Comics Reviews: MICKEY MOUSE #309 and WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #720 (June 2011, kaboom!)

All credit to Boom! for figuring out a way to squeeze the most out of its last two "classic Disney" comics releases. The second part of Romano Scarpa's adventure "The Treasure of Marco Topo" (1984) wasn't originally supposed to be in WDC&S #720, but the company wisely bumped a previously announced feature so as to slip Scarpa's entire story under the wire before the guillotine fell. (Those metaphors aren't mixed, they're positively tangled!). The last-minute switch actually wound up making a whole lot of sense, as Scarpa's tale, with its clever and entertaining crossover of the Duck and Mouse "universes," frankly deserved to appear in WDC&S, the omnibus comics title par excellence. "Here's to the greatest bunch of characters I know!" Mickey declares at the end of "Topo." If this is, in fact, fated to be the last original line of dialogue ever delivered in WDC&S, then it would be hard to come up with a more fitting one.

These last two issues' return to the "first principles" of Disney comics -- create funny and memorable characters, let 'em bounce off of one another, and watch what happens -- stand in marked contrast to Boom!'s original plans for these titles. WDC&S and MICKEY MOUSE both began life at Boom! as wholly unrecognizable entities -- WDC&S as the home of the Ultraheroes, MM as the home of WIZARDS OF MICKEY. Both "New Directions" were actually somewhat faithful to the spirits of the titles that housed them, just in completely off-the-wall ways. Once ULTRAHEROES and WOM split off to go their merry way (assuming that full-scale power-dives into the Earth's surface qualify even tangentially as "merry"), Boom! caught lightning in a bottle with Casty in WDC&S and kept MICKEY readable with a generally good mixture of new and old material. It wasn't enough to save the day, but "Topo" allows Boom! to cede its control of these titles with a considerable amount of grace.

The story of Mickey's search for a golden gondola ornament hidden in Venice by his ancestor Marco Topo contains surprisingly little "real" action -- at least, less than originally seems to be promised by a European treasure jaunt involving Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Scrooge, Brigitta MacBridge, Pete, Trudy Van Tubb, and The Phantom Blot. (Where are Donald and his Nephews, you ask? Let co-scripter Joe Torcivia enlighten you on that point himself.) A good portion of Part One is taken up by Mickey's wordsmithing neighbor's translation of Marco Topo's diary, and, once the gang gets to Venice, all of the action takes place in a single square in the city's Getto Novo district. Scarpa does pay good attention to local color in setting the action during the Carnival of Venice and using a real podium in the square as a key marker in the search for the ornament, but I rather wish that "The Maestro" had made use of a few more locations in his native city. What makes the story work are the believable interactions between the characters -- and here, Joe and David Gerstein shine. Everyone gets something to do (though The Blot spends most of his time skulking around in the background and muttering to himself before making one big push for the McGuffin near the end), and everyone is written perfectly in character. It "feels" very much like a modern-day version of the Gold Key PHANTOM BLOT comic, in which the writers effortlessly mixed and matched various characters to extremely good effect.

There are a couple of weak spots in the plot that Joe and David, try as they might, can't quite manage to paper over. If the spirit of Marco Topo is doomed to hang around the square until some descendant finds his ornament, then shouldn't Marco have made double-extra sure that his descendants would be able to find the instructions for locating the ornament a bit more easily? Even Mickey would have had a hard time finding Topo's diary had Pete not crushed The Mouse's newly-inherited "18th-century cupboard" with a steamroller and revealed the precious parchments "hidden in the paneling." At least Topo doesn't appear to particularly regret his foolishness, even getting into the spirit of the Carnival revelers who enjoy playing pranks on Mickey and his friends. A more serious (and frankly annoying) issue arises when the Carnival-goers greet Mickey's gang as...

