Comics Reviews: MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC #11-12 (IDW Publishing, September & October 2013)

* SPOILERS TO THE MAX, OR SOMEWHERE CLOSE TO IT*

After receiving panel-to-panel raves for their impeccable handling of "The Return of Queen Chrysalis," MLP:FIM comic stalwarts Katie Cook and Andy Price apparently got a fair bit of blowback from a certain segment of MLP fandom regarding how they handled these two issues.  While their approach is certainly... let us say... debatable, they had a perfect right to handle the tale of the first meeting of Twilight Sparkle's brother Shining Armor and his wife, Princess Cadance, in any way they chose, provided that it paid at least a basic fealty to the parameters laid down in the TV show.  What the negative fan reax show is that some people interpret said parameters in a very narrow and constricted fashion.  You might say that I'm not surprised.

The two-issue arc -- which is mostly told in flashback, with Shining Armor getting to narrate #11 and Cadance #12 -- relates how the pair's paths first crossed in high school.  And not just any high school, mind you, but a ponified version of one of those halls of learning from the popular teenage movies of the 1980s.  It is quite possible that Cook and Price spun the entire concept out of a single scene in the episode "Call of the Cutie," in which the schoolteacher Cheerilee showed her charges what she looked like in H.S.  You can see the same sight in the lower-left-hand corner of Price's cover to #11.  C&P evidently grabbed this meager evidence and ran with it, packing their story with all sorts of references to 80s fads, music, and so forth.  Said shoutouts include a Dungeons and Dragons-style game called Oubliettes and Ogres, of which the teenage Shining Armor and his three nerdish buddies are devotees.  Princess Cadance, as a representative of Equestrian royalty (though her precise relationship to Princess Celestia is never established), plays the role of the untouchable "popular girl" who would normally be considered well out of a dweeb's league.  Shining Armor, not being your average nerd, is bound and determined to make her his "very special somepony" before a lunkheaded, arrogant "big stallion on campus" can muscle in.  The expected physical hi-jinx and emotional agonies ensue.

While I found most of this fanciful concoction to be clever and amusing -- even though I must confess to having missed a couple of the cultural tributes the first time through -- I can understand, in an intellectual sense, why this got so many Bronies' legwarmers in a twist.  The pinning of Shining Armor and Cadance's youth to a specific spot on the universal time line reminded me of the depiction of Goofy as a literal "child of the 70s" in the Disney OVA An Extremely Goofy Movie (2000).  I hated that twist, but the two situations are not really comparable.  Goofy's personality was well established long before AEGM and had never been tied down by any set of cultural references, except those that might be fodder for general parody, as in the classic House of Mouse short "How to Be Groovy, Cool, and Fly" (2001).  Shining Armor and Cadance, by contrast, were pretty much ciphers before these issues.  They played major roles in the TV adventures "A Canterlot Wedding" and "The Crystal Empire," but the focuses there were on action and outside threats to Equestria, rather than on the characters themselves.  There was plenty of room for character development; Cook and Price simply took a far different route than what most people had been expecting.

One thing that Cook and Price unfortunately did not make clear -- an omission that probably explains a good deal of the vitriol hurled their way -- is how the "dork" version of Shining Armor managed to metamorphosed into the somewhat stolid Captain of the Royal Guard we saw on TV.  I'm sure that the relationship with Cadance boosted Shining Armor's confidence and all that, but what specific actions completed the transformation?  It also seems a little unlikely that Twilight, who, as a precocious young filly, helped her foal-sitter Cadance literally figure out that Shining Armor was the pony for her, had forgotten her key role in pushing the relationship along by the time of "A Canterlot Wedding."  On balance, though, these issues are great fun, especially for children of the 80s and those who wish they had been.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 29, "Duckman of Aquatraz"

I'm back, lads & lassies... and to WHAT?  Ugh.  And to make matters worse, those ever-loving Disney lawyers appear to have chosen the period of my mental convalescence as an opportunity to conduct one of their periodic purges of all "offending" DuckTales vids on YouTube.  The only remaining sources that I could find were "marred" (so to speak) by unremovable graphics on the screen.  That explains why I don't have a title card displayed below.

We haven't seen a "split decision of opinions" like this for quite some time.  Greg came within a  feather's breadth of giving "Duckman of Aquatraz" a perfect five-star rating, while GeoX seemed just about ready to TAR and feather writer "Francis Ross."  I put Ross' name in quotes because (1) I've seen it spelled elsewhere as "Francis Moss," and (2) given that this is "Ross"' only writing credit ever according to IMDB, it's not out of the realm of possibility that "Francis Ross" is some sort of self-incriminating "Alan Smithee" substitute.  For sure, if I had been a DuckTales freelancer and had presented this script for approval, I might have wanted to hide behind a pseudonym.  Though the ep doesn't truly collapse until the third act, collapse it most assuredly does, done in by a deadly combination of excessive sentimentality, some overly simplistic writing, and a view of the Duckburg legal system that is, to say the least, quirky (though, to be sure, some future eps will make the legal system look even worse).

  Another Japanese laserdisc "Did they really watch the episode?!" moment!

"Ross" appears to have been under the impression that Flintheart Glomgold isn't Scrooge's main challenger for the title of "money champ" so much as he is a jealous, chiseling petty rival, sort of a John D. Rockerduck with even more questionable ethics.  I say this not because Flinty warned partner-in-conspiracy Pierre L'Oink to wait to cash his check -- though I can understand why GeoX hated this gag, I did kind of like the twist on the old "cheapskate" routine -- but because Flinty's scheme to frame Scrooge for the theft of the Duck a L'Orange was so, well, cheesy.  Surely Glomgold could have come up with a more ingenious plot than dressing up as Scrooge, stealing his own painting, and then basically hoping that no one was smart enough to watch the security video all the way through.  Thank goodness (for Flinty, anyway) that Glomgold managed to have the trial take place in a court where a defendant is apparently not allowed to DEFEND himself -- at least, not unless he blurts out convenient plot points in total violation of the rules of order.  The manner in which Glomgold's perjury is disposed of at the end has been a bone of contention ever since Robert Ingersoll wrote about it in one of his THE LAW IS AN ASS columns in the (sadly, recently deceased) COMIC BUYER'S GUIDE, but I would argue that the depiction of the original trial is even harder for persons in possession of their normal logical faculties to swallow.  And there's more to come.

"Sorry, Mr. McDuck, I won't be on retainer for another 65 episodes or so."

