DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 31, "Much Ado About Scrooge"

The first season of DuckTales has now settled into what, in production terms, could be called its "middle period" -- and a fecund one it will prove to be.  "Home Sweet Homer" touches off a skein of 10 episodes that all (with one arguable exception) have reasonable arguments to rank among the series' best.  It's as if accomplishing the monumental task of completing "Treasure of the Golden Suns" served as a goad to maintain a similarly high standard of quality in the half-hour episodes.

Interestingly, a fair number of the eps in this remarkable run give Scrooge, if not exactly a second-banana role, then certainly a somewhat less central role than we have heretofore been accustomed to seeing him fill.  As I noted in my discussion of "Homer," Scrooge may have talked a good heroic game in that ep, but it was the Nephews who did most of the heavy lifting.  Now comes an episode with a highly misleading title, even granted that writers Karen Willson and Chris Weber were straining mightily to come up with a Shakespearean angle when they crafted it.  It would be very difficult to argue that Scrooge is the center of attention here -- not with one of the most indelibly memorable one-shot characters of the series primed and ready to grab center stage.  Indeed, Filler Brushbill the super-salesman takes up so much of the oxygen that I've always wondered whether another character, one much more familiar to Carl Barks fans, might originally have been slated for this starring turn.  But more on that anon, as a writer of cod-Shakespeare might put it.

For what is, at its core, yet another globe-crossing treasure-hunt story, "Much Ado About Scrooge" takes its own sweet time to get up to speed, as the audience luxuriates in a no-holds-barred battle of wits between the ever-persistent Brushbill and the determined-to-resist Scrooge.  A few of the gags here could probably have been omitted in favor of the characters spending more time on the "haunted" isle of Great Written, but, in all fairness, Willson and Weber aren't simply marking time waiting for Scrooge, HD&L, and Duckworth to give in and the main plot to kick into gear.  They plant an important character-relationship seed, quickly establishing that Louie, heavily in hock to Brushbill though he might be, has a sneaking admiration for the salesman.  When Huey and Dewey arrive in the midst of the standoff and Louie tells his brothers about Brushbill's arrival, the green-clad Nephew's "But Unca Scrooge isn't gonna let him in!" sounds decidedly wistful.  In the scene below, Louie looks almost dazed, as if Brushbill is exerting some sort of weird, Svengali-like power over him.  (Good thing Filler isn't really that sleazy, eh?)  I honestly hadn't taken full notice of these foreshadowing moments until my more recent viewings of the episode.  

Scrooge's ultimate surrender to Brushbill's blandishments could be considered a belated version of the old miser being "hoist by his own canard."  (At least, it would if a dogfaced character weren't involved.)  In the Tony Strobl-drawn comic-book tale "The Kitchy-Kaw Diamond" (DONALD DUCK #40, March 1955), Scrooge uses "Gabby Smoothtalker the super-hypnotic salesman" to get Donald hopelessly in debt, thereby forcing the destitute duck to perform an unpleasant task for him.  Since Brushbill causes Scrooge to "blunk-out" (for what should be obvious reasons, I prefer that description to Greg's "lose control of his bodily functions") just before the latter caves in, I suppose that it's at least possible that Willson and Weber were aware of the Strobl story.  In all honesty, though, it's not likely.  Despite the somewhat contrived manner in which Brushbill is used to get the "original editions" of William Drakespeare into Scrooge's hands, the salesman is far more than a simple gimmick to put a larger plot in motion.

Perhaps I'm not taking into account the full effects of inflation over the past 25 years, but it seems to me that original editions of Drakespeare "owned by 'The Bird' himself" would be worth rather more than a portion of $444,448.04 (the amount that Scrooge is obliged to shell out for all of his purchases -- and remember, that's counting the glow-in-the-dark socks).  This is especially true in view of the fact that entire volumes of the "original editions" seem to be taken up by single plays, as Scrooge notes when he picks up the bulky copy of Romeo and Julieweb.  Were the Drakespeare originals considerably longer than the versions that survived, only to be brutally slashed at some point, on the order of von Stroheim's Greed?  I'll go along with Scrooge's later line that acquiring these tumescent tomes for that relatively piddling amount of money was "cheap at twice the price." 

Emphasis on "complete."