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... stars of a reality series back home. Oog! Here, Joe and David were trying to make sense of the obvious fact that the Venetians clearly recognize Mickey and his gang as "celebrities" of some sort. However, I would have tried to tie the explanation into previously established Disney material, as opposed to riffing on The Jersey Shore. How about regarding the House of Mouse short cartoons as "reality TV" of a sort... or DuckTales as "The Further Adventures of the Famous Scrooge McDuck with a Camera Along"? We could then explain the presence of Trudy and Brigitta by positing that they appeared in "later seasons" of HOM and/or DT -- seasons that we unlucky denizens of "Earth Prime" never got to see but the inhabitants of "Earth-Disney" did. Anything is preferable to trying to figure out which of the cast members of Calisota Shore corresponds to "Snooki."

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Picked nits aside, this was a most delightful way to conclude Boom!'s tenure on the "classic Disney" titles. Uh... over to you, Stan? (And I don't mean Blather.)

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #714 (December 2010, Boom! Kids)

We're sittin' on 714, with the 70th anniversary issue of WDC&S due next month. If we are fated not to have any new Casty material for a while, then at least the much-praised creator improved on the disappointing "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare" with the enjoyable, albeit somewhat frothy, "Mickey Mouse and the Menace from the Future." It turns out that I correctly called the true nature of Goofy and the Bubblebrains' "Purple Rain Punch," but Pete's role in the affair was not expected, nor did I foresee Special Agent Uma's complete lack of a direct connection to Mickey. Given Uma's physical looks and scrappiness, I was certain that she would be some sort of descendant of The Mouse. Then again, with our heroes having straightened out the Mouseton of 2049, we don't even know whether a Special Agent Uma will need to exist in the altered future, so perhaps she should count her blessings that she had a hand in creating a future where her presence would be required. (But why would she not be used to "positive reinforcement"? Wouldn't her superiors sending her on a mission that could alter the future of Mouseton signify a certain amount of basic trust in her abilities?)

Casty would have been well advised to have worked on this tale's backstory just a bit more. Why would the Mouseton conquered by "The Grim Gagagoofy" have experienced such a universal "great leap forward" in technology, even unto possessing the secret of time travel? I would think that "The Grim One" would have wanted to limit the development of bubble cities, "omnidisks," etc. so as to maintain the upper hand over the populace. It's not even clear how "The Grim One" managed to assemble the tech to create a robot army in the first place. I suspect that the tech may have been stolen from some other source (Gyro Gearloose? I certainly hope not, for his sake). David Gerstein does another fine job with the dialogue; there are fewer pop-culture gags but a couple of "wink-wink" references (such as the characters entering "The Ladder District") that help us to remember that the story is not meant to be taken all that seriously.

The three-page filler story "Pluto at the Beach" (WDC&S #177, June 1955) is an odd choice in view of the fact that it is completely "out of season" for a comic with a December cover date. In fact, apart from the inclusion of "Christmas Cheers" as a backup story in UNCLE $CROOGE #398, Boom!'s Disney books let the holiday season pass without comment. Between this and the lack of holiday movies this year, do we have reason to be worried? Hopefully, Boom! will top off its "classics"-heavy slate of 2011 releases the right way and bring back some sort of special Christmas release a year from now.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #713 (November 2010, Boom! Kids)

Oh, no! Not the Goofy Family Album... story! And from the hitherto adventure-minded Casty, no less. It's a little early in the game to say for sure, but "Mickey Mouse and the Menace from the Future," the first part of which appears here, bids fair to be the most overtly humorous Casty story to date. I mean, how seriously can you take a scenario in which what appears to be an Astro-Boy-booted secret agent (from the future?... maybe) is hypnotizing Goofy's relatives, all of whom are in town to help their cousin make an eggplant-flavored soda to enter in the Mouseton "Invent the World's Wildest Soda Pop" contest? All the Goof men have different versions of the famed Goofy laugh, even the Cockney fellow from England named Dogueberry. From the manner in which Agent Uma's bosses advise her about her mission -- they describe Goofy, head of "The Bubblebrains" (sounds like a foe of Underdog to me), as a "destroyer of worlds" (an' maybe houses an' movie sets, hyuck!) -- it would seem as if "Purple Rain Punch" might be a super-fuel or super-explosive of some sort. In that case, Pete's presence in the plot (as a fellow contestant and would-be prize-stealer) suggests that he might move in on the substance at some point. This story seems so weird, however, that any speculation seems as foolhardy as entrusting Goofy with the "nuclear football." Scripter David Gerstein certainly gets into the free spirit of the thing, throwing in references to Buffalo Springfield, Mary Poppins, the United Negro College Fund... he may even have added some ingredients to the eggplant soda, for all I know. I can't wait to see how this one shakes out.

