Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S MICKEY MOUSE, VOLUME 5: OUTWITS THE PHANTOM BLOT by Floyd Gottfredson (Fantagraphics Press, 2014)

By the time we run out of space in this latest Gottfredson collection, we're bumping up against what I consider to be THE ABSOLUTE prime period of the strip -- roughly, from 1940 to 1942.  Every single story during this period is a winner in every way, and, as fate would have it, we're going to get just about the whole schlemozzle in Volume 6.  Before that, however, we're obliged to crawl over a fair amount of the panelological equivalent of "broken glass."  Despite the presence of the single most famous MICKEY story of them all, "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot," the 1938-1940 dailies reproduced here vary dramatically in quality and force the reader to choke down a carload of racial stereotypes, mostly of the black persuasion.  (Even the appearance of the Blot himself was partially inspired by the looks of two Negro children called "The Blots" in the old comic strip JERRY ON THE JOB.)  Some of the early reviews of Volume 5 have made quite a bit of this unfortunate coincidence.  It doesn't really spoil a context-conscious reader's enjoyment of this collection, of course, but those who are made overly squeamish by "unacceptable" pop-culture conventions past are advised to proceed with some caution.

One of the problems here is that some of the worst examples of stereotyping are married to stories that are unusually weak by Gottfredson's standards.  "Mickey Mouse Meets Robinson Crusoe" marks a significant turning point in Mickey's history, as the strip of December 22, 1938 suddenly finds The Mouse sporting pupiled eyes for the first time.  The context, confusingly, is the start of filming of a new MICKEY cartoon, an adaptation of the Daniel Defoe classic.  Not that Gottfredson hadn't tried framing gambits like this before -- see this volume for two such efforts -- but, given that the daily strip, unlike the Sunday page, had long since been dedicated to lengthy, real-world adventure narratives, using it here seems awkward.  Gottfredson's use of the "make-believe" cordon sanitaire becomes more understandable once we bite into the heart of the story: a messy slumgullion featuring an irritatingly nebbishy, "pink-tea" version of Crusoe and "island natives" who talk like Stepin Fetchit.  It's every bit as embarrassing as it sounds.  Remarkably enough, Gottfredson did a sequel of sorts to "Crusoe" in "An Education for Thursday," wherein friendly (and lazy, and hungry) native Friday sends his "almost twin brother" Thursday to Mickey to acquire some "edumcation."  IMHO, "Thursday" wears a bit better than "Crusoe" only because Thursday is a primitive savage, as opposed to a deep-Southern knockoff, and it's not hard to mentally replace Thursday with DuckTales' Bubba Duck and interpret Gottfredson's three months' worth of "fish out of water" gags as a sort of "early director's cut" version of "Bubba Trubba."

"The Miracle Master" and "The Plumber's Helper", while far more satisfying than "Crusoe" and "Thursday," suffer from another problem that seems to have been bothering Gottfredson during this period: an inability to wrap up his stories in a reasonable amount of time.  "Master" takes a reasonably short time to make its basic cynical point about the futility of well-meaning reforms (even magical ones) in a fallen world, but taking the show to "Genieland" to make exactly the same point seems like overkill.  The inadvisability of the double-dip becomes apparent when Mickey's visit to "Genieland" quickly devolves into a series of gags.  Granted, many of the gags are pretty amusing, but you're ready for the story to be over long before it actually is, a rare experience for a Gottfredson reader.  "Helper" is a cleverly written mystery featuring one of Gottfredson's more intriguing visiting characters, but, given that it lasts almost 40 strips longer than "Phantom Blot" and has almost no action, it's not hard to imagine that Gottfredson could have sped up the story a little and sharpened its impact.

Aside from "Phantom Blot," the quality of which goes without saying, the best story in the book is "Mickey Mouse, Mighty Whale Hunter," the last great "true adventure" of the "pie-eyed Mickey" era.  It's got all the classic whaling tropes -- including, of course, a couple of ethnic stereotypes among the crew -- but Gottfredson doesn't fall into the trap of concluding the tale with the capture or destruction of the legendary whale "Ol' Barney."  His solution to the problem is far more subtle and gives Mickey one of his more memorable "compassionate moments."

