1980... 2008... Coincidence?? (yep)

I'm a lot luckier than many Phillies fans... I've been fortunate enough to see four of the Phils' six pennants and, best of all, both World Series titles. In 1980, I was a college freshman and every game (especially in the memorable 5-game NLCS against the Astros) seemed like life and death. This championship run was a comparative stroll, as the Phillies went 3-1, 4-1, and 4-1 in three postseason series (not exactly Moses Malone's famous "fo, fo, fo," but close enough) and finished with 24 wins in their last 30 games, a sizzling .800 clip. The catch was that the offense produced only in fits and starts, so it seemed as if the road was much rougher than it truly was. The pitching was the real difference, especially the bullpen.

The Phillies' victory parade will be tomorrow, on Halloween -- entirely fitting for a franchise (and city) bedeviled by so many sports-related "ghosts." Wish I could be there, but instead, I'll be doling out Halloween Mini-Comics to costumed cherubs. This year, I'm giving out both the usual DONALD DUCK comic (this one containing an original story by Marco Rota) and a PEANUTS Halloween special produced by Fantagraphics. Have a safe and happy (and hopefully, not too gluttonous) holiday. I'll be back this weekend with (at long last!) new reviews.

Kept in Soggy Suspense

I haven't posted in a while due to work demands and -- no surprise here -- the fact that I've been following the Phillies in the World Series. Well, after last night's rain-blotched buffoonery, the Series is in limbo, and who knows when the fun might resume.

Some have claimed that this situation is a first for the Series, but there have been any number of games played in suboptimal conditions since MLB decided to start playing Series games at night in 1971. I remember Game 1 of the 1979 World Series in Baltimore, when the Pirate starter hurt his arm because of the cold conditions. Even the "old days" had their share of slopfests; just read descriptions of the messy final game of the 1925 Series if you don't believe me. If the Phils and Tampa have to wait until Thursday to secure at least reasonably marginal conditions, that'll be fine with me. It's just hard to wait extra long for that elusive championship...

I should have a few reviews up this weekend.

Mocha Ado About Nothing (Comics Review: UNCLE $CROOGE #380 [August 2008, Gemstone Publishing])

Carl Barks' one-page "filler" gags, like those produced by his contemporaries at Western Publishing, generally rated a few chuckles and then were quickly forgotten by readers impatient to get on to meatier fare. Honorable exceptions were the quartet of gags Barks produced between 1952 and 1956 on the theme of Scrooge tricking a diner counterman out of a free cup of coffee. Aside from being clever gags in and of themselves, the gags made a cogent point about Scrooge's personality: rather than being annoyed by his unwillingness to pay for the java, we marvel at his sheer ingenuity (and, by so doing, gain additional appreciation for his "sharper than the sharpies" philosophy). Given the popularity of these gags, it's somewhat surprising that an entire story on the theme wasn't produced until 2006, when Kari Korhonen brewed up "A Case of One-Cupmanship." Joe Torcivia's inspired dialogue -- which Joe admits flowed quite naturally from Kari's natural humor sense and pacing -- only serves to accentuate a plot that takes the simple scenario of the diner gags and runs with it as if it had received an extra shot of espresso. Scrooge has "unbent" to the extent that he's willing to pay 75 cents for a cup at Joe's Diner, but he more than negates the largesse by commandeering Joe's prize booth and digesting the daily papers at his extreme leisure. With the percolator-predating pinchfist oblivious to the situation, a desperate Joe hatches scheme after scheme to turn the tables (those not bolted to the kitchen counter, that is). The harried hash-slinger only succeeds in alienating the rest of his clientele without budging Scrooge. By the end, you're definitely rooting for Joe to have just one small victory, but his final effort backfires when his niece Carrie unwittingly duplicates his strategy. You'll have to buy the comic (and DON'T try to scam the dealer out of it, either! He has to make a living!) to find out how everything shakes out. Barks' original diner gags, reprinted in order of original appearance, are sprinkled throughout the issue, with Kari and Joe's gem at the end.

