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.

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.

Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE #306 (March 2011, Boom! Studios)

Yes, it's definitely "Recreate the Experiences of Disney Comics Publishers Past" Month at Boom! Right on the heels of DONALD DUCK #364's channeling of the spirit of "Gladstone II" comes this latest issue of MICKEY, which reads like nothing less than a "short-stack" edition of a Gemstone comic -- right down to its "bringing back" a visiting character who'll be a complete mystery to anyone who hasn't read her one previous appearance during the Gemstone era. Byron Erickson and Paco Rodriquez' "Catch as Cat Can" features the return of Katarina Kodorofsky, the sexy professional art thief (Inducks calls her a "spy," but that's a stretch) who unwillingly teamed up with The Mouse in WDC&S #687's "Claws of the Cat" (read my review of that first appearance here). We do get an "editorial box" alerting us to Katarina's origin story, but we're not told where the story can be found. (Query: Did Chris Meyer assume that readers would look this appearance up online and therefore didn't feel the need to state a specific issue?) More problematic is the fact that Mickey's ending quip to Minnie will literally make no sense to anyone who hasn't read "Claws," since it is a direct call-back to the conclusion of the earlier story. I appreciate Boom!'s interest in linking what it is presently doing to the work of previous publishers; I just wish that there were a slightly smoother way of doing so.

At the start of "Catch," Kat seems to have reverted to her "default setting" of mistrusting Mickey as an "amateur" art-crook-chaser, claiming that she needs his body rather than his mind (it's NOT what you think, OK?!). Not until we are well into the story do we learn the reason for Kat's unwilling request for assistance: Mickey's presence will help her cover for an embarrassing personal weakness. Or so she thinks. The criminal opposition (a crooked Egyptologist who's been stealing priceless Egyptian antiquities) is, as it turns out, less interesting than the intriguing relationship between Kat and Mickey, which is kneaded and rekneaded in line after line of dialogue. I like Kat because she is a very different sort of ally for Mickey -- a character who could very easily be an adversary if the tables were twisted slightly -- and it's a real shame that, at least according to Inducks, no further stories featuring her have been published. But I do wish Rodriquez would ditch the "poofy lips" once and for all. Perhaps we could send both Kat and Lotus Blossom to the Nip/Tuck guys before they come "on stage" again.

The backup GOOFY story, "Spaghetti and Goofballs," continues the Gemstone vibe by making strenuous efforts to ape one of the enjoyable Sarah Kinney Goof-tales that Gemstone favored us with. The tale even includes references to Doc Static and Goofy's "favorite cartoon critter," Flip the Fish, both of which became very familiar to American readers during the Gemstone era. Unfortunately, writer Maya Astrup is no Sarah Kinney. Apparently having concluded that Goofy's famed "eccentricity" is actually out-and-out insanity, Astrup presents a Goof who becomes obsessed with creating "stuck-together spaghetti" sculptures, to the point that he literally can't stop. Oh, and he cooks the spaghetti in a machine that he "doesn't know how to stop." Uh, what? This is simply too weird and contrived to be believable, even on what passes for "normal" Goofy terms. Goofy doesn't even sound right, speaking perfectly good Mousetonian English. Oh, well, not every Gemstone GOOFY story was a ten-strike, either... and the featured story is strong enough to make MM #306 an overall winner.

Comics Review: UNCLE $CROOGE #400 (February 2011, Boom! Kids)

On the happy occasion of U$' milestone 400th issue, I'm feeling so generous that I'm giving pride of visual place to Don Rosa's "Busy, Busy World of Scrooge McDuck" cover, even though I actually purchased the old-school Deluxe Edition with Carl Barks' painted version of the cover to FOUR COLOR #386. (The "logos-in-the-back" business was a bit creepy, but still... why would you want to muck up a classic image like that?) The good vibes are warranted: this is easily the best ish of U$ that Boom! has given us, a welcome return to the glory days of Gemstone, when we were regularly treated to new stories in the old tradition. The two featured items here are (with apologies to Keno Don) "a little something special" in terms of thematic approach, but not so much so as to seem out of place.