With the Ducks' discovery of Drakespeare's note and subsequent dash for Great Written, we begin to glimpse the outlines of the original form that this story might have taken.  Specifically, the manner in which Brushbill learns of the existence of Drakespeare's lost play seems suspiciously similar to the implausible manner in which Gladstone Gander gets wind of Donald and HD&L's impending mission to recover Scrooge's lost documents in Carl Barks' "Secret of Hondorica" (DONALD DUCK #46, March 1956).  Granted, Scrooge and the boys aren't obliged to memorize the information on Drakespeare's note, as Donald and HD&L did for the map...

... but Gladstone's discovery of the map and the wind blowing Drakespeare's note onto Brushbill's beak seem to be "two pains in a pod":

This, combined with Brushbill's somewhat obnoxious personality (created, in very large part, by Charlie Adler's voice work) and quasi-mystical salesmanship abilities, has always inclined me in the direction of the opinion that Willson and Weber may have originally written "Much Ado" as some sort of vehicle for Gladstone.  (Heck, "Secret of Hondorica" itself might have given rise to an excellent DT adaptation, perhaps with Launchpad taking Donald's place.)  I have no way of knowing at this point whether my theory is correct, though I once had a chance to find out.  (No, really...  on one of my trips to the San Diego Comic-Con, I was briefly on an elevator with Chris Weber.  I still wonder why I didn't hazard the question at that time.)  In any event, it's not hard to visualize a version of this story in which Brushbill's siege of McDuck Mansion is replaced by a sequence introducing the audience to the power of Gladstone's luck, and Gladstone subsequently getting the chance to race Scrooge and the boys to find the lost play.  If such truly were the case, then evidently it was felt that Gladstone needed to be introduced in a somewhat more formal and less "plot-heavy" manner, as he ultimately was in the comparatively stripped-down "Dime Enough for Luck." 

At this point, GeoX raises a very significant question about the logic behind Scrooge's mad rush to secure the play:

There's a bit early on where one of the kids objects to this quest: "But Uncle Scrooge, Drakespeare said that last play wasn't very good!" To which Scrooge replies: "Who cares? It's still worth millions just because he wrote it!" I'm pretty sure we're supposed to view Scrooge as engaging in ethically shady profiteering here, but for rather obvious reasons, this is a very stupid idea.

Granted that Geo is far more familiar with matters literary than I am, this line of reasoning (by which I mean, casting Scrooge in a somewhat negative light for his interest in profiting from the play) isn't truly that far-fetched.  I mean, people really do try to pull stunts like this all the time.  Why else would anyone suddenly dig out a moldy manuscript by Woody Guthrie and try to recast the left-wing icon as a major novelist.  (Let's face it, if this thing had been any good at all, it would certainly have been published ages ago.)  Then, there's the once-burgeoning market for Carl Barks... well, "scribbles," I'll call them.  There's nothing at all wrong with owning original art, but there's art, and then there's faint scratches on tissue paper that miraculously avoided the trash can.  I can't help but look a little askance at those who tried to peddle the latter as "Barks art."

The set-up on Great Written Island is... well, strange.  We never do get an explanation as to why Drakespeare didn't want outsiders "sneaking, peeking, or exploring" around the place.  At some point, wouldn't such obsessive secrecy have hurt his reputation as "the greatest writer ever"?  (I don't know -- is J.D. Salinger still considered to be a major novelist?)  With Brushbill and the Ducks ultimately teaming up in a cooperative manner to explore the island, I suspect that the unfriendliness of the "Great Written Players" was an attempt by Willson and Weber to create some conflict and tension where none really existed.  Simply having the gang stroll through the woods to Drakespeare's castle without encountering any obstacles would have made for some rather dull visuals.

For my money, the highlight of the Ducks' pre-castle sojourn on Great Written comes in the very first scene -- the boat wreck.  This very atmospheric moment is memorably punctuated by the sight of Louie being swept away by the waves.  Fittingly, Brushbill saves Louie from harm by peddling brushes and such to the Weird Sisters from... er, Macbeak.  (The title Macduck, of course, is already taken, though the gang doesn't know that yet.)

In the ensuing "bonding scene" at the campfire, we once again note Louie's strange connection to Brushbill.  Having almost spilled the beans to Filler after the note blew out of Scrooge's limo back in Duckburg (and, incidentally, shouldn't Scrooge have gotten a little more bent out of shape about the loss of that note?  Wouldn't IT be worth a fair chunk of change in the literary-collectibles market, too?), Louie completes the job here when he accidentally reveals Scrooge's agreement with Brushbill's theory about the "value" of the terrible play.  I swear, my Svengali theory is starting to look better and better.  I do wish that we knew more about WHY Louie, in particular, seems so attuned to Brushbill.  For crying out loud, Louie even expresses interest in becoming a door-to-door salesman himself someday!  Given that (1) the boys will presumably inherit Scrooge's riches at some point and (2) Louie, like his bros, is considerably brighter than the average duckling, you'll forgive me if this ambition sounds a bit laughable.  None of the previous research about the differences between the Nephews (cf. Dan Haley's seminal work back in the 80s) gives us any clue here.  I'm certainly open to suggestions.