The front of the ish isn't bad, either. Don Rosa's 1993 story "Island at the Edge of Time" was one of the last stories Keno Don produced before committing himself to "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck," and its refreshing lack of pretension is just one of its virtues. Scrooge and Flintheart Glomgold race to the Pacific to claim the rights to a newly formed volcanic island that's literally oozing solid gold. The kicker: the infant islet is perched on the International Date Line, so who really did "get there first"? The sadly bungled "Ali Bubba's Cave," the final chapter of DuckTales' "Time is Money" saga, should only have handled the denouement so well (though the ultimate fate of the island is clearly telegraphed for those paying attention). Rosa cleverly injects himself directly into the story through the medium of an extraordinarily verbose third-person narrator, whose constant references to "Time!" finally prompt a frustrated Scrooge to bust the "fourth wall."

Per Hedman, Travis Seitler, and the artistic team of Francisco Rodriquez and Enriqueta Perea next serve up a somewhat truncated but nonetheless entertaining epic, "The Legendary Crown of Queen Kazabra," in which Daisy is possessed by the war-mongering spirit of the headlined monarch during Scrooge's hunt for Kazabra's buried riches. Unfortunately, all of the armored Daisy's "yeeks" and "screeches" can't drown out the little voice in my head that keeps asking: How could a "barbarian warrior queen" have existed anywhere near Duckburg? (And I thought the "Mad Duke of Duckburg" in Barks' "House of Haunts" was a stretch.) I put this questionable conceit down to the fact that the story has a European origin.

After the Beagle Boys are forced to break back into jail to tie up their latest caper in Pat and Carol McGreal and Nunez' "Back to the Big House," we get a hidden gem, the Dutch story "The Treasure of Alexander the Great." It's easy to be put off by Jose Ramon Bernado's strange-looking art and plot-spinner Piet Zeeman's unseemly haste to get the main event underway (to wit: thanks to Gyro's convenient appearance with a "time shifter" device, Scrooge, Donald and HD&L are whisked off to Alexander's time before the first page is turned), but stick with the story and you'll be rewarded. Scrooge/HD&L and Donald, having returned to ancient Macedonia to discover Alexander's supposed cache of loot, soon find themselves fighting on opposite sides of the war between Alexander's army and King Darius' Persians. What's more, thanks to Scrooge and Donald's advice, the armies are soon resorting to such anachronistic innovations as gunpowder and steerable battle wagons! "The Battle at Hadrian's Wall," Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl's fine late-60s venture into ancient Britain, had much the same ambience as this story, but "Alexander" is much subtler and cleverer in its humor (as rendered by the dialogue of John Clark). The ending twist is quite ingenious, as well. With a "cup of coffee to go," it makes for a fine conclusion to a strong issue.

Phil 'er Up

Obviously, I'm delighted that the Phillies copped their sixth National League flag the other night by completing a systematic dismantling of the Dodgers. I'm following the action from a bit of a psychological remove, though, thanks to lingering resentment over the 1994 strike. My interest in baseball has never really recovered from that incident. In 1993, 1983, and, of course, 1980, the affairs of the Phillies really were life or death type stuff. Not so now. That being said, I'm hoping Philly finally gets that long-delayed parade.

The Ills of Discovery (Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S DONALD DUCK: THE BARKS AND ROSA COLLECTION, VOLUME 3 [September 2008, Gemstone Publishing])

It would seem a tall order to top "The Golden Helmet," one of Carl Barks' all-time best Donald and HD&L adventures, but here's one instance in which Don Rosa unquestionably rose to the challenge of crafting a worthwhile -- even inspired -- sequel to a beloved classic. 1997's "The Lost Charts of Columbus" has its weak spots but still holds up remarkably well, even though Scrooge -- who made such a memorable addition to Keno Don's earlier "Return to Plain Awful" -- is nowhere in evidence. With the assistance of some intriguing bonus material, the two tales of would-be North American conquest form the strongest BARKS AND ROSA COLLECTION release to date.