Ancillaries include reproduced pages from the "softened" 1955 reprinting of "Phantom Blot" in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES, in which the Blot's notorious deathtraps are redrawn by Paul Murry as considerably less perilous perils; a first-rate essay by Joe Torcivia on the history of the Blot; and a fascinating "Heirs of Gottfredson" piece detailing just how heavily the early works of Osamu Tezuka were influenced by "Phantom Blot."  It ain't subtle, gaijin.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 63, "All Ducks on Deck"

"All Ducks on Deck" isn't a character-building episode on the order of "Hero for Hire," "Sir Gyro de Gearloose," or "Top Duck."  Nor is it an old-fashioned Barksian treasure trek like "Raiders of the Lost Harp."  Its original air date, a couple of days after the similarly-themed "Spies in Their Eyes," may actually have worked against it a bit, at least in the minds of those viewers who were unfamiliar with the history of Disney comics.  However, for those "in the know," the ep took no time at all to shoot to the top of the "faves" list, for one rather obvious, obsidian-cloaked reason...

Yep, the appearance of The Phantom Blot was a stunner, all right, not least because he had long been linked with Mickey Mouse in fans' minds.  (It also may have marked something of a turning point in the depiction of The Blot in all media, an argument which I will explore below.)  Why did the DT crew wait until almost literally the last minute of the first season to bring him on board?  The big-canvas criminal plans that The Blot typically favors would seem to provide an excellent contrast to the more Scrooge-centric obsessions of The Beagle Boys (robbing the Money Bin), Flintheart Glomgold (topping Scrooge on the money list), and Magica De Spell (getting her hands on Old #1).  Moreover, in battling The Blot's machinations for the good of the wider world, Scrooge would have multiple chances to grow in moral stature, just as he did when he tearfully left the petrified Nephews and the rest of his family behind at the Mansion and went off to secure "The Golden Goose."  Oh, well, at least we'll always have Cat Island.

As memorable as The Blot's performance is, he's not the only star of this particular show.  For example, he must (no doubt reluctantly) share the stage with Donald, who turns in his most comprehensively Barksian performance of the series here.  Any Duck fan who doesn't recognize the influence of Barks in Don's desire to impress his Nephews by relating tall tales of his supposed Navy exploits is hereby required to turn in his or her honorary key to the city of Duckburg -- no exceptions.  At the same time, the specific sin that Donald commits also makes perfect sense in the context of his role in DT, and, more specifically, of his relationship to HD&L in the series.  The slightly more "grounded" and cynical Nephews of most Barks "ten-pagers" would more than likely have seen through Donald's exaggerated stories relatively quickly and blown them off without having to set a webbed foot inside their uncle's duffle bag.  By contrast, from the opening moments of "Don't Give Up the Ship," the DT HD&L have generally tried to give Don the benefit of the doubt, and they maintain that attitude throughout the course of "Deck." Even after the boys stow away and learn that Don's stories of heroism were bogus, Louie declares that he's proud of Unca Donald anyway, and the trio dig into the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook and set about trying to create situations in which Don can live up to his inflated self-image.  In the end, after braving a fair amount of adversity and bum luck -- most of which happens to him through no direct fault of his own -- Don comes up with the plan to guide Scrooge and Launchpad back to the carrier with flares (OK, GeoX, it may not have been "brilliant," but Don hatched the idea at the precise time it was needed, which has to count for something), and the boys reward him with the handmade medal in a touching scene that does, indeed, evoke memories of the heartfelt concluding panels of Barks' 1956 story "The Olympic Hopeful." 

The episode sets up Donald's folly perfectly with the opening Pinball Reef sequence, which plays out like a "sea story" brought to visual life.  The anthropomorphized waves, the giant octopus' "knotty" end, the "dinging" sounds that Don's carrier makes when it collides with the reef, and the carrier's abrupt acquisition of Slinky-like capabilities as Don pilots it out of the hazard are unmistakable signs of a fib being told -- more specifically, a fib of the hyper-exaggerated sort that the comics Donald might conceivably dream up if he were in a particularly creative mood.  The difference here is that Don is allowed to "get away with" these initial whoppers, at least at first, since the DT HD&L already have a more consistently benign view of their fallible uncle to begin with.  Some of the more hard-assed "sourdoughs" in the Barks fandom might object to the show letting Donald slide by in this manner, much as some fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic didn't like it when the fib-telling Rarity managed to preserve her reputation with both her forgiving friends and Canterlot society in the episode "Sweet and Elite."  Both Donald and Rarity do seem to learn and absorb their lessons, however, which is the whole point of the moral in both cases.