The business in Aquatraz itself is probably the best thing about the episode, though, in all honesty, that's a pretty low bar to clear.  (Get it?  Bars?  Prison bars!  I made a funny!)  The boat ride out to the forbidding island stronghold, and a shuddering Scrooge's initial interview with the smilingly sardonic warden, are particular high points.  Scrooge then literally gets "thrown in" with the rich-duck-despising Mad Dog McGurk, who, despite the stickily sentimental manner in which his relationship with Scrooge is ultimately worked out, is a pretty enjoyable character.  Peter Cullen is a big reason why McGurk comes across so well; the voice actor gives the lug an outsized personality that somewhat resembles that of Neighbor Jones (a character for whom I've always thought that Cullen would have provided the perfect voice -- say, in some House of Mouse short that should have been made but wasn't).  Even when McGurk is throwing his new "roomie" around the cell and squishing him by lying down in the top bunk, you can't help but chuckle just a bit.  Why, McGurk makes prisoner-on-prisoner abuse seem almost... cute.

Scrooge's subsequent "mettle-showing" also plays into well-worn prison stereotypes in a reasonably clever way.  Scrooge will land in jail a couple more times before the series is over, of course, but "Aquatraz" represents the only time that he is actively obliged to participate in jailhouse culture to any real extent.  I've no problem whatsoever with Scrooge demonstrating an ability to arm-wrestle far burlier opponents into submission; the "lifting moneybags makes one stronger" gag must have been used as a cover gag for a $CROOGE comic book at some point.  Plus, the arm-wrestling challenge is a perfect way for Scrooge to demonstrate his physical prowess to the other inmates without getting really physical, if you know what I mean.  I wonder whether the Beagle Boys ever had to undergo such an "initiation" during their stays at Aquatraz (at least, I'm assuming that they have stayed there; even the Duckburg CJ system would surely have figured out that the Beagles belonged in such an escape-proof prison, right? Right?).  Scrooge's grappling triumph, plus his covering for McGurk and the suspiciously high-voiced con over the lunch-table incident, establishes the old miser's bona fides with the locals once and for all. 

While Scrooge bonds with the boys in stir, HD&L go about their amateur detective work in their attempt to clear their uncle's name, with logic again being taken for the proverbial "one-way ride" along the way.  Forget what GeoX described as the "delayed-action water" that ruined the family portrait; where on Earth did the boys suddenly get their scuba gear during their nocturnal pursuit of Pierre L'Oink?!  Are we to infer the existence of a 24-hour scuba supply store somewhere in downtown Duckburg?  Note that HD&L's normal clothes also conveniently vanish during this time... and Mrs. Beakley isn't even around to get them back (at least I don't think so).  The pig judge then inexplicably gives the videotape evidence away to the boys after they visit him and show him the muddled remnants of the portrait.  Just like it would have happened in real life.

The treacle starts to trickle with the "visiting day" scenes involving, first, Scrooge's family, and then, McGurk's "dear mudder."  There is one nice, subtle moment in the first of these decidedly unsubtle scenes: Mrs. Beakley's face visibly falls when McGurk refuses her initial offer of fudge bars, only to perk up when the big con takes her up on the offer after all.  Likewise, when Scrooge pays for McGurk's "dear mudder" to come and visit, the fact that the long-awaited reunion quickly turns into an arm-wrestling contest is worth a chuckle.  But, boy, is the sentimentality laid on with a trowel here. 

With the "great escape" at the start of act three, the whole rickety structure comes crashing down about our ears... and I'm sure as heck NOT talking about Aquatraz itself.  First off, you would think that a grateful McGurk, whom we will soon learn was actually framed by Glomgold, might now be willing to let Scrooge in on the secret that the two of them are both victims of the same sort of injustice.  After so doing, he might then offer Scrooge the chance to cooperate in a joint escape, which would have set up an interesting dilemma in which Scrooge would have to choose between the pleas of his newfound ally and the demands of the law.  This conflict of wills would have been challenging to pull off in an animated format, but at least it would have given Scrooge something meaningful to DO during the climactic action.  Instead, by literally shanghai'ing Scrooge "over the wall" against the latter's will, and without any explanation whatsoever apart from the standard desire to "bust outta dis joint," McGurk completely changes his whole mindset (from grumblingly resentful acceptance of his status as "an old jailbird" to a rebellious hunger for freedom) and transforms Scrooge into a passive pawn in a game that McGurk can't possibly win without the last-second reprieve that ultimately (and improbably) arrives.  Scrooge stops being a "victim" only after McGurk brains himself on the rock and Scrooge must drag him to the shore.  Once there, Scrooge makes a brief but truncated reference to the two giving themselves up to the authorities as "the only way" to proceed -- a faint echo of what might have been a really interesting conflict had "Ross" thought things through a bit more.

Of course, "Ross" provides the very escape hatch that both McGurk and Scrooge need by allowing HD&L to discover the video's hidden secret (I've heard of Easter eggs being hidden in various media, but never a "Get Out of Jail Free" card).  "Sheer insane idiocy" might be overstating things a bit, GeoX, but I've been shaking my head over this transparent dodge for a good long time, trying to figure out why "Ross" wasn't called in by Jymn, Mark, et Cie. and asked to come up with something just a tad more reasonable.

The infamous "Glomgold's only crime was stealing his own painting!" argument was originally taken to the cleaners by Robert Ingersoll, who pointed out the obvious fact that Glomgold could have been found guilty of perjury (assuming he was ever actually asked to take the stand, of course!) and/or the bearing of false witness (a violation of a Commandment, at the very least).  But there is one other problem with the "tearfully joyous" wrap-up dock scene.  Even assuming that McGurk was cleared (and I'm assuming that Glomgold would have had to do that somewhere along the line, thereby adding to the list of sins for which he could presumably have been "sent up" himself), wouldn't he have to face some kind of charge for escaping while still under confinement?  Mudder McGurk's "I'm so proud of you, Mad Doggie!" acquires a somewhat ironic undertone in this context.  I've often wondered why Mad Dog, so well characterized for a "mere" one-shot supporting player, never made another appearance in the series.  The reason why may be more ominous than we would like to admit.

"Curses!  Foiled again... so to speak."

So, was "Ross" consciously thumbing his nose at the intelligence of the viewing audience with this whole sketchy scenario, or was he simply displaying an incredibly high level of naivete?  There's a lot of evidence to support the former hypothesis, but let's face it; only a truly naive writer would be able to come up with a line like, "Unca Scrooge is the richest duck in the world!  Why would he need to steal?!"

Next:  Episode 30, "Home Sweet Homer."

