Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S UNCLE $CROOGE AND DONALD DUCK: THE DON ROSA LIBRARY, VOLUME 2 by Don Rosa (Fantagraphics Press, 2014)

The "challenging" years of 1988-1990 found Don Rosa slowly and laboriously polishing his craft while coping with various physical, financial, and corporate roadblocks that, at times, threatened to choke off his fledgling Duck comics career.  The fact that Rosa persevered through it all and managed to "come out the other side" in more or less one piece is certainly to his credit... and, intriguingly enough, just as some of Carl Barks' greatest stories were produced at a time when his life seemed to be coming apart, so too were several of Rosa's best-loved (yep, even to this day) tales crafted during his own "time of troubles."

** SPOILERS **

Fittingly, taking pride of place on the cover is Rosa's first "formal" sequel to a Barks story, "Return to Plain Awful" (Gladstone DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #12, May 1989).  In retrospect, Rosa did two very clever things in this story that lifted it above the status of a straightforward "Lost in the Andes" followup.  He hooked the tale, to as large an extent as possible, to events he himself had previously detailed in "Son of the Sun," and he explored the logical consequences of the Ducks' visit to the isolated Peruvian valley, reasoning that Donald and HD&L would have had as big an impact on the Plain Awfultonians' lives and habits as did the famed "Professah Rhutt Betlah."

As enjoyable as "Return" is, and continues to be, "His Majesty McDuck" (Gladstone UNCLE $CROOGE ADVENTURES #14, August 1989) is the more substantial and successful epic, one that still shows up on most everyone's "short lists" of the best Rosa adventures.  Certainly, its portrayal of Scrooge is far more nuanced than the one seen in "Return," in which, let us not forget, Scrooge is left to fume about the Plain Awfultonians' annoyingly "pure and untainted spirit" together with Flintheart Glomgold, the putative villain of the piece.  If anything, Scrooge starts "Majesty" in an even deeper moral hole, kvetching over giving his freezing employees a stick of wood or two for the Money Bin office's outdated wood stove.  He proceeds to burrow even deeper when he discovers an ingenious legal-historical loophole that allows him to set up his Money Bin and surrounding property as an independent country -- and demand billions in back taxes from the U.S. and Duckburgian governments as a result.  But, it is what Scrooge decides to do after he discovers the drawbacks of being a postage-stamp king that truly packs the punch here.  It's nothing less than the modern-day equivalent of the memorable last page of "Back to the Klondike"... and any time you can fairly compare a $CROOGE story to "Klondike" without making a stretch, you know that you're dealing with one heck of an effort.  The humor in "Majesty" is also top-notch at all levels, from the expected slapstick gags when the Beagle Boys try to invade "Unca King Scrooge"'s domain to the subtle dig at the pretensions of historical societies (i.e., the funny contrast between the hushed reverence at the Friends of Cornelius Coot Library and the semi-literate nature of the Coot documents that are housed in such forbidding splendor there).

Disney's 1988 directive to forbid the freelancing Rosa from getting back his original artwork was a powerful motivational force for a good deal of the work reprinted here.  Thankfully, Rosa's description of the decision isn't nearly as splenetic as I had feared; the passage of time has evidently cooled his temper considerably.  Instead, he spends more time simply describing the numerous ways in which he tried to supplement his suddenly lessened income.  This included illustrating other writers' scripts for the Dutch Disney publisher Oberon, writing a DuckTales story (which he dismisses with bothersome, but admittedly justified, condescension) for the DUCKTALES MAGAZINE, creating a "storyboard" for a special Duck story (which ultimately never appeared) for a Disney-MGM Studios theme park tie-in, and writing several scripts (with copious borrowings from Barks mixed in) for WDTVA's TaleSpin.  Personally, I'm sorry that Rosa never evinced interest in writing for DuckTales the TV series -- at least, not until after the show was out of production -- but, given his jaundiced view of the whole enterprise, it was probably better that his TV writing gig turned out to be for an entirely different WDTVA production.

