DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 25, "Treasure of the Golden Suns, Part Two: Wronguay [sic] in Ronguay"

Ah, yes, about that "[sic]".  We need to pause at the title card for a moment before forging onward...

I'm "Ivory Soap" certain (that is, 99.999% sure) that this was ORIGINALLY supposed to read "Wrong WAY in Ronguay."  After all, the pun is directly referenced during the episode itself, when the Nephews realize that the "robot-jacked" Ronguay Airlines aircraft is literally heading in the wrong direction.  I hardly think that Jymn Magon (by far, the most likely suspect among the trio of writers who labored on "Golden Suns" to unleash this kind of groaner) would go to the trouble of cracking the joke without planning to foreshadow it here as well.  Someone along the production line must have slipped up here.

Thankfully, the (IMHO) spelling error is just about the only "uay" in which one can criticize this episode.  Though I remember being a bit puzzled by the seeming finality of the ending -- we wouldn't learn about the rest of the Treasure of the Golden Suns until the start of part three -- Scrooge and HD&L's trek to "the tiny country of Ronguay," their search for the "sunken" gold ship, and their battle with Flintheart Glomgold and El Capitan make for some absolute captivating viewing.  Adventure, rather than character development, is the main focus here; even so, we get one superb "moment of connection" between the boys and Scrooge and are also witness to the definitive revelation of the depth of El Capitan's obsession (though a few hints dropped during the episode as to the wrinkled one's past identity will not be picked up until future installments).  It takes quite a bit of doing to upstage the series' first authentic treasure hunt and the first animated appearance of Glomgold, but El Cap does so.  Fittingly, he gets both the final shot and the final words of the ep.

I've previously discussed some of my feelings as to why the DuckTales Glomgold turned out the way he did.  My idea that Flinty has moved from South Africa to Duckburg to keep closer tabs on Scrooge certainly isn't challenged by Glomgold's first few seconds on screen, in which he's seen watching the doings at Scrooge's candy factory on TV and perusing a massive mainframe that (I guess) keeps up-to-date stats on how his fortune compares to Scrooge's.  Imagine how much more easily Flinty could do this today with the help of the Internet.  The slightly goofy office nerds who "help" Glomgold in this scene are never seen again, more's the pity; at least one of them (my pick would have been the phone-toting guy with the overbite) should have served as Flinty's laugh-grabbing "bump machine" for the remainder of the series.  As it was, we had to wait until the final season's "Attack of the Metal Mites" for a guest-starring Dijon to fill a somewhat similar role.

In the jaundiced spirit of Carl Barks' "The Money Champ," Glomgold couches his initial challenge to Scrooge (which, we are easily led to believe, is not the first such ultimatum) in the form of a money-making contest.  Flinty's approach to the duel, however, is far more "John D. Rockerduck-ian" than it has ever been before (to those viewers who had not read Don Rosa's "Son of the Sun" earlier in 1987, that is).  Glomgold's relatively modest use of shrinking juice on Scrooge's money pile in "The Money Champ" pales in comparison to what the DT Flinty will stoop to in order to get what he wants.  Joe Torcivia once described the DT Glomgold as "a sort of Anti-Scrooge," a description which fits both Flinty's Scottish attire and accent and his flexible morals.

Ever so conveniently, Scrooge's need to dig up some kind of treasure before the two weeks of the contest are up arises just as HD&L have solved the mystery of the wooden ship... and, GeoX, I would argue that it's at least possible that the "insanely idiotic" code that the boys decipher could really, truly be as simple as this. There were more sophisticated ciphers available in the 16th century, when the ship was presumably built, but those other methods weren't much more complicated than the simple letter-number substitution used here.  Besides, if a person didn't know that "Gannaw Ondat" had to be a made-up name because it was carved on a ship originating in Spain, then he or she would glance at the craft and walk away without a clue that it was meant to be a message of some kind.  When HD&L do their "play dumb" routine as a ploy to convince Scrooge to let them come with him, they do so without evincing any fear whatsoever that Scrooge will be able to figure out the mystery by himself.  I think they're at least partially justified in doing so.

