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even deeper moral hole, kvetching over giving his freezing employees a stick of wood or two for the Money Bin office's outdated wood stove.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."

Book Review: FUNNYBOOKS by Michael Barrier (University of California Press, 2014)

What Michael Barrier did for the history of classic Hollywood studio animation in HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS, he does here for the golden years of Dell Comics and its most accomplished and historically significant creators -- Walt Kelly, John Stanley, and, above all, Carl Barks.  While devoting most of his critical attention to this trio of greats and the ways in which they helped shape the development of the American comic book into an art form with its own distinct verbal and visual language, Barrier also unearths facts and highlights overlooked personalities in a manner that is sure to surprise and delight even the most knowledgeable Dell/Western Publishing fan.

As was the case with HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS, FUNNYBOOKS had an extremely long gestation period, with Barrier using interview material from as far back as the 1960s to help craft his narrative.  Barrier also draws upon material used in his 1981 book-length study of Carl Barks, but he expands greatly upon that earlier work.  Perhaps his most important critical achievement here is his in-depth illumination of exactly how Barks, who famously worked in isolation and with minimal (at first) editorial interference, became one of the very first comics creators to "crack the code" and essentially discover how to tell effective stories in comic-book form.  Barks fans have always known of the Old Duck Man's mastery of narrative, but they will come away from this discussion with a newfound appreciation of the wider importance of his work.

Barrier pretty clearly considers Barks to be primus inter pares even among the "really good ones," but Kelly and Stanley get their due and then some.  Kelly's creation and development of the POGO characters is covered in detail, as is Stanley's work on LITTLE LULU, but Barrier brings their other notable comic-book works (e.g., Kelly's stories for OUR GANG and his fairy-tale and Christmas comics, Stanley's honing of his craft in NEW FUNNIES) under similar critical scrutiny.  As was made quite clear in HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS, Barrier is a very astringent analyst, and it takes quite a lot for a story to wring praise out of him.  Everyone who knows these creators will probably disagree with Barrier's assessments at some point -- for example, I think that he is much too harsh on Barks' more loosely-wound, but still immensely entertaining, UNCLE $CROOGE stories from the 1960s -- but he always has a well-considered reason for his opinions.

The "extra material" here is what really lifts FUNNYBOOKS to "instant classic" status.  Anyone who has ever wondered about the precise relationships between the various corporate subsidiaries and allies grouped under the spreadeagled "Western Publishing" umbrella -- Whitman, K.K. Publications, Dell, Gold Key -- will have any and all questions answered to their satisfaction here.  Interested in the early history of LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES, the Warner Bros. "answer" to WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES, or in how Dell handled such significant "non-funny-animal" licensed properties as TARZAN and various movie cowboy heroes?  You'll learn about some of these comics' most accomplished writers and artists here.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is a brief discussion of "the Jim Davis shop," an association of artists who produced "funny-animal" challenges, of a sort, to Dell's humorous hegemony for the notorious comics entrepreneur Benjamin Sangor.  It's nice to see the exquisitely obscure characters that came out of this outfit get some recognition, even if Barrier's primary purpose for bringing them up is to demonstrate how their comics failed while the best of Dell's succeeded.

If I have a small nitpick here, it is with Barrier's comparatively brusque brushing-aside of the Gold Key era.  Yes, that era did see ill-considered format and price changes and increasing editorial restrictions, but there was a whole lot of high-quality material being produced at that time, as well.  (See Joe Torcivia's 50th Anniversary tribute for numerous examples.)  I fully realize that Barrier's intention was always to focus on the years before the Dell/Western split, but a few extra pages discussing some of the GK highlights couldn't have hurt.  Anyone want to pick up the bracketed torch (as opposed to fallen; it's not as if Barrier failed, after all) and try writing a sequel?

So, what are you waiting for?  If you care at all about the Dell Comics that truly WERE "Good Comics," or simply about the history of quality comics in general, FUNNYBOOKS virtually defines the term "MUST-GET."

Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S MICKEY MOUSE, VOLUME 6: LOST IN LANDS OF LONG AGO by Floyd Gottfredson (Fantagraphics, 2014)

We've finally hit the mother lode of the early-modern (read: "post-pie-eyed" and "pre-all-gags-all-the-time") MICKEY MOUSE strip.  If I had to choose a single era of Floyd Gottfredson's prime creative years in which I felt the strip was at its very best, it would be 1940-42, the years covered in this volume.  No single story jumps up and presents itself as a "smack-you-across-the-face" classic on the order of "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot," but all of them are, at the very least, good.  Merrill de Maris' imaginative verbal interpretations of Gottfredson's plotting is at its best, while Bill Wright's inking is slick and confident.  The locations of the stories spreadeagle the map; to take the most head-spinning example, Mickey jumps from a bloody, near-deadly encounter with the primitive inhabitants of the "Lost World" of Cave-Man Island ("Land of Long Ago") right into the catty "drawing-room comedy of manners" (so saith yours truly, in an introductory essay) that is "Mickey Mouse in Love Trouble."

A fan's appetite for revisiting (or, in such rarely-reprinted cases as "Mystery at Hidden River" and "Mickey Mouse, Super Salesman," making initial acquaintance with) these tales is made all the keener by the knowledge that major changes in the strip were just over the horizon.  De Maris departed the scene in 1942, Dick Moores assumed the inking chores soon after, and we would have to negotiate several long stretches of gag strips before Bill Walsh took firm control of the plottery... and promptly steered the stories into very different, though still highly entertaining, channels.  Thad Komorowski has a good point when he fingers "Hidden River" as the last adventure that could be said to fit the "prewar Gottfredson adventure model." (This is quite literally true: Pearl Harbor was attacked just as Mickey was riding down a log flume, heading for the end of the North Woods encounter with a newly pegless Peg-Leg Pete.)  The happiest thought that one can take away from these tales is that the "prewar model" rolled out of the shops in first-class condition, rather than gasping to the finish line.