The main feature is backed up by the five-page early-90s Brazilian story "A Goofy Look at Romance," drawn in a pleasantly sketchy style by Aluir Amancio, whose credits include storyboard work on a number of the classic Warner Bros. animated series of the 1990s. It's more elaborate than #709's "A Goofy Look at UFOs" but in much the same GOOFY ADVENTURES-inspired spirit -- perhaps even more so, since it includes a "mini-costume role" for The Goof as Casanova (the mind reels... that is, until you note that the only women attracted to him are of the Goof-lookalike persuasion). Nice job by Saida Temafonte on the dialogue, too.

Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #302 (November 2010, Boom! Studios)

Sergio Badino and Giorgio Cavazzano's "Legend of the Robo-Presidents" turns out to have been a more substantial epic than I'd thought. I was expecting another "half-and-half" deal here, with one story closing and another opening; instead, "Robo-Presidents" takes up all the space. In said space, we learn that The Phantom Blot has retrofitted the giant robot Presidents that inventor Borzon Gutglum had been commissioned to build to complement the newly-sculpted Mount Rushmore attraction (make sure to read that again, slowly) with the help of software designed by Gutglum's slightly wayward grandson. For all of The Blot's pleonastic, pompous pedantry (at least translator Saida Temafonte is consistent on this score; s/he used the same characterization for vastly different versions of The Blot in the ULTRAHEROES and WIZARDS OF MICKEY tales), the villain's plot is what he himself might call a "dreadfully banal" strike at the gold in Fort Knox. This comes, it should be noted, on the heels of The Blot's channeling of Hugo Drax in Casty's "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare." Honestly, if The Blot's new image as an intellectual is to be taken entirely seriously, then he really should be above ripping off schemes by James Bond villains, much less relying on the help of goons with names like "Billy Bob." The Blot, in the tradition of Pinky and the Brain, seems not to realize that the flying Robo-Presidents couldn't possibly get off the ground if they were truly "stuffed" with gold, but at least he has writer Badino to blame for that little oversight. Morty and Ferdie get a rare chance to fill the HD&L hero role, and, as you might guess, the "Nintenduck" obsession that they displayed in #301 winds up being a key to the good guys finally winning. An absurd story, to be sure, but oddly engaging, with Cavazzano's energetic art, as always, a point in its favor.

In the wake of The Blot's appearing without his black hood and cloak throughout the WIZARDS OF MICKEY sequence and in civvies in part two of "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare," his partially-unmasked status here is notable. Once he captures Mickey, Minnie, Morty, and Ferdie, he pulls off his hood and spends the rest of the story with his head showing above the cloak. I suppose that this is an "Italian thing," and, after mulling over the events of both this story and "Orbiting Nightmare," it's a "thing" that I actually do understand. The Blot can't pretend that absolutely no one knows what he looks like anymore (otherwise, why use a disguise to infiltrate Space Hotel Olympus in the first place?) and, while he can still rely on the "full effect" of his costume to produce some "fright value," there is no real reason why his face can't be regularly shown. This, of course, provides the writers with a challenge, to make The Blot's schemes really imaginative so as to compensate for the "loss of mystery." If The Blot's next caper involves "toppling" Mousetonian rockets or swallowing up Duckburgian space capsules, then he has every right to lodge a protest.

Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE ON QUANDOMAI ISLAND (November 2010, Boom! Kids)

You can read my piece-by-piece reviews of Casty's second American adventure (along with its backup, "Minnie Runs Out of Time") here, here, here, and here. Casty may have stumbled a bit with the recent "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare," but here, he's in excellent form. Casty might have gained an even larger (book-oriented) audience from this collected work had the cover price not been artificially inflated by 30 pages' worth of "previews" of other Boom! softcover collections. This colorful propaganda is a regular feature of the softcovers I've sampled, and, quite frankly, it strikes me as a major -- and, more to the point, inefficient -- waste of space. Why not provide a couple of pages of cover shots and brief blurbs (a la the last several pages in this volume, which cover some of the earlier soft- and hardcover releases), fill up a couple of extra pages with relevant ancillary material (e.g. a more extensive interview with Casty), and reserve the more substantial preview material for online display? Who knows -- the few bucks saved on the cover price might allow Boom! to snare a few extra readers who get hooked into Boom!'s regular titles as a result of enjoying the work of a fine Disney comics craftsman in a compact and convenient form. Just a thought, but, IMHO, a well-reasoned one.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #712 (October 2010, Boom! Kids)

We now have incontrovertible evidence that the justly-praised Casty is not, in fact, bulletproof. I was considerably underwhelmed by the conclusion of "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare," and that was before I noticed that Magic Eye Studios' cover gives away the identity of the villain. Granted, he's not in his standard garb, but folks in the know will quickly recognize the "civilian" corpus of The Phantom Blot. Having infiltrated Project Space Hotel Olympus disguised as designer Alastair Zond and having "retrofitted" the orbiting hostel to fit the standard world-domination protocol, The Blot plans to hold the world to ransom with a "death ray." Hugo Drax would certainly be proud, but even the megalomaniacal villain of Moonraker didn't go to the lengths of redesigning his space station to look just like him. For a bad guy who's habitually hidden behind a cloak, advertising to the entire world what you really look like doesn't seem like the most intelligent thing to do.

My friend Brent Swanson once argued that, once The Blot was unmasked at the end of his origin story, he lost what made him special. I don't necessarily agree with that theory in general, but, in the case of this particular tale, I do see Brent's point. The unmasked Blot was fairly effective as the villain in the WIZARDS OF MICKEY continuity, but that was a "costume story" and such deviations from the norm were acceptable under the circs. Here, apart from the 50-cent vocabulary and the gargantuan, self-indulgent "personal ad," The Blot could literally have been any big-ticket baddie -- say, The Rhyming Man making his what-seems-inevitable-at-some-point comeback. As other comics writers and artists -- not to mention DuckTales and Mickey Mouseworks/House of Mouse -- have shown, there's a workable middle ground between rehashing the Floyd Gottfredson version of The Blot and using him as just another schemer in a violet sport coat and bumblebee turtleneck (hmm... perhaps The Blot should stick to what he knows, sartorially speaking, and remain in "basic black" at all times).

Casty also failed to take advantage of the large cast he introduced, Love Boat fashion, in part one. Everyone save Cassandra Dot bails when "the orbital stabilizers [are] destroyed," and, while Cassandra shows the ability to "grow" when she ignores her own far-fetched theories of aliens in favor of helping Mickey solve a very concrete mystery, adding stowaway Goofy to the mix doesn't really help much. Mickey even resorts to using his pal as an inadvertent "rogue missile" when beginning the fightback against The Blot. Additional business involving the passengers, however, wouldn't have fixed the flaw at the heart of the story.

The creeping "Gemstone-ization" of Boom!'s "classic Disney" output is amplified by this ish's backup story, the GOOFY four-pager "Tidy Friday". This vintage 1958 tale, in which Clarabelle tries to clean Goofy's apocalyptically messy house, is just the sort of nugget that a Gladstone or Gemstone issue of WDC&S would have tucked into the magazine. Had the story featured Donald or some other "non-Mouse-oriented" character, I would have been even more impressed. Onward to issue #715, in which the "classics" come back with a vengeance.