The collection concludes with Rosa's early contribution to the brand-new Disney Comics line, "The Money Pit" (Disney DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #1, June 1990).  It's pleasing to learn that Rosa produced this story, the script of which had originally been rejected by Gladstone, as a "good-faith work" in support of editor Bob Foster, to indicate that Rosa would still be willing to work directly for Disney Comics if the artwork-return policy were changed.  There's quite a bit of "soapbox scaling" in this story, with Rosa putting his own complaints about the silliness of comic-book collectors into Scrooge's beak, and a "Donald repentance" scene that's somewhat more "squishy" than the norm (HD&L even add an extra *snif* for good measure!).  But this tale has never looked better -- those ugly blue pupils of the Disney Comics printing are gone -- and it's probably the best of the short stories that appear here.  Surely, Donald is entirely to blame for the near-disaster that results from his greed-fueled course of action... unlike, say,  "The Curse of Nostrildamus" (UNCLE $CROOGE #235, July 1989), in which he is a pure victim of the titular torment.  Unfortunately, there would be many, many more victimizations of the "Nostrildamus" variety to come for Donald in Rosa's future stories.

Volume 3 will pick up with Rosa's triumphant return to American Disney comics... sadly, in the wake of the "Disney Implosion."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Merry Christmas!

To quote Don Karnage: "Is this not the season of giving?"  Then, let's celebrate the holiday by giving some love to the much-put-upon Bonkers AND the sadly underused Fawn Deer.  I still wish that the Bonkers production crew had stuck it out with Miranda Wright as Bonkers' partner.  The cast of Bonkers' friends and foes in the Wright eps -- some of whom can be seen in silhouette on the wall in Shelley Pleger's illo -- held at least as much potential as the Toons that were introduced when Lucky Piquel entered the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bozhe Moy!  Baggy is Russian?!

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, really.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 99, "The Golden Goose, Part 1"

A few words before we figuratively "kick for home" in a cloud of goose feathers and gold dust... 

I greatly appreciate all of the comments and suggestions I've received while I've been working on what has turned out to be a two-years-plus (the latter, just barely) project.  It's been quite an experience, and, as I've said before, I've been continually amazed at how much MORE I've been able to say about the DuckTales episodes than what Joe and I included in our original DUCKTALES INDEX.  After we've taken a fresh gander at "The Golden Goose," I plan to do a wrap-up post, similar to the one I wrote at the conclusion of the Kimba reviews, and then... quien sabe?  I definitely intend to review the cutscenes of the DuckTales Remastered video game, since (as I can now personally aver) the scenario does resemble a 101st episode of sorts, provided that you squint hard enough and aren't distracted by all the bleeping and blooping.  I'm also thinking about reviewing some of the DUCKTALES comic-book stories -- not the ones I've already discussed, such as "The Gold Odyssey" and the various stories that appeared in kaboom!'s UNCLE $CROOGE during its DT phase, but stuff from the early-90s DISNEY ADVENTURES, the "non-serialized" era of the Disney comics DUCKTALES title, and other sources, most of which I've never had a chance to put under the critical microscope before.  (In certain instances, that might actually be a good thing!)  I'm also seeking out whatever interesting DuckTales fan fiction might be lurking out there on the Internet.  There isn't much of it -- or, should I say, much that is legitimately worth reading -- but I have unearthed a bit of promising material thus far.  Do you, my humble and lovable readers, have any further suggestions as to DT-related matter that you might want to see me dissect on this blog?  If so, then please let me know.

According to GeoX's diligent correspondent "Christopher," "The Golden Goose" wasn't actually meant to be DuckTales' farewell adventure.  The creative staff supposedly believed that there would be more episodes to come, perhaps even another feature film or two.  Granted that "Christopher" might have access to some "inside infor" that I don't possess, something about this theory doesn't ring right to me.  DuckTales: The Movie was animated by Disney MovieToon Studios (now DisneyToon Studios) and Walt Disney Animation France, neither of which had anything to do with the production of DT half-hours.  Therefore, delays caused by animation studios being busy with other projects (as, for example, Hasbro Studios releasing only 13 new half-hours of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic during the 2012-13 season, due to the Summer 2012 release of the Equestria Girls movie) ought not to have been an issue.  The absolute best possible time to have produced a substantial number of new eps would have been the 1990-91 TV season, the first season of The Disney Afternoon and the first season following the release of the theatrical feature.  The decision to make only four 1990-copyright episodes and stop at a total of 100 eps (a strip-show-friendly number, since it is divisible by five) seems suspiciously convenient.  In the end, perhaps the best argument in favor of "Goose" being an appropriate end of the road is, in essence, a psychological one.  Its narrative may be "lean and lively" rather than "sweeping and epic," and it plays out on a relatively bare stage, but it simply feels like a finale, blending elements from all "eras" of the series -- action, moral seriousness, slapstick, verbal humor, great character dynamics -- into a satisfying whole.  Add the fact that the storyline, for all of its sideline silliness, features the most apocalyptic vision EVER put forth in a story about talking ducks, and you've got the ideal way to wrap up modern TV animation's most groundbreaking single series.