Scrooge's promise to let the boys come along with him "just this once!" resurrects some questions that I raised during my discussion of "Don't Give Up the Ship."  Judging by the boys' initial attitude towards Scrooge, I found it rather tough to believe that this version of Scrooge, Donald, and HD&L had gone on very many adventures together.  Scrooge's comment here seems to bear this observation out.  It also suggests that the ensuing adventure in Ronguay will further cement the relationship between the "old sourdough" and the young ducklings, to the extent that Scrooge will never again seriously question the boys' right to accompany him on globe-trotting trips.  This is correct, up to a point; the boys, after all, will have to sneak a ride aboard Launchpad's copter in order to share in the Antarctic adventure of "Cold Duck" and the subsequent trip to the Valley of the Golden Suns.  But the aforementioned "moment of connection" that the Ducks will share during the low point of their Ronguayian trek will have serious reverberations...

It's debatable as to whether any of the sights, sounds, and (plane) sputters of "inhabited" Ronguay would pass muster if they were being newly created in today's uber-sensitive climate.  The stereotypes are a little easier to accept here, I think, because so much of what we see and learn about Ronguay is, well, just plain bizarre -- perhaps not as ridiculously absurd as the depiction of Gwumpki's homeland of Blatismorkia in Quack Pack, but certainly more than sufficient to elicit a few head-scratching "Huh?" moments.  For example, we've seen ramshackle, livestock-filled vehicles like the "usually non-stop" Ronguay Airlines plane in other "Third World" contexts, but who the heck decreed that an old-fashioned, hand-cranked speaker phone should be placed in the cockpit?  What could that thing possibly be connected to?

After Scrooge helpfully comes to just in time to pull the plane out of a dive, the Ducks land at "Ronguay Airport" -- which is actually a soccer field:

Then we get a "Sam Peckinpah Moment" -- I call it such because one of the director's less successful (and more underfunded) movies was once criticized for including the same band of Mexican peasants in literally every crowd scene -- as the crowds of Ronguayians frantically leaving the country to avoid the "Monsapis" include a couple of folks who evidently decided to double their un-pleasure.  Note the stork with the serape and big sombrero, the mustachioed dogface with the green shirt and blue hat, and the bird-woman with the flower in her ear in these two completely separate scenes.  (To make matters worse, the first group is the one that tosses the Ducks out of the plane and then takes off, while the second group appears after the plane has departed.)

The normally censorious folks at Toon Disney must have been so baffled by all of this that they failed to notice the stereotyped fat guy who sells Scrooge the llama and let the entire sequence be rerun without complaint.  Of course, they were all over the scene of Dewey tearing the electrical cord out of the socket like mud on the proverbial pig (probably the same one that tripped Scrooge on the plane) and excised that, leaving the Glomgold robot to short-circuit with no explanation.  Well, I can't say that I can blame them.

Regarding the Ducks' subsequent voyage through the soon-to-be-inundated wastelands, Greg commented that the adventure focused on Scrooge to the extent of making HD&L look weak.  In the sense that Scrooge did most of the actual work and faced most of the actual perils, he's correct.  However, I think that the writers took this approach (if it was, in fact, even taken consciously) to introduce "the adventurous Scrooge" to a TV-watching audience that may never have seen that aspect of the character up to now.  The Nephews, after all, were in plenty of danger throughout "Don't Give Up the Ship," so their "quick, feisty, cunning, sharp, resourceful, etc." bona fides had already been highlighted.  Unless you came to the show already familiar with Scrooge's comic-book adventures, "Ship" didn't tell you very much about Scrooge the derring-doer.  Now, while taming bucking llamas, escaping quicksand (how did Scrooge get that box of scuba supplies open while buried in sand, I wonder?), and protecting the boys from the rain with the "Malaysian umbrella," Scrooge gets a chance to show his mettle and, as Geo points out, reveal some of his past exploits in a very Barksian manner.