Most of the ep's other supporting players -- Launchpad, Admiral Grimitz, and the traitorous dork Ensign Plover -- are also in excellent form.  LP doesn't actually have all that much of substance to do, but whatever he does do is pretty much pure gold, starting with his using the top of Scrooge's rolltop desk as a miniature aircraft carrier...

... then carrying through to the classic "double-parkin' crash"...

... and finishing with flying the invisible jet...

Season the dish with such memorable lines as "What a sunset -- ya'd hafta get up pretty early in the morning to see a better one!" and "A net, and I don't mean Funicello!", and the viewer winds up getting an unexpected amount of bang for his McQuack buck here.  Speaking of bangs, Admiral Grimitz, while he's still suffering from "Spies in Their Eyes" "kablooey" syndrome here (although he does get a chance to experience the feeling from the other end of the gun, as it were), both behaves and is treated more like a legitimate naval commander.  The Navy saw fit to use Grimitz's carrier as the place to land the invisible jet, didn't it?  Would it have dared to do so if the Admiral were a complete stumblebum?  Not in the Reagan 80's, it wouldn't have.  As if to make up for his shabby treatment of the much-put-upon Seaman Duck in "Spies," Grimitz also acts a little bit more benignly, towards Donald here.  Donald's deck-swabbing penance is justified -- Launchpad and Scrooge did bring him back late, after all -- and Grimitz subsequently thinks highly enough of him to (1) have Don accompany himself and Plover during the lifeboat drill and (2) permit Don to actively participate in the missile exercise.  Even after both activities have ended in disaster for Grimitz, Donald is merely sentenced to peeling potatoes, which, according to Plover, Don was originally slated to do anyway.  The punishment could certainly have been a lot worse.

Greg pointed out that IMDB misidentified Ensign Plover as "Ensign Plummer."  In this case, the movie reference site has even less of an excuse to get things wrong than Disney Captions typically does.  Like Jack Lemmon's Ensign Pulver in Mister Roberts (1955), Mark Taylor's Plover is a callow, vaguely obsequious sort who "grows" in unexpected ways by the end of the production.  The problem is that one can "grow" in the manner of a weed as well as a flower, and Plover, like Taylor's infamous Dougie Benson of TaleSpin's "Louie's Last Stand," turns out to be a thoroughly bad egg -- a worse one than Dougie, in fact, since "Agent X" was presumably corrupted by The Blot long before he actually turned to the dark side and stole the jet.

Oh, Scrooge was in this, too, wasn't he?  I guess that the biggest contribution that he makes to the ep was... getting netted by The Blot?  That, or using some fishing paraphernalia to manipulate a "wonky-sounding" lever.  Take your pick.  The beauty part of Scrooge's presence is, of course, that he does not need to make a huge impression in order to, well, make an impression.  He is secure enough in his role as star of the show that he can gracefully step aside, accept a decidedly minor role, and allow others to shine.  There can be no better example of the depth of DuckTales' cast, and its ability to mix cast elements in an effective manner, than that.

But make no mistake, it's The Blot who steals the show from the moment we hear that raspy offscreen voice "calling Agent X."  I'm not one of those people who dislikes the reuse of The Blot even after the character had been unmasked in the original 1939 Floyd Gottfredson story.  It's not the ID of The Blot that matters so much as the quality of the opposition that he provides.  The portrayal of The Blot, especially in artistic terms, has been far less consistent over the years.  The original article was a hulking "man of mystery" who played for keeps despite never wanting to hang around until the death trap had been sprung.  The addition of long fingernails to The Blot's arsenal of menace on the cover of that first comic-book reprint may have been a slight exaggeration, but it was certainly an understandable one.

When Gold Key decided to let The Blot "return" to American comics in a 1964 WDC&S serial, the "mystery look," in particular the blank eyes, was retained:

The decision to give The Blot his own title -- yes, Western "went there" (as it did with The Beagle Boys) long before any superhero publisher decided to tribute a villain in this manner -- was accompanied by a slight "softening" of the character's appearance, in the form of pupils being added to his eyes.  It certainly wasn't as bizarre-looking as Harold Gray's giving Little Orphan Annie pupils late in his career, but it did have the residual effect of making The Blot seem a bit more like a conventional big-scheme villain, albeit one who has opted for an interesting choice of habiliment.

