns actually spread?  One can understand Scrooge wanting to keep the Valley's fate a secret from the general public, just in case some crazies decided to imitiate El Capitan and dig endlessly (and futilely) for riches in the ruins.  Any acquaintances whom Scrooge trusted with the info were undoubtedly sworn to some form of secrecy... and it's therefore surprising that Scrooge didn't shush Gladstone (or even whack him with his cane) when Gladstone mentioned the adventure at the Ducks' table at Quack Maison.

(2) Glomgold reacts to Bankjob and Big Time's bomb-bungling by grumbling, "Now I know why you two never work together!" -- which, in fact, they never actually had before, unless you count that mob-scene in "Full Metal Duck" (which was itself a skull session, as opposed to an actual gig) and set aside the comic-book story "The Great Chase" (preferably, at a VERY great distance).  Given that Bankjob and Big Time are actually among the more competent of the DT Beagles, their treatment here seems a bit uncharitable of "Stretch."

(3) To while away the time during a long flight, Launchpad tells Gladstone tall tales of his exploits, among which is his "harrowing hiatus with the Harpies" ("The Golden Fleecing").  Evidently, to Launchpad, any adventure you can walk away from is a tale-worthy one, even if one's role in it is somewhat, well, embarrassing.  Speaking of which, Launchpad invokes the "Any crash you can..." mantra a couple of times here.

You do have to respect a writer who treats canonical series material in such ingenious and imaginative ways.

WRITING AND HUMOR:  Acceptable at best, and most of the humor is of the accidental variety.  (*** out of *****)

From the spellings of certain words such as "tonnes" for "tons," to the use of the phrase "the lot of them," to Scrooge's reminiscence about picnicking in a country "kirkyard," I gather that "Stretch" is probably a native of the British Isles.  "Stretch"'s writing gets the job done, but it does fall victim to the occasional dropped comma and misspelling.

One must give kudos to "Stretch" for having the daring to try to reproduce the Ducks' "synchronized snoring" in prose.  It results in an unintentionally humorous bit:

"Huh," snored Scrooge.

"Shhhh[,]" continued Huey.

"Quack, quack," slept Dewey and Louie respectively.

That last sentence reads as if "Stretch" is using "to sleep" as a verb capable of taking a direct object.  What would such objects be, I wonder?

I also found the following throwaway paragraph amusing.  Read this, and see if you don't get a distinct impression of Launchpad being pwned:

Scrooge divided the adults into three watches: Gladstone first, as he liked to stay up late; Scrooge last, as he usually woke up early, as "the early bird catches the worm"; Launchpad received the difficult midnight and early morning hours, because it was the only one that was left. 

QUESTIONABLE MATERIAL:  None, aside from the aforementioned scares and ghosts (which aren't actually all THAT scary).

OVERALL:  ***** out of *****.   N&V RECOMMENDED.

While not spectacular by any means, "The Lost Tomb of Pharaoh Sedqaduck" is a fun read and displays commendable effort.  If you like classic "lost-ruby jungle plunges" with a couple of intriguing (though somewhat problematic) twists, then you should enjoy this story.

NEXT FANFIC UP:  "The Sincere Fraud" by "Commander."  In the not-to-distant DT future, the Nephews' mother Della returns... after a long stay in jail.  I got a BAD feeling about this, Mr. McDee...

Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S UNCLE $CROOGE: THE SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD by Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books, 2014)

If this be "skimming," then at least it's mostly cream.  In his seminal CARL BARKS AND THE ART OF THE COMIC BOOK, Michael Barrier* praised the earliest UNCLE $CROOGE stories -- in particular, "Only a Poor Old Man" -- to the highest heavens but then argued that, with Scrooge's essential nature having been revealed whole during these tales, there was nothing more that Barks could do with the old miser that wouldn't be "skimming the surface" in comparison.  When he used that phrase, Barrier had in mind tales exactly like the ones in this collection, the stories from U$ #7-12 (1954-55).  Here, we can see Barks really settling in with the notion of using Scrooge as an adventure hero in search of lost treasures -- the genre that William Van Horn once tongue-in-cheekedly described as "plunging into the jungle in search of the lost ruby."  In the sense that these stories don't delve as deeply into what drives Scrooge as did "Poor Old Man" or "Back to the Klondike," then Barrier has a point; after all, Scrooge can be "fully realized for the first time" only once.  But even Barrier had to admit that many of these "second-stage" offerings are "beautifully crafted."  Given that Barks was still getting used to the whole idea of Scrooge playing an heroic role on a regular basis, that's certainly an admirable enough achievement.