Is Boom! REALLY a Bust? No, But...

While I'm trying to find the time to catch up on my comics reading, I ran across this take on Boom!'s handling of the Disney comics line. I'm definitely in agreement with "The Hyperionites" on the issue of Boom!'s reliance on continuing story lines. Not that Boom! should abandon the notion entirely -- I'm fine with the serialization of Casty's stories in WDC&S and the treatment of the material in DARKWING DUCK in a manner more befitting a superhero -- but there's no point to running multi-part stories simply for the sake of running multi-part stories. For sure, MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #300 would have been a lot more special had Boom! run "300 Mickeys" in its entirety. Of course, the book would have been more expensive, but Boom! seems to have no problem raising the prices of individual issues for the flimsiest of reasons ("foil-embossing," anyone?). Asking readers to pay an additional $1 or $1.50 for a complete, "300-friendly" adventure wouldn't have cost too much in terms of circulation.

One reason for hope regarding the issue of "lack of sufficient content for the money" is that we are starting to see backup stories with a fair amount of regularity. The reduction of advertising pages is a welcome trend, as well. No longer do we see multiple pages bringing the latest MUPPETS-related releases to our attention. In fact, I think that Boom! would do well to imitate Harvey Comics (which "The Hyperionites" correctly finger as a very kid-friendly line) and put "coming issue" information for all of its Disney-Pixar releases on a special page, together with brief blurbs about what's in each issue. Even Star Comics did the readers that favor.

Boom! can certainly improve how it packages and markets its collections. The article's praise of Bongo Comics' trade paperbacks is interesting in that Bongo has done nothing but reprint SIMPSONS COMICS issue-by-issue -- just as Boom! was doing with its entire line at one point. And therein lies the difference: be judicious about what recently published material you collect. It's clear that Casty and DARKWING (plus, I imagine, RESCUE RANGERS when it becomes available) are Boom!'s strongest selling points at the moment, so, by all means, give those works a handsome paperback treatment -- but DON'T reprint every single story arc separately; try to package where appropriate. Also, Boom! should consider giving those willing to buy the paperbacks something extra -- perhaps a potted history of the Darkwing Duck TV series (which would also fit well as part of the collection of DARKWING stories from DISNEY ADVENTURES that Boom! will be letting loose in a couple of months) or a longer interview with Casty. As for the hardbacks, I'm already on record as favoring classic, Gemstone- and Gladstone-style material for those, should Boom! see fit to revive them.

Perhaps Boom! will address these and other issues during "Boom! Kids 2.0" next year. The mere fact that they're going through such an exercise suggests that they're ascending a "learning curve" of some sort. Only time will tell whether said "curve" leads to the plateau of Shangri-La or to a plummet off a cliff.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #711 (September 2010, Boom! Kids)

We literally "blast off" to another Casty adventure with part one of "Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare," which looks, at least at first blush, to be a melange of The Love Boat, The X-Files, Lost in Space, and Galaxy of Terror (without the alien worm rape scene and the disembodied, maggot-covered arm, of course). "Utterly ordinary everyman" Mickey is the odd mouse out in a bunch of A- (or at least A-minus) listers taking a space-shuttle trip to the newly launched Olympus Hotel, the world's first space hostel. But has the grandiloquent Olympus been infested by "space monsters"? Mickey's companions include a lunkheaded "Heismouse Trophy" winner, a bubble-brained actress, and an hysterical pseudo-journalist who's made her literary fortune off of books drumming up belief in extraterrestrial bogeymen, so Mickey is the prime candidate for the "Mystery Inc. Debaffler Award" almost by default. I'm already suspicious of the muckraking journo Cassandra Dot (should be pronounced with a long "o", I assume), who would certainly stand to personally profit from any "discovery" of space aliens. The fact that Olympus designer Alistair Zond happened to be "outside" just at the moment that a threatening message appeared is also troubling, though I can't see yet how he would gain any advantage from scaring customers away from his own creation. Dialoguists David Gerstein and Jonathan Gray are supplanted for this go-round by Stefania Bronzoni, who's done a decent job thus far. Indeed, botoxed B-list babe Bella Breakhearts gets off a priceless line when she screams, "What's going on here? I demand easy answers!"