** SPOILERS **

The best story herein?  Well, I'm kinda prejudiced in favor of "Love Trouble," but even I would admit that an actual adventure needs to take pride of place, and I'm perfectly fine with Byron Erickson's praise of "The Bar-None Ranch" as an ideal story to show a "Gottfredson newbie" so as to pique his or her interest in seeking out more of the strip.  The story has very few plotting problems and a good mix of humor, action, and "forward thinking" (Peg-Leg Pete's use of a scientist's "dinguses" to create the illusion that he is an unstoppable master crook).  In addition to being a bit more sedate -- not to mention a bit dated in its portrayal of feminine "wiles" and overall bitchery -- "Love Trouble" also contains an annoying flaw, one that I did not mention in my essay but have always found irritating, nonetheless.  In order to get back at Minnie's stepping out with the caddish, superficially debonair Montmorency "Rodawn," Mickey calls on his cousin Madeline to play the role of visiting debutante Millicent Van Gilt-Mouse, who becomes smitten with him.  At one point, though, when we see Madeline call Mickey on a house phone, Mickey answers and refers to her as "Millicent."  What, does he think Minnie has the phone tapped?  They're conversing in private, so why just call Madeline by her real name?  And it would have been so easy to have fixed the problem, too, by having the two meet at a cafe or something.  OK, it's not as obvious a flaw as the sudden change of the mysterious ghosts in "Bellhop Detective" from three-dimensional spooks to 2-D projections on a wall... it's just that this story came SO close to stone perfection.  I can't help but be just a LITTLE resentful.

Insert "beach/bitch" gag here.

We begin to get inklings (and even a few overt mentions) of the war era in "Hidden River" and "The Gleam."  One possible essay feature that I would like to see in the next volume -- which will take us deep into the war years -- is how depictions of the conflict in the MICKEY strip changed over time.  I've only had extensive exposure to the Walsh-scripted continuities from 1944 and 1945, and some of those stories could certainly be considered more or less escapist.  I seem to recall that there was far more actual war-related material (including war-themed gags) in the strip during the first few full years of the conflict.  At least we won't have long to wait to test my theory.

Feature material in this volume includes a cartoon tribute by Stephen DeStefano (of Disney Comics peak-years fame), reprintings of several panels' worth of examples of the Gottfredson "redraws" that appeared in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES in the late 40s and 50s, and an "Heirs of Gottfredson" piece on Carl Barks that includes a color reprinting of Carl's one MICKEY adventure, 1945's "The Riddle of the Red Hat" (FOUR COLOR #79).  For something that Barks claimed to not be his "cup of tea," this story is surprisingly good.  Barks certainly didn't mail it in; he does a particularly good job of writing Goofy. 

One comment of Gottfredson's concerning this era that probably should have been mentioned somewhere in here was his claim that the revenue from the MICKEY strip and the other ongoing Disney strips was literally keeping the straitened Walt Disney Studios above water in the early 40s.  (Recall that Pinocchio [1940] had been a box-office disappointment, the first release of Fantasia [1940] was an out-and-out bomb, and the war had cost Disney the overseas market.)  How about a statistical report at some point on how successful the MICKEY strip actually was?  Do those data even exist any more?  It's worth a dig through the appropriate archives, if you ask me.

Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S UNCLE $CROOGE: THE SEVEN CITIES OF GOLD by Carl Barks (Fantagraphics Books, 2014)

If this be "skimming," then at least it's mostly cream.  In his seminal CARL BARKS AND THE ART OF THE COMIC BOOK, Michael Barrier* praised the earliest UNCLE $CROOGE stories -- in particular, "Only a Poor Old Man" -- to the highest heavens but then argued that, with Scrooge's essential nature having been revealed whole during these tales, there was nothing more that Barks could do with the old miser that wouldn't be "skimming the surface" in comparison.  When he used that phrase, Barrier had in mind tales exactly like the ones in this collection, the stories from U$ #7-12 (1954-55).  Here, we can see Barks really settling in with the notion of using Scrooge as an adventure hero in search of lost treasures -- the genre that William Van Horn once tongue-in-cheekedly described as "plunging into the jungle in search of the lost ruby."  In the sense that these stories don't delve as deeply into what drives Scrooge as did "Poor Old Man" or "Back to the Klondike," then Barrier has a point; after all, Scrooge can be "fully realized for the first time" only once.  But even Barrier had to admit that many of these "second-stage" offerings are "beautifully crafted."  Given that Barks was still getting used to the whole idea of Scrooge playing an heroic role on a regular basis, that's certainly an admirable enough achievement.

If Barrier doesn't have a full appreciation of Barks' craft during this period, then DuckTales sure as shootin' did.  The TV series borrowed liberally from Barks' output during this time, producing direct adaptations of "The Lemming with the Locket" and "The Golden Fleecing" and swiping the conflict from "The Great Steamboat Race" to serve as a centerpiece of its ill-fated Scrooge biography, "Once Upon a Dime."  And that may not be the end of the story.  As I argued when discussing "Too Much of a Gold Thing," the final chapter of "Treasure of the Golden Suns," one could make a good argument that "The Seven Cities of Cibola" had a direct influence on that climactic classic, just as it did on a certain Mr. Lucas and Mr. Spielberg.

As great as the finest of these tales are, I do have to admit that this volume contains the first U$ feature story that I didn't much care for: "The Mysterious Stone Ray," aka "The Mysterious Unfinished Invention," aka "Leave Stranded and Petrified Beagle Boys Lie."  I previously reviewed it here.  The story is currently ranked 16th among all Disney comics stories at Inducks, which I quite frankly cannot fathom.  Our own GeoX bombed quite savagely on "The Menehune Mystery" as Barks' first really sh**ty $CROOGE story (Geo, of course, used the uncensored version of the word), but "Stone Ray" is poorly organized and is illogical in so many ways that it's hard for me, at least, to regard it as being distinctly better than "Menehune."  Chacun a son gout, and all that.  The use of the two unrelated "adventurettes" in U$ #11, "The Great Steamboat Race" and "Riches, Riches Everywhere," is just a bit irritating -- I'm sure that at least a few of Barks' loyal readers back in 1955 regarded the unprecedented double-dip in the same way that DuckTales fans regarded that series' only venture into the two-story format (in Episode 11, no less! How about that?!), but at least the Barks tales are actually good.