If Barrier doesn't have a full appreciation of Barks' craft during this period, then DuckTales sure as shootin' did.  The TV series borrowed liberally from Barks' output during this time, producing direct adaptations of "The Lemming with the Locket" and "The Golden Fleecing" and swiping the conflict from "The Great Steamboat Race" to serve as a centerpiece of its ill-fated Scrooge biography, "Once Upon a Dime."  And that may not be the end of the story.  As I argued when discussing "Too Much of a Gold Thing," the final chapter of "Treasure of the Golden Suns," one could make a good argument that "The Seven Cities of Cibola" had a direct influence on that climactic classic, just as it did on a certain Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg.

As great as the finest of these tales are, I do have to admit that this volume contains the first U$ feature story that I didn't much care for: "The Mysterious Stone Ray," aka "The Mysterious Unfinished Invention," aka "Leave Stranded and Petrified Beagle Boys Lie."  I previously reviewed it here.  The story is currently ranked 16th among all Disney comics stories at Inducks, which I quite frankly cannot fathom.  Our own GeoX bombed quite savagely on "The Menehune Mystery" as Barks' first really sh**ty $CROOGE story (Geo, of course, used the uncensored version of the word), but "Stone Ray" is poorly organized and is illogical in so many ways that it's hard for me, at least, to regard it as being distinctly better than "Menehune."  Chacun a son gout, and all that.  The use of the two unrelated "adventurettes" in U$ #11, "The Great Steamboat Race" and "Riches, Riches Everywhere," is just a bit irritating -- I'm sure that at least a few of Barks' loyal readers back in 1955 regarded the unprecedented double-dip in the same way that DuckTales fans regarded that series' only venture into the two-story format (in Episode 11, no less! How about that?!), but at least the Barks tales are actually good.

Artistically speaking, Barks is still close to the top of his game here, though the effects of the notorious mid-50s "drawing paper switch" that stiffened up his art for a while can first be seen here (in U$ #11).  The worst of these effects won't show up until the "tall Ducks" period of the late 50s, however, and, all things considered, Barks' initial adaptation to the switcheroo is quite adept.  On the gag side, we see the initial one-page salvos in the "free cup of coffee wars" between Scrooge and the unfortunate diner owner who will have to wait more than half a century before his psychological torment can be comprehensively examined in a real, live, full-length story.

* In case you were unaware of the fact, FUNNYBOOKS, Barrier's new book-length history of the "Dell Comics are Good Comics" era, presently stands on the cusp of release.  Barrier can be an astringent analyst, but his views are always worth considering, so anyone with an interest in the Dell days should pick this book up, either for oneself or as a gift for a like-minded friend.  Given IDW's aggressive action in acquiring the Disney comics license and its sturdy stable of licensed properties and original creations, might we be on the verge of seeing the rise of "the new Dell"?  Time will dell... er, tell.

A POST-"DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE" PERSPECTIVE: "A Dime in Time"

Let's get right into the spirit of things and (mentally) travel 20 years back in time, to that fateful moment in 1994 when Joe Torcivia introduced himself to the "small but mighty" audience of the late, great Disney Afternoon-themed APA WTFB with the first installment of his now-legendary THE ISSUE AT HAND.  The comic that Joe reviewed in that first effort was Disney Comics' UNCLE $CROOGE #259 (October 1991).

U$ #259 was the third installment of an ingenious "Duck comics crossover event" dreamed up by Disney Comics Managing Editor Bob Foster.  "The Time Tetrad" linked together four unrelated Duck stories, all of which featured a spheroidal time machine created by Gyro Gearloose.