Our quartet of creative contributors (Ken Koonce, David Weimers, and Alan Burnett on story; Jeffrey Scott on script) waste zero time cutting to the wild goose chase (Burger's favorite, in case you weren't aware), putting all of our major players into Barkladesh right away.  (That initial pan shot of people shopping in the marketplace must have blown the budget for extras for the entire adventure; a "cast of thousands" will be conspicuous by its absence the rest of the way.)  As will be confirmed in Part 2, this country (which ought to have been named "Barksladesh," but you can't have everything) is tucked away somewhere on the Indian subcontinent.  The appearance of a snake charmer and a merchant's reference to "rupees" further hammer home the point.  This inevitably leads to speculation as to whether Dijon and his brother Poupon, anchorite-in-chief of the Brotherhood of the Goose, are Barkladeshian.  I have no real problem with the notion.  It's easy to imagine Dijon, the kleptomaniacal "black sheep" of the 'on family, literally being forced to strike out on his own as a lackey-for-hire and winding up somewhere in the Middle East (with dress to match the location) just in time for the events of DuckTales: The Movie.  Funny how he seems to regard morphing into a "professional beggar" as a step up in class from that.

The explosive meeting of Scrooge and Dijon in the marketplace, as I confessed in my review of "Attack of the Metal Mites," really SHOULD have been the characters' first get-together since the final scene of DT:TM.  They quickly recognize each other and display entirely appropriate reactions.  It might have been nice to have had one additional reference to the events of the movie -- perhaps Scrooge making note of Dijon's takeover of the Money Bin while Dijon had control of the magic lamp and its Genie -- but what we got was perfectly adequate.  Given Dijon's subsequent character arc in the story, it's for the best that we start back at "ground zero," with Dijon occupying the same moral position that he did when he escaped with that pantload of "loose change" in the movie's final scene.  It also makes sense for HD&L to suggest that Scrooge immediately let bygones be bygones by giving Dijon a quarter (which, when you come to think about it, makes about as much sense as that legendary Scottish ditchdigger giving "young Scroogie" an American dime).  That turns out as well as you might expect.

After Dijon swipes the robe (yes, I know it looks like he paid the merchant, but watch carefully; he actually paid with money cadged from the guy's own pocket) and "joins" the Brotherhood, we segue to Glomgold and the Beagle Boys on the balcony, with Flinty making with the exposition about the Golden Goose.  Get comfortable with this, because there are several additional info-dumps to follow.  There was no real way to avoid this, of course, since we only have 45 minutes or so in which to develop and wrap up the entire storyline.  One noteworthy aspect of this scene goes unmentioned but deserves comment: This is the only time in the series when Glomgold actually steals a march (an appropriate phrase, methinks) on Scrooge when it comes to seeking out a treasure.  Flinty has aggressively taken the initiative in the past, of course, but such proactiveness involved duplicitous behavior (framing Scrooge in "Duckman of Aquatraz"), a new business venture (commissioning the giant robots in "Robot Robbers"), or a challenge to a contest (coming to Duckburg to literally throw down the gauntlet to Scrooge in Carl Barks' "The Money Champ").  In "Wrongway in Ronguay," "Master of the Djinni," and throughout "Time is Money," Flinty gets involved in a treasure tussle in response to various actions by Scrooge.  Here, Glomgold is boldly treading on turf that should, by all existing precedent, be Scrooge's.  I wonder where Flinty got his original "infor"... or do I want to know? 

Greg is right -- that is Flinty's arm when it should be Scrooge's.

You can tell by the red cuff.