Artistically speaking, Barks is still close to the top of his game here, though the effects of the notorious mid-50s "drawing paper switch" that stiffened up his art for a while can first be seen here (in U$ #11).  The worst of these effects won't show up until the "tall Ducks" period of the late 50s, however, and, all things considered, Barks' initial adaptation to the switcheroo is quite adept.  On the gag side, we see the initial one-page salvos in the "free cup of coffee wars" between Scrooge and the unfortunate diner owner who will have to wait more than half a century before his psychological torment can be comprehensively examined in a real, live, full-length story.

* In case you were unaware of the fact, FUNNYBOOKS, Barrier's new book-length history of the "Dell Comics are Good Comics" era, presently stands on the cusp of release.  Barrier can be an astringent analyst, but his views are always worth considering, so anyone with an interest in the Dell days should pick this book up, either for oneself or as a gift for a like-minded friend.  Given IDW's aggressive action in acquiring the Disney comics license and its sturdy stable of licensed properties and original creations, might we be on the verge of seeing the rise of "the new Dell"?  Time will dell... er, tell.

Book Review: THE RETURN OF GEORGE WASHINGTON by Edward J. Larson (William Morrow/Harper-Collins, 2014)

"What?" the reader may ask upon reading the title of Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Edward Larson's new book.  "How could George Washington have returned from anything?"  A good question, indeed... because, as Larson makes clear in this study of Washington's life and public works from the end of the Revolutionary War until he became America's first President under the new Constitution, Washington never truly stepped off the stage or shucked the role of America's "indispensable man," even after he shockingly resigned his commission and retired to Mount Vernon for what he hoped would be a pleasant retirement as a gentleman farmer and land speculator.  Indeed, his influence wound up being a -- Larson would no doubt say "the" -- deciding factor in persuading citizens to accept the paper version of an unprecedented form of popular government.  The belief that Washington would inevitably be the first President and could be trusted to set a good precedent for conduct in office was, of course, widespread, but Larson also reveals just how "hands-on" Washington was in aiding and abetting the Federalist cause "behind the scenes" during the ratification process. 

The tribulations of the newly independent United States (plural emphasized) under the Articles of Confederation, like the fabled Corleones, kept pulling Washington back into public life even as he insisted that he was "out" for good.  A trip to his western landholdings convinced him that only a strong central government could preserve property rights, protect settlers, and encourage commerce in the back country.  (Washington's hope for a Potomac River canal never really materialized, but he certainly was on the right towpath.)  Interstate squabbles, the inability of Congress to convince states to monetarily support what central authority there was, "hyperdemocratic" and faction-riven state institutions such as the unicameral legislature of Pennsylvania, and, above all, the insurrection in Massachusetts that became known as Shays' Rebellion convinced Washington, and many other "like-minded" nationalists, that a proposed convention to "reform" the Articles of Confederation needed to literally start the process over from scratch, creating a governmental framework for a nation, as opposed to "the several states."

Always expressing his reluctance to be dragged into the world of politics, Washington nonetheless played a critical role as President of the Constitutional Convention, albeit one that hardly ever intersected with the actual debates taking place on the floor.  While both large- and small-state advocates got some of what they wanted in the final document, the sheer weight of Washington's presence -- and the delegates' inherent, and justified, trust in him to do the right thing by the country -- guaranteed that the primary influence would be nationalist/Federalist.  Indeed, Washington appears to have assumed something of a protective role towards the Constitution, believing it to be the only alternative to chaos, and he took a dimmer and dimmer view of the "Antifederalists" as the ratification debates proceeded.  Never to the point of literally trying to ram the Constitution down its opponents' throats, however; Washington realized that "Antifeds" had to have their say, that they would have to be part of the new nation, and that the debates should be conducted with what he called "moderation, candor & fairness."

I am an immense admirer of Washington and greatly appreciated this discussion of a (relatively) lightly examined period in the great man's life.  Larson's portrait of the general/statesman depicts a man with strong opinions, forcefully expressed, but whose modesty, character, and ethical sense kept him firmly grounded at all times, as he displayed conduct that all too few "revolutionary heroes" have imitated in the centuries since.

Book Review: THE COMPLETE DICK TRACY, Volume 17: 1956-57 by Chester Gould (IDW Publishing/Library of American Comics, 2014)... plus RIP Jay Maeder

** SPOILERS **

This latest TRACY collection begins by wrapping up the "Joe Period and Flattop Jr." continuity.  The denouement features one of Gould's most (literally) haunting sequence of images, as the ghost/spirit of a murder victim of Flattop Jr.'s literally attaches itself to his neck and won't let go until he himself is gunned down.  By the time Flattop meets his demise, he is white-haired and completely barmy.  The fact that he is a teenager makes the images particularly compelling.  Joe Period doesn't fare much better, getting arrested by Tracy and crew after scoring his first (and, since he's thereby doomed to the electric chair, only) notch on the old gun-butt.  In another highly effective and eerily mounted series of strips, Joe's grieving mother comes to see him in prison, laments her inability to be a good and responsible parent for her boy... and promptly commits suicide by running out into city traffic.  Gould applies a final twist of the knife when he refuses to let us see Joe's on-panel reaction to the shocking news; all we get is a panel of a guard coming to tell the "juvie" prisoner that something has happened.

The Joe Period/Flattop Jr. tale was the latest one in time order to be reprinted by Harvey Comics' old DICK TRACY COMICS MONTHLY.  From here on in, easily accessible pre-IDW reprints of TRACY continuities will be conspicuous by their absence.  Not quite "uncharted waters," but close enough to smell the salt air.