The "Great Written Players" remind me a bit of the character Fanny Featherbrain from Barks' "Isle of Golden Geese" (UNCLE $CROOGE #45, October 1963).  Like her, they're isolated from the outside world and are complete anachronisms in both attitude and appearance -- "fairy tale" characters of sorts.  Watching them go through their play-acting paces, one might also be tempted to compare them to the Druids in "The Curse of Castle McDuck," except that their self-entrapment in cultural amber seems to be far more, well, pointless than anything the Druids displayed.  In driving out intruders from Castle McDuck in order to enact their rituals, the Druids were merely attempting to preserve what was, by then, a dying culture.  But the whole world is presumably filled with acting troupes performing the Drakespeare plays, so why have the "Players" refused to contact the outside world?  Given the real-world existence of all the modernized versions of Shakespeare's works, it would have been an interesting plot twist had the "Players" known about altered versions of the Drakespeare plays and actively tried to make a point about keeping true to the texts of the originals (maybe even the uncut, book-length ones!).  But, no, we're supposed to believe that these guys and their ancestors have simply been spinning their creative wheels for some 400 years, to no apparent purpose other than a slavish devotion to Drakespeare's puzzling last request.  I didn't mind this angle so much when I first watched "Much Ado," because I was so impressed by the episode's ambiance (not to mention Willson and Weber's admirable resistance of the temptation to spoon-feed the audience and explicitly identify the different Shakespearean characters that the "Players" were playing).  But now, it does seem a lot more like a "myth-busting" episode of Star Trek, as GeoX noted.  For this reason alone, I probably wouldn't be able to give the episode full marks were I reviewing and rating it anew today.

The concluding business is admittedly a bit overcooked -- how convenient that the lightning storm broke out just when Brushbill decided to "go rogue" and pilfer Macduck -- but it still works quite well for me, GeoX's point about "cheating the customers" notwithstanding.  It might have worked even more smoothly had the issue of Brushbill's honesty been raised at the very beginning of the episode, as opposed to suddenly popping up about halfway through.  Planting the notion early on that Filler, for all his annoying persistence, is an "honest man" at heart would have made his sudden switch to the "dark side" seem all the more dramatic.  Another pre-planted "seedling" does flower here, though, as Louie makes his memorable plea to the "better angels" of Brushbill's gaudily-clad nature.  BTW, I think that this scene could very easily have been pulled off with Gladstone as well, perhaps with Louie or whoever reminding the lucky gander that "trying to cheat people is a form of work!".

"Much Ado" is a not-quite-perfect-but-reasonably-close illustration of what distinguished DuckTales from other animated TV series of the era -- and continues to do so today.  The pieces may not all fit together snugly, but the script takes for granted the fact that the viewers possess a modicum of intelligence, the spooky atmospherics of Great Written make up for some of the gaps in logic, and some clever character business pops up when there's really no need for it to do so.  Bottom line: you don't have to "sell me" on the quality of this episode.

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"DuckBlurbs"

(Greg)  So we cut back to the rowboat as Scrooge asks Louie if he sees anything. And they are wearing life jackets (so they can be safe according to the LAW OF DORA) as Louie asks if fog counts and Scrooge blows him off. Then he panics as there are rocks coming. Louie panics as we get the FPS shot of a giant rock and the rowboat crashes into it and gets destroyed of course while the babyfaces fall into the sea. At least we now see a use for the life jackets this time around. We pan right to see Scrooge, Dewey and Huey pop up gurgling; but Louie seems to be missing. Scrooge uses the cane to get Huey and Dewey together. However; Louie gets caught in the rip tide and gets engulfed by a big wave. Scrooge yells for him and the rest of the ducks get swamped as well.

Actually, Louie may have been in more danger here than we were led to believe.  At some point between the boat crash and his arrival on shore, his life jacket slipped off!