Comics Reviews: MICKEY MOUSE #309 and WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #720 (June 2011, kaboom!)

All credit to Boom! for figuring out a way to squeeze the most out of its last two "classic Disney" comics releases. The second part of Romano Scarpa's adventure "The Treasure of Marco Topo" (1984) wasn't originally supposed to be in WDC&S #720, but the company wisely bumped a previously announced feature so as to slip Scarpa's entire story under the wire before the guillotine fell. (Those metaphors aren't mixed, they're positively tangled!). The last-minute switch actually wound up making a whole lot of sense, as Scarpa's tale, with its clever and entertaining crossover of the Duck and Mouse "universes," frankly deserved to appear in WDC&S, the omnibus comics title par excellence. "Here's to the greatest bunch of characters I know!" Mickey declares at the end of "Topo." If this is, in fact, fated to be the last original line of dialogue ever delivered in WDC&S, then it would be hard to come up with a more fitting one.

These last two issues' return to the "first principles" of Disney comics -- create funny and memorable characters, let 'em bounce off of one another, and watch what happens -- stand in marked contrast to Boom!'s original plans for these titles. WDC&S and MICKEY MOUSE both began life at Boom! as wholly unrecognizable entities -- WDC&S as the home of the Ultraheroes, MM as the home of WIZARDS OF MICKEY. Both "New Directions" were actually somewhat faithful to the spirits of the titles that housed them, just in completely off-the-wall ways. Once ULTRAHEROES and WOM split off to go their merry way (assuming that full-scale power-dives into the Earth's surface qualify even tangentially as "merry"), Boom! caught lightning in a bottle with Casty in WDC&S and kept MICKEY readable with a generally good mixture of new and old material. It wasn't enough to save the day, but "Topo" allows Boom! to cede its control of these titles with a considerable amount of grace.

The story of Mickey's search for a golden gondola ornament hidden in Venice by his ancestor Marco Topo contains surprisingly little "real" action -- at least, less than originally seems to be promised by a European treasure jaunt involving Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Scrooge, Brigitta MacBridge, Pete, Trudy Van Tubb, and The Phantom Blot. (Where are Donald and his Nephews, you ask? Let co-scripter Joe Torcivia enlighten you on that point himself.) A good portion of Part One is taken up by Mickey's wordsmithing neighbor's translation of Marco Topo's diary, and, once the gang gets to Venice, all of the action takes place in a single square in the city's Getto Novo district. Scarpa does pay good attention to local color in setting the action during the Carnival of Venice and using a real podium in the square as a key marker in the search for the ornament, but I rather wish that "The Maestro" had made use of a few more locations in his native city. What makes the story work are the believable interactions between the characters -- and here, Joe and David Gerstein shine. Everyone gets something to do (though The Blot spends most of his time skulking around in the background and muttering to himself before making one big push for the McGuffin near the end), and everyone is written perfectly in character. It "feels" very much like a modern-day version of the Gold Key PHANTOM BLOT comic, in which the writers effortlessly mixed and matched various characters to extremely good effect.

There are a couple of weak spots in the plot that Joe and David, try as they might, can't quite manage to paper over. If the spirit of Marco Topo is doomed to hang around the square until some descendant finds his ornament, then shouldn't Marco have made double-extra sure that his descendants would be able to find the instructions for locating the ornament a bit more easily? Even Mickey would have had a hard time finding Topo's diary had Pete not crushed The Mouse's newly-inherited "18th-century cupboard" with a steamroller and revealed the precious parchments "hidden in the paneling." At least Topo doesn't appear to particularly regret his foolishness, even getting into the spirit of the Carnival revelers who enjoy playing pranks on Mickey and his friends. A more serious (and frankly annoying) issue arises when the Carnival-goers greet Mickey's gang as...

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... stars of a reality series back home. Oog! Here, Joe and David were trying to make sense of the obvious fact that the Venetians clearly recognize Mickey and his gang as "celebrities" of some sort. However, I would have tried to tie the explanation into previously established Disney material, as opposed to riffing on The Jersey Shore. How about regarding the House of Mouse short cartoons as "reality TV" of a sort... or DuckTales as "The Further Adventures of the Famous Scrooge McDuck with a Camera Along"? We could then explain the presence of Trudy and Brigitta by positing that they appeared in "later seasons" of HOM and/or DT -- seasons that we unlucky denizens of "Earth Prime" never got to see but the inhabitants of "Earth-Disney" did. Anything is preferable to trying to figure out which of the cast members of Calisota Shore corresponds to "Snooki."

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Picked nits aside, this was a most delightful way to conclude Boom!'s tenure on the "classic Disney" titles. Uh... over to you, Stan? (And I don't mean Blather.)

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #715 (January 2011, Boom! Kids)

It's time to celebrate 70 years of Comics and (at least in the old days) Stories! To fete the moment -- which could also be considered a belated "official salute" to the old warhorse's passing the 700-issue mark -- three of the four stories inside this over-sized issue feature multiple-character "mash-ups" of the old-school variety. The gaudiest gumbo of all is the Dutch story "70th Heaven," drawn by Daan Jippes and Michel Nadorp and retooled by David Gerstein to obliterate its original status as (I believe) some sort of anniversary celebration of Dutch Disney comics. Actually, it's still fairly easy to tell that this tale was not originally intended for American consumption; the guest stars include all manner of Disney feature-film characters, most of which didn't get all that much four-color exposure in the U.S. back in the day. In order to involve all of these folks, the plot literally throws even the most elementary forms of logic to the winds, with the zephyr-blown handbills advertising Gladstone Gander's party for "luckniks" acquiring the apparent ability to traverse dimensions (Wonderland, Neverland, the world of Little Hiawatha's human Indian tribe) and travel through time (the 19th century rodent-London of The Great Mouse Detective, the Italy of Pinocchio). Turned away at the door, the visiting Disney-character mob repairs to a neighboring hall, where the Ducks are celebrating the anniversary of their beloved "community paper." (Does this mean that if I read old Gold Key issues of WDC&S, I'll find that the "Gold Key Comics Club" features have been magically replaced by yard-sale ads and slightly questionable personals?) Well, if I can accept the premise of Disney's House of Mouse, then accepting this should be a piece of cake -- and, indeed, the concoction slides down the old gullet quite easily. I can't think of two better, or more fitting, talents to pull this off than Gerstein and Jippes (who, like Tony Strobl, has the enviable ability to draw any Disney character well). Jippes, in particular, almost seems to be channeling early-50s Barks in some of his drawings of the Ducks -- entirely apropos, given that Barks' work was the featured item during those peak years of WDC&S' popularity.