No less a personage than Carl Barks himself (Dog-Nosed Version, Patent Pending) is the center of attention in the 1992 Italian story "Uncle $crooge and the Man who Drew Ducks." When I first heard about this tale, I thought that it might have been a tribute created after Carl's death in 2000. The fact that it was produced a number of years before Barks' passing gives the idyllic portrait of a reporter's genial visit to Carl and Gare's home in Grants Pass, OR something of a bittersweet tinge. The "Carl Barks Studio" fiasco which made Carl's last years less pleasant than they ought to have been was still over the horizon. Writer Rudy Salvagnini (with David Gerstein doing what, for him, seems to be some fairly unadorned translation duty) appears to have taken inspiration from the German DONALDist claim that Barks' stories were "reports" of actual happenings in Duckburg -- that is, that Barks was serving as "journalist of record" for the Ducks. Barks' first original ten-pager in WDC&S (#32, May 1943) is presented as a "reenactment," while Carl describes himself as "living through" Scrooge's various travels to exotic destinations. Turning Barks' comics adventures into something like shorthand transcriptions should leach some of the magic away from the stories, but it honestly doesn't, largely because Barks did, in a real sense, create a unique, believable (albeit often fantastical) "universe" and "inhabit" it as he was spinning his stories, to a greater extent than most any other comics creator. This is a charming tribute, and a worthy lead-off to such a significant issue.

Byron Erickson and Daan Jippes' "Obsession" can't hope to match the unique nature of "The Man Who Drew Ducks," but it comes amazingly close, given that it's based on the familiar conflict between Scrooge and Magica De Spell. As he notes in his comments in "Musings from the Money Bin," a three-page text feature at the back of the book, Erickson went back to basics -- in this case, Magica's debut story, "The Midas Touch" (UNCLE $CROOGE #36, December 1961) -- and exhumed the easily-overlooked fact that Magica originally didn't care whether or not she got Scrooge's Old #1 Dime. She simply wanted any coin that Scrooge had touched and only became fixated on Old #1 after she realized that its "potential energy" would make her planned "Golden Touch amulet" all the more powerful. What would happen if someone -- in this case, Magica's feathered pal Ratface -- realized that Magica could create her amulet and gain riches without relying on Old #1? Answer: Magica would realize a "triumph" that would turn out to be hollow at its core. This splendid story is as much a comment on our own expectations about Scrooge-Magica stories as it is an exploration of the relationship between Scrooge and Magica. Recall that DuckTales, when it used Magica for the first time in "Send in the Clones," cut straight to the chase and introduced her as being obsessed with Old #1 from the start. It's funny how quickly we forget how it all started. (In a similar fashion, the many modern stories about an "evil" Flintheart Glomgold have tended to make us forget that Glomgold was originally conceived by Barks as basically just a South African clone of Scrooge, right down to the money bin full of Rands.) Jippes complements Erickson's clever writing with some supremely crafted depictions of Magica in all her guises, from sultry temptress (when she's posing as a filthy-rich "mystery heiress") to raving madwoman (when she turns on the baffled Ratface, casts "foof bombs" left and right, and destroys her non-Old-#1-powered amulet as "the only way to beat McDuck!"). I do wish, though, that Jippes had kept straight the physical details of how Magica's amulet works. Magica claims that she only needs to have the amulet on to turn things to gold, but, early in the story, she is always holding or touching the amulet during "gilding operations." We also see her holding or touching various inanimate objects (trays, pages in a book) while wearing the amulet but not turning said objects to gold. In a showdown with Scrooge, however, she turns Old #1 and the walls of the Money Bin to gold while wearing but not touching the amulet. I know magic is tricky, but Arrrgggghhh! Can we have a little consistency here, please?

Three Barks gags -- including the Genuine Old Original "Free Cup of Coffee Gag" -- and the aforementioned "Musings from the Money Bin," which include comments by William Van Horn, Giorgio Cavazzano (artist for "The Man Who Drew Ducks"), and other notables in addition to Erickson, fill out a superb package that keeps Boom!'s "2.0 winning streak" alive.  Between the newly "classicized" titles and the enjoyable Disney Afternoon material, this is as close as we've gotten in years to the days of Disney Comics circa 1990-91. Let us devoutly hope that "history repeats itself" only up to a point.

Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE #304 (January 2011, Boom! Studios)

MICKEY MOUSE... it's not just for "Boom! Kids!" anymore! With this issue, heralding as it does the start of the new "Classics" era, MM is officially promoted to the "adults' table" to join DARKWING DUCK and CHIP AND DALE'S RESCUE RANGERS. Mickey also "loses his 'Friends'," though Minnie, Pluto, Goofy, Clarabelle, and Pete do all make appearances here. It's the first time that Mickey's book has borne the proud old original title since the end of the "Gladstone I" era, at the beginning of 1990. The funny thing is that, to celebrate the return of vintage Mouse material for purportedly "older" audiences, Boom! presents a Bill Walsh and Floyd Gottfredson tale packed with features that can best be described as credulous and childish -- and, much more disturbingly, attempts to slip some censorship past our radar. Hopefully, the latter was only a one-time occurrence, but I'm certainly in no mood to accept such meddling as the "price" we are expected to pay in order to be allowed to enjoy works like these once again.

Walsh and Gottfredson's 1944 strip continuity "The Pirate Ghostship" has had two prior comics reprintings. The first, in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES in 1947, boldly titled the uber-fanciful pirates-and-natives epic "The Isle of Death" (and this two years after the end of World War II, no less). In 1989, Gladstone republished the story in one of its oversized Comic Albums, pairing it up with another 1944 tale, "The World of Tomorrow." The '89 effort, unsurprisingly, "whitewashed" the brown-skinned "sea cannibals" who capture Mickey and the 17th-century (sic) Pete placeholder, Captain Greatbeard. Boom!'s version, by contrast, tints the natives and their Minnie-like "White Goddess" Princess green. (Was the underwater passage to the natives' lair some sort of wormhole to Vulcan?) Given that Walsh's story is tethered only loosely to reality to begin with, playing "How Green Were My Natives" makes the giddy concoction seem all the zanier. Over the past two decades, there has apparently also been a change of opinion on the burning issue of the propriety of showing drunken canines. The '89 reprinting preserved intact the scene in which Pluto becomes sozzled after sampling "The Captain's Grog," but Boom! changes the "Grog" to "Sarsparilla" and, even worse, appears to have Photoshopped in a pic of a just-about-to-vomit Pluto from some other source. The panel with Pluto paying for his sins in the stocks has been altered, as well. I suppose it could have been worse... Pluto could have been using "uncivil discourse" and gotten cut out entirely. (Don't laugh; one of the Princess' tricks is getting Pluto to speak English, albeit only briefly.)

"The Pirate Ghostship" is a far wobblier vehicle than its '89 bookmate "The World of Tomorrow," but "World" was reprinted by "Gladstone II" fairly recently (WDC&S #588-590, 1993-94), as was another Walsh tale of similar vintage, "The 'Lectro Box." Walsh's casual attitude towards plot setup and resolution are always a little troubling to those more used to Gottfredson's well-calibrated storytelling, but they are especially so here. Even so, "Ghostship" has several good, solid, creepy moments: the fate of Greatbeard, the appearance of the fatal "Walking Death," Minnie's picture "coming to life" to scowl at the comely Princess, and Mickey's and Pluto's lives "flashing before their eyes" when they think that they're about to drown. Nice work by David Gerstein on the restoration (now, if we could only have had one of his commentaries to accompany the tale) and Casty's first-rate cover add to the package's appeal.

Following "Laundry Blues," a Gottfredson Sunday-page gag from 1932, the backup GOOFY story "Don't Worry About It" is a bit of a surprise. One might wonder why a simple "Goofy goofs up in a new job" (as a tree surgeon, this time) story would require no less than three scripters: Ed Nofziger, Byron Erickson, and Romano Scarpa. According to INDUCKS, this state of affairs came about because the tale was originally created for the Disney Studios overseas comics program but was never actually published. Scarpa dusted it off and reworked it (presumably with Erickson's help) not long before his death. This may account for the story's unusual level of self-awareness. It's a standard plot, but everything is pitched one octave higher: Clarabelle's reactions to Goofy's depredations upon her property are way over the top; Mickey and Minnie are actually betting on whether or not Goofy will succeed; and Pete is thrown in at the end more or less for the heck of it. I think that the story's self-conscious humor would have been even better appreciated had it run during the Gold Key era, when such GOOFY stories were routinely run as secondary features in DONALD DUCK. Alas, it's ten pages long, rather than four, and thus wouldn't have fit the GK template. The extra effort is appreciated, though.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S MICKEY MOUSE CLASSICS: MOUSE TAILS (Boom! Kids, 2010)