(Greg)  Filler goes into his big ass doctor's bag and brings out the RIC FLAIR BROOMSTICK OF DOOM; and it has nylon bristles and used one with low mileage on them. He throws all the broom right at the witches just to annoy me some more. The witches take this well as Filler gives them cauldrons in small, medium, large and the Monster Size one. HOLY CRAP?! Did he skin Eleroo and his pouch or something?! HOW IN THE HELL DID HE KEEP THAT BIG ASS CAULDRON IN THAT DOCTOR'S BAG?!

I dunno; you'd have to consult an expert...

(Greg)  Scrooge and Dewey continue to comb the beach looking for Louie. And then they see: Julius Caesar and two Roman Guards?! Okay; this could be good. Julius cuts his promo (Lend me your ears) as I should point out that it wasn't Julius who spoke these words; I believe it was [Mark] Ant[h]ony or Brutus. It's been a long time since I read the original play; but I know it wasn't Caesar. Bad research there guys.

It was Mark Antony.  Even though I've always thought of and referred to the Will Ryan-voiced character in this episode as "the Caesar guy," you could just as easily think of him as Antony, I suppose.  He's never formally identified as Caesar.

(Greg)  Then we see the curtain flapping from behind as we clearly hear Filler cutting a Hamlet promo with a sales deal. That is the ultimate blasphemy! Scrooge is about to use the cane; but out comes Louie and Filler as Louie is giggling under his breath.

More evidence of Brushbill's sway over Louie, perchance?  The gag wasn't THAT funny.


Next:  Episode 32, "Top Duck."

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 9, "Pearl of Wisdom"

"Pearl of Wisdom" is a very "1950s" sort of DuckTales adventure, for both good and ill, though the former hugely outweighs the latter.  Stereotypes and crystal-clear morals abound and are punched over with only a faint trace of irony.  A classic character who was a near-constant presence during the days when Dell Comics truly WERE "Good Comics" makes an unexpected appearance as the villain of the piece.  Even the pastime in which Donald's Nephews indulge -- one that, as GeoX correctly notes, sets up the main conflict of the episode in a somewhat contrived manner -- harkens back to the days of Ike and sock hops and clashes amusingly with other eps' depiction of HD&L as enamored of trips to video arcades (which are themselves pretty dated by now) and the like.

Our little Wayback Machine sojourn begins in the ep's very first scene, with the completely unanticipated return of Black Pete (writer Michael Keyes calls him "Sharky," but the Italian dub, among others, gives Mickey Mouse's indefatigable foe the proper ID).  Granted, this is a pretty "decaffeinated" version of the character, with voice actor Will Ryan clearly emphasizing Pete's comical aspects, as opposed to the sinister elements on display during Pete's superb "costume role" as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in Mickey's Christmas Carol.  When Jim Cummings took over the role for Goof Troop, he continued "bringing the funny" but gave Pete a little more of a nasty, conniving edge.  "Sharky," by contrast, is completely believable when he confesses to having been "a failure as a crook," or when he digs through his version of Felix the Cat's Magic Bag to come up with a disguise to fool the natives of Banana Island.  But Ryan's take on Pete is immensely enjoyable and clearly presages future appearances (of which, alas, there were arguably too few).

Pete also loads up the nostalgia-laden ep's visual cues right off the bat by appearing in the sailor's outfit that he sported in numerous MICKEY MOUSE adventure tales of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, many of which were written by Carl Fallberg and drawn by Paul Murry.  Artists Mike Royer and Rick Hoover chose to include "Sailor Pete" as one of three iconic "images of Pete" displayed in the opening panel of Marv Wolfman's "What's Shakin'?" (Disney Comics MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES #13, June 1991).  (In case you're wondering, the other two are the "original version" of Pete from the era of "Steamboat Willie" [1928] and the intimidating, authoritarian Foreign Legionnaire Pete from "Mickey Mouse Joins the Foreign Legion" [1936].)  Did Royer and Hoover pull that image out of their joint consciousness all by themselves, or did a viewing of this episode jog their memories?

With the introduction of Pete's partner Yardarm, we go several steps beyond a "mere" sentimental journey.  The serrated-snouted sidekick serves as a stand-in of sorts for Scuttle, the lop-eared retainer who accompanied Pete in many of those MICKEY tales of the late Dell and early Gold Key eras.  Strangely enough, despite the close association of these characters with Fallberg and Murry, the closest comics analogy to Pete and Yardarm may have been "Parrot for Plunder," a 1974 story drawn by Bill Wright, in which Mickey, Minnie, and Captain Churchmouse race Pete and Scuttle to an island populated by natives... with giant pearls supposedly available for the taking.  Since I highly doubt that Keyes knew anything about this exquisitely obscure, never-reprinted Watergate-era epic, the coincidence is quite remarkable indeed.  