While Scrooge may have enjoyed many adventures in the past, DuckTales delicately leaves aside the question of how many adventures he's participated in recently.  Scrooge comes across as such a miser and negative character at the start of "Don't Give Up the Ship" that a "newbie" viewer could perhaps be excused for wondering whether Scrooge had been living an isolated, sedentary life for some time before taking in the Nephews -- perhaps not to the extent of "The Recluse of McDuck Manor," but certainly along those lines.  The possibility that Scrooge's adventurous chops have not been tested in the recent past lends at least some degree of credibility to what would otherwise be a rather problematic scene, namely, the disappointed, rain-soaked Scrooge's declaration that "I'm finished."  A long-time comics fan would probably be taken aback by what would seem to be Scrooge's entirely too abrupt decision to abandon the "hopeless" search for the treasure ship.  Seen in the context of the series, however, this scene is extremely effective, not least because it demonstrates that Scrooge and HD&L can and will function effectively in the future as a mutually supportive team.

The visuals have been getting better and better throughout the episode, and they peak during the cave scenes.  The play of light and darkness, the atmospherics, the legitimate sense of peril, are all splendid.  When I first saw this sequence during "premiere weekend," it simply knocked me out, and I just couldn't wait to see it again during the subsequent rerun on another station.

But wait, there's more -- even though you have to "suspend disbelief" in a manner akin to the Sword of Damocles in order to fully take it in.  Regarding a scene like the "setting sail of the golden ship," sometimes you just have to ignore obvious logical problems and say "Ooooohhhh!" as the Nephews do here.  Perhaps accepting the scene is as simple as figuring that a ship which already held gold ropes and gold sails would probably have had some gold planks and nails lying around as well -- though that still doesn't explain how the boys were able to nail the nails into the planks in the first place.  Besides, Carl Barks himself posited the existence of a seaworthy boat carved out of a giant gold nugget in one of his later UNCLE $CROOGE adventure stories, so this unforgettable scene might be said to have had the indirect sanction of the Old Duck Man himself.

The abrupt return of Glomgold and El Capitan makes for an equally strong ending, the true power of which will not be fully understood until a few more facts about El Cap are revealed.  Huey's line "That guy acts like he used to own this ship!" will ultimately acquire a truly creepy vibe when we learn that (1) El Capitan really WAS the master of the craft all those hundreds of years ago and (2) he has literally refused to die until he finds "every bit of" his lost treasure.  Oddly enough, he seems uninterested in recovering this bit of said treasure after the ship sinks; I imagine he's been fixated on the treasure in the Valley of the Golden Suns for so long that he probably regards recovering the ship's treasure as a mere formality after the bigger prize is bagged.  Before the gold goes gurgling under, however, we see El Cap's grumbling and grousing about "el stupido" Glomgold, which up to now has not seemed all that different from his occasional complaints about working with the "mental midget" Beagle Boys, mutate into something far more sinister than we could have possibly expected when the "old wheezer" first came on the scene.  He's willing to treat one of Scrooge's classic rivals as nothing more than a means to an end, which makes even more of an impression on a viewer familiar with the comics than one who is seeing Glomgold for the first time in any medium.  How he'll get back into the story line, it's impossible to predict at the end of the episode, but there's absolutely no doubt that he WILL return and, moreover, will give Scrooge a hell of a challenge.

"Wrong Way in Ronguay" (sorry, but I am quite insistent about that change) is just about perfect and, though the next two installments are both excellent in and of themselves, won't be matched during this serial until the final chapter.

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"DuckBlurbs"

(GeoX) [T]here are three clear Barks call-outs [in the episode]: the ship stranded in the desert recalls "The Seven Cities of Cibola"; [El Capitan], as he's taking Scrooge's gold captain's hat, refers to it as a "golden helmet;" and then at the end...  Glomgold has to eat his hat (okay, so it was Scrooge's hat that he ate in "The Money Champ," but still).