CHRISTMAS CLASSICS may have beaten it into print by a couple of months, but this unquestionably ranks as Boom!'s first true Disney comics "classic." Its production values are far superior to those of the Christmas volume; it features a fine cross-section of MICKEY MOUSE comics stories from (almost) the beginning to the present day, including Carl Barks' only MICKEY story; and, I'm happy to say, it displays a sense of history that provides a sound counterpoint to the superheroics, spy capers, and wizardry of Boom! Kids' "New Direction" newsstand releases. Though none of Mickey's most truly memorable heroic moments are reproduced here -- indeed, the cliched scenario of "Mickey saving the day," which is trumpeted in the back-cover blurb, is conspicuous by its relative absence -- MOUSE TAILS succeeds admirably in its stated intent to help readers "acquaint [themselves] with the mouse of yesterday to better understand the Mickey of today."

As he should, Floyd Gottfredson gets pride of front-of-the-book place with the reprinting of a continuity from early 1931, Mickey Mouse vs. Kat Nipp. Neither Gladstone, Gemstone, nor Disney Comics ever got around to giving us this opus, and its only previous reprinting in the U.S., in a 1934 David McKay volume, omitted a number of strips. Gottfredson was just getting his feet under him as a writer, and it must have seemed natural to pit feisty Mickey against the preening bully Kat Nipp, who'd appeared in several Mickey cartoons a couple of years earlier. In a sense, Mickey deserves the somewhat painful treatment meted out to him, as he insisted on finding out the identity of the hidden Nipp -- the self-proclaimed "toufest (sic) guy in the county" -- even after being victimized by a number of booby traps. The gags are very much of the animated-cartoon variety, but Floyd milks a surprising amount of mileage out of the simple scenario, especially after "nepeta cataria" is shown to be Nipp's great weakness. It's funny stuff, if not particularly profound, and David Gerstein's brief afterword is much appreciated.

One of my favorite stories in the short-lived Gladstone Comics digest line was Ken Hultgren's 1943 adventure, Mickey Mouse and the Seven-Colored Terror. The muddy coloring and poor reproduction couldn't hide the quality of Hultgren's artwork (and it was real quality; Hultgren drew several beautiful BAMBI comics at about this same time and handled "funny animals" every bit as well). MOUSE TAILS gives Hultgren's tale the quality reprinting it's long deserved. Since Hultgren also wrote the story, Terror (and its backup stories in FOUR COLOR #27, The Great Swami Moo-Lah and Villain of the Victory Garden, which I also hope to see reprinted someday) is an artifact of a great "might-have-been" in American Disney comics history. Had Hultgren stayed with Western, rather than going off to script and draw now-forgotten animal characters for most of the rest of the 1940s, might he have developed into the Mouse version of Carl Barks? He certainly doesn't write a "formulaic" Mickey, depicting the Mouse's quest to solve the mystery of the headlined "monster" of idyllic Lake Tranquil as a product of Mickey's headstrong (albeit always well-intentioned) nature. Hultgren has a nice way with words -- "I've got to use my brains, or a reasonable facsimile," grumbles Mickey at one point -- and even characterizes the minor players well. Topping it all off is an unexpected wartime tie-in, as the "Terror" winds up being connected to a search for a rubber substitute. There's only one false note: when Mickey has a climactic fistfight with the putative villain of the piece, the "sounds of the battle" apparently can be heard for an amazingly long distance! Kermit Washington didn't hit Rudy Tomjanovich nearly as hard.

Asked to draw Mickey due to wartime manpower shortages, Carl Barks drew and scripted The Riddle of the Red Hat, then immediately forgot it. "My old pay vouchers prove I did do the work," he commented 25 years later, "so I'll puff out my chest and brag that I did a pretty fair Mickey and Goofy." They're actually better than fair, though some have claimed to have found swipes from Gottfredson in several character poses. Barks' dialogue is decent, as well. Where this story (which was reprinted not that long ago as a Gemstone contribution to "Free Comic Book Day") falls short is in the plotting, which appears to have been the work of Western managing editor Eleanor Packer. Mickey and Minnie's involvement in a jewel-thieving caper turns entirely upon the improbable coincidence of Minnie and her crazy new hat looking the same (from the back) as a female jewel courier. Chester Gould would be proud, but Barks probably wouldn't have thought up so clumsy a device himself, even at this early stage of his career. At least we get to see Mickey and Minnie packing heat when they corner the crooks (among whose number is Pete, though he's just a hired goon in this case).