We're still a long way from the ravening-eyed, cackling Blot of "Deck" at this point... or are we?  By 1972, a cover artist for Brazilian Disney comics had stuck a smile on The Blot's cape, the first instance that I've been able to find of an artist treating the character as a kind of "shadow figure," as opposed to a man in a cloak.  Roger Armstrong introduced the grinning Blot to American comics when he teamed up with writer Mark Evanier on a couple of SUPER GOOF adventures in the mid-70s.  It's unlikely that any cross-pollination took place here, but, hey, you never know.  Before long, even longtime Mouse comics master Paul Murry had abandoned past practice (including all seven issues of the PHANTOM BLOT title) and had started to affix a smile to HIS Blot.

Some overseas treatments of The Blot got even looser and goofier than this in the 1980s.  In this 1984 French cover, The Blot has not only acquired a wide, gaping mouth, he appears to have hair growing out of his (cloak-covered??) scalp!  I don't know which is more "incroyable mais vrai" (incredible but true), the "flying kayak" at upper right or the mere existence of this image.

Most intriguing of all is the following cover to Brazilian MICKEY #454 (October 15, 1987).  Yes, you read the date right -- just a shade over two months before "Deck" had its premiere on December 30.  If that figure at lower right isn't a close relative of the "Deck" Blot, then I'll be gravely disappointed.  Can Frank Welker transpose that raspy Blot voice into Portuguese, by any chance?

Much more of this, and The Blot will become unrecognizable as that clever cloaked fellow from 1939 and will morph into something like a dusky devil-figure.  The Blot of "Deck," however, marks a spot where the trend of silly abstraction seems to have executed something of a U-turn.  Granted, we would still see an "exaggerated" Blot on occasion: for example, on Rick Hoover's classic cover to Disney Comics MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES #3 (August 1990)...

... but most modern stories featuring The Blot have returned to the classic, blank-eyed, clearly-cloaked version of the character.  It was this Blot that made such an impression in the wonderful Disney Comics two-parter "The Big Fall"/"A Phantom Blot Bedtime Story" (MMA #7-8, December 1990-January 1991)...

... surprised us by showing up in the modern TV shorts Mickey Foils the Phantom Blot (1999) and Mickey and the Color Caper (2002)...

... and (sigh) got slimed and sucked into God knows WHAT alternative plane of existence at the end of the "Dangerous Currency" arc that wrote finis to the Boom! Disney comics era.

While he may have been a logical result of various trends of artistic Blot-dom at the time of his one appearance, the Blot of "Deck" stands wholly alone as the only version of The Blot to not only break through the "fourth wall" into the world of "human" pop culture, but to smash the "wall" to smithereens in the process.  Did this Blot have a psychic pipeline to the future in his comparison of himself to entities like Darth Vader and Dr. Doom, both of whom are now "Disney properties," as the Disney version of Captain Hook has always been?  I don't know; perhaps we ought to do some surreptitious checking and see whether the Disney Company has sunk some of its capital into the purchase of vintage 1953 Buicks.

Needless to say, "All Ducks on Deck" is one DuckTales tale that has aged quite gracefully, even as its version of The Blot appears to have subsumed into the past.

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) Oh, yeah, anyway, the Blot tries to steal an experimental invisible plane--though the idea that he's going to somehow be able to RULE THE WORLD with this plane needs some fine-tuning.

This is one of the ep's few obvious flaws.  Had we gotten some detail about the jet's potential as a weapon of mass destruction, The Blot's confidence in its vital importance would have been slightly more justified.

(GeoX)  [The Blot] actually has comparatively little screen time, but his ranting IS entertaining to watch, and I have to admit, I was not expecting -- spoiler alert! -- for Grimitz's ass-kissing adjutant to be in league with him.

The remarkable thing is that Plover's heel turn (thanks, Greg) still came as something of a surprise despite the obvious Scooby-Doo "Economy of Characters" principle being in force (to wit: once it was learned that one of the characters was an enemy agent, it was obvious that it would have to be someone who had appeared during the episode).  I guess that Mark Taylor's "dork" act really WAS convincing.