I think that there's a case to be made for all of these references being intentional, but I'm most certain about the connection between the treasure ship and Captain Ulloa's "desert-ed" ship in "Seven Cities of Cibola."  For one thing, there's that pesky Celestial Arts connection to consider: "Cibola" was reprinted in that volume.  For another, the visuals are just too similar, though the treasure ship appears to be in surprisingly good shape for a wreck that has been alternately baked and inundated by water for X hundred years.

The golden helmet ("Check!") that Scrooge sports and El Capitan later reclaims might well be a reference to the miter that gives its wearer ownership of North America, but it could also be... just a plain, ordinary conquistador's helmet that happens to be made of gold.  This particular Barks story, and this particular Barksian artifact, are well enough known to Duck fans such as Jymn Magon that I'm willing to grant Jymn the benefit of the doubt in this case.

The hat-chewing connection is probably the weakest of the three.  Flinty's tam-o-shanter is so garish that the idea to make its consumption the forfeit to be paid by the loser of the bet might simply have occurred by chance.  An intended reference to "The Money Champ," however, certainly isn't impossible.

(Greg)  So we begin this episode back outside the oozing chocolate candy factory as the woman news reporter continues to talk and police continue to surround the place. The news reporter says nothing of note as we head inside and we basically get new footage of the finish from the last episode of the Beagle Boys Chocolate Statues being carried out by two officers as one white haired dogsperson officer proclaims that the bonbon is going to Sing-Sing. Okay; this makes sort of sense from a storyline point of view, but it's a waste of time. Why not show this at the end of the first episode and show El Captain's saying beware from the start? Not a big deal; just an observation. Then logic break #1 for the episode rears it's ugly head as [Burger]'s head gets un-cracked on site with a mallet and chisel as he pops up and eats chocolate. Cute spot though; but all three Beagle Boys were carried out still completely covered with chocolate in the previous episode!  We cut to the female reporter as she continues to fill in the details about the objet d'art that the Beagle Boys were after as the police continue to secure the area and clear out the Beagle Boys. And then more logic is broken as Scrooge takes the ship away from the chocolate wave and he walks off on his own even though we clearly saw him talking to his nephews during that sequence in the previous episode! Now I see why Disney started doing PREVIEWS for syndication episodes?! It was to KILL CONTINUITY ERRORS like this. 

This was rather peculiar, insofar as Disney, to the best of my memory, never tried to do anything like this in any other "recap" in a multi-part story.  Generally, the next part of the tale either struck off in a new direction, assuming that everyone remembered what had happened at the end of the previous episode, or used episode clips to get everyone up to speed.  (In a later series, of course, "Previously on Gargoyles..." became an expected part of EVERY episode.)  Perhaps it was felt that the retrofit was necessary in order to provide a fitting lead-in for the introduction of Glomgold.  It would have seemed rather strange if we'd gotten our first glimpse of Flinty reacting to something that had already happened in the previous ep.

(Greg)  And of course the plane goes into a nosedive as Louie has to go into the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook. If Kit [Cloudkicker] was here; this scene would be over in 15 seconds as this would be his wet dream realized. Besides; Kit doesn't need a book anymore he seems to have this down pat...  Sadly; the guide book has nothing about flying an airplane. HAHA! About damn time those nephews got licked; not let's see how well they do without that damn book...or why Kit is so much better you you three combined. 

And so the surprising fallibility of the DuckTales Junior Woodchuck Guidebook is revealed for the first (in "real" continuity) time.

(Greg)  So now Flint throws the dynamite down the hill as he want to bury Scrooge good... El Captain tells him to forget him because it's all about the gold see...  Flint wants to be [better] safe than sorry; but El Captain doesn't want to wait as Flint and El Capitan turn around and they are SHOCKED and APPALLED (in that order) as their jackass is EATING THE MAP on the rock! Wait a minute?! Wasn't it in the pouch?! That's logic break #3 for the episode.