The inclusion of Romano Scarpa's Lost in the Microcosmos (1957) in a volume supposedly devoted to examples of Mickey's "just generally saving the day" is a bit curious, as it's Eega Beeva who does most of the heavy lifting (or traveling, in his microscopic sort-of-spacecraft), especially early in the story. Mickey, Eega, and Chief O'Hara have to cooperate to foil a counterfeiting scheme masterminded by an "old fiend" disguised as a fruit salesman with a surprisingly stereotypical Italian accent (not to mention a mustache that disappears and reappears at least once). Dialogue mavens David Gerstein and Jonathan Gray are hereby sentenced to 100 lashes with a wet piece of linguine for their un-progressive transgression. They do, however, deserve credit for giving a semi-scientific basis to a weird "microcosmic" scene in which multiple microscopic copies of the villain go on a rampage. In Carl Fallberg and Paul Murry's The Last-Minute Mutiny (1959), Mickey likewise is drawn into the story as opposed to making it happen, with Goofy inviting him to participate in a ship-sailing contest to celebrate the founding of Mouseton "by thuh early Spanish explorers five hundred years ago!". Mickey more than gets his (sword) licks in before the end, though, as he and Goofy foil (heh) an attempt by the inevitable Pete to pilfer the prize. Fallberg and Murry did better stories than this, but it's wholly representative of their output.

The volume's last offering (apart from a handful of newspaper and strip gags), Byron Erickson and Cesar Ferioli's Trading Faces (2008), is by far its strangest. Erickson and Ferioli have teamed up Mickey and Donald Duck before, and in that adventure story they played with the theme of Donald resenting the two pals' diametrically opposed experiences of good fortune. Here, the entire story turns on the latter notion. Thanks to Gyro Gearloose's "holographic body switchers," Don and Mick spend virtually the entire story in one another's bodies (so to speak). Convinced that "Fate doesn't like my face!", Don wants to prove his theory by watching Mickey absorb punishment while clad in Duck feathers. The real charm of this tale is watching Ferioli (who also provides MOUSE TAILS' cover) tackle the task of portraying Mickey displaying Donald-like emotions while Donald "underplays" scenes as Mickey would under the circs. If any modern artist could pull that off, Ferioli could, and he does. It's not an adventure or anything close to it, but it's a nice way of tying Mickey into the other main segment of the Disney comics "universe."

If MOUSE TAILS is any indication of what is to come from Boom!'s hardback "classics" line, then that segment of the Boom! Disney line, at least, is in sure hands. My review of the next (in chronological order of reception, that is) release, VALENTINE CLASSICS, will appear in this space soon.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #696 ("September" 2008, Gemstone Publishing)

Two days hence marks the 80th anniversary of the release of Steamboat Willie and the debut of Mickey Mouse, the fount from whom all other things Disney flowed. What better way to celebrate the occasion than to... er, bring back a singularly irritating character to torment Mickey and his friends? Byron Erickson and Cesar Ferioli give Mickey "An Impish Bad Birthday" in this issue, and, if a complaints window for such "gifts" existed, I'm sure Mickey would be heading there even as we speak. The painfully derivative "imp from the 11th dimension" "blunks" back into Mouseton, causing Mickey to skip an entire day and thus miss his birthday. When Mickey tries to outsmart him by claiming that his friends had planned a later birthday party, the punk pixie turns everyone present into manifestations of their "worst personal nightmares" and deposits them in the monkey cage at the zoo. Several pages of tedious non-shenanigans precede the inevitable moment when the bumptious brownie is sent packing by being forced to unwittingly do a backwards recital of the phrase on his "magical jar." By that time, in the words of Gilbert Gottfried's Mr. Mxyzptlk, I really do "need a barf bag!" Ferioli's superb artwork is literally the only thing this story has going for it. Well, that, and a moment of curious candor from Minnie. After the imp has zapped Mickey and Minnie into baby clothes, the two mice re-raiment themselves and take off in pursuit of him, with Minnie commenting, "It's a good thing I keep a spare outfit at your house!" Hmmmm, how conveeeeenient! Spare bows I can perhaps understand, but what would a spare outfit be doing there, unless....?!?!