In 1987, we didn't have the "good sense" to be offended by the multi-colored, idol-venerating natives from whom Pete and Yardarm swipe the pearl in the lengthy, cleverly staged opening sequence.  But who cares -- these are classic, "garland-variety" natives from a 1950s adventure tale, who even look like they were designed by Paul Murry (especially the native chief voiced by Hal Smith), and it's hard not to get roped in by the sheer, unadulterated innocence displayed by these genial folks.  Nonetheless, it is a little troubling that Pete's cheesy native disguise fools the locals so easily.  You'd think that the appearance of any new figure on this remote island would stand out like the proverbial sore thumb... and Pete is a pretty darn massive "new figure."

In a sense, Scrooge's role in this episode is almost as passive and tangential as it was in "The Money Vanishes," at least in a psychological sense.  Granted, he does purchase the pearl from the disguised Pete, goes to the Explorers' Club to find out more about the bauble, goes in search of Webby when he discovers that the pearl is gone, and then pursues Pete and Yardarm to Banana Island, where the two have their climactic sunrise surfside grapple.  But the ep doesn't really seem to be ABOUT Scrooge; Pete, Yardarm, HD&L, and even Webby are the characters who attract our attention and get most of the really good spots.  We quickly get a sense of this when Webby uses her "google-eyed" phone to mimic Scrooge's reaming-out of the hapless Mr. Waddle.  It's almost as if Keyes is purposely allowing Webby to step on Scrooge's lines here.

I agree with GeoX that the frequent "pitching" of Webby as "much younger than HD&L" was probably a turn-off to some people.  In this episode, however, Keyes seems to have been more committed to this characterization than any other writer.  Perhaps it's the use of "kiddie props" to jackhammer the point home.  Along with using the toy phone, Webby rides a Big Wheel, rather than a bike, to Duckburg Park for the marbles competition.  The Wise Webbina(tm) who verbally schooled HD&L on several occasions during the "Rightful Owners" serial seems light-years removed from this portrayal.  Keyes seems to be as committed to the notion of Webby as an extremely young child as was Vic Lockman to the idea that Doofus had to be older than HD&L (and hence a higher-ranking Junior Woodchuck) simply because he was larger than them.  Perhaps it was just a coincidence, but, in the rest of Keyes' other scripts, Webby makes only one non-speaking, background appearance.

A trope of much hardier duration makes its first appearance in this ep -- HD&L's epochally messy room.  I can't recall Carl Barks ever doing anything with this, but DT really pushes it hard right from the get-go, when two of the boys dive into a giant pile of dirty clothes in an effort to locate the "Great Masher."  Just as Rescue Rangers Dale's and Quack Pack Donald's Hawaiian shirts were intended to show how "wild and crazy" these characters could be, I imagine that "The Room of Ruin" was an attempt to establish the Nephews' "regular kid" bona fides.  In truth, that shouldn't really be necessary, but, at least at this early stage of the series, the "everyday-guy" characterization of the boys is yet another pleasant reminder of the classic age of Duck comics.  The DuckTales HD&L ogle the studiously unhip "Great Masher"; the Quack Pack HD&L reserve such reverential reactions for "cave babes," extreme sports aces, and the like.  Thus do we progress.

While the boys' "regular-ness" is familiar to Duck fans, the episode's focus on Huey as a marbles champion is a departure.  It doesn't have the impact of Dewey's rebellion against the triplets' identical nature in "Duck in the Iron Mask," but it's nibbling at the edge of hitherto unexplored distinctions between the boys, just as Louie's friendship with salesman Filler Brushbill will do in "Much Ado About Scrooge."  If one is following the Dan Haley template, one might expect that Louie, the most "athletic" of the trio, would be the marbles whiz, but I'm certainly not complaining about the use of Huey in the role.  Heck, I'm not even bothered by the show-boaty way in which he acknowledges the cheers of the crowd at Duckburg Park.  After all, it's not as if his ego is sufficiently large that he would take advantage of an opportunity to control others and thereby take over the... uh, wait.