"Villain in a Half-Shell" (1950), written and drawn by Gil Turner, continues the "Gang's All Here" theme by bringing Donald (not a particularly well-rendered Donald, but what the hey) into a "classic-era" LI'L BAD WOLF story setting. Irascible Don finds renting Practical Pig's home for a vacation to carry its own perverse share of "fringe benefits" in the form of the ravenous Zeke Wolf, who's quick to realize that roast duck tastes almost as good as roast pork. Turner certainly has a handle on Don's personality; the duck has his suspicions about the helpful Li'l Bad Wolf before finally agreeing to cooperate in Zeke-zapping, and, even more believably, goes well beyond what Li'l Bad had intended in terms of "teaching Pop a lesson" by gleefully exacting some painful revenge on Zeke. Western Publishing's track record with character crossovers was mixed; this is one of the more-carefully-thought-out ones.

The cover blurb suggests that stories "by" Don Rosa and Carl Barks are featured inside, but that's not strictly true; we get a story drawn by Rosa and scripted by Barks. Well, at least they're present (as is William Van Horn, who draws the cover parodying Hank Porter's famed cover for WDC&S #1). "Forget-Me-Not" (1990) was one of Rosa's assignments for Holland's Oberon Publishing, and today it serves primarily as an illustration of just how Rosa's drawing style improved over the subsequent years. The DAISY'S DIARY (actually, it looks more like "Daisy's Steno Pad") entry finds scatterbrained Daisy having booked a lot of events on the same day. Isn't that just like a... well, to be fair, Rosa himself probably wouldn't have written Daisy to be as idiotic as she seems here. All the major Duck characters appear in the final panel, which is pretty much all that this three-page finger exercise has going for it. Barks' JUNIOR WOODCHUCKS story "Life Savers" was originally drawn by Strobl in 1970, but here, we get the Jippes redraw from 2008. This unpretentious story predated Barks' long string of JW ecology stories, so it isn't forced to carry a heavy burden of uplift. It's OK despite a rather abrupt ending.

All in all, I was fairly pleased with this stroll down memory lane. There was enough new material to keep me intrigued and enough vintage stuff to satisfy those gnawing nostalgia cravings.

Comics Review: DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #362 (January 2011, Boom! Kids)... plus BONUS COVERAGE!

*** SPOILERS BELOW: PROCEED WITH CAUTION! ***

It may sound like a backhanded compliment, given my general opinion of some of the previous issues in the "Kung Fu Donald" sequence, but this issue -- the last of the rice wine, as it were -- turns out to be a pretty good conclusion to the short-lived cycle. In "Return of the Titan of Tae-Kwon-Duk," scripter Joe Torcivia picks up where he left off in "Titan of Tae-Kwon-Duk!", the enjoyable backup story in #360, by, strangely enough, going in temporal reverse. Torcivia cabooses the unrelated 1990 Paul Halas-Tom Anderson-Vicar story "Malicious Mallard" onto the backside of the original "Titan," which Egmont actually released over a decade later, and creates a Barks-flavored mini-epic in which Donald's difficulties, rather than those of some "does-he-or-doesn't-he-really-exist?" relative in feudal Japan, drive the plot. Actually, Donald is more of a victim in "Return" than anything else, since Halas and Anderson stick Don with a case of amnesia at just the moment when a lookalike lowlife, the bad-assed, karate-kicking Mangler Mallard, escapes from jail. Torcivia enlivens what could have been (and probably was in the original incarnation) a truly dreary cliche-fest with some inspired name-dropping (e.g., the amnesiac Donald's boss, who thinks the zoned-out mallard is the real Mangler and uses him to commit robberies, is named Handlebars McTwirlsneer) and some snappy repartee between Mangler and the recovered Don as they have a sort-of-set-to in a junkyard. (The use of "Ajax" as the junk company's name is a clever shout-out to the "Acme" simulacrum used in Mickey Mouse Works and Disney's House of Mouse.) Donald earns an unexpected triumph -- though not one without a barb in the very end of its tail -- so we get an ending that can be ranked as satisfying, for all of Don's travails. Torcivia's success in hooking up the two unrelated stories is pleasantly reminiscent of Disney Comics' creation of "The Time Tetrad" from a quartet of Duck tales that ran across four different titles dated October 1991. Disney Comics "imploded" soon after "Tetrad" appeared; let's hope that isn't an omen...

Janet Gilbert, ably assisted by artist Francisco Rodriquez Peinado, gives us an equally amusing back-up, "A Star is Hatched." As those of us who enjoyed her GOOFY stories during the Gemstone era can attest, Janet has come a very long way from the bad old days of having a bored Scrooge join the circus. Here, it is entirely believable that a glory-hungry, martial-arts-obsessed Donald would try to horn in on director Quackie Chan's action film. Don has to settle for the role of a lowly "production assistant" (read: all-purpose goofy "gofer") but winds up filling a hole in the cast after he inadvertently puts one of the stars out of action. The kicker: the star is actually a starlet. The extra kicker: Don's reaction once he learns that he's become a comedy smash is frankly surprising. Very funny and very well-drawn, with a positively grotesque depiction of the starlet's demise thrown in. "Goof-Jitsu," a two-page MICKEY MOUSE strip gag from 1948, is the "cherry blossom" on top of an enjoyable package that finally does a little bit of belated justice to the whole "Kung Fu Donald" concept.

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The trade paperback versions of "DARKWING DUCK: The Duck Knight Returns" and "DUCKTALES: Like a Hurricane" have recently been released, and some oddities -- both minor and major -- are immediately apparent. For starters: Why is the DUCKTALES volume slightly smaller than the "Duck Knight" volume? Not in terms of page count, but in terms of actual, physical size? Is this meant to indicate some sort of "aesthetic difference" between Boom! Studios releases and those carrying the imprimatur of Boom! Kids? If so, then the policy is apparently not being applied uniformly, since the advance notice for the collected "CHIP AND DALE'S RESCUE RANGERS: Worldwide Rescue," slated for release in July, lists dimensions that are slightly different from those of "Duck Knight."