Luckily, part two of Romano Scarpa's "The Sacred Spring of Seasons Past", which takes up most of the last half of the issue, saves Mickey's bacon insofar as a fitting tribute is concerned. (A vintage Floyd Gottfredson Sunday-page reprint doesn't hurt, either.) The standard Scarpa strangeness more than manifests itself in the person of an obsessed sea captain in search of Moby Dud, an albino sardine. Rest assured, however, Cap'n Ahab (yes, really) has a significant role to play before story's end. Mickey, Atomo Bleep-Bleep, and absent-minded antique dealer Heath O'Hara wind up losing out on a really big haul, but, thanks to the generosity of the guardian "wandering ghost" of the long-lost Native American treasure -- who had been obliged to wander the earth to complete his bungled mission -- they do come out ahead on the deal. Jonathan Gray's dialogue is top-notch, as always.

Donald, as is proper on this occasion, has a low-key role in the issue. In Carl Barks' 1947 story "The Cantankerous Cat," Don and HD&L's plans to get a good night's sleep before a fishing outing are wrecked when a stray cat Don's bull-headedly insisted on taking in (much as he insisted on trying to tame an untamable wild colt in a story a few years earlier) howls from dusk to dawn. The trip goes on, with Donald and the boys punch-drunk from lack of sleep, but Don still hopes to get some use out of the annoying cat. He doesn't, of course. The funniest thing about the story is the weird dialogue that Don and HD&L use when they're trying to stay awake to fish. (I've never said anything like they did when I've been sleep-deprived, but I may have thought it.) Continuing on the theme of pestiferous animals, Travis Seitler and Mau Heymans' "Playing Possum" finds Donald trying ineptly to take care of an opossum (named Pogo, man, what a stretch!) the Nephews have brought home as part of a school project. As with Barks' cat, Don's knuckleheaded consideration backfires on him, as he takes the possum's "playing dead" for the real thing and winds up bringing a whole slew of others possums into his home to make up for the "damage" he caused. A David Gerstein-scripted BIG BAD WOLF story with an "election" theme (to wit: Zeke wanting to get elected to the Forest Council but needing the Three Pigs' votes in order to succeed) wraps an ish that would have been better had that annoying BATMAN supporting-cast ripoff not been on hand.

Is It "Bedtime" Again Already? (Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S VACATION PARADE #5, May 2008 [Gemstone Publishing])

Eighteen years on, the influence of the Disney Comics title MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES can still be felt. Without MMA's reestablishment of Mickey Mouse as a truly viable adventure character -- no offense intended to longtime Mouse artist Paul Murry, but Mickey's escapades as a "private detective" had long since grown enervated and stale by the time Murry retired in the mid-1980s -- one can hardly imagine Mickey's dramatic comeback in the Egmont-produced comics of the late 1990s and early 2000s ever taking place. Thanks to Byron Erickson, David Gerstein, a passel of talented (and primarily American) writers, and a phalanx of artists (led by Cesar Ferioli and Noel Van Horn) who successfully married Mickey's contemporary look to an old-fashioned Floyd Gottfredson attitude, Mickey is once again a front-rank comics star.

Of all of MMA's many fine stories, none packed quite the wallop of the two-part 1990 tale "The Big Fall" and "A Phantom Blot Bedtime Story," in which Mickey faced off against The Phantom Blot in a full-blooded throwback to the original Blot story of 1939. This classic, written by Lee Nordling and drawn by Stephen DeStefano and Gary Martin, finally gets an overdue reprinting at (unfortunately) the back of the recently released WALT DISNEY'S VACATION PARADE #5. (Actually, we were fortunate to see it at all, as the 1943 Ken Hultgren adventure "The Seven-Colored Terror" was originally scheduled to run in its place.) In "The Big Fall," The Blot, arguably closer here to his 1939 persona -- with one intriguing exception (see below) -- than in virtually any other story one could name, matches wits with Mickey for possession of a valuable gem, only to be foiled in the end. Making his escape at the end of the story, The Blot seeks revenge, and what a revenge he cooks up -- a death trap that makes the "barber chair" and "footstool" death traps of the original story seem like children's parlor games. Dumped into a bizarre revolving maze that's a cross between an M.C. Escher print gone mad and the chaotic rotating stairwells of Hogwarts Castle, Mickey labors to save Pluto and Goofy from certain doom. The Blot would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the fact that the venom-emboldened villain tries one ruse too many. Legendary artist John Byrne provided cover art illustrating The Blot's labyrinth, but DeStefano and Martin do an even better job of bringing the maddening maze to ghastly life.