For my money, Huey earns his true stripes in this episode when he sacrifices the "Great Masher" and quite literally risks his life to prevent Scrooge's ship from being sunk by Pete and Yardarm's torpedo.  This remarkable display of courage is passed over with virtually no commentary as to its true nature, which seems like a serious oversight to me.  What was that about the DuckTales creative crew being reluctant to put the kids in danger?  The ice-slide in "Lost Crown of Genghis Khan" was a casual water slide compared to this.

Unfortunately, the sense of fun and innocence that successfully sustains the episode for most of its length betrays it (at least in part) at the climax.  The "true wisdom" vouchsafed to Pete and Scrooge could be seen coming from several parsecs away, and the chief's post-lecture invitation to "party" isn't nearly enough to lift the heavy hand.  Even before Pete and Scrooge undergo their melodramatic "road-to-Banana-Island" moment, we get to see such silly bits as the disguised Scrooge and HD&L moving their bush-cover into the water next to Pete, the marbles-flummoxed Yardarm literally blowing a hole in his own submarine, and Scrooge getting hit point-blank by gunfire and sustaining no lasting injuries at all, as if he were a "common Toon."  Taken as a whole, the scenario is sufficiently unserious that I'm almost willing to take GeoX up on his suggestion that Scrooge's enlightenment consist of "a more far-reaching vision -- something about the ultimate hollowness of the eternal pursuit of money."  In order for that to have seemed at least somewhat consistent with the rest of the episode, though, we would probably have had to make several earlier scenes a bit less light-hearted.  It's probably better that "Pearl" maintained its old-fashioned conceits right to the bitter end, even as they forced us into a somewhat less than satisfactory ending.

Keyes does tie the ep's remaining loose ends into a neat knot at the very end when Scrooge has his brainstorm to solve his cargo problem and help the Banana Islanders get rid of their surplus bananas.  Keyes was "in and out" as a DT writer, but Joe and I flagged "Pearl of Wisdom" as his best work of the series 25 years ago, and I think that the description still holds.

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DuckBlurbs

(GeoX)  Funny little scene where Duckworth coolly catches the urns that the ducklings have knocked off their pedestals.

I regard this as a very "Cadbury-esque" moment.  The Rich family's "perfect butler" couldn't have pulled it off with any more aplomb.  

(Greg)  Yardarm and Sharky enter the submarine as Yardarm wants to look for a buyer and Sharky has the perfect one in mind as one who never asks questions and never backs down from a deal.

This description of Scrooge doesn't ring right for some reason.  "Never asks questions"?  The guy who takes pride in "making it square" and has fifty quintillion booby traps around his Money Bin to prevent someone from sneaking up on him?  Does not compute.

(Greg)  Scrooge sees this as a way to increase his wealth infinitely. They have a jolly good laugh as Battmountan [sic] proclaims that it's only a legend. Scrooge wraps up the map as Battmountan [sic] thinks they are far too civilized to believe in such nonsense.

I'd think that it would have been far more likely for Battmounten to have taken this "legend" seriously, given that the Abominable Snowman... er, woman... turned out to be real.

(Greg)  HOLY CRAP?! I got to admit; [shooting the "Great Masher" at the torpedo] is a pretty dangerous thing to do for Huey. I've seen Kit do a lot of crazy things; but Huey is showing that he can do his fair share once in a while. How he turned into Quack Pack Huey; I'll never know.

Ask the "babes."  They probably know.

(Greg)  Scrooge and the nephews (wearing ski masks and looking like commandos. I see where the commando thing came from.) climb down on the raft and Scrooge states that he will be fine. 

Perhaps I should have included this as another example of a silly moment at the climax.  Sure, the Ducks' wearing of commando garb is "cool" and all that, but, given that Scrooge and HD&L subsequently hide behind foliage, the exact purpose of the camouflage escapes me.  At least it looks "cooler" than the gear HD&L and Webby wore in DuckTales: The Movie, or even the Rambo-style duds that the Quack Pack Nephews wore during "Feats of Clay."  Scrooge came well prepared for all contingencies, I'll give him that much.

 

Next:  Episode 10, "Master of the Djinni."

Book Review: 1919: THE YEAR OUR WORLD BEGAN by William Klingaman (Harper Collins, 1987)

Until author Klingaman tips his partisan hand about two-thirds of the way through, this is a highly readable and generally fair-minded survey of the events of one of the most momentous years in human history.  It's certainly not a pleasant journey.  After slogging through nearly 700 pages detailing the massacres, rebellions, and ethnic conflicts of war-torn Europe and the sad effects of race riots and "Red Scares" in the U.S., juxtaposed against the half-idealistic, half-cynical clown's pageant that was the Paris Peace Talks leading up to the Treaty of Versailles, the average reader is likely to feel a little like Jess Willard did after being massacred by Jack Dempsey in the July 4, 1919 heavyweight title fight at Toledo, OH.  Believe it or not, the story of this notorious bout is actually among the lighter moments of the relentlessly downbeat narrative.  