Because it's close to Halloween, I suppose -- at least, the two aisles in the local supermarket that have been given over to candy, costumes, and such suggest as much -- the back of the book features a reprint of "Tomb of Goofula" (1991), a four-page story produced by the team responsible for creating THE TOMB OF DRACULA (1972-79) for Marvel: writer Marv Wolfman, penciler Gene Colan, and inker Tom Palmer. This was quite literally the last story ever to appear in Disney Comics' GOOFY ADVENTURES, as the title was then canceled as part of the notorious "Disney Implosion." It got a (tiny) cover blurb but, sorry to say, fails to live up to whatever modest expectations there might have been for such a short story. Indeed, it points up one of the flaws that, two decades later, has become apparent regarding the Disney Comics era: Great comics creators don't necessarily make great Disney comics creators. Wolfman, whose Disney Comics track record was mixed to say the least, wends his weary way through some fairly predictable gags (and yes, the groan-inducing "baseball bat" gag is included, though at least "Mickey Harker" comments on the predictability of that occurrence). Goofy irritatingly substitutes "Ah" for "I", which seems more appropriate for Foghorn Leghorn, and there's a pretty bad continuity gaffe involving a "will" that Mickey Harker must fill out before entering Castle Goofula. The artwork is decent but a little cluttered. It's nice to see Boom! dipping into the Disney Comics archives, but I'd like to see something with a little more bite (hyuck!) in it next time.

Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #300 (September 2010, Boom! Kids)

OK, let's get the obligatory gag out of the way up front...

MICKEY, IN A SCREAMING FALSETTO: THIS... IS... MOUSETON!!

(Well, it officially has been since 1990, at least.)

But seriously... I'd like to toss the geniuses responsible for the $6.99 "Deluxe Edition" of this milestone issue into the nearest available "pit of doom." For your three extra bucks, you get (1) a Daan Jippes cover that I have a sneaking feeling I saw sometime back during the "Gladstone I" era and (2) a "foil-embossed" MICKEY MOUSE logo. Nothing so declasse, in other words, as, well, actually printing the lead story (Stefan Petrucha and Cesar Ferioli's "300 Mickeys") complete in an extra-sized issue. Just when it seemed as though Boom! were weaning itself off this multiple-cover routine, they squander a unique opportunity to do a "mega-issue" in favor of this cheesy gambit! The two "historical background" pages (including contributions from Casty, Jippes, and David Gerstein) don't really begin to make up for this, though they do add to the nostalgic feel associated with reading a "shoulda-coulda" Gemstone-issue-in-all-but-name.

"300 Mickeys" bears all the earmarks of a story that was originally slated to appear in Gemstone's MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES digest. Mickey uses Eega Beeva's "Pduplication Ray" to clone himself and keep simultaneous dates with Minnie (for dinner) and Goofy (at the arcade). Unfortunately, clones of "Mickey Nothing" unexpectedly continue to pop into existence even as Eega (who's suddenly got the "p"s back in his speech patterns -- this, plus the neat, MMA-style lettering, is a dead giveaway that this story was prepared a while back) returns to retrieve the gizmo. Adding to the inevitable chaos is the inconvenient fact that the clones, much like VHS tapes, "lose integrity" (in this case, become less intelligent) with every duplication. In the grand tradition of Pinky and the Brain's "Paper World," the increasingly mindless clones are soon fixing to set up shop for themselves on a newly-created island in the Tulebug River. Petrucha and Ferioli do their usual high-quality work, and the whiff of the Gemstone era is frankly quite refreshing after all those Italian WIZARDS OF MICKEY stories. Why Boom! didn't see fit to fit the entire story into issue #300 -- especially when the "300" conceit is part of the story's title -- is a complete mystery to me.