The year 1957, the very crux of the 50s, was once described as "the year it seemed that everyone graduated from high school -- or at least wished they had."  As for Gould, well, he had certainly had better years.  The Kitten Sisters, a trio of close-cropped, acrobatic, "butch" burglars who take a giant step up on the ladder of crime when they commit a revenge murder, are fairly interesting as characters, but they are almost captured too easily: these are the types of arrogant villains that I would have expected to have gone down in "a blaze of gory."  There's actually more bloodshed in the next continuity, which is supposed to serve as comedy relief, or at least I heard some rumor to that effect.  B.O. Plenty's father Morin Plenty (it only seems as if old B.O. has had as many relatives as Snoopy) spends many weeks of panels touting his amazing new invention, a screw-on shoe heel, only to vow bloody revenge after a pair of would-be swindlers cause the death of his barefooted, teenaged hillbilly wife Blossom.  In his Introduction, Max Allan Collins calls this Gould's worst comedy continuity ever.  I can't bring myself to go that far.  OK, it's far from a laugh riot, but Morin is an engaging, genial sort, with an energy that belies his advanced age, and it's genuinely touching to see him break down after Blossom is killed.  Some of Gould's comedy bits from the 30s -- the ones with half-witted wannabe rube detectives and stereotypical black servants -- were far more annoying than this.  The whole affair comes to a classic DICK TRACY conclusion, with the requisite high body count.  Thankfully, despite his vow of revenge, Morin wasn't involved in any of the carnage.

Atypically, the volume closes on the end of a continuity, the tale of the unfortunate Crystal family and the "mad" mother Elsa.  Child abuse, fire, flood, drug pushing, and a gruesome form of murder all compete for attention in this story.

Several "this could only have happened in the 50s" moments are scattered about.  Tracy and his partner Sam Catchem get crew cuts, and Tracy gets involved in a young men's organization that wants to combat the JD plague by having its members "dress like men," as opposed to outfitting themselves in leather jackets and skintight jeans.  Collins sniffs at the idea, joking that he "must have missed" the day when that was discussed in school.  But now that we have college students routinely coming to class wearing baggy pants and pajama bottoms... who's to say that Gould wasn't onto something?

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.

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This volume is dedicated to NEW YORK DAILY NEWS columnist Jay Maeder, who died in July of cancer.  If any of you are wondering about the origins of my interest in DICK TRACY, you have a combination of Maeder and the first (sort of) incarnation of Gladstone Comics to blame.  Back in the early Summer of 1990, as stores filled up with chatchkas of all sorts touting the Disney-Touchstone Dick Tracy movie and various local TV stations unwittingly set themselves up for various ethnic protests by planning a rerelease UPA's old Dick Tracy Show, Maeder published a paperback biography of the jut-jawed flatfoot.  As fate would have it, Gladstone, trying to keep its hand in the comics game after Disney had stepped in and given the Disney comics license to its own comics subsidiary, had recently started publishing a DICK TRACY reprint title.  Wanting to continue my support of Gladstone, I bought the reprint comics, liked them, saw the Maeder book in a local library, bought it, and thoroughly enjoyed Maeder's virtually year-by-year examination of the progress of Gould's strip.  Having read all of the IDW volumes, I now know that Maeder simplified some things and got some other things wrong, but it was his enthusiasm for the strip and its milieu that grabbed me.  I've maintained that level of interest ever since. 

Some years after writing the TRACY bio, Maeder took over the writing chores on the near-moribund LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE strip and boldly "reimagined" it for the 21st century -- changing Annie's dress and appearance, giving her a female adventuress for a companion, etc.  That didn't prevent ANNIE from ultimately being "orphaned" for good and all, but it was Maeder's devotion to the idea of the classic newspaper adventure strip that should, and hopefully will, be remembered.  Thanks, Mr. Maeder, for fighting the good fight.

Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S UNCLE $CROOGE AND DONALD DUCK: THE DON ROSA LIBRARY, VOL. 1 by Don Rosa (Fantagraphics, 2014)

Quick turnaround time, indeed: Volume 2 of this collection just landed at my comics dealer's this past week.  (Volume 3, by contrast, isn't slated to be released until next June.)  Since a good deal of the matter in these initial tomes has been reprinted several times in the past -- by Gladstone and Boom!, to be more specific -- and can easily be found to pristine-or-close-to-it condition, I'm not all that surprised that Fantagraphics got this new reprint project off to a fast start.

I was an anomaly among the many unsuspecting readers who bought Gladstone's UNCLE $CROOGE #219 (July 1987) and were hit square in the face with a brand-new $CROOGE adventure story, crafted by an American, no less.  Thanks to an article in COMICS INTERVIEW magazine, I knew who Don Rosa was, how much he admired Carl Barks, and even something about THE PERTWILLABY PAPERS, the fan project that provided the template for the plot of "Son of the Sun."  I even recognized Rosa's nascent art style -- which one of the very few negative letter-writers to the U$ lettercol criticized as "nervous and scuzzy-looking" -- as an extension of sorts of the style he had previously used for his personal comics.  (I was not aware of the fact that Rosa basically cribbed virtually all of the Duck-poses in "Sun" from Barks drawings... though, now that Rosa has made me aware of the fact, said fact seems pretty obvious in retrospect.)

You'll pardon me if I classify the appearance of Rosa in general and "Sun" in particular as one of TWO great "booster shots" that Scrooge's career received in '87, the other, of course, being DuckTales.  At the time, I was unaware that DT was on its way -- the good thing AND the bad thing about today's instant-gratification world is that very few such pop-culture bombshells still catch us by surprise -- but the arrival of a new and promising American Duck creator clearly presaged a future for American Disney comics that went above and beyond "simply" reprinting Barks classics and serving up treats from abroad.  And so it proved to be.