For such a comprehensive survey, there are a surprisingly large number of narrative lacunae in this tale.  Klingaman spends a good deal of time describing the "First Red Scare" in America but, for some reason, doesn't even mention the famed imprisonment of the Socialist leader Eugene Debs, who wasn't released from jail until well after Woodrow Wilson had left office.  This omission is particularly strange in that Klingaman provides us with a wealth of detail concerning the abortive Bolshevik rebellions in Germany and Hungary, to say nothing of the early struggles of the Soviet Union against the "White Russian" forces (and, lest we forget, a small contingent of Allied soldiers who were dumped into Russia with a rather vague charge to fight the Bolsheviks, and whose travails all too often go unmentioned in standard histories of this period).  If the omission of Debs' plight was a simple oversight, then it was a mystifying one.  Less defensible is Klingaman's decision to focus virtually all of the attention in the U.S. political battle over the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles on Wilson's strenuous -- and, in the end, near-fatal -- efforts to overcome Senatorial opposition with his famous whistle-stop tour of the American West.  Wilson's fate is obviously a more dramatic story than a dry debate in the halls of Congress could ever be, but Klingaman gives almost literally NO attention to the reasons for the opposition, apart from the usual boilerplate about isolationism.  It's difficult to attribute this to anything other than ideological bias.

Klingaman does leaven his narrative with occasional digressions into the fashions, literature, and cinema of the day.  Even many of these asides have their grim aspects.  Take sports, for example: aside from the Willard-Dempsey bout, the Black Sox Scandal gets plenty of space, and even the description of Babe Ruth's final season with the Boston Red Sox is likely to turn the stomachs of Sox fans.  The world of silent movies, meanwhile, is primarily represented through a retelling of the plot of the infamous horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  It's unfortunate that 1919's introduction of the world's longest-lived animated cartoon character couldn't have at least been mentioned, if for no other reason than to soften the mood.

If you like sweeping "life and times"-style histories in the grand tradition of Mark Sullivan's OUR TIMES or William Manchester's THE GLORY AND THE DREAM, then you'll probably enjoy "1919"... that is, if "enjoy" is the proper verb to use to describe one's relationship with such a depressing catalogue of human injustice, crime, folly, and suffering.

Comics Review: DISNEY'S HERO SQUAD #4 (Boom! Kids, April 2010)

All together now, kiddies: "LET'S LEVEL MOUSETON!" Well, a superheroic subsection of it, at least. The plot of the "Ultramachine" saga finally begins to move again as the Ultraheroes agree to turn over their Ultrapods to the Sinister 7 in exchange for the captured Mickey. This involves flying the 'Pods to the 7's island hideaway, where the contractually obligated double-cross awaits. Problem is, the newly-assembled Ultramachine doesn't work. Gladstone/Cloverleaf appears to turn traitor, confessing that a secret seventh 'Pod lies in Villa Rose. Granted, Clove's been sulking ever since that bout with Pete made him look bad, but would even Gladstone stoop this low? It doesn't matter in the end, as Emil Eagle goes Gladstone "one worse" by finally dropping the pretense and boldly announcing that he's abandoning his allies and going after the seventh 'Pod (the i.d. of which comes as a rather clever surprise) with the aid of his giant robot (which looks more like a tamed Transformer than the Master Cylinder-style gizmo that Emil, Pete, and Prince Penguin used back in MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES #12). We get a nice payoff of the running gag about Scrooge's repeated escape attempts, and, praise be, it appears that Eega Beeva is finally going to do some legitimate battle, as he calls for the "Green Ultra-Suit" (whatever that may be) in the chapter's final panel. The Antonello Dalena artwork is just a shade above the South Park Colorforms level, though... and, after walking into a trap to rescue Mickey, why did the Ultraheroes leave him behind as they dashed back to home base?!