As this screen shot reveals, the map had indeed been taken out of the ice cream cart (by Flinty) before Flinty and El Capitan's mule started noshing on it.  You can see it here lying on the rock in the foreground, with the mule already eying it hungrily.  Nice foreshadowing there.

(Greg)  All hands on deck as the nephews get on board as the sail is also made of gold. Okay that makes even less sense along with the floor repairs. Seriously; and some question Plunder and Lightning's breaks in logic. Why? Because they are Cartoon Ducks and when you see Cartoon Ducks; you accept them without. Since bears are Russian and Russians are EVIL Communists (which is so absurd no one should be caught dead...oh never mind); they are booed. Now you understand the psychology of why people thought Ducktales and Darkwing Duck was better than TaleSpin; even if the quality would prove otherwise in hindsight (not to see the two duck cartoon sucked in any way; but still). It's the “American” way see. Then again; I'm Canadian; and that's why I'm so biased the other way.

"Sorry, lads, I dinna understand that either."

  

Next:  Episode 26, "Treasure of the Golden Suns, Part Three: Three Ducks of the Condor."

Belated RIP Billie Mae "Rudolph" Richards

I've had more than the usual amount of time to Web-surf this week while recovering from surgery. Thus it was that I learned, only a couple of days ago, of the death of Billie Mae Richards, the Canadian actress who voiced Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on three extremely memorable occasions, this past September 10. She was 88 and had suffered several strokes. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) remains my favorite of all the perennial Christmas specials -- yes, even over A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) -- and Richards' winning, boyish portrayal of Rudolph, so similar in so many ways to Billie Lou Watt's portrayals of Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, is a VERY big reason why. Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1976) was a popular (and still, to my mind, highly underappreciated) sort-of-sequel, with Richards in fine form after a decade away from the character, and even the maddeningly slow-tempo'ed feature film Rudolph and Frosty's Christmas in July (1979) had its good points (plus a solo song by Richards, "No Bed of Roses," which, quite honestly, wasn't one of them). Younger (in a comparative sense) folks probably best "know" Richards as the voice of Tender Heart Bear, one of the Care Bears.

In tribute to Richards, here's "No Bed of Roses."

All Tripped Out

Now that my trip to Vancouver for the Joint Statistical Meetings is over, I'm willing -- nay, eager -- to play homebody for the foreseeable future. Three sizable Summer journeys will do that to a fellow. Not that I didn't enjoy my stay in Vancouver, of course. The weather was pleasant, and I took advantage by concluding my stay with a trolley tour of different parts of the city, including beautiful Stanley Park. My talk went well (I've already gotten a request for my Power Point slides from an attendee) and maybe, just maybe, it can be turned into a paper.

The dinner visit to William Van Horn and his wife Elaine in "North Van" on the 3rd was great, apart from the $65 I had to shell out for cab fare. (The guy taking me there could at least have known where he was going. As it was, he had to drive with a city map on his lap.) Bill and I talked about everything from Duck comics (bien sur) to roofing during the 4 1/2 hours I was there. In Bill's studio, a partially finished Duck story lay on the drawing board (yes, he's still producing them, though at a much slower pace and with absolutely no idea as to whether they will ever be printed in the U.S.) and the walls were adorned with comic-art originals by George Herriman, Walt Kelly, and Chester Gould, among others. (I was unaware that Bill is a big DICK TRACY fan.) Bill's son Noel is prospering and has now turned his hand to Duck stories. Wouldn't I love to see both VH's represented in a reformatted DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS?