The relationship between Dijon and Poupon will, of course, be of key importance throughout the remainder of the tale. Poupon's obvious decency and willingness to forgive his wayward brother are unquestionably admirable, but his inclination to give Dijon such an important responsibility (that of guarding the Goose on its fountain) right away could be flagged as a bit... naive.  Even real-world monastic orders, after all, don't give their novices major duties right off the bat.  Rather, the novice must typically demonstrate fidelity to the order through acts of humility and selflessness.  Since Poupon offhandedly disses Dijon in the fountain scene ("Have you anything worthless... besides yourself, of course?"), he pretty clearly thinks that Dijon has a ways to go before fully meriting the good opinions of others... and Dijon quickly backs him up on that by casting a covetous glimpse at the Goose the moment after Poupon has left the fountain room.  Poupon can't even be sure that the two big monks at the door will provide a fail-safe, since Dijon is well-known for his slipperiness.  Dijon, Scrooge, Glomgold, and the Beagle Boys all share some responsibility for the metastatization of the "Goose crisis," but Poupon's contribution shouldn't be neglected just because his actions were the result of kindness.

The Beagles provide the main levity of Part 1 when they don the inevitable "cheesy disguises" to try to sneak into the fountain room.  I'm in agreement with GeoX that the Beagles are a bit on the irritating side here -- Burger makes one or two too many food references, and the absence of Bouncer deprives the Beagles' performance of some needed gravitas (did I ACTUALLY JUST WRITE THAT?!) -- but the "tacky tourist" garb the B-Boys employ here is simply too funny for words.  Dijon is quick to get with the program, embracing his inner Toon and materializing an impromptu disguise of his own that fools the monks into giving him the (literal) boot.

Commence Moral Dilemma Number 1!  Dijon shows off his shiny new conscience by talking through his options on the mountainside.  I think that Scott made the right decision by having Dijon's final remark (the one before the Beagles accost him) suggest that he might have voluntarily returned the Goose.  It's our first real indication that this seemingly hopeless case might be salvageable, after all... and it makes Poupon's angry "supposed final break" with Dijon during Part 2 have even more of an impact.

Scrooge finally becomes involved in the adventure through no effort of his own, thanks to the proverbial "conveniently placed box."  (In case you're wondering where the "fifty rusty door chimes" are, Greg, they're obviously under the packing material on which the Goose lands.)  Scrooge's relative passivity here contrasts, in a certain sense, with what most of us would like to think about the character, just as Glomgold's aggressive treasure-seeking is something out of the norm for him.  The dissonance is especially true of the classic "old sourdough" version of Scrooge who dug his fortune out of the frozen ground of the Klondike, "outsmarted the smarties," and so forth.  However, there are more than enough UNCLE $CROOGE adventures in existence into which Scrooge gets sucked by one means or another, so I have no real problem with his portrayal here.

After Poupon collars Dijon and teases what we will learn about the Goose's powers in Part 2, we shift back to Duckburg, where Scrooge begins to get an inkling as to the true worth of the "ugly" Goose after Burger tries to steal it (Big Time would have been my first option for that job, but that's just me) and Glomgold attempts to bargain for it.  I'm not sure why Greg was so negative about the "sale negotiation" scene.  Scrooge knows enough about Glomgold's capacity for do-badding that he should naturally be suspicious at any interest Flinty might show in a seemingly "worthless" item, especially after one attempt to steal it (and by a figure who has worked with Glomgold in the past, no less) has already been made.  Flinty's comment to Scrooge back in Barkladesh that he had "more important things to do" than search out bargains may also have popped back into Scrooge's mind here at just the right moment.  Scrooge keeps raising the price only because Glomgold is able to match several of the lower offers for the Goose.  That's not being "a jealous old jackass," that's elementary CYA in the ongoing conflict between this pair.