After its early struggles, I had thought that Boom! had weaned itself off of major editorial gaffes, but the "Like a Hurricane" collection is the messiest, least logically constructed thing that I've ever seen the company release. Recall that "Like a Hurricane" was the "umbrella title" used to envelop the DUCKTALES material in UNCLE $CROOGE #392, #393, #394, and #395 in a clumsily awkward embrace. Aside from recognizing the use of the phrase for trade-paper packaging purposes, I gave it no mind, but now it appears that I should have done so -- or, at least, tried to. As bizarre as it seems, "The Curse of Flabberge," "The Everlasting Coal," and "The Pyramid of Prak-ti-Kal Dioker" -- in that order -- are presented without separate story titles here, as if they were some sort of continuous narrative. Unlike Joe Torcivia's efforts with "Tae-Kwon-Duk," however, there isn't even the slightest attempt to believably create linkage. Indeed, on page 2 of "Flabberge," there's a reworked editorial sidebar reference to "Prak-ti-Kal Dioker," which originally was released before "Flabberge" in "real" UNCLE $CROOGE time but appears after it in this volume. I didn't know that sidebar references could be used to predict the future. If this isn't enough to make one's head hurt, consider that "The Littlest Gizmoduck" and "A Switch in Time" are used as "filler" material with their titles still intact. Honestly, did the proverbial "pack of monkeys typing randomly on typewriters" have a hand in putting this together? I suppose that I ought to be pleased that the positioning of "Flabberge" at the front of the book might represent a recognition of sorts that David Gerstein's ambitious use of an existing story to "achieve closure" on the tale of Carl Barks' Brutopia was, in fact, the high point of the DUCKTALES era of UNCLE $CROOGE. From all appearances, however, putting "Flabberge" first might literally have been because someone "rolled a six."

"Duck Knight" is a much more pleasing package, in large part because it has a couple of surprises lurking within. For one, there are no ads for other Disney-related Boom! products. This makes some sense, given that (1) DARKWING is being released under the Boom! Studios banner and (2) Boom! is clearly trying to "hook" mainstream superhero fans here as well as Disney comics fans, but a one-page preview of the "Worldwide Rescue" collection, as well as that of the ongoing "Crisis on Infinite Darkwings," might not have seemed out of place. Following the cover gallery, we find two bonus items that more than make up for the PR omission: two pages of character sketches by DARKWING artist James Silvani and a three-page article on "The Origin(s) of Darkwing Duck" by none other than DW's creator, Tad Stones. For the Stones piece alone, with its priceless bits of "inside infor" on how "Double-O Duck, Starring Launchpad McQuack" mutated into the "terror that flaps" that we know and love, this volume is worth getting, even if you already own DARKWING DUCK #1-#4. Did you know that Gizmoduck was originally going to be paired with "Double-O" Launchpad? I didn't.

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As we gear up for the official launching of "Boom! Kids 2.0" and the promised "return of the classics," word has come of some unfortunate cancellations elsewhere in the Boom! "universe." Read the entire thread for some interesting observations and revelations. I didn't read the Pixar and Muppet books but heard many good things about them. Could Disney be planning to shift these titles to Marvel?

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #712 (October 2010, Boom! Kids)

We now have incontrovertible evidence that the justly-praised Casty is not, in fact, bulletproof. I was considerably underwhelmed by the conclusion of "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare," and that was before I noticed that Magic Eye Studios' cover gives away the identity of the villain. Granted, he's not in his standard garb, but folks in the know will quickly recognize the "civilian" corpus of The Phantom Blot. Having infiltrated Project Space Hotel Olympus disguised as designer Alastair Zond and having "retrofitted" the orbiting hostel to fit the standard world-domination protocol, The Blot plans to hold the world to ransom with a "death ray." Hugo Drax would certainly be proud, but even the megalomaniacal villain of Moonraker didn't go to the lengths of redesigning his space station to look just like him. For a bad guy who's habitually hidden behind a cloak, advertising to the entire world what you really look like doesn't seem like the most intelligent thing to do.

My friend Brent Swanson once argued that, once The Blot was unmasked at the end of his origin story, he lost what made him special. I don't necessarily agree with that theory in general, but, in the case of this particular tale, I do see Brent's point. The unmasked Blot was fairly effective as the villain in the WIZARDS OF MICKEY continuity, but that was a "costume story" and such deviations from the norm were acceptable under the circs. Here, apart from the 50-cent vocabulary and the gargantuan, self-indulgent "personal ad," The Blot could literally have been any big-ticket baddie -- say, The Rhyming Man making his what-seems-inevitable-at-some-point comeback. As other comics writers and artists -- not to mention DuckTales and Mickey Mouseworks/House of Mouse -- have shown, there's a workable middle ground between rehashing the Floyd Gottfredson version of The Blot and using him as just another schemer in a violet sport coat and bumblebee turtleneck (hmm... perhaps The Blot should stick to what he knows, sartorially speaking, and remain in "basic black" at all times).

Casty also failed to take advantage of the large cast he introduced, Love Boat fashion, in part one. Everyone save Cassandra Dot bails when "the orbital stabilizers [are] destroyed," and, while Cassandra shows the ability to "grow" when she ignores her own far-fetched theories of aliens in favor of helping Mickey solve a very concrete mystery, adding stowaway Goofy to the mix doesn't really help much. Mickey even resorts to using his pal as an inadvertent "rogue missile" when beginning the fightback against The Blot. Additional business involving the passengers, however, wouldn't have fixed the flaw at the heart of the story.

The creeping "Gemstone-ization" of Boom!'s "classic Disney" output is amplified by this ish's backup story, the GOOFY four-pager "Tidy Friday". This vintage 1958 tale, in which Clarabelle tries to clean Goofy's apocalyptically messy house, is just the sort of nugget that a Gladstone or Gemstone issue of WDC&S would have tucked into the magazine. Had the story featured Donald or some other "non-Mouse-oriented" character, I would have been even more impressed. Onward to issue #715, in which the "classics" come back with a vengeance.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S VALENTINE'S CLASSICS (Boom! Kids, 2010)

It isn't a violation of the "truth in advertising" laws -- quite -- but that charming Cesar Ferioli cover of Minnie bear-hugging Mickey with intent to cherish may be a little misleading. Only one of the stories in this compendium has any direct connection to Valentine's Day. (Sorry, Daan Jippes, but your "Raven Mad" gag story of Mickey getting more than he bargained for after capturing a raven to give to Minnie as a gift could have been set at any old time of the year.) Two of the four "featured items" center around characters cheesing one another off for romantic reasons, while a third, though it has its share of happy aspects, comes with a barbed tail of satire attached and winds up having been a dream all along. No "greeting-card garbage" (thank you, Scrooge) on display here, for the most part. That being said, the collection is an outstanding follow-up to MOUSE TAILS, not least because of the inclusion of one of my favorite Floyd Gottfredson MICKEY MOUSE strip continuities, "Mickey Mouse in Love Trouble" (1941).