European Trip Diary, Part 7: Airship of Fools? (July 14)

No pictures to illustrate this final installment, I'm sorry to say... though, in hindsight, I wish that we had snapped some. Our straight-shot, 8 1/2-hour flight from Vienna to JFK on Austrian Airlines turned out to be a lot more interesting -- in the dubious Chinese sense -- than the lay-back-and-snoozefest that we had been expecting. Due to the late arrival of the plane from New York, our flight was delayed for over an hour and a half, allowing us ample opportunity to carefully survey our fellow passengers. The effect was not unlike that of being chucked headfirst into the steerage scenes in Titanic, if not the cantina scene in Star Wars. Among other things, we encountered:


(1) A young woman from Belarus, dressed in vaguely gypsy-ish garb, who cornered us at the security checkpoint (which was right at the gate itself) and asked us to tell her "the name of a street in New York City." Nicky's critical antennae, honed in NYC and further sharpened by her military intelligence background, went up, and she pointed the girl out to the security people. The woman must have been "clean," for they let her into the waiting area, but I couldn't help but wonder the fate that was in store for her on the "other side."

(2) Numerous Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic families with extremely loud kids.

(3) A woman who was reading a newspaper in which "k" was used as a vowel.

(4) Several smelly guys of indeterminate origin who surreptitiously swiped stuff from the first-class section when we boarded the plane.

(5) A crate containing a bomb-sniffing dog.


The "foreign-bazaar" mood was heightened by the large number of "standees" after the seating area had already been filled to capacity. The gate personnel finally relented and opened up the "restricted" seating area, as well as commandeering the empty seating area in the neighboring gate. Apparently, Vienna has become the major transfer point for travelers from Eastern Europe and the Balkans on their way to America. It's as if the Hapsburg Empire never went away...

The interior of our plane was like something out of a bad 70's dream: Flight attendants dressed all in shocking red! Seat upholstery in "pea/Astroturf green"! At least we got two decent meals and a "snackypoo" or two... though some individuals in our economy section were apparently more "equal" than we were. These youngish folks were the recipients of a steady stream of goodies -- cheese, alcohol, and other first-class amenities -- from a complaisant stewardess. Nicky and I finally deduced from their general appearance and luggage that these were other Austrian Airlines personnel getting a lift to their next assignment. If that's the case, then I understand the special treatment, but did they have to advertise their good fortune with all that raucous laughter? At least they didn't make with the Gladstone-style bragging.

We finally landed at JFK about an hour and 45 minutes late after seemingly being over Canada's Maritime Provinces for about 19 days. I gather that the pilot was trying to dodge some bad weather; the cloud cover never lifted once for the whole of our journey. At the "Border Control" inside JFK, we gasped at the immense crowd of visitors who were already there waiting to enter the U.S. (The line for U.S. citizens was considerably shorter, thank goodness.) The monitors at the baggage-claim area streamed an endless sequence of pictures of multi-hued, preternaturally cheerful folks "welcoming" newcomers. The immigrants who came through Ellis Island didn't receive such treatment, but didn't they integrate more eagerly into American society, for the most part? What's the "lesson" here?

The 19 1/2-hour travel day to remember (no matter how hard we try to forget) comes to a close when we reach Mom's condo in Wilmington around 7:30 pm. Nicky and I are already discussing a possible return trip... but, for the time being, we're glad to be home.

Book Review: WALT DISNEY'S DONALD DUCK CLASSICS: QUACK UP (Boom! Kids, 2010)

The Boom! "Classics Division"'s first whack (or should that be "Wak"?) at Donald isn't quite as uniformly impressive as the earlier MOUSE TAILS, but it's eminently worthy of an honored place on the same shelf. The Boom!sters "had me at" the very first page with a beautifully colored new reprinting of one of my favorite Carl Barks adventure tales, "Luck of the North" (1949). This story was one of the "Big Four" in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS DIGEST #44 (December 1973), the venue in which I was first exposed to Barks' work back in the 70s (though I knew neither his name nor his significance until later), and I think it's a severely underappreciated piece of work. Like the earlier "Race to the South Seas" and the later "The Gilded Man," it's structured as a one-sided battle between Donald and his cousin Gladstone that "turns" only at the very last (as in: right down to the last bloody panel) moment. The "big idea" here is that it's Donald's fault that he gets into the mess. Driven beyond the point of endurance by lucky Gladstone's bragging and gloating -- and, given that Gladstone also manhandles Donald physically while showing off his luck in various Duckburgian venues, we can certainly second Don's emotion -- Don tricks his cousin into going off to the Arctic Circle in search of a phony uranium mine, only to suffer an attack of conscience later. With HD&L (literally) in harness, Don dashes North to "save" Gladstone, but the Ducks wind up stranded on an iceberg. An iceberg that holds more than a few unexpected treasures having nothing at all to do with uranium...