"Book One": "The Secret of Atlantis" by Byron Erickson (English dialogue) and Vicar, in DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #17.  Any relationship to a story by Carl Barks, or, for that matter, a certain DuckTales adventure of more recent vintage, is hereby discounted with extreme prejudice. 

"Book Two": "Dirk the Dinosaur," the featured story in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #564, again by Erickson and Vicar.  Interestingly, this story was the first installment -- officially, it was labeled "Chapter 0" -- in an actual series of much lengthier time-traveling adventures which Inducks flags as the "Time Machine graphic novels." 

"Book Three": "The Only Way to Go/Travel," in the aforementioned U$ #259, yet another Erickson/Vicar joint.  Disney Comics' BETWEEN THE LINES list of the month's releases uses "...Travel," while the story itself uses "...Go."  Both versions of the title appear in Inducks.  And now my head hurts.

"Book Four" is our main concern for the nonce: DUCKTALES #17's "A Dime in Time", written by Bob Langhans and drawn by the usual assortment of "credited-by-name-but-in reality-all-but-anonymous" Argentinians who toiled for the Jaime Diaz Studios.

Unlike the other stories in the "Tetrad" series, "A Dime in Time" takes up the entire issue.  What's more, it ends with a scene the setting of which would have seemed quite familiar to those who had been following the DUCKTALES title.

That's right, we're going into overtime.  It's yet another Bob Langhans cliffhanger, of the exact same sort which so enlivened "The Gold Odyssey" (DT #9-15).  My opinion of the latter story has been on record for quite some time, and I see no reason to alter it in the wake of the short-lived Boom! revival of the DUCKTALES title.  When it comes to DT comic-book stories that appeared in America and captured the authentic spirit of the series... well, this is as good as it gets, folks.

Thankfully, "A Dime in Time, Part Two" turned out to be the actual conclusion of the story, as DT #18 (November 1991) ran smack into the onrushing shock wave that was "The Disney Implosion."  Dan Cunningham's coverage of the "Implosion" era (the link shown above) as part of his survey of the history of Disney Comics is as thorough an exposition as we are likely to get of the affair.  If the details are unfamiliar to you -- or even if you think they are familiar -- then I highly recommend that you read the whole thing.

Well, at least another Langhans multi-part story got into print before the heavens fell, right?  And this one is bound to rival "Odyssey," if not in scope, then in terms of overall quality.  Right?

When I reread "A Dime in Time," I found that I could remember no details about it whatsoever.  Evidently, my "memory bone" was unconsciously doing me a favor.  "Time" doesn't measure up to "Odyssey" in any way, shape, or form.  It doesn't come close.  From the evidence provided in the story, I'm not even sure that anyone who directly worked on this story -- writer, artists, editors -- was paying it more than the most cursory attention.

Even the much-admired Bob Foster can't escape some criticism here.  He had to vet the tale on the American end, and I can only excuse his signing off on some of the egregious continuity errors and sloppy storytelling that fatally compromise Part One as the result of a desperate desire to find SOME way to give DUCKTALES its place in the "Tetrad."  Part Two flows more smoothly, but is also somewhat duller, due to all of the action basically taking place in a single venue, and it doesn't end so much as stop, with an abruptness that is violent enough to give one literary whiplash.

We begin Part One with a typical DuckTales Beagle Boy raid on the Money Bin that proceeds in the expected fashion, "expected" being in the second-season sense.  (By contrast, "The Gold Odyssey" started with Scrooge already in the throes of high adventure, stubbornly snow-catting his way through an Alaskan blizzard.  Steee-rike One.)  Magica De Spell has been crystal-eye-balling the Beagle siege and has a better (but aren't they always?) plan to snag her eternal heart's desire, Scrooge's Old #1 Dime.  She's going to use a time machine to literally go "back to the Klondike" and snag the coin from young miner Scrooge.

Magica later describes the pictured gizmo as, and I quote, "a time-warper from the 23rd century."  And Magica acquired it how, exactly?  Sure, she's a sorceress, but she's not capable of something like THIS, is she?  Or perhaps she is.  As Langhans writes her throughout the story, Magica's powers appear to be "whatever is necessary to perform a particular task," including those tasks the achievability of which would seem to be above her pay grade.  Apparently, Langhans never stopped to consider that, if Magica had the inherent magical ability to nip ahead in time and steal a time-travel device, then she wouldn't have NEEDED a time-travel device in the first place.