In the COMICS INTERVIEW piece, Rosa said that Barks' anonymity during his working career could be considered an advantage of sorts, because it gave Barks the freedom "to just try and please himself."  And that is precisely what the Rosa adventures, short stories, and gag pages of 1987-88 reflect: an inexperienced, but talented and enthusiastic, creator, who was simply trying to craft the best Duck tales he possibly could.  Yes, a lot of the artwork is crude and clunky by Rosa's standards of the 90s and the aughts, but it's not REALLY that terrible -- William Van Horn's early gag pages for Gladstone got more catcalls -- and the writing is good from the off.  Rosa's bold willingness to put his pen to the service of eye-popping, oversized individual panels (the explosion that hurled the Temple of Manco Capac into the empyrean in "Son of the Sun" was the first and, arguably, the most famous example) indicates a creator who is willing to punch above what would seem to be his artistic weight, at least at this time, and such risk-taking would serve Rosa well as his sense of finesse improved.  Most importantly, the pretension and "weight-of-the-worldishness" that beleadened numerous Rosa projects during and after THE LIFE AND TIMES OF $CROOGE McDUCK is almost entirely absent.  In "Last Sled to Dawson" (UNCLE $CROOGE ADVENTURES #5, June 1988), Rosa's first stab at Glittering Goldie, the sentiment underlying the entire story is only revealed at the very end and is kept quite low-key, Rosa's spangled and flashy "staring into my memories" final panel notwithstanding.

Most indicative of the fact that Rosa was still taking these early jobs with the lightheartedness that they reflect is the observation that he was perfectly willing to do "ten-pager"-style domestic stories during this period.  In his "Behind the Scenes" story notes, Rosa has some fun with the idea that he doesn't have much to say about the content of these stories, but, then again, there wasn't a lot of content in most of Barks' "ten-pagers," either.  (There were exceptions, of course, but a lot of fans tend to remember those "sports" and then make mistaken generalizations as to the quality of the lot.)  A couple of these efforts -- "Mythological Menagerie" (WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #523, October 1987), in which Rosa wears his considerable research into obscure mythological creatures rather lightly, and "Metaphorically Spanking" (WDC&S #531, August 1988), in which Rosa delightfully subverts his soon-to-be-ironclad rule that Donald, and NOT HD&L, should always be the member of the Duck clan to take the major abuse -- stand out as legitimately superb.  Even in these tales, though, I get the sense that Rosa was straining at the leash, unsatisfied with painting on such a relatively small canvas.  By the time he got to the "operatic" part of his career, such "minor" creations would, for the most part, be set aside.  When you're comparing Rosa to someone like Barks in terms of being a "complete" creator, that does have to count as a debit.

 

"The Rosa Archives," presented at the back of the volume, appears to be Rosa's version of a biography of sorts.  If so, then he's booking through it at double time, since part one takes us from his birth up until "The Son of the Sun."  Oh, please tell me that I'm wrong... does this mean that part two is going to be one gigantic rant about how that evil Disney corporation (does any "artistic type" believe in a GOOD corporation anymore?) refused to give him back his original artwork to help him make a living?  I haven't opened Volume 2 yet -- a few other items on my current "pile" are on top of it -- but I'm hoping that Rosa exercises good judgment on that score.  (BTW, there's a funny photo in this section of a teenaged Rosa smiling like a split cantaloupe over a pile of comics that he's just recently acquired.  He looks for all the world like a maniacal teenaged Bobby Fischer with glasses.  I kid you not.)

Book Review: THE COMPLETE PEANUTS, VOLUME 21: 1991-92 by Charles M. Schulz (Fantagraphics Press, 2014)

In this latest collection, Schulz continues to consolidate the aesthetic ground he had regained during 1989 and 1990, when he started to fully exploit the potential that had been opened up by his decision to change to a variable panel format.  This time, however, most of the innovations center on the Sunday strips.  Schulz seems to have realized at some point that the Sunday format was every bit as much a candidate for a shakeup as the dailies.  He subsequently begins to employ far larger Sunday panels than he had ever used before (e.g. the crashing ocean wave of 4/21/91, the Victoria Falls panorama of 4/19/92).  In an even more radical departure, he begins to assume the virtually unprecedented role of an OMYUN (Omniscient Yet Unseen Narrator; (c) Joe Torcivia) and use narrative captions, an early example of which appears in the Victoria Falls Sunday strip.  A daily caption duly follows in the one-panel strip of 8/22/92.  Clearly, an old dog can learn new tricks, whether you feed him cookies (which Snoopy continues to guzzle here as if they're going out of style) or not.

Only one new character is included herein: Cormac, a little boy who meets Charlie Brown at summer camp and subsequently shows up in Sally's class, where he, not very artfully, contrives to interpose himself between Sally and her supposed "Sweet Babboo," Linus.  If subsequent appearances by Cormac will help to drive the by-now-tiresome "I'm not your Sweet Babboo!" six feet underground for good and all, then I'll be eternally grateful to Schulz.  Old routines, such as Snoopy's assaults on Linus' blanket, maintain their position in Schulz' arsenal, while Rerun, who will play a much more significant role later in the decade, begins to pop up once again in late '92.

Book Review: THE AGE OF GOLD by H. W. Brands (Anchor, 2003)

My 900th post!

"They made their fortunes by being tougher than the toughies, smarter than the smarties, shiftier than the shifties, slyer than the sly-ies, luckier than the luckies... and they made it any shape they could!"

Brands' history of the particulars and aftereffects of the famed California Gold Rush plays out on an exceptionally broad canvas, though the true extent of the canvas does not become apparent until two-thirds of the way through.  The triggering event (the discover of gold near Sutter's Fort in early 1848), the logistics of getting to the gold fields by fair means or foul, the hardships the "argonauts" endured en route, and the increasingly elaborate ways in which the miners extracted the precious ore get a generous amount of space, to be sure.  But Brands is actually after bigger game.  He argues that the race for riches (of which, of course, this was only the first and the splashiest) gave birth to a new version of the "American Dream," one in which the old, Puritan-inflected method of "pursuing happiness" was roughly elbowed aside by the aggressive drive for instant wealth.  In this new paradigm, audacity, risk-taking, and a healthy measure of luck counted for more than the inculcation of steady and sober habits.  Brands contends -- and it is difficult to disagree with him -- that the Gold Rush provided the template for numerous booms to come, up to and including the dot.com boom of the 1990s.  With boom, of course, there often comes bust, and those who came to California (or were already there, but alert for the main chance) and provided the miners with supplies, equipment, and urban amenities in such jumping-off towns as San Francisco frequently enjoyed far more financial success than the majority of orediggers, who often found easy riches harder to come by than they'd imagined.