First and foremost, "Luck" is a spectacularly drawn story. Mike Barrier correctly notes in his Barks book that Donald's gradual dissolution from flippant indifference to Gladstone's fate into literally being burdened with guilt is a real tour de force of dialogue-free characterization. There's a later panel in the story that, to my mind, is just as impressive. After Don, trying to get the fake map, accidentally grabs Gladstone's horoscope chart, he shows the piece of paper off to the boys. HD&L have the usual (for the era) sentence-sharing verbal reaction... and have three completely different expressions on their faces, all of which are believable under the circs. There are excellent Duck artists who would never have thought of that and would have simply given HD&L three identical "takes." It's a small thing, perhaps, but Barks excelled at the small details during this period of his career. The story's dialogue and gags are sharp and first-rate, as well... especially the opening, which gets us on Donald's side even as he plays a mean trick on his relative.

Alas, this marvelous story, which has never looked so good reproduction-wise, is marred just a hair by some silly political correctness injected by Boom!. On three occasions in Barks' story, characters shout, "We've been gypped!" With Boom! evidently worried about perpetuating stereotypes about gypsies, the line is changed to read, "We've been hosed!" Never mind that the expression is totally anachronistic to those familiar with the original... and do very much mind that the fractured dialogue of the Eskimos who have dealings with Gladstone, Donald, and HD&L over kayaks is preserved intact! Inconsistent much, guys? Then, there's the whole touchy idea of Donald using his Nephews as sled dogs. Thank goodness Don didn't use a whip, or this story would have been buried deeper than Floyd Collins long ago...

From a Dell classic, we move to a happy reminder of the best days of Gladstone Comics with the reprinting of "The Master's Touch," a late-70s story plotted by Egmont writers, drawn by "Dutch masters" Daan Jippes and Ben Verhagen, and, most significantly, dialogued by Geoffrey Blum. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Blum reinvented the whole notion of a Duck story as a highly literate, even educational experience when he worked for Gladstone in the late 1980s. Here, he takes a pretty straightforward "mastery" tale (to wit: accomplished photographer Donald, who specializes in prettifying ugly reality, comes unglued when he comes up against a subject that represents the ultimate challenge) and gives it a patina of extra class. "I found the great truth in the camera obscura of life!" Don gloats to HD&L before his big fall. For those like me who first read newsstand Disneys in the "Gladstone I" era, Blum's work established a level of quality that we've since come to expect from American writers. That's not to say that I take his work for granted -- far from it, in fact. All I have to do is dip into a new Whitman Duck comic from the late 70s or early 80s to realize what a quantum leap Blum's work represented.

Bob Gregory, author of this book's third reprint, "The Paper Route Panic" (1959), was also a fine writer in his heyday, but his reputation has suffered from the unfortunate fact that he drew, as well as wrote, a number of his stories, most notably those in DAISY AND DONALD. The D&D opi can only be termed "clunky," and that's a shame, as Gregory's work for the DONALD DUCK title in the late 50s was, if not up to the level of Barks' contemporary work on UNCLE $CROOGE, at least within shouting distance of same. "Panic," drawn by the fecund Tony Strobl, follows the Gregory template of tying seemingly disparate strands of plot together in a neat bow by the end. Here, Don messes up the absent HD&L's paper route while working on an invention that ultimately leads to a new hit record for the boys' favorite singing star, Paisley Mantee. Scrooge gets involved as a potential investor for Don's brainstorm, but his presence really isn't necessary; Donald could have sold his invention to anyone. Most lead stories in DD during this period included Scrooge, probably because his title was a better seller, and "Panic" doesn't do as good a job of incorporating Scrooge into the action as did other Gregory efforts of the era. Even so, it's a good, solid read.