I also have a problem with the whole notion of Magica snookering Scrooge in his virile, full-of-beans Klondike phase.  I had certain issues with Don Rosa's "Of Ducks, Dimes, and Destinies" (UNCLE $CROOGE #297, April 1996) when it first appeared, mostly related to the whole idea of mucking around with the charmingly simple (and, lest we forget, non-Barksian) idea of Scrooge obtaining Old #1 after shining a Glaswegian ditchdigger's boots, but Magica going back to 19th-century Scotland to take advantage of a 10-year-old Scrooge makes much more logical sense. 

Magica decides to put the device to a test (she should really have done that in the 23rd century, I'm thinking) by making the Beagle Boys younger.  In the process, she leaves the rest of Duckburg in the present.  I have NO earthly idea how that works. Nor can I savvy how the Ducks (well, Scrooge and Louie, at least) are literally able to sense that "something weird is going on here" in the space of a single panel:

Scrooge had last been seen chasing the Beagles with murder in mind two pages back, but mentioning that fact seems a bit like piling on at this point.  Seriously, HOW did Scrooge and Louie figure that out?!  I suspect that even "ol' Al Einstein" (how colloquial of you, Magica) would be unable to come up with a good explanation for this.  At this point, the story is falling faster than my old pants did when I tried to put them on after my post-surgery weight loss.

Magica takes off for the past in the Ducks' very faces, conveniently explaining her plan in the process. She even tells Scrooge her exact destination; she's headed for "Uppa Creek" in the Klondike, where she'll presumably find a general store selling "Ahilla brand beans" and "Aloafa brand bread".  Evidently, Magica has done enough research on Scrooge that she knows exactly where he hung out during his mining days, at least in this somewhat dubious version of his past.  Scrooge corrals Launchpad (whose participation, along with a couple of early-Barks-style HD&L rescues, arguably comprise the sum total of high points in this entire effort) for assistance, and the Ducks ask Gyro to get his Time Coupe out of mothballs.  It appears that the events of "A Dime in Time" are taking place a good deal of time after the events of the other three stories in "The Time Tetrad."  Well, Gyro did once say, "Toy with time and you're asking for trouble."  Perhaps he finally admitted to himself that he had been right all along.

See Gyro there, in the lower right hand corner, hiding the Time Coupe in the bushes?  Take a good, long look... because you won't be seeing him again.  That's right; the story still has 40-odd pages to go, and Gyro is nowhere to be found on any of them, even after the Ducks have moved on to another point in time.

Seriously... there are no words.  After this scene, Langhans evidently forgot that Gyro had been a member of the cast, and no one editing or reviewing the story caught the error!

Are there sharks in the Klondike, and is there a location where one can jump them?

Leaving Gyro in limbo for the duration, the Ducks head to town, where Magica successfully gets them in Dutch with the local authorities by framing them as wanted bank robbers.  In so doing, she proves able to materialize and manipulate whatever she requires in order to make the ruse seem at least reasonably convincing to the rubes.  I can kinda-sorta accept the magical puppeteering, but creating material objects out of thin air with her own bare hands?  Has Magica ever displayed that sort of ability before?

If the bottom panel of that page looks a bit more like the Old West than the Klondike... well, that's because the town of Uppa Creek gradually does morph into a Western town as the story goes on, with the snow cover being the only material difference between the two venues.  I guess that either Langhans didn't know about the true nature of the Klondike, or he simply didn't care and went with what he did know.

The captured Ducks are soon in jail, faced with a grim fate, which Langhans describes sans veils of any sort.

"We'll string up them no-good polecat varmints, eh?"

A wee echo, there, of some of the grimmer moments of "The Gold Odyssey," such as the magus being buried alive or Flintheart Glomgold being marooned on the planet Sarros.  Granted, HD&L are ultimately let off with life in prison -- perhaps their jail cell will be renamed the "uninvited guest room"? -- but this is pretty stern stuff for a DuckTales romp.  Or limp, "as the bee may case."