As he should, Floyd Gottfredson gets a nod at the back of the book with eight pages' worth of the quasi-continuity "Tanglefoot Pulls His Weight," essentially a string of gags in which Mickey tries to convert his knobbly-kneed horse into a "working animal," with decidedly mixed results. Now that MM&F has been re-established, I'd really like to see a "Gemstone-lite" issue like this now and again in between all the Italian imports. But, please, can we keep in mind that the drive to serialize may not always be appropriate?

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #710 (August 2010, Boom! Kids)

When is a happy ending not a happy ending? When, in order to fully accept the conclusion of Casty's marvelous "Mickey Mouse on Quandomai Island," you are forced to choke down one of the bleakest visions of the future that has ever been presented in a Disney product. Rune Meikle and Massimo Fecchi's Matrix-influenced "Time of Reckoning" (Gemstone DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #1, July 2003) was easily digestible by comparison. In that case, at least, one could comfort oneself with the notion that the dystopian future Duckburg was (1) the result of specific actions that could be ameliorated by a more cautious Scrooge and (2) was so obviously a "media parody" that it could be taken with a grain of salt. Casty appears to give us no such loophole. The parched, litter-filled Disney Earth of "the Year 125QXX" -- into which Mickey and a soon-to-reveal-his-true-color-yellow-and-chicken-out Lord Hight of Konseet travel with a brace of captured bug-creatures -- is the result of "gross menz... poison[ing] and pillag[ing]" the planet and then going off-world to find another home. "You blame uzz, but we only collect your inheritance!" sneers one insectoid to Mickey, who has nothing to say in response. Pixar's Wall-E got its share of grief for its vision of the future, but at least the end of that movie held out the possibility of redemption for the remaining humanoids. What hope does Casty (aided by co-conspirators David Gerstein, Jonathan Gray, and Francesco Sperafino) provide us with here? Not bloody much -- and, for all the excitement of the rescue sequence in which Mickey, Prof. Baquater, and Pete (!) save their amber-encased pals and compatriots from the bug-men's palace and get back to Quandomai just in the nick of time before the panicked Duke Hight shuts down the Eon Vortex, I'll have to admit that the end of this otherwise first-rate story left something of a bitter aftertaste. Between the vision of "The Year 125QXX" and King Kontinento's "greenish" decision to completely scrap the "World to Come" project in Casty's first story, I'm beginning to wonder whether Casty can complete a tale without clambering onto some sort of environmentalist soapbox, however well-constructed. We'll soon find out, as WDC&S will apparently continue to be "Casty's Comics Corral" for a while yet. Pretty amazing, isn't it, that a creator we Americans hadn't even heard of a year ago has come to dominate the "flagship" U.S. Disney comics title as no creator ever has (apart from that one time in the 60s that Tony Strobl literally drew the whole book -- but that was probably more of a coincidence than anything else).

We do get some decent catharsis here. Duke Hight's "man" Maximus suddenly acquires the power of speech and chases his no-doubt-soon-to-be-ex-boss over the horizon at story's end. Minnie gives the all-bluster, no-balls Duke a verbal hiding and apologizes to Mickey for being taken in by the con artist. Pete actually shows some real compassion when he insists on helping Mickey save the day so that his paramour Trudy will be safe -- and Mickey shows no hard feelings by letting Pete share in the glory. Even Goofy gets in a priceless line while flattening a bug-creature: "Take a 'Goofy Look' at THIS, pal!" By contrast, the pallid ending of "Minnie Runs out of Time" -- all she has to do is go home and smash the coffee maker to restart time? That's IT?! -- only leaves one to wonder why Minnie wasted so much time goofing around. "Minnie Runs of Time" ended up being only marginally better than "Peg-Leg Pete and the Alien Band," and I'd suggest that Boom! seriously consider replacing these not-meant-to-be-serialized backups with "done-in-one" gag stories featuring Donald, Scrooge, and other non-Mouseton-based characters. It may have "all started with a Mouse," but WDC&S really should show some measure of diversity in its contents.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #709 (July 2010, Boom! Kids)