Lending a touch of pathos to this otherwise straightforward story is the introduction of The Blot's black-clad daughter. Yep, you read it right. "The Phantom Brat" (cf. editor David Cody Weiss in the MMA letter column) appears in the last panel of "Fall," sobbing over her Dad's apparent plunge to doom. It seems that The Blot meant to give the gem to her, all his stories about being forced to steal the stone to propitiate a kidnapper being so much Blots**t. The wee one's role in "Bedtime Story" is even more arresting. Already in custody at the start of the story -- but given a chance by Mickey to say goodbye to his daughter -- The Blot couches the story of his a-maze-ing battle with Mickey in the form of a fairy tale in which he ("The Good King") crosses swords with and ultimately falls victim to Mickey ("The White Knight"). This fairy tale isn't fractured, it's positively twisted beyond the point of recognition. Adding to the surreal feel of the framing sequence, "The Phantom Brat"'s toys all sport the same cloaked heads as "The Brat" and her Dad. "The Brat" -- now bearing the name "Alberta" -- appeared in at least one other Egmont story following her debut, but it's safe to say that this was the high point of her brief but memorable comics career.

As great as this narrative is, certain flaws are now apparent that were not so visible in 1990. The biggest of these lies in the characterization of Mickey. Oh, he's certainly not a weak character of the "happy bandleader" mold here; his characterization just isn't quite as distinctive as that of the Mickey that would blossom in the later Egmont stories. Mickey basically plays the stalwart hero, impressing The Blot no end ("How durable of you!" the villain responds after Mickey has evaded death yet again) but showing relatively little of the Floyd Gottfredson-inspired flavor that later writers such as Gerstein, Pat and Carol McGreal, Stefan Petrucha, and Noel Van Horn would emphasize. Of course, in the context of 1990, simply showing that Mickey could handle heavy-duty action and suspense and not only survive but thrive was more than enough of an accomplishment for Nordling, who would go on to pen "Space Mickey and the Throgg-Ray Wars," an epic space adventure, for DISNEY ADVENTURES DIGEST (more's the pity) before gradually fading from the scene.

The rest of WDVP #5 isn't too shabby, either. Carl Barks' 1949 adventure "Trail of the Unicorn" isn't usually put on the short list of his greatest stories, but it's full of action and good running gags (Donald: "Yes, Uncle Scrooge!"). Sent to the Himalayas to corral a unicorn for Scrooge's zoo, Donald and HD&L must fend off Gladstone, who, strangely, not only trusts to his famous luck but also actively tries to scam Donald into purchasing a worn-out nag instead. This could be considered a logic break, except for the fact that Gladstone himself regrets actually working to con his cousin and goes back to lying in the lap of Lady Luck. The story also features one of the Ducks' all-time great near-death experiences, as Dewey barely saves himself from being skewered by the rampaging unicorn by proffering a moss-covered rock to the (supposedly) mythical beast. A grateful Dewey totes the rock home, and, unsurprisingly, the souvenir ends up helping the Ducks trump Gladstone in the end. Might this story enjoy a better "rep" if Scrooge had come along, as opposed to simply using Donald and HD&L as gofers? Could be...

The Scrooge of Kari Korhonen's "Treasure Treachery" is perilously close to becoming a basket case -- ceaselessly badgering his employees and stressing out to the max. The Ducks cook up a bogus treasure quest to an exotic island in order to shake Scrooge out of the rut, but Donald, true to form, doesn't want to stop the good times from rolling and ups the ante by tossing a fake treasure map into the mix. Little does he know that Scrooge has gotten wise to Don's deceit and is planning a revenge scam of his own. It's another good, solid Korhonen effort with lots of character-based humor -- and, unlike "Fall"/"Bedtime" and "Unicorn," it actually has something to do with a vacation. So, too, does Jack Bradbury's 1955 LI'L BAD WOLF story "Back to Nature", in which Zeke tries -- and mostly fails -- to prove his mettle as a he-wolf during a camping trip with his son. Even the Dick Kinney/Al Hubbard DONALD AND FETHRY story "Preserve Psychiatry" contains a nod to summer fun (hmm, now there's a name for a Disney quarterly...) as Don heads for a hunting and fishing frolic in The Everglades, where he runs smack dab into newly-anointed "conservationist" Fethry. There's no doubt, however, that the highlights of this issue transcend any particular season.