Meanwhile, Scrooge confronts young(er) Scrooge and demands Old #1, though she goes about doing so in a fairly slipshod manner:

Er, Magica, "that shiny dime" may not BE Old #1.  How can you be certain from that distance?  And how do you know that Scrooge's entire fortune is lying on his bed?  (Actually, we are led to believe that it is, but Magica couldn't have been expected to have known that.) 

The believably feisty young Scrooge doesn't take kindly to Magica labeling him a "jerkymonger" (isn't that someone who works for the Slim Jim company?) and knocks her down a hill, turning her into a giant snowball in the process.  She must get knocked unconscious, or something, because we quickly move back to Scrooge and Launchpad's meet-up with impending doom.

HD&L subsequently escape and, taking advantage of the fact that all of the spectators at the hanging are conveniently standing on one side of the gallows, pile up sacks below the trap door to break S&L's fall.  Before the supposedly-fatal-but-now-not-so-much drop, Scrooge commits what he really ought to know is a big boo-boo, especially in this venue.

Earlier, when faced with denying his ID as the notorious outlaw, Scrooge had tried to pass himself off as the fictitious "Jim Smith," which makes logical sense.  This... does not.  The potential effects of the goof are subsequently exacerbated when the newly-free Scrooge and Launchpad join with HD&L in helping Klondike Scrooge try to keep the dime away from Magica.  To be fair, Scrooge doesn't fall into the same trap again, saying more or less cryptic things like "we have a lot in common" and "[we are] kindred spirit[s]."  But I'm afraid that the empty bag is already lying on the ground, and the cat is nowhere to be found.

Now... when you consider that I had a major problem with the ghosts of departed members of the McDuck Clan helping to shape Scrooge's destiny in Rosa's "The New Laird of Castle McDuck" (UNCLE $CROOGE #289, December 1994), how easily do you think I bought THIS little scenario?  Putting aside the issue of the "lucky" dime for the moment, given the immense symbolic relationship that Scrooge will come to have with Old #1, it is tough to imagine him completely forgetting this series of incidents, which were most likely the first such to distinguish Old #1 from the rest of Scrooge's stash.  The possible impact of "remembering a meeting with his future self" on Scrooge's subsequent progress is, well, monumental.  For example, modern-day Scrooge makes the offhand comment that young Scrooge should "hold tight to that dime" because "it's going to carry you far in life."  Can you imagine a memory of that comment helping to buck up young Scrooge's spirits at difficult points in his future life... and consequently helping to dictate some of his actions?  I certainly can.  The fact that young Scrooge sees the Ducks and Magica taking off in their time machines, and that Old #1 suddenly returns to him, as if by magic, at the end of Part Two, would most definitely set him to thinking about the true nature of the mysterious visitors whom he'd previously called "daft."  He'd need something on which to cogitate during those long winter nights on Uppa... er, White Agony Creek.

When it comes to Scrooge's origins, I prefer keeping things as straightforward as possible.  No time-traveling interventions, ghostly buttinskys, or dumb-lucky oil strikes, please.  Rosa's LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE McDUCK was a monumental and, generally speaking, worthwhile endeavor, but I tend to lean a bit towards the sentiment of longtime fan-friend Dana Gabbard, who opined (re Rosa's epic in WTFB) that Scrooge's background, as presented by Barks, was part fact and part fiction, thus rendering Scrooge a classic example of a mythical or legendary figure, like Paul Bunyan. Pinning such a character down with too many specifics tends to reduce him to "just another adventure hero with a well-detailed past."  When you start throwing fantastic elements into the mix... well, just as Gyro said happens when you "toy with time," you're asking for bad vibes to rear up and bite you.

Part One ends on that cliffhanger panel of Magica (who had just stolen Old #1 back from the Ducks) and our gang flying through... the intertemporal medium, I guess.  Launchpad's attempt to hitch a ride on the surface of Magica's time device proves unsuccessful but has the side effect of knocking her progress askew, sending her to the Old West (not to be confused with the Klondike, unless you're reading this story).  Not that the Ducks themselves know quite "when" they're going, of course... though, when the dime slips into a time vortex, Launchpad seems mighty confident in his ability to track it, no matter "when" it goes.  Nice of Gyro to have given the Ducks all the information they needed to artfully manipulate the Time Coupe before he... he... heeeeeeee...