 

(GeoX) Seems like the idea of the nephews stowing away in luggage is a bit ragged by this point…

Well, let's see: there was "Dinosaur Ducks," this episode, and... um... what am I missing?

(Greg) Quick logic break; when they do the pinball spot; the carrier actually nails the sharp rock in the middle; which would have caused a huge hole in the bottom of the carrier and the carrier would have sank; but it whizzed by as if it didn't hit the carrier at all. Bad, bad form there Wang Films.

Donald's tale-telling had the effect of "rubberizing" the carrier.  End of problem!

(Greg) Some Youtube users were suggesting that if TaleSpin ever continued into a second season that the Phantom Blot would make a great villain to replace Don Karnage (or at least give TaleSpin a really bad ass second main villain) and he would have all the one shot villains who lost to Baloo, Rebecca and Kit working for him to destroy Higher For Hire.

You know, if the TaleSpin High Flight project had lasted longer than it did, then I can easily imagine someone coming up with an idea like this.  It's hard to visualize The Blot as a kingpin ruling over a multitude of minions, though.  Typically, either he works alone or he has a very small group of associates assisting him.

(Greg) Louie claims that the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook even amazes them. Doesn't that kind of prove that the book is a crap shoot? Huey proclaims that they hope it never falls into the wrong hands. Don't worry; no sane person would ever touch that book with a ten foot pole.

It'd be kind of hard to blame what went wrong here on the Guidebook.  Donald just happened to hit the remote-controlled "shark" in the worst possible place, and Admiral Grimitz pocketed the missile homing device under the mistaken impression that it was a radio.

(Greg) Donald and the nephews grab flare guns and then begin shooting them. And folks; we finally have evidence of kids shooting guns in a Disney cartoon and this is as close as bullet shooting guns as you can get without being as such. The writers are going to have a long talk with BS&P after this episode airs. I wonder if Toon Disney cut this scene out?! 

No, in this case, I believe that they showed common sense.

(Greg) We then cut to Scrooge and Launchpad as Scrooge pops up and hits his head on the canopy and he wants LP to open it. Big mistake there Scroogie and he pushes the invisible button which commits logic break #2 for the entire episode as the GOOFS WITH ATTITUDE eject without the canopy being open; or glass shattering no less. 

You may have missed the canopy flying off to the right during the ejection sequence.  Good attention to detail there, as the canopy would naturally become visible once it detached from the invisible jet.

Next: Episode 64, "Ducky Horror Picture Show."

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 50, "Double-O-Duck"

We're halfway home!  This weekend, I plan to write up some reflections on the "journey" thus far, including some comments (similar to those put forth by Joe Torcivia in the comments section not long ago) on how this retrospective has thus far influenced my overall view of DuckTales.  First, though, we have one of the series' unquestioned classics to plow through, an episode that seems to have a secure place on everyone's "Top 5" list.

It's pretty safe to say that, in terms of its influence on other creative entities, "Double-O-Duck" has enjoyed the longest "half-life" of any single DT episode.  The fans' interest in extending their exposure to super- (or should that be stupor-?) spy Launchpad immediately became apparent when the Gladstone Comics DUCKTALES title ran a poll to determine which ep readers most wanted to have turned into a comic-book story.  "Double-O" was the webs-down winner.  Alas, we ultimately had to content ourselves with...

I don't own this book, but something tells me that the version of the story presented therein is rather more... sedate... than the wild, Terence Harrison-fashioned version that we saw on screen.  Why else would the publisher have seen fit to put a scene from the "equivalent of the flip side" on the cover. In all honesty, the lack of a "Double-O" comic in the late 1980s was probably a blessing in disguise, as the artistic chores would almost certainly have been handled by the Jaime Diaz Studios, whose offerings were famously bland (though, admittedly, very rarely off-model -- which might actually have been an additional disadvantage for artists trying to capture the ep's squash-and-stretch, "pop from pose to pose" style).

On his blog, Mike Peraza fills in the details of the next stage quite thoroughly.  A fateful flip-flop turned Launchpad from the star of a proposed new Double-O-Duck show into the sidekick to a brand-new mallard, who eventually emerged as the re-branded Darkwing Duck. 