Presumably, Boom! didn't see the irony of reprinting Barks' censored ten-page story, "Donald the Milkman" (1957), in the same volume in which it turned a gypsy insult into (I guess) a Canadian one. This is the third reprinting of a story (the first was in 1990, during the early Disney Comics era) that was originally rejected by Western Publishing because Donald was "too mean to the villain." Actually, the same dynamic that led us to root for Donald in "Luck of the North" despite his dishonesty is in play here, and amplified roughly 100-fold. In his efforts to become a "perfect" milkman, Donald shows no hubris whatsoever, remaining "humble and lovable" throughout, and so we're fully behind him when he finally "goes lactic" and takes revenge on the vicious pig character who's been trying to trip Donald up so that he'll get fired and the pig can claim his job. Truth be told, the "meanness" that gave Western the willies is downright silly, rather than offensive. Censorship is such an inexact science...

The Italian story "Moldfinger: or, The Spy who Ducked-Out on Me" (1966) goes on for 30 mostly tiny panels, and it's rather a slog, even given the fact that I'd been fully "prepped" for the casting of Donald as a "secret agent" thanks to DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS' "Double Duck" saga. It's not really the fault of dialogue men Joe Torcivia and David Gerstein, who do the best they can with the raw material. No, this spy spoof has two big debits that can't be expunged: the artwork of Giovan Battista Carpi and writer Carlo Chendi's shameless swiping from Goldfinger (1964). Carpi was a contemporary of Romano Scarpa, and, while the Italian "Maestro" had his awkward moments artistically, they're minor when compared to Carpi's inartful inconsistency. The Beagle Boys appear first as roly-polies, then lose fully a quarter of their body weight within a few pages. Eric Moldfinger, the would-be looter of Scrooge's Money Bin, smokes a cigar roughly the size of a Hickory Farms Beef Stick and indulges in all manner of wild gesticulations. A human lackey suddenly appears at Moldfinger's hideout for no apparent reason. All I can say is, thank goodness the panels were so small. As to the plot, Donald the MIA (McDuck Intelligence Agency -- "The Cheaper Secret Service!") agent acquits himself reasonably well, but Moldfinger's scheme to "gas" the Money Bin guards hardly needed to be locked away for safekeeping, since it was lifted straight from the Bond movie. Joe and Dave made this one enjoyable in the end, but it was a close shave.

Happily, QUACK UP ends on a bright note with Lars Jensen, David Gerstein, and Cesar Ferioli's "Nothing New" (2007). Like a Mobius strip, the Ducks' "universe" bends back on itself here as Donald's second cousin Hackney McWebfoot, the burned-out author of the PUP COP! (read: SCOOBY-DOO) comic book, gets some fresh ideas simply by observing the Duck clan in action during an eventful trip to a county fair. Alas, "Unca Hack"'s plan to create a "universe" out of his relatives' world is nixed by an exec who claims "Nobody wants to read comics about Ducks!" (In the context of Duckburg's "ethnic" makeup, wouldn't this sentiment be considered, well, rather racist? Or perhaps "speciesist" is the proper term.) The funny conceit makes the tale work despite the odd fact that most of the specific activity in the story has nothing to do with the ultimate payoff. Oh, and Ferioli rules. I'd love to see previously-unseen Ferioli-drawn stories become a recurring back-of-the-book feature in these "Classics" titles. Despite the faults of "Moldfinger," this particular "Classic" lives up to the line's high standards.