Once the mechanics of the Gold Rush are out of the way, Brands turns to some of the more immediate social and political fallout.  The vast influx of people to California made the huge territory ready for statehood even before it had truly been organized as a territory, and the Compromise of 1850 was constructed to find a common ground between North and South when the resulting fallout over slavery threatened the Union.  The notorious Kansas-Nebraska Act, which probably did more than any other measure to make the Civil War inevitable, had its roots in the desire to facilitate travel to California by transcontinental railroad.  California itself, despite being admitted as a free state, had a number of pro-slavery settlers, some of whom wanted to see the southern portion of the state secede, or to use the wealth of the state to finance the Confederate war effort.  The importance of the railroad wound up keeping California in the Union, but it was a closer-run thing than many people might think.  The development and "civilizing" of San Francisco and other California towns, and the impact of the mass migration on native Californians and Native American tribes, also get their due amount of attention.

You'll find many well-known figures discussed in these pages, but I found the stories of the more obscure (or obscure, but soon to be famous) people to be just as interesting, if not more so.  The narrative becomes a bit diffuse in its last third, as if Brands is trying to fit in as many ramifications of the Gold Rush as he can, but the quality of the prose remains high from beginning to end.  I could also have asked for more detailed maps of the gold fields.  Still, this is a story that everyone should know -- especially since the risk-taking individual entrepreneur, without which the "American Dream" still cannot survive, is at the core of the tale.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Final Thoughts and a Look Ahead

A housekeeping note before I begin: I have placed links to the opening chapters of my two sets of animation retrospectives (DuckTales and Kimba the White Lion) at the head of my list of favorite blogs and Web sites, on the far right of this page.  The DT "launch page" has direct links to my reviews of all 100 of the episodes, and I'm going to include a similar set of links for Kimba as soon as I get the chance.

I'd like to augment the thank-yous I wrote in my review of "The Golden Goose, Part 1" by paying special tributes to GeoX and Greg Weagle.  Responding to their different takes on the eps played a central role in helping me to clarify some of the new thoughts that came to my mind while revisiting the series.  So, what better way to organize my final thoughts on the project than by sticking with tradition and answering some other DT-related questions that turned up during their own wrapup comments and posts? 

(The N&V Community) What, you're not going to favor us with the inevitable "Best of" and "Worst of" lists first?  Isn't that sort of thing kind of expected at this point?

Well, GeoX and his correspondents discussed such lists, whereas Greg did not -- at least, not formally -- but I can certainly get behind adherence to that particular tradition.  Here are my lists, which may be a little more extensive than what you might be expecting:

Best Half-Hour Episodes

1.  "Hero for Hire"
2.  "Sir Gyro de Gearloose"
3.  "Raiders of the Lost Harp"
4.  "The Uncrashable Hindentanic"
5.  "Top Duck"
6.  "Duck in the Iron Mask"
7.  "Home Sweet Homer"
8.  "All Ducks on Deck"
9.  "Double-O-Duck"
10.  "The Land of Trala La"

An exceptionally difficult list to put together; there were quite a few eps that I felt bad about leaving out, especially those from the Fenton-Bubba era.

Worst Half-Hour Episodes

10.  "Down and Out in Duckburg"
9.  "The Right Duck"
8.  "The Money Vanishes"
7.  "Duckman of Aquatraz"
6.  "Luck O' the Ducks"
5.  "Once Upon a Dime"
4.  "Magica's Magic Mirror" / "Take Me Out of the Ballgame"
3.  "Bubba's Big Brainstorm"
2.  "New Gizmo-Kids on the Block"
1.  "Yuppy Ducks"

Most of these are obvious, but I did put some thought into how to order them.  I decided to give "Once Upon a Dime" a little bit of extra consideration for at least trying to incorporate bits and pieces of Duck-comics lore into Scrooge's story, including some elements that were fairly obscure.  It may not have been done well, but "Dime" at least showed more essential ambition than the misbegotten two-episode experiment.

Best Half-Hour Components of Multi-Part Stories

1.  "Don't Give Up the Ship" ("Treasure of the Golden Suns")
2.  "Too Much of a Gold Thing" ("Treasure of the Golden Suns")
3.  "A Whale of a Bad Time" ("Catch as Cash Can")
4.  "Wrongway in Ronguay" ("Treasure of the Golden Suns")
5.  "The Golden Goose, Part 2"

Worst Half-Hour Components of Multi-Part Stories

5.  "A Drain on the Economy" ("Catch as Cash Can")
4.  "The Billionaire Beagle Boys Club" ("Time is Money")
3.  "Aqua Ducks" ("Catch as Cash Can")
2.  "Ducks on the Lam" ("Time is Money")
1.  "Bubba Trubba" ("Time is Money")

I'm not really down on "Super DuckTales," but the individual parts of that serial had some very tough competition to overcome.  I had a difficult time choosing between "GG2" and "The Duck Who Would Be King" for the final slot but ultimately decided to give the former the nod, primarily because of, you know, that whole "end of the world" thing.

Best Adaptations of Carl Barks Stories

1.  "The Land of Trala La"
2.  "The Status Seekers" 
3.  "The Unbreakable Bin"
4.  "Scrooge's Pet"
5.  "Lost Crown of Genghis Khan"

I'm not going to do a "Worst Adaptations" list, because, quite frankly, all of the Barks adaptations were at the very least passable, with the obvious exception of "Down and Out in Duckburg."  For my "Best" list, I favored those adaptations which brought something interesting and (in my view) appropriate to the table, apart from merely transferring the Barksian details into animated form.

Top One-Shot Characters Whom I Would Have Liked To Have Seen Again

1.  The Flying McQuacks ("Top Duck")
2.  The Phantom Blot ("All Ducks on Deck")
3.  Ludwig Von Drake ("The Golden Fleecing")
4.  Filler Brushbill ("Much Ado About Scrooge")
5 (tie).  J. R. Mooing ("Ducks of the West") and the Grand Kishki of Macaroon ("Catch as Cash Can")

Er... let me explain that last entry.  This was a sort of tribute to Joe Torcivia.  The Barks adaptation that Joe has always wished could have come to pass in the series was an adaptation of "The 24-Carat Moon" (UNCLE $CROOGE #24, December 1958), with Mooing (as "The Fabulous Cattle King"), "Kishy" (as "The Rajah of Eyesore"), and Scrooge rocket-racing to the newly-discovered golden Moon to claim its riches.  Sounds like a good idea to me.

