You can read my piece-by-piece reviews of Casty's second American adventure (along with its backup, "Minnie Runs Out of Time") here, here, here, and here. Casty may have stumbled a bit with the recent "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare," but here, he's in excellent form. Casty might have gained an even larger (book-oriented) audience from this collected work had the cover price not been artificially inflated by 30 pages' worth of "previews" of other Boom! softcover collections. This colorful propaganda is a regular feature of the softcovers I've sampled, and, quite frankly, it strikes me as a major -- and, more to the point, inefficient -- waste of space. Why not provide a couple of pages of cover shots and brief blurbs (a la the last several pages in this volume, which cover some of the earlier soft- and hardcover releases), fill up a couple of extra pages with relevant ancillary material (e.g. a more extensive interview with Casty), and reserve the more substantial preview material for online display? Who knows -- the few bucks saved on the cover price might allow Boom! to snare a few extra readers who get hooked into Boom!'s regular titles as a result of enjoying the work of a fine Disney comics craftsman in a compact and convenient form. Just a thought, but, IMHO, a well-reasoned one.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE ON QUANDOMAI ISLAND (November 2010, Boom! Kids)
You can read my piece-by-piece reviews of Casty's second American adventure (along with its backup, "Minnie Runs Out of Time") here, here, here, and here. Casty may have stumbled a bit with the recent "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare," but here, he's in excellent form. Casty might have gained an even larger (book-oriented) audience from this collected work had the cover price not been artificially inflated by 30 pages' worth of "previews" of other Boom! softcover collections. This colorful propaganda is a regular feature of the softcovers I've sampled, and, quite frankly, it strikes me as a major -- and, more to the point, inefficient -- waste of space. Why not provide a couple of pages of cover shots and brief blurbs (a la the last several pages in this volume, which cover some of the earlier soft- and hardcover releases), fill up a couple of extra pages with relevant ancillary material (e.g. a more extensive interview with Casty), and reserve the more substantial preview material for online display? Who knows -- the few bucks saved on the cover price might allow Boom! to snare a few extra readers who get hooked into Boom!'s regular titles as a result of enjoying the work of a fine Disney comics craftsman in a compact and convenient form. Just a thought, but, IMHO, a well-reasoned one.
Totally agree with you about the advertising in the back of the books - the Muppet ones are just as unforgivable! I picked it off the shelves and barely saw a Muppet... Most people I know pick up a book and naturally flick from the back. I'm sure there are more people like me who also like them to be well-produced, focussed collectibles too! I love having the (usually excellent) content released, but let's make the books the right size or add relevant content and/or extra comic pages (especially in the Disney books) if it's cheaper to print to standard sizes. At the moment, they don't sit very well, sadly, especially when first impressions are key!
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