"Love Trouble" was reprinted fairly recently by Gemstone (and reviewed in installments by yours truly, here and here), but I'm delighted to see it preserved between hard covers; the 1979 Abbeville Press reprinting was marred by re-lettered dialogue (back-translated from Italian) and omitted the notorious strip in which an angry Mickey walks through a picture window. The story has its flaws -- the dated and unflattering characterizations of the females above all -- but, as the "ultimate test" of Mickey and Minnie's relationship, it stands as the quintessential domestic comedy of manners in an era in which the MICKEY strip was primarily recognized for adventure. (The story actually served as a "tipping point" of sorts in the strip's history; Gottfredson would plot only one more non-domestic tale, "The Mystery at Hidden River," before turning the strip over, first to a gag-a-day format, then to the writing talents of Bill Walsh.) It also features a "perfect storm" of strip talent -- Merrill de Maris was Gottfredson's best dialogue man in the pre-Walsh era, while Bill Wright's inking of Floyd's pencils is droolingly beautiful -- and has recently grown unexpected "legs" in the form of Minnie's new beau, the wiseacre Montmorency Rodent, being used as the model for the modern version of Mortimer Mouse. I can, however, blame it for one truly horrific precedent in Disney comics history. While Mickey's supposed "rival babe" Millicent Van Gilt-Mouse is plenty cute, her collagen-enhanced lips are a real turn-off. Alas, Minnie got "the treatment" later in her career and spent a long period of time with an unflattering pucker that, when coupled with her rather dowdy clothing of the era, made her look like a candidate for some "face time" in an Old Maid deck. Carl Barks and the Ducks fell into a similar trap, resulting in a string of femmes with full-figured flanges that ranged from the unnamed girl duck of "Lifeguard Daze" (1943) to DuckTales' Millionaira Vanderbucks. Even Clarabelle Cow, plain though she may be under the best of circs, took a step backward when she was stuck with "the big red ones" on House of Mouse. Let's get one thing straight: big lips DO NOT make anthropomorphic female Disney characters more attractive. Capiche?



Barks' "My Lucky Valentine" (1953) is the only true Valentine story herein, and it's a good one, despite a rather awkward ending in which a fuming (of course) Donald is pursued by a blathering HD&L for eight whole panels. The thing that I like about this story, actually, has little to do with the Valentine theme. Here, Donald actually succeeds in getting a responsible job (as a mail carrier) and does not fail in his work. He's so dedicated, in fact, that, after pitching away Gladstone's Valentine to Daisy in a fit of rage, he repents and tracks the letter down in the teeth of a snowstorm. Daisy doesn't acknowledge his efforts -- was Daisy channeling the "Thing That Wouldn't Leave" Daisy of the early Mickey Mouseworks era here? -- which explains why Don is so upset at story's end. Apart from that setback, however, Don still has his job and has proven that he is good at it. Too bad Barks had to "reset the clock" before the next ten-page story.

Romano Scarpa's "Lights Fantastic" (1963) is a fitting companion piece to "Love Trouble" in that the scheming Brigitta MacBridge seeks to stoke Scrooge's jealousy by apparently casting her lot with would-be business maven Jubal Pomp, who's out to market a line of "firefly mood lights." Scrooge, of course, never loved Brigitta in the first place, so his reaction is less romantically jealous than it is philosophical; he worries that by "resting on his laurels" and letting new ideas pass him by, his empire may be in peril. Scarpa plays up the "fiduciary midlife crisis" angle (which is somewhat similar to the approach writer Michael Keyes took in his adaptation of Barks' "The Giant Robot Robbers" for DuckTales) by giving Scrooge an imaginary living moneybag to talk to as a sort of combination conscience and goad, but the bit lasts a little past its sell-by (cash-in) date. This entertaining Scarpa romp is enlivened, as always, by superb dialogue from David Gerstein.

Gerstein, with Jonathan Gray, is also on hand to dialogue the 1987 Brazilian story "Wedding of the Century" (aka "A 'What-if' Love Story of Imaginary Proportions!"), in which Donald and Daisy finally (gasp!) get married and have kids, albeit (literally) in Don's dreams. This story was published in Brazil a couple of months before DuckTales debuted, and, if the "old sourdoughs" of the day had issues -- and they did -- about the TV show's fidelity to the Ducks' world, I can only imagine what they would have thought of this had "Gladstone I" seen fit to print it (fat chance). One gives "imaginary stories" some leeway in any event, but, in places, this qualifies as a "hallucinatory story," nowhere more so than in the pages immediately following Donald's long-awaited proposal to Daisy (after waking up from a coma into which he'd fallen upon getting the news that the long-suffering Daisy had finally agreed to get engaged to Gladstone). Four artists divided the duties here, and Luiz Podavin, the second member of the "tag team," gifts us with some of the weirdest Duck character designs I have ever seen. What the heck, let's show off some of Podavin's wares:

That's the sort of thing that can keep a Duck fan up nights. Thankfully, the other artists allow the characters to age more gracefully and do a good job with Don and Daisy's teenage offspring (who bear names like Denzel and Dilbert and are every bit as trouble-prone as you might expect, given their parentage). Gerstein and Gray, too, do a good job explaining some of the "squashing and stretching" of characters that takes place here. The story is a simple one at heart, but the combination of funny dialogue and the... erm... unconventional approach to the artwork help to make it entertaining. Boom! deserves credit for deciding to print it, just as it does for continuing to make its special hardbounds special.

A Boom! from the... Future?

Several days ago, Chuck Munson posted his reaction to a DISNEY INSIDER E-mail newsletter trumpeting the "new and arguably improved" WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES. I've now had a chance to digest the thing myself. I suspect that I'm a bit more receptive than many to Boom!'s dramatic departure from the traditional format of Disney comics. My own entry into Disney comics collecting, after all, was rather atypical, and I never saw any conflict between enjoying Carl Barks' stories and championing DuckTales' interpretation of Barks' world. The need for "contemporary relevance" stressed by Boom! CEO and founder Ross Richie certainly isn't new; we heard this same sort of thing from the creators behind the animated Mickey Mouse Works and, later, House of Mouse. However, such "updatings" are not an automatic panacea; they can be done well, or they can be done poorly. Mouse Works and (especially) House of Mouse had a near-perfect "ear" for this delicate blending of classic and contemporary material. Boom!'s track record to date is much more uneven. As surprisingly enjoyable as Ultraheroes has been, I still think that it was a big mistake to plunge directly into battle, as it were, without a lot more back story on how all of these heroes and villains came to exist in the first place. In a strange way, Boom!'s handling of COMICS AND STORIES reminds me of Walt Disney's decision to make Fantasia; that movie failed upon first release, at least in part, because Disney had made such a giant leap in terms of what people expected from an animated film that too many potential viewers were simply baffled by it all. Some of Ultraheroes' more serious aspects, such as the love-hate relationship between The Duck Avenger and Super Daisy, have been robbed of a good deal of their punch due to this lack of context. Wizards of Mickey and Double Duck make more narrative sense to me; the former has basically transferred everyone into the "magical milieu" and left it at that, while "Double Duck" Donald is still easily recognizable as Donald (the writers have even paid Don a compliment by making him more competent than one might expect!). As noted in painful detail here, UNCLE $CROOGE has been the most disappointing Boom! title, by far, and for reasons that have little to do with how "cool" kids think Disney characters playing superhero might be.