Other Barks Stories (Unrelated to Any Series Offerings) That Would Have Made for Good DuckTales Adaptations

1.  "The Heedless Horseman" (UNCLE $CROOGE #66, November 1966) (could have been a great slapstick offering along the lines of "Hindentanic" if handled properly)
2.  "Mystery of the Ghost Town Railroad" (UNCLE $CROOGE #56, March 1965) (should have replaced "Ducks of the West")
3.  "King Scrooge the First" (UNCLE $CROOGE #71, October 1967) (yes, I know that Barks only wrote this one, but I think that it might have worked pretty well on-screen)
4.  "The Mines of King Solomon" (UNCLE $CROOGE #19, September 1957) (can easily imagine Fenton getting involved here, helping Scrooge survey his various businesses)
5.  "The Flying Dutchman" (UNCLE $CROOGE #25, March 1959) (could have been a REALLY scary Halloween-style episode)

Now, to tackle some of the issues raised by others.  I'm going to paraphrase the actual comments a bit in order to save space.  If you have any additional general, series-related questions to ask me, I'd be happy to tackle them in the Comments section.

(GeoX: "On Everyducks") How much of a detriment to the series was it to leave Donald (mostly) out of the picture, thus eliminating the "Everyman" role that Donald played so well in the $CROOGE adventures? 

I think it was a loss, but not a grave one.  As Geo himself notes, Launchpad and (especially) Fenton have their own personal motivations and hangups and thereby fill some of the gap left behind by the absence of Donald.  The softening of Scrooge also helped in this regard, as he took over Donald's domestic responsibilities and came across as a somewhat less remote and forbidding figure.

Speaking of Donald's "Everyman" role, a book about that very topic should be coming out soon.  I've already preordered it from Amazon.

(GeoX and correspondents: "Family") Is it out of character for Scrooge to be presented as living in a luxurious mansion, complete with servants?

I've got to admit, I'm prejudiced here, thanks to my longstanding affection for Richie Rich and the world in which he operated.  I see no issue with the DT Scrooge having an impressive place to call home, or, for that matter, operating as a classic business tycoon (as he did in numerous Barks stories).  If you take the "deracinated" image of Scrooge to its logical extreme, then he would concentrate almost exclusively on (1) hanging onto the fortune in his Money Bin; (2) going on occasional adventures to add to said fortune.  If you're going to accept that Scrooge may be motivated to go on adventures because of business deals or discoveries made during the course of his business endeavors -- which I assume that most of us do -- then you're going to have to accept that he is more in the mold of a classic tycoon, who differs from other such creatures in that he has an unusually strong attachment to the places from which he has come to get to that point.  And in the world of TV in which DT operates, a classic tycoon "should" have a mansion.

(GeoX: "Employees") Did the characterization of Launchpad deteriorate as time went on?

Not as badly as did the Nephews' characterization (at times), but the show definitely made much less use of him than it should have during the Fenton/Bubba period, and his characterization in these rare appearances basically traded off of what had been established during the first season, with relatively little progression.  The real falloff didn't begin until he joined the cast of Darkwing Duck.

(GeoX: "Villains") Which Barks villain was best realized in "DuckTales"?

I have no real complaint with the portrayals of Magica and Glomgold.  The "personalized" Beagle Boys (including Ma) had their moments, but I definitely think that it was a mistake to have relied so heavily on Big Time, Burger, Bouncer, and Baggy.  Burger and Baggy had all-too-obvious character "hooks" and did suffer from some "Flanderization" as time went on.  Bankjob and Babyface did not seem to have obvious "hooks," and Bugle/Bebop's "hook" was at least more interesting than either Burger's or Baggy's, so it is a real shame that they didn't get more screen time.  The "wild card" among the villain was Black Pete, who always had something of value to contribute and surely merited a few additional "costumed" turns.

(Greg) Did "DuckTales" "jump the shark" when Bubba was introduced?

No way; there were more than enough solid episodes among the final 35.  Unquestionably, however, the introduction of Bubba as a continuing cast member was the biggest mistake that the show ever made.

One issue that I raised during my discussion of the later eps should also be brought up here.  The sensibility of the show's humor style took a distinct turn towards the "sitcommy" during the Fenton-Bubba era.  That approach seemed to fit Fenton and his subcast (Mrs. Crackshell and Gandra Dee) quite well.  But, looking back on it now, I do wish that a few more globe-trotting, adventure-focused episodes had found their way into the second and third seasons, for balance's sake.  A hearty sense of humor could certainly have informed these tales, but a sense of real peril and intrigue should have been included, as well.  Don't forget that "The Uncrashable Hindentanic" included some moments of genuine danger along with all of the funny business.

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So, what DuckTales-related matters can you expect to see me discussing in the future?  Here is a provisional list (which I pretty much sketched out already while reviewing "The Golden Goose", but it won't hurt to repeat it here).

1.  A review of the DuckTales Remastered video game

2.  Reviews of some DUCKTALES comic-book stories (both good and bad) that I've never reviewed in detail before

3.  Reviews of several DUCKTALES fanfics

There is also a possibility that, at some point in the future, I will return to some of my earlier RETROSPECTIVES and beef them up with additional images and such.  If I make any changes, I will be sure to let you all know about them on the blog.

Thanks again for patronizing my DUCKTALES project!