Hopefully, someone will reseal the "Universal Plug" in time.

For the vast majority of the story's 19 remaining pages, we'll be spending our time in ancient Rome, shuffling through our dog-eared index cards listing all the "ancient Roman" cliches that have accreted over the millenia.  Greedy, self-centered, bloodthirsty emperor... check.  Arrogant Roman soldiers and gladiators... check.  Ducks (well, Scrooge and Launchpad) being thrown to the lions... check.  Vaguely appropriate "period insults" like "rabble," "cur," "carbuncle," "toad," "harpy," "plebian [sic] dog," and "wretch"... check.  (Scrooge is also called an "infidel," which belongs to another period entirely.)  Sticking "-us" at the ends of words... check.

What saves the sequence, at least for me, is Launchpad's performance.  By doing nothing more than just being himself -- with all the good and bad that that implies -- he inadvertently creates crisis after crisis for the other Ducks, who ultimately become so spooked by his presence that they literally run away from him when it seems like he's about to step in it once again.

In classic LP style, Launchpad uses his own improvisational skills to best the most persistent of his tormentors, an overbearing, Bluto-like "greatest gladiator" named Detractus Finalus.  Say what you will about Langhans' performance here, but he definitely knows how to write Launchpad.

HD&L once again do their part as well, neutralizing the lions slated to gobble up Scrooge and Launchpad in a manner strikingly similar to (that's a politically correct way of saying "exactly the same as") a gambit they used in a well-aged Barks adventure.

At least Scrooge and Launchpad weren't summarily thrown out of Rome for being such "disgraces to the Empire" that even tigers wouldn't touch them.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Magica has arrived, using her crystal ball as a sort of temporal GPS (there's that "rubber-sheet flexibility" of her powers turning up again...) and subsequently disguising herself as the Emperor's bitchy wife in a failed attempt to trick Scrooge out of Old #1.  Thereafter, she resorts to good, old-fashioned zappery.  The gang nonetheless manage to take off in the Time Coupe, leaving Magica behind, and fly back to Duckburg, where, in Scrooge's absence, the ever-persistent Beagles have broken into the Money Bin with the aid of what Bouncer calls "this super acid we swiped from the lab."  You know, you know... THAT lab.  The Time Coupe arrives just in time to decisively squash their hopes...

Bozhe Moy!  Baggy is Russian?!

... and, if you can believe it, that's a story.  No return of Magica, no explanation as to what became of Gyro.  That's it.

So, was Bob Langhans just the Duck comics writers' equivalent of a one-hit wonder?  Hard to say.  He wrote a number of other DUCKTALES stories, some of which were published in the UK, but most of the images I've been able to find of them on Inducks are from Dutch publications.  Most of the other stories appear to be of the fairly modest variety, ranging from 6 to 16 pages.  For sure, "A Dime in Time" and "The Gold Odyssey" were, by a considerable margin, the most ambitious DT tales he ever wrote.  If one of these epics had to be second-rate, I'm glad it wasn't "The BIG One."

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Next, I'm going to turn my attention to DuckTales fanfic that can be found on the Internet.  As I mentioned before, while there isn't all that much of it to be found, I have found a couple of works worth commenting upon.  Any illustrations will have to be of the generic variety, of course, but that's what comes of working with text stories.

My first review along these lines will be of a rather modest, lighter-veined story, but more ambitious efforts are on the docket.  Here's one preview that may intrigue you:

Imagine that someone took Don Rosa's famous image of Scrooge's 1967 gravesite seriously... very seriously... and used it as a jumping-off point for the Nephews' future lives.  In the world of DuckTales.  And Darkwing Duck.  And TaleSpin (circa 1970 or so).  And even Goof Troop.  Now imagine that the story rated somewhere between PG-13 and a "hard" R.

Yes, really.