In one area, at least, Boom! has already had cause to rethink a "contemporary update" of a classic character. DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #350, released this week -- and which I'll be reviewing later this weekend -- sports a new version of the Double Duck logo:

Someone, somewhere, must have finally resisted Donald's "piece." Since Don hasn't actually used a gun yet in the story, perhaps the original logo was meant to be "symbolic" of Don's new spy role, as opposed to a depiction of his actual operating equipment. This "new look" may also be suggestive, rather than illustrative -- though Double Duck deserves at least one sultry "hustle" with Kay K before he's through...

Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #299 (Boom! Kids, December 2009)

The blurb-writer at Boom! needs assistance, stat! Here's the innocent-on-the-surface plot summary for this issue, per Comic Book Resources:

Student of the great wizard Grandalf, Mickey Mouse, along with friends Donald Duck and Goofy, must face off against the Phantom Blot and his nefarious Team Black Phantom!

The same aggressively genetic blurb was used for MM&F #298, but, since "Wizards of Mickey" is a continuing story with a single general theme, no big deal, right? Er, not so much...


(1) The Phantom Blot, aka "The Lord of Deception," does appear here for a two-page rant of little consequence, but Peg-Leg Pete and the Beagle Brothers are nowhere to be found; "Wizards of Mickey"'s only thaumaturgical tiff in this relatively uneventful issue is with "Team Tapestry" and its "knitted warrior" come to life.

(2) Another team on the side of the magical "angels" makes its debut here: "Team Diamond Moon," consisting of our old friends Minnie, Daisy, and Clarabelle. (No, they don't dress in schoolgirl pinafores, though Minnie, somewhat to my dismay, sports the unbecoming "lipstick look" that various comic-book artists gave Mickey's girlfriend in the 50s and 60s.) The distaff diviners claim a victory of their own in the ongoing sorcerers' tournament, do the character-interaction "thang" with the boys, and then conveniently vanish from the scene during the battle with "Team Tapestry." They'll no doubt appear again soon enough, given that Donald is enamored with Daisy (even to the point of enlisting Goofy's help in an attempt to serenade her) and Minnie, the self-described "Princess of Moonland" (hm, maybe she and Usagi Tsukino have more in common than I thought!), appears to be something of a "big cheese" in this still-rather-nebulously-defined "universe."

(3) Who is this "Grandalf" they blurb of? Mickey's master Nereus is still imprisoned by "The Lord of Deception" but finds time to perform another "information dump" on Mickey through the medium of a magical medallion. Apparently, The Blot's minions all wear medallions bearing the letter M. Unless M stands for "Magic" -- which seems rather silly in this world, given the pervasive use of sorcery -- this ranks as the most mystifying use of that initial since the English translation of Go Mifune's name was not accompanied by a similar updating of his clothes.


Hopefully, Boom!'s PR people will catch up with the actual story in time for the next issue. Lest you think that I'm dissing #299, it's actually not that bad, despite the relative lack of forward plot movement. I even got an extra laugh out of Clarabelle's magical shtick of divining fortunes; it reminded me in a weird way of her House of Mouse role as "cast gossip." Needless to say, the shtick does come with something of a catch...

"Duck in the Iron Mask," part one

Here's part one of my response to Gregory Weagle's review of "Duck in the Iron Mask". Greg's comments are boldfaced.

This episode is written by Don Glut (?!!)...After he went through his stint in writing animation episodes; he went on to do documentaries and Agony Booth bad horror flicks including Countess Dracula's Orgy of Blood, The Mummy's Kiss (and its sequel), The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula, Dinosaur Valley Girls, Blood Scarab and the Vampire Hunters Club. Umm; yeah...These movies are stuff that I'll let Albert Walker and his gaggle of ranters at the Agony Booth touch because they are the experts and I'm not see. I agree with Chris Barat: What in the world was Disney's hiring practices back then to get these kind of writers on board?

I think the more relevant point regarding Glut's participation here is his long career as a comic-book writer for such titles as CAPTAIN AMERICA and VAMPIRELLA. He was quite active as a comics fan during the "Silver Age" and therefore must have had some exposure to Carl Barks' work. I don't know the precise backgrounds of a lot of the freelancers who provided scripts for DuckTales' first season -- though I know more than I did 10-15 years ago -- but I'd be pretty confident that a majority of them read and enjoyed Duck comics. In that sense, folks like Glut were good choices to help adapt Barks' world to TV.

The nephew on first base calls for time and the nephews have a conference at the plate as the pig fan cannot tell them apart. Funny since they had zero trouble figuring it out in Take Me Out Of The Ball Game. Then again; I'm dealing with the same writer who wrote [and directed] Dinosaur Valley Girls; so I shouldn't be surprised.
 
The Junior Woodchucks' ballgame here isn't quite like the match against the Beagle Brats. The stadium's bigger and the fans are further from the action, so it's not surprising that they can't pick up what Greg notices next...

Dewey looks out as I see logic break #1 for the episode already. In Take Me Out of The Ball Game; they were wearing the same red sleeves on their shirts. In this episode; Dewey has blue sleeves, Huey has red sleeves and Louie has green. And the crowd and announcer somehow cannot tell them apart. Oh; this is going to be a fun episode to mock; I just know it. 

I never noticed this myself until now, so I wouldn't "pile on" the fans and announcer for missing it too.

Dewey is sick of people getting them confused all the time. Funny since this wasn't a real problem until now. Sure; I have my problems telling them apart in Time Merit [sic] Adventures; but that was the exception. 