"The Golden Helmet" has a fail-safe core plot notion: he who can claim title to the titular bauble, secreted on the island of Labrador in AD 901 by early Viking discovers of North America, will gain possession of the whole blinkin' continent, thanks to an earlier "Code of Discovery" enacted by Europe's rulers a century earlier and (helpfully) never repealed. The pickle-pussed Azure Blue, buttressed by his shifty lawyer Sharkey, so claims, and two representatives of the Duckburg Museum -- the elderly curator and lowly guard Donald -- head for Labrador to thwart the villains' plans by securing the helmet for themselves. Barks, in his prime artistic period at the time this story was created, really lets himself go in the Newfoundland scenes, crafting awesome land- and seascapes that he freely admitted were inspired by Hal Foster of PRINCE VALIANT fame. It's the characters, though, who really give this epic legs. Azure Blue, oddly enough, is probably the weakest of the lot; for all his grimacing menace, he's basically just a bully and con artist, not unlike Chisel McSue in Barks' later "Horseradish Story." Sharkey, with his comical snout and bogus Latin phrase-making, is something else again. The old curator also gets some memorable moments, in addition to which he, like Donald and Sharkey (and even Huey -- for a moment, at least!), gets the dubious opportunity to fall under the "spell" of the helmet and claim the auriferous armor for his own. Each character who gets "helmetized" spins his own fanciful fantasy of what he'll do with absolute power over North America; Donald, of course, gets the most outlandish one, with his goofy notion to tax the population for every breath they take. For his sins, Don gets to experience isolation (having the self-important Sharkey along almost doesn't count) and near-starvation before HD&L arrive to bail him out. Donald's subsequent refusal to continue the charade (despite Sharkey's protests) shows that he's learned his lesson well. Classic stuff appears on literally every page, and the story as a whole is a masterful mix of speculative history, action, suspense, and humor, with a poke or two in the ribs of "human nature" tossed in.


Prodded by his Norwegian editor to do a sequel to "Helmet," Rosa, perversely, came up with the idea of creating artifacts antedating (and thereby negating) the Golden Helmet's power-granting... uh, power. The need for such a trinket arises after Gladstone Gander (who else?) fishes the sunken helmet out of the deep during a trip to Newfoundland with Donald and the Nephews. Gosh all fishhooks (a phrase that seems quite apropos in this case, BTW), the Ducks' grizzled fishing guide turns out to be Azure Blue, and no sooner do we digest that highly unlikely intelligence than another "wouldjabelieve" moment socks us upside the head. Riffling through Junior Woodchuck documents in Canada, the (for the moment) blissfully ignorant HD&L discover old documents of Columbus revealing that he knew all along that land lay in the path of his westward journey. Columbus' collection of ancient maps yield several additional prior claims to discovery of the continent, and the race for control of North America's destiny is on again in earnest. (According to reprinted pages from the original version of the story, also reproduced herein, Akers MacCovet, the crooked real-estate agent from "His Majesty McDuck," was slated to be part of the lineup. It sure would've made logical sense, but MacCovet was dropped from the final version.) As the Ducks and Blue and Sharkey (who break their partnership and just as quickly re-form it when conditions are right) tussle over relics of Ireland, China, and Phoenicia and race from Mexico to Egypt to Cape Cod and back again, characterization takes a decided back seat to action and gags, but there's more than enough of the latter to satisfy anyone. The kicker is priceless, though I did "ding" it back in the day for political correctness. It doesn't seem nearly as irritating now, just a cute way of negating the Chris Berman-esque, "BACK-BACK-BACK" theme of temporally retreating relics. In his comments on "Charts," Rosa admits that it took no small amount of contrivance to get his plot underway, but, once it does, it "rolls" rather like the ancient Chinese stone wheel that Donald's butt spends a portion of the story uncomfortably wedged inside. Rosa does a nice job of tying the story in with his equally fine "Guardians of the Lost Library," as well.

Horizons Unlimited

Stevenson University's "Expanding Your Horizons" event came off quite smoothly yesterday, with 150 middle-school girls invading campus to take hands-on science and mathematics workshops from female professionals. No small amount of thanks is due to Nicky, who coaxed several of her colleagues at Johns Hopkins to provide presentations. One of them (on fashion science, from a chemist who works for Proctor & Gamble) turned out to be the hit of the day. Not having the proper chromosomes to engage in direct participation, I contented myself with watching several activities and ferrying the keynote speaker from her hotel to the campus, and thence to the airport. A repeat engagement next year seems almost certain.