After his Disney Afternoon and re-run... um, runs, the popular DW enjoyed a well-received (though all-too-brief) revival in 2010, getting the regular comic-book title he had never previously enjoyed.  The tremors from "Double-O"'s original "Big Bang-Up Job" could still be felt as late as the Fall of 2011, when an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic featured a masked hero character named "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" and sporting a costume with a suspiciously familiar color scheme.

Of course, "Double-O" was far from being Disney's first crack at the spy genre.  In one of its boldest moves ever, Western Publishing completely made over the rather staid MICKEY MOUSE comic-book title in 1966, turning Mickey and Goofy into "Super Secret Agents" operating in a world of realistically drawn humans.  Paul Murry and Dan Spiegle tried hard to make it work, but the "new look" lasted only three issues.

Overseas Disney comics readers, meanwhile, were given an original spy character in the feathered form of 0. 0. Duck.  (By the way, those are zeroes, not O's.  The Inducks search engine told me so.)  Created by writer Dick Kinney and artist Al Hubbard, the team behind Fethry Duck (among others), 0.0. made his debut in 1966 and, to my considerable amazement, continues to appear in new stories to this day, though his appearances seem to have slowly petered out after the 1980s.  I suppose that as long as James Bond movies continue to be made, this character's existence in the "Duck universe" will continue to be justified, if only just.

Cover to a 1967 Australian comic (which seems to have made the zeroes/O's error)

I was able to find only one 0. 0. DUCK story in English, and, from what I could gather, the character resembles Maxwell Smart more than anyone else.  He's not a comical bumbler so much as he is comically oblivious to and/or unconcerned by what is going on around him.  Notice how he and his female partner Mata Harrier react to their car careening off a cliff...

... and compare it to Launchpad's somewhat different take on a very similar situation at the end of Act One of "Double-O-Duck":

I would argue that LP's unique combination of physical bunglage, general attitude, and mental confusion makes him a far more successful potential spoof-spy than 0. 0. could ever hope to be.  The fact that "Double-O" maximizes the potential of the basic idea so well, however, should not be overlooked.

So what works so well in "Double-O-Duck"?  As the saying goes, if you have to ask, then you obviously haven't seen the episode.  Start with the opening sequence in which agent Bruno von Beak leads the DIA spies on a merry chase -- arguably, the single best opening of any DT ep, period.  Is it any coincidence that the jazzy "chase music" we hear here is the same music that accompanies the car chase at the end of the equally outstanding "Hero for Hire"?  I think not.

After Bruno winds up on the plane's wing, the episode's visual aesthetic begins to appear with a vengeance.  Characters don't react in this ep, they lunge; they don't vault gracefully, they hang in midair and defy gravity; above all, they pose.  Harrison foreshadowed this approach in "The Golden Fleecing," but he totally commits to it here.  The ending gag, with Bruno, having survived all of those perils, being trampled by a mob of frenzied commuters, is the perfect capper.

BTW, what's up with that strangely suggestive advertisement on the station wall in the fourth image?  And that won't be the only such wink-wink moment that we'll see.

After LP is mistaken for Bruno and taken to see J. Gander Hoover (Arrest warrant?  What's that?), the storyline rolls smoothly into the well-established James Bond plot-ruts.  As GeoX notes, everything that should be covered in the spoof is in fact covered, though some things are admittedly covered more thoroughly and/or effectively than others.  Take Scrooge's relationship to the DIA, for example.  In "The Right Duck," it was strongly intimated that Scrooge funded or supported DASA in some way, else he would not have had access to the information that Launchpad had been launched aboard the "Voyager."  The fact that LP uses his presumed "one phone call" to contact "Mr. McDee" here suggests that (1) he knows how much weight Scrooge pulls in Duckburg in general and (2) Scrooge has some level of interest in the DIA's activities, most likely a financial one.  Since it is far less likely for a single city to have its own intelligence force than even to have its own space program, it's quite possible that Scrooge is financing the DIA single-handedly.

As described by Hoover, Dr. Nogood's scheme has glaringly obvious flaws, of course.  Simply destroying the paper money in all the Swiss banks (interesting how the country retains its "real" name here but is turned into "Swizzleland" in "The Duck Who Knew Too Much") wouldn't affect the paper money elsewhere, much less hard currency.  In my comments on "The Money Vanishes," I made the same point regarding Scrooge inexplicably forgetting that the "money moths" wouldn't attack his gold coins.  Perhaps writers Ken Koonce and David Weimers should have thought on a more modest scale and had Nogood's plans involve the destruction of one single, precious substance in which Scrooge might have a very large stake.