There's precious little to say about part two of the relentlessly mediocre "Origin of the Red Bat." Fethry doesn't even get the satisfaction of defeating The Beagle Boys legitimately; his victory over the would-be costume-party robbers (are the B-Boys really that hard up for capers?) is a stone fluke. Scrooge has the fitting reaction when Donald reveals the existence of the "masked duck": a simple "Oh." Darkwing Duck would turn up his sizable beak at the very notion of something like this being HIS origin story. Somehow, I think the upcoming DARKWING mini-series will be much more entertaining...

Comics Review: UNCLE $CROOGE #384 (October 2009, Boom! Kids)

For the foreseeable future, this title will be Boom!'s monthly bouquet tossed to the "old sourdoughs," the die-hard Disney Duck fans who cheered "Gladstone I," took a roller-coaster ride with Disney Comics, gradually became disillusioned (if not outright disgusted) with "Gladstone II," and cherished the effort put into the Gemstone books. The Boom! $CROOGE, like the Gemstone version, will concentrate on European stories in the Barksian mold, so the "x-factor" in its success will be the quality of the translation and dialogue work. Gemstone's scripts are a tough act to follow, though, and U$ #384 doesn't even come close. Toss in an egregious formatting decision, and this issue stands as the weakest Boom! has released to date.

Apart from the three-tiered format, there's little to distinguish this ish's first story, "Uncle $crooge and the Ghostly Carriage," from a mid-rank Gemstone space-filler. Per-Erik Hedman provides the plot and Wanda Gattino the Daniel Branca-esque artwork for a relatively straightforward tale in which Scrooge, Donald, and HD&L, closely tracked by Magica de Spell, head to Germany to investigate rumors that a castle Scrooge has just purchased holds a treasure, secreted there by the pile's late owner, a count. The title bar (Huzza! The title of a story, finally displayed in all its glory!) cleverly features some "Scooby-Doo Font" lettering, but there's nothing phony about the count's ghost, though the Ducks do find that the villagers' claim that he's been haunting the place while driving a spectral schlepper isn't exactly accurate. Magica's presence is due solely to the highly dubious theory that Scrooge feels safer about leaving his Money Bin if he brings along his "magical" dime. Between screeching ineffectively, blowing up a few "poof" (sic) bombs, and losing her "magic bag" (what, is she cribbing from Felix the Cat now?), Magica's more of an annoyance than a true menace here. Unfortunately, thanks to the relatively prosaic dialogue, the Ducks aren't characterized with any more vim than Magica. It's a competent effort, but we've come to expect more from our $CROOGE stories.

"The Ghostly Carriage" does have one inestimable virtue -- it begins and ends in this issue. Such, shockingly, cannot be said of its follow-up story, "Salt and Gold," another Hedman-Gattino team-up which immediately succeeds "Carriage" in Duck-time. This time, the Ducks, joined by Gyro, are off to Krakow, Poland to investigate a story that Copernicus' assistant Krzystof may have possessed the knowledge to turn salt into gold. (Actually, Gyro quotes Copernicus as having said, "If anyone can make gold out of salt, [Krzystof] can!" which merely indicates that Krzystof was the most likely lad to succeed; it doesn't guarantee that he actually achieved success.) Having recovered her runic rucksack, Magica follows apace. Gyro is given access to the Copernicus archives because to his "reputation in scientific circles" (I thought he was a glorified backyard inventor? Won any Nobel Prizes lately, Gyro?) and briefly gets to wield a neat little device that helps him scan and locate documents in a flash, but the Ducks quickly fall under suspicion when a priceless book vanishes (it was actually stolen by Magica). Scrooge and Donald are apprehended as HD&L and Gyro escape... and, folks, that is where it ends, "to be continued next month." After only six pages, mind you. This is easily the clumsiest "continued story scenario" I've ever seen in a Duck comic. Wasn't there some short Egmont story that could have filled this gap? If the two stories were linked to begin with, then why print them in a book with limited space, as opposed to a $CROOGE trade paperback or extra-size issue? Boom!'s displayed several traces of haphazard organization in all of its releases to date, but this one is by far the most troubling.

As mentioned in my previous post, Don Rosa provided the cover for the special Baltimore Comic-Con edition of this issue. The two other cover variants were drawn by Daniel Branca (see above, following the first paragraph) and Tino Santanach (see immediately above). Since my local comics shop is closed for renovations right now, I won't be able to get either of these regular releases for a bit, but I greatly prefer the clean, easy-to-scan Branca cover to the cluttered Santanach version. I'm glad to see that Boom! intends to continue the practice of giving Egmont stalwarts pride of place on $CROOGE covers. The book's interior, however, needs a bit of work.