A bit more contrivance ensues back at the Mansion as Scrooge more or less stumbles upon the secret of the Goose (interestingly, much as he did in Barks' "The Fabulous Philosopher's Stone" [UNCLE $CROOGE #10, June 1955])... and then, "away he golds," with Moral Dilemma Number 2 trailing in his wake!  Though the true consequences of this dilemma will not kick into full gear until Part 2, we get ample foreshadowing of it here, with Scrooge gradually turning more and more things in the Mansion to gold, even as his family members warn him that he's endangering the Ducks' "happy home."  The obvious question here is why no reference to the "gold fever" of "Too Much of a Gold Thing" was made.  Upon further review, I honestly don't think that the two situations are all that comparable.  In "Gold Thing," Scrooge was literally overwhelmed by the discovery and massive physical presence of gold, to a degree unlike anything he had ever experienced before.  Here, Scrooge is actively creating gold and therefore has more inherent "control" (a word he himself uses at one point) over the process of acquisition.  If Scrooge were as gold-crazed as he was in "Gold Thing," or even in "Philosopher's Stone," he would not have stopped to go to bed; he would have continued turning things to gold until the cows came home.  (In "Philosopher's Stone," Scrooge's gold-making had a built-in time limit, in that the "radiation" from the Stone would have turned him to gold before long.  Absent that limiting factor, he would unquestionably have gone on indefinitely, as well.)  Part of the intrigue of this story lies in the fact that we never do get to find out whether Scrooge would have been able to control himself once the initial excitement had died down.  Would he have had a moment of "Dough Ray Me"-inspired epiphany and realized that turning every single thing in his house into gold would ultimately be counterproductive?  Would the pleas of Mrs. Beakley, HD&L, and Webby have finally gotten through to him after a good night's rest?  As with Dijon's ultimate "Beagle-free" decision on the mountainside, the "what-if" helps give this tale an extra, and welcome, layer of complexity.

The genetic source of Huey's fantastic leaping ability in "Send in the Clones" REVEALED.

We end, of course, on the cliffhanger that sent many viewers into a tizzy back in the day, HD&L's being turned into gold statues by the Beagles.  This easily trumps even Bob Langhans' array of narrative minefields in "The Gold Odyssey," which is the highest possible complement where DT is concerned.  What we do not know as of yet, of course, is that the Nephews will literally have no further part to play in the story, in terms of active participation.  This, I think, is why Scrooge's grief and distress in Part 2 wind up having the impact that they do.  Scrooge will have to try and atone for his spasm of greed by dedicating the rest of his efforts to the Nephews, but he will also ultimately be forced to choose between acting on behalf of the boys and acting on behalf of the entire world.

A few coloring and animation mistakes from Wang Films aside, this table-setting chapter of the saga of the Goose delivers ALL the goods... and, just think, we haven't even gotten to that whole "fate of the world" business yet.

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Specially requested by GeoX... not.

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"DuckBlurbs" 

(GeoX) The idea is that Scrooge and HDL are in Arabland (sic) to collect old junk to pawn off as antiques (um…didn't "Much Ado about Scrooge" establish that this is considered immoral by the show's metric?)

("Christopher")  I think that when you take actual old items from halfway around the world, it's fair to describe them as exotic antiques, because curios that are made in far away places with strange sounding names always have some level of value in the U.S. It's only when you try to pass off mass-produced cheap junk from Hong Kong factories as antiques that you're stepping over the ethical line.

I'm inclined to side with Christopher on this one.  The lost Drakespearian play in "Much Ado" would certainly be of interest to the entire world, and its ultimate worth, no matter what the quality of the play might be, would be greatly influenced by that fact.  Selling Barkladeshian merchandise as "exotic antiques" is much more of a one-on-one transaction involving the seller and the buyer, and the buyer would always have the option of refusing to buy.

I will say that for Scrooge to be micromanaging the stocking, opening, and operation of a department store -- right down to using HD&L as security personnel! -- does seem a little "off."  Surely, Scrooge would ride herd on the individuals who did operate such a store on his behalf, but going to the trouble of traveling to Barkladesh for merchandise and then manning the store himself?  That's much more of a stretch.  All a matter of plot convenience, you understand...

(GeoX) Yadda yadda, [the Goose] accidentally gets stowed in Scrooge's luggage and towed back to the States, and it's quite weird how the show emphasizes how completely worthless he thinks it looks. Dude--it's a gold statue. He would be all over that shit, whether or not he knew its secret.

And, knowing the properties of gold and other precious metals as well as he presumably does, he would probably be suspicious of the authenticity of the "gold" statue, based on the physical evidence alone.