I was a bit disappointed to see that K&W overlooked "Sir Gyro de Gearloose" when they explained why Gyro was serving as "G" (or, as the lab door with the even-then-anachronistic slide rule painted on it proclaims, "Dr. G").  I know that they didn't write that episode, but it wouldn't have taken much effort to check and note that Gyro is a general inventor-for-hire, not some sort of hireling of Scrooge's who depends upon Scrooge's generosity to stay in business.

If you asked me to finger the single cleverest idea in "Double-O-Duck," it would probably be the use of maps to show Launchpad's globe-hopping travels.  Yes, I know that it's a bit of a "cheater," but some thought was put into the creation of these things.  The peculiar placement of Duckburg in what seems to be the general vicinity of Roanoke, Virginia will, of course, be questioned by many...

... but another map shows what looks like a cartoon explosion where Israel would be (talk about getting crap past the radar -- good luck getting away with that today, fellas).  Some good continuity is also shown when Launchpad "fills up in Istanbul" (yes, Greg, check the unmistakable form of the Anatolian peninsula; that wasn't Iraq!) and refers to that fact during the ep's iris- (and crash-) out scene.  The geographical ingenuity is, of course, partially undercut by the surprising Indian stereotyping.  It's not the snake-charmers, flutists, and bazaar salesmen that bother me so much as the line about LP going to New Delhi (yeah, the Delhi/Deli stuff was fairly lame, but what the hey) and meeting "beggars who'd love a pastrami on rye."  Jokes involving starvation... oh, what fun.  It reminded me a little bit of the RICHIE RICH comic-book stories involving the comically poor Latin American nation of El Squalid, where "El Presidente" ate a tiny pellet of food each day because "a Presidente must keep up his strength."

As the side-switching femme fatale with the (no surprise) first-rate Tress MacNeille voice, Feathers Galore brings quite a lot to this episode, so I suppose that I shouldn't complain too much about the fact that, since Nathan Yodel's Deli and Dr. Nogood's hideout are in Geneva already, it would have been far easier for Launchpad to have met her there (in a different locale in the city, of course) than to have gone all the way back to New Delhi to do so.  After all, without that side trip, we wouldn't have had the hilarious scene in Feathers' room in which her desire for some "smoochy smoochy" gets out of hand and she gets to show off her karate skills.  When LP boasted in "Lost Crown of Genghis Khan," "Usually, it's the girls' chasin' me!", I don't think that this is what he had in mind.  Interesting how Feathers' "sexy" dancing-girl outfit is actually far LESS sexy than the outfit she's wearing during this sequence.

The first of two Toon Disney cuts occurs soon after this, as Launchpad's comment that Feathers is the sort who "gives women drivers a bad name!" was removed for TD rebroadcast.  Since LP's comment was actually critical of the familiar stereotype, I don't see what the problem was here.  As we'll see, the second excision makes even LESS sense.

The encounter with Dr. Nogood is a massive mash-up of more-or-less direct swipes from James Bond films.  Nogood and his silent henchman Odduck are clearly meant to evoke memories of Auric Goldfinger and his body servant Oddjob, the cat Flower (Bambi reference?) dates back to the earliest movies to feature SPECTRE mastermind Blofeld, while the DIA forces' "dropping in on" Nogood's troops on rappel lines is lifted from the climax of You Only Live Twice.  (Since Nogood's setup is already far underground, I wonder what obstacles the DIA troops had to obliterate in order to blast that giant hole.  Scratch one pseudo-deli, I guess.)  Unfortunately, I can't recall a Bond flick during which Bond was put in a death trap with carnivorous animals.  It must have happened sometime, wouldn't you think?

Despite the quick response of the DIA troops -- even Jimmy John's probably wouldn't have been that "freaky fast" -- I'd be hard-pressed to say that the DIA pulled off this caper more efficiently than even the bureaucracy-bound SHUSH of Darkwing Duck would have.  A number of the problems encountered by Launchpad are the direct result of the operators at the DIA not being told that LP was going to be calling in on "unauthorized" equipment.  That's a pretty big oversight, even though J. Gander Hoover would more than likely brush it off as an example of "details, details!".  Greg's theory that Hoover was put out to pasture after this caper, with the agency changing its name and bringing in J. Gander Hooter as a more competent replacement, begins to look plausible now.