Book Review: THE PRESIDENTS' WAR by Chris DeRose (Lyons Press, 2014)

When Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, five of his predecessors were still alive and active, a record that still stands.  As author DeRose reveals in this unusual look at the antebellum and Civil War eras, this was a decidedly mixed blessing.  Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan had all governed in the great Era of Compromise, in which effort after effort was made to hold the Union together in the face of the growing controversies over slavery.  Each had to make his own version of a "deal with the devil" to preserve the status quo.  The Lincoln years split the ex-Presidents asunder, just as the Civil War split the country as a whole.  Tyler joined the Confederate cause wholeheartedly, working to take Virginia out of the Union and serving in the Confederate congress for a time before his death.  Pierce became a Copperhead, or Peace Democrat.  The much-maligned Buchanan turned most of his attention to various attempts to salvage what remained of his reputation after his one disastrous term, which had ended with a number of states seceding.  Even Fillmore, who (at least in DeRose's telling) comes off better than any of his Democratic peers in terms of energy and ambition, broke angrily with Lincoln after the latter announced the Emancipation Proclamation and broadened the war's moral scope.  Perhaps symbolically, Van Buren, the oldest of the five and the one whose lifetime stretched back to the difficult Revolutionary War era, seems to have been the most uniformly supportive of Lincoln's policies, though he died before Emancipation became an issue.

DeRose does a decent job of weaving the actions and reactions of the ex-Presidents in and out of his narrative.  The main problem here is that the wartime narrative, in particular, gets too much attention.  The time spent reiterating the well-known results of various battles could have been better spent expanding upon the ex-Presidents' views.  The book also ends rather abruptly, at the end of the war, with three of the five exes still alive.  I would have liked to have seen an epilogue that discussed how their feelings towards Lincoln and the war effort may have changed (if, in fact, they did) and how they may have felt about the war's impact on their legacies.  I could also have done without some of DeRose's clunky grammar and troubles with dates (he has an annoying tendency to record days absent years).  Still, I appreciate his efforts here.  These may not have been America's best and/or brightest leaders, but it is useful to know what they thought and said about Lincoln and the war that forever sundered their time from the very different future that was to come.

Book Review: THE GREATER JOURNEY: AMERICANS IN PARIS by David McCullough (Simon & Schuster, 2011)

David McCullough's followup to JOHN ADAMS and 1776 -- both of which were immense best-sellers and critical favorites -- received critical hosannas which were, for the most part, deserved, but did not do nearly as well in terms of sales.  It's not hard to see why if you take a close look at McCullough's approach.  Here, he tells the story of various Americans -- writers, painters, medical students, inventors, etc. -- who traveled to, lived in, and worked in Paris during the period 1830 to 1900.  While certain figures get more time on the stage than others, so many individuals stroll past on the figurative "Champs Elysees of ideas" that the average reader probably can't be faulted for losing track of "who's who" on an occasion or two.  There's plenty of interesting and fascinating information to be found here, but be warned that considerable attention will have to be devoted to keeping one's mental "scorecard" updated.  The comparative lack of focus, culminating in an ending chapter and an epilogue that might best be described as a "fadeout" rather than a definitive conclusion, may help to explain why some readers found THE GREATER JOURNEY to be somewhat laborious going.

The Americans discussed here should not be confused with the "Lost Generation" who so famously came to Paris in the aftermath of World War I.  The earlier cohorts might be more accurately described as a "Finding Generation."  Leaving a much younger and rawer America, they sought enlightenment, polish, and education in one of the world's most cosmopolitan capitals.  Moreover, they did so without a trace of the world-weary rejection of American mores that so many members of the "Lost Generation" evinced.  The primary goal of such individuals as painter/inventor Samuel Morse, sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and medical student/writer Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. was to use the knowledge and skills that they had gained in order to enrich their home country.  Some of them stayed in Paris for years, but they never stopped thinking of themselves as Americans first and foremost.  The interplay between the values that these individuals brought with them and the refinements that residence in Paris taught them provides much of the intellectual intrigue of the book (though, admittedly, certain figures, even some fairly famous ones, simply spend too little time in the spotlight to get full attention on that score).

Easily the most impressive part of the "bitty" narrative is the tale of Elihu Washburne, U.S. minister to France during the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, the subsequent siege and fall of Paris, and the short but bloody reign of the Paris Commune.  As the only diplomat from a major power to remain in Paris during the siege, Washburne did yeomanlike service in assisting stranded Americans and people of other nationalities to either escape the city or survive the effects of the siege.  This included protecting German nationals who had been trapped in the city and were in potential danger of being persecuted or killed by the locals.  McCullough makes heavy use of Washburne's diary to keep track of the day-by-day events, as well as Washburne's emotional state.  Significantly, this sequence is easily the most reminiscent of McCullough's sweeping narratives in his Revolutionary War books.

THE GREATER JOURNEY isn't McCullough at his very best, but even a McCullough at three-quarters speed beats the average ideology-bound academic historian every day of the week.  Highly recommended.

Book Review: THE GREATEST COMEBACK by Patrick J. Buchanan (Random House, 2014)

Say what you will about the trajectory of Pat Buchanan's political career; a narrative of how his career began was long overdue, and he has now finally given it to us.  Joining Richard Nixon as a researcher, speechwriter, and all-around gofer in 1965, Buchanan was on board for RN's tortuous climb out of the political abyss, culminating in his razor-thin victory in the election of 1968.  This set, and will probably remain, the standard for all political comebacks.  Drawing upon an extensive collection of memoranda, Buchanan walks us step-by-step through Nixon's resurrection.  The coverage of the '68 election campaign itself is a bit less compelling than that of the earlier years, and Buchanan (perhaps understandably) puffs up his own role in the process a bit, but there's enough new and interesting material here to intrigue even those like myself who have read other versions of this story before. 

Arguably the most poignant passage of the book concerns Nixon's foreign tour in 1967, which included several stops in Africa.  At the time, a number of promising African leaders seemed to be emerging, and they gave as good as they got in their conversations with Nixon.  Sadly, most of these individuals were fated to wind up exiled, dead, or both.  Who knows what might have happened had they survived and gained power.

Buchanan hints that a followup volume concerning Nixon's presidency may be on the way.  As a speechwriter's memoir, William Safire's BEFORE THE FALL will be a very tough act to follow, but Buchanan has the advantage of having been present through the end of RN's presidency, whereas Safire left before the Watergate scandal began to metastasize.  Here's hoping Pat follows through. 

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.