My longstanding take on the decision to focus an ep on HD&L's identical nature: Why hadn't someone thought of it before? It's a perfectly legitimate springboard for a character-driven subplot. Barks never called attention to it, and Don Rosa's "An Eye for Detail" (WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #622, March 1998) -- in which we learn about Donald's uncanny ability to tell the boys apart (without the benefit of "officially" color-coded clothing, that is) -- was still 10 years away. The real stroke of genius was Glut's embedding of the "why do we look alike" subplot in a larger plot based on Dumas' novel THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, which pivoted on the supposed existence of a twin brother of Louis XIV, whose existence had to be concealed from the public. Had the idea popped up in a completely unrelated story, then the claim of contrivance would have been much more solid.

So we head to Scrooge's Mansion as the nephews whine about the loss as Dewey still thinks it's unfair that they look alike. Geez; can this get any more contrived. I mean who cares? Yeah; I made fun of the nephews for not being nearly as cool as Kit [Cloudkicker]; but the Ducktales nephews are still good enough. Besides; I think the DT nephews should watch their Quack Pack counterparts and I think that alone will change their tune. No matter how moronic Mr. Glut gets. And I see mistake #2 for the episode as Louie calls them twins. Um; no, it's triplets. Unless Triplets is copyrighted for some reason. 

One important point here is that the boys are several years younger than Kit. I've always thought of them as being in the 10-11 year old range. Kids who are that young and are identical triplets (Louie's "The three of us are twins!" is pretty clearly a joke [and a funny one]) might well have a dispute of some sort over the issue. And if it's a choice between some mild bickering and the boys splitting into the threesome seen on Quack Pack, then I'll take the bickering every time.

Oh lord; if Glut makes it to have Scrooge not tell them apart; I'm going to strangle him. Thank goodness Don Glut didn't go there; yet. 

And he never does. Scrooge may not have Donald's "eye for detail" regarding HD&L, but at least he knows enough to crib by peeking at their sleeves.

Scrooge and [Count] Roy are kissing cousins it seems as [Scrooge] flips onto the staircases and demonstrates his sword slashing skills because they didn't have a worry in the world. I guess Scrooge was a child back then.

It'd really be a challenge, I think, to fit Scrooge's friendship with Count Roy into the popularly accepted "timeline" of Scrooge's life and times (thank you, Mr. Rosa). Scrooge has his spectacles in the fencing scene, so it couldn't have been that long ago.

So Huey and Louie are on the platform waiting for Dewey and here comes Dewey wearing the most absurd outfit in history; before we saw Kit wearing a pickle and seal outfit. Dewey is merely a clown who is trying to convince me in a contrived way that he stands out in a crowd. Kit wore the seal and pickle outfit because he's an animal lover and an insane sadist. I mean that outfit would be outlawed by the FASHION POLICE OF LAW; not to mention that this whole thing is seriously out of character for the nephews in general.

It'd definitely be out of character for Kit to wear Dewey's disguise, but remember, Dewey is several years younger. The boys are intelligent and mature for their years, it's true, but if Gosalyn Mallard can obsess over zombie movies and essay silly disguises, then Dewey's capable of wearing a silly outfit as well. The spats and bow tie are a bit of overkill, though.  I should point out at this juncture that Russi Taylor's voice acting for HD&L in this ep is among her best efforts of the series. She had to switch emotions off and on time and again and did a superb job of it.

Scrooge tells Launchpad to be careful because the kingdom is so small; he might miss it. I think Scrooge should be careful in asking to Launchpad to land the helicopter period. Of course; I guess Scrooge assumes that the helicopter has no wings; so LP cannot crash it. That kind of logic died a long time ago Scroogie. We do a cockpit shot as Launchpad tells him not to worry because he won't miss it by much. 

I can think of several "helicopter crashes" for Launchpad during the series, such as the near-operatic crash that destroyed Scrooge's new bank near the beginning of "Hero for Hire." It wasn't a lapse of logic so much as Scrooge "teeing it up" for LP to deliver one of his best one-liners.

And then we go to the side shot outside and of course the engine starts to sputter. Why is it that when something crashes in this show; it's NOT because LP is trying to crash it on purpose and it's some stupid mechanical failure?

Uh... LP tries to crash on purpose? Granted, he has a fatalistic streak about his crashing (from "Top Duck": "The ground and I are like two irresistible forces, destined to keep meetin' again and again!"), and sometimes he takes over the controls when a crash seems inevitable (as in "Duck to the Future"), but LP's ineptness isn't purposeful, I don't think.

Scrooge tells him to do something and Launchpad is doing something which is what he does best: crash. See; this is why I think the fuel line clogging is an obvious hoax.
 
Sounds like LP's fatalistic streak is kicking in to me.

Everyone pops out from their hiding places and somehow; the helicopter lands without any damage to it whatsoever. I see Scrooge has invested in LP crash proof materials. 

Can you blame him, really?

The platform opens with a thud as Pietro's (Will Ryan I bet since it sounds like Dogface Pete and probably looks like Dogface Pete only in Muskerteer [sic] gear.) voice beckons and the nephews look out. And it does look like Dogface Pete (plus purple feather of doom which is dangerously close to sending Michael Eisner out of the Phantom Zone.) as he is writing a ticket of charges on his scroll. He demands to see the driver of this contraption. Launchpad and Scrooge walk out as LP blows Pietro off (I'm guessing Chris Barat would have him as Petero which makes the pun better I do believe.) and Pietro stuffs tickets into his mouth to shut him up.
 
It's Captain Pietro, all right, and a great "costumed role" for Pete, one which puts his current "Doc Ock" turn in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES' "Ultraheroes" story arc to shame. They even give him a darker tint to fit into the Iberian/Italian/??? milieu. Will Ryan, being a big Barks fan, really puts his all into his few appearances as Pete, though Jim Cummings created a more memorable persona for the character in Goof Troop and House of Mouse.

Only three charges against LP as Scrooge reads them from his mouth. Okay; the disturbing the peace one is understandable; operating an illegal contraption is a bit of an ass and crashing in a no crashing zone is redundant. The fine is only $2000 which is pretty generous actually. And knowing Don Glut; I'm betting Scrooge gets pissed off big time on that. And damn you Don Glut as Scrooge get stuffed another 500 bones for squawking which is also redundant since disturbing the peace would cover that charge.

As we quickly see, the "zone" thing is a running gag. And why shouldn't Scrooge squawk over a $2000 fine -- he's gotten bent out of shape over far smaller sums than this. If he didn't, he wouldn't be Scrooge. "Contraption" relates to the fact that Monte Dumas is a backwards (in terms of technology) country, and it, too, pops up again before the episode is over.

Part two upcoming!