As menacing as Harold Sakata's Oddjob was in the original Goldfinger, the silent Odduck goes him two better here by catching Launchpad's toupee bullet in his teeth and then grabbing some additional bullets and crumbling them to dust.  Toon Disney kept the first scene (though it dropped LP's line "Is this what they mean by 'bite the bullet'?") but eliminated the second.  THIS MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.  It would have been better (not to mention more consistent) had TD purged ALL references to Odduck stopping bullets and limited the big goon's hench-activities to chasing after Launchpad and Feathers and dumping LP into the lions' den.

The bullet he's allowed to have in his mouth, but not in his hands.

The demise of Nogood, and the subsequent tearful goodbye between Launchpad and Feathers, could have been handled a little better.  We don't get to see Odduck or Flower meet their demises; instead, Nogood clambers up a catwalk and gives himself no reasonable avenue for escape apart from plowing straight through LP and Feathers.  If nothing else, he should not put himself in the position of having to defeat Feathers, since he presumably knows something about her karate talents.  The death-dive remains pretty "gruesome" (GeoX's description), though, and that's true regardless of whether the bubbling vat contained acid or (as is more likely) "vanishing fluid" (which Nogood, oddly, was previously able to store in a test tube without the tube itself dissolving).

GeoX is right in fingering the Casablanca-inspired farewell scene as being somewhat awkward.  The major issue is Launchpad's declaration that Feathers belongs with her "true love" Bruno.  Even if this were true, there's still the inconvenient fact that Bruno is now in jail and is presumably going to stay there for a long time.  If Feathers takes LP's suggestion seriously, then she'll be placed in the awkward position of being forced to pine after two former colleagues.  That seems rather harsh to me.  As Greg notes, it is possible that Feathers herself will have to lose her liberty for a short time due to her association with FOWL, and who knows what will happen after she is released?  (For a very believable -- and somewhat bittersweet -- fanfic take on what might have happened to Feathers after the events of "Double-O-Duck," I highly recommend Kim McFarland's Darkwing Duck story "Here a Slug, There a Slug.")  At least the Casablanca riff gives us some legitimately fine visuals -- atypically serene ones given the manic tone of most of the episode, but affecting ones nevertheless.

In a sense, "Double-O-Duck," despite its free-swinging approach, takes less risks with the DT characters than does a "reality-bending" ep like "Scroogerello."  You pretty much know what to expect here; the fun lies in getting to the final goal.  And great fun it certainly is.  This is an episode that no one gets tired of rewatching.

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"DuckBlurbs"

Thanks to Greg, I was able to confirm that my name was, in fact, listed in the "Special Thanks" credits of DuckTales Remastered.  Go here and scroll to 30:48.  Regarding those names preceding my own... Yossi, I really don't know what to say.  I consider that a HUGE compliment in and of itself.

(Greg)  So we head outside the D.I.A. Headquarters (Note to self: Never show thy name in front where everyone can see it)

It's all good, thanks to the ingenious use of an extra letter to throw enemies off the track.  (I'm assuming that the "H" stood for "headquarters.")

(Greg)  So we logically go to the scene changer of doom as LP re-enter[s] disguised as a stereotypical German [actually, I think it's a Bavarian] carrying a barrel of pickles that Peter Piper picked....apparently. 

Between that beard-obscured lower beak and the lederhosen he's wearing, LP resembles no one so much as a larger version of Super Duck here.

(Greg)  Other than the usual Wang screw ups and logic breaks; this episode was perfectly written and pretty much the high watermark in terms of writing from the KK/DW duo. I also like Feathers and her chemistry with LP as well since she had some killer moves while at the same thing not being a total super feminist. 

In terms of precise writing, I'd have to vote for "Hero for Hire" and "The Uncrashable Hindentanic" as superior to "Double-O," but "Double-O"'s sheer "energy and panache" (thanks, GeoX) place it right behind those.  And I do agree that Koonce and Weimers managed to walk the fine line with Feathers, making her competent to handle herself while somewhat vulnerable at the same time.

Next:  Episode 51, "Jungle Duck"... but first, those aforementioned reflections on reaching the halfway mark.