(GeoX) Back in Arabland [sic], Poupon is insistent that they go recover the goose--otherwise, for unspecified reasons, the END OF THE WORLD may occur, as it's been known to do. But back, again, in Duckburg, the Beagles succeed in stealing the statue from Scrooge, and TURN[S] THE NEPHEWS TO GOLD OH NO and to be continued and I can't help pointing out that if you can turn people into gold, there is really no chance that Scrooge wouldn't have accidentally done it to himself in his transmutation binge.

Even while he is in the throes of his initial binge, Scrooge clearly demonstrates that he realizes that the Goose's beak is the source of its gold-granting powers.  Poupon makes the fact explicit in Part 2, but Scrooge definitely got the message fairly quickly.

(Greg)  Dijon sadly doesn't get the remove the damn cowl put and just goes to the eating part. HA! So the monks remove his cowl and they are not impressed because Dijon is not a monk. Dijon claims that this is not the YMCA. Oh god Jeffrey Scott; what would Dijon KNOW about the YMCA?! It should be "So this is not the Friars League?!". That makes a lot more sense than this.

Change "Friars' League" to "Friars' Club," and I'm with you.  That would have been a first-rate "in-joke," especially considering the nature of the real-world organization.

(Greg) The big ass guard grabs [Dijon] by the nose and throws him back into the fountain because they are there to make sure Dijon keeps his word. Which begs the question; if they are there then why would you need Dijon to guard the goose? Probably punishment for being a thief and a liar I guess.

Dijon's task is to keep the Goose on the fountain; the big monks' task is to (as I said before) serve as a fail-safe.

(Greg) So the nephews grab their whistles, and police caps with night sticks and run out of the security room. Yes; we are supposed to believe that a bunch of ten year olds are Scrooge's Rent-A-Cops. Kit Cloudkicker might be able to get away with this; but not a bunch of crybaby nephews. They chase Burger in the store as Burger realizes that he blew his cover; he collides very poorly into a model of a lady posing right next to a dognose (dogperson; same difference) and the bag goes flying and so does the golden goose. Then we jump cut to Burger leaving the store and getting into the heels' van. Huh?! So how did Burger get out of the store?

I guess he must have simply slipped (sound familiar?) past everyone as they were distracted by the sliding Goose.  Also, Burger's mannequin fail = obvious outtake from "New Gizmo-Kids on the Block."  Just saying.

(Greg) Scrooge touches the scale with the [Goose's] beak claiming that it[s] weight is worth in gold and the scale turns into gold. Obvious logic break: After the nephews are surprised that the scale turned to gold, Scrooge then taps the green book; but nothing. The reason I mention this is because before he turned the scales into the gold; both the green book and desk lamp were ALREADY gold colored. And the desk lamp is red shade with a blue base. So the original scene was to have the SCALE turned last and the green book and lamp first according to Wang's line of thinking. Really bad form there Wang Films.

Yup.  There's a coloring mistake earlier in the ep, in which the shirt color of the dognosed Barkladeshian towing Glomgold around in a rickshaw (or whatever the local equivalent with the bicycle is called) switches between blue and tan.  Since Dijon's vest was blue, did some animator mistakenly think that this guy was supposed to be Dijon??  Given Wang's decidedly spotty track record during the series' final dozen or so episodes, I'm almost inclined to believe it.

Before and after, the Wang way!

(Greg)  Mrs. Beakly comes in and blows of[f] Scrooge for letting the golden touch get out of hand here. Scrooge ribs her and tells her to relax [and] he goes to the golden waste paper basket and gets golden garbage since they can buy a new home from it. Which is silly since in Dough Ray Me; this would devalue gold big time.

Not if Scrooge had the sense to use the gold to buy things a little bit at a time.  The open question we are left with is: Would he ultimately have had the sense, had Glomgold and the Beagles not intervened? 

(Greg) Still; a pretty nasty scene as the heels leave while Big Time proclaims that the Scrooge will like the nephews now because they are priceless. Problem with that line is; Big Time never heard Scrooge say that.

I don't think he was ever meant to.  Scrooge's earlier praise of the Nephews as "priceless" and Big Time's use of the word here could easily have been thought up independently. 

Next: Episode 100, "The Golden Goose, Part 2."