The "secret" behind the existence of Quandomai Island is finally revealed in this third installment of Casty's latest gem, and -- not entirely surprisingly -- it turns out to be more "bizarre science" on the order of the elusive "World Equation" that was supposed to create "The World to Come." If anything, we're asked to take an even higher "leap of faith" to hurdle the notion of an "Eon Vortex" creating an isolated "cylinder" of frozen time. How does one "open a tunnel" into what amounts to an incorporeal force field, anyway? (The tunnel through the crater where the Vortex is centered makes sense, but wouldn't one have to penetrate the Vortex itself at some point?) And if the Vortex ceased to operate, wouldn't anyone inside at the time be thrust back into whatever present reality existed on that spot, as opposed to being "trapped inside" the world created by the Vortex in the first place? The phrase "too clever by half" comes to mind. In that off-the-wall spirit, it's entirely fitting that Our Gang's real enemies turn out to be murderous, shape-shifting, bug-like creatures from "the future" (Eega Beeva is starting to look mighty attractive right about now) who have managed to wormhole their way into this geometrically precise bubble of generated past reality. Somewhere, Bill Walsh is smiling broadly. The aliens -- sorry, I can't buy the notion that these guys represent our future; maybe they're "Newcomers" like the creatures in Alien Nation -- appear to have taken inspiration for their plans from MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES' Wiley Wildbeest and Prince Penguin. With Pete and Duke Hight's scheme thus turned back against themselves, "forced cooperation" between good guys and bad guys is now the order of the day... and that almost always works out great. If "World to Come" is any indication, however, the "Eon Vortex" will be a casualty of the battle.

If Minnie really is "Running Out of Time" in the backup story, she seems decidedly casual about the fact. After preventing a car crash (that heap big cliffhanger from last time, remember?), she walks about in a self-congratulatory mood. Umm... Attempting to reinstitute the natural laws of physics isn't imperative at some point? Before Minnie does the deed -- whatever that might be -- it appears that she's going to revisit "Time Teasers" territory, preventing a bank robbery. I assume that WDC&S #710 will feature the end of this story to coincide with the conclusion of "Quandomai Island," but the last panel of part three contains a "To Be Continued" box instead. I imagine that's a misprint. Time can't stand still forever, can it?

... Say, what's this? A THIRD story at the back of the book... a two-pager complete in this issue? I haven't been this shocked since the flight attendant gave me a second bag of "savory mix" to enjoy with my thimbleful of soda. "A Goofy Look at UFO's", written by Jos Beekman, dialogued by David Gerstein, and drawn by Michel Nadorp, is a charming call-back to the days of GOOFY ADVENTURES. It's especially likable because, unlike some of the lengthy "costume tales" we got during the second incarnation of Gladstone comics, it makes its obvious point and gets off the stage. Kudos to David for including a reference to Pinky and the Brain that almost made up for the lame concluding gag (which didn't originate with David himself). The formatting of this story is unusual, more like the current DARKWING DUCK comic than any of the Italian material we've been getting in other Boom! books. Was it originally produced that way in Holland, or is this a Boom! original? If the latter, then, by all means, let's have more, please.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #708 (June 2010, Boom! Kids)... plus a little extra

Just when it looked as if Casty really was going to go the "been there, done that" route and serve us up a warmed-over goulash of equal parts Floyd Gottfredson's "Land of Long Ago" and the TaleSpin episode "Paradise Lost," part two of "Mickey Mouse on Quandomai Island" took a turn for the decidedly weird during its final panels, leaving the reader legitimately baffled as to what might happen next. It's clear as crystal, at least, that the preening Duke Hight of Conceet is a nogoodnik to the core, planning to turn the dinosaur-choked isle into "a game reserve for the ridiculously rich!" His alliance with Pete to that effect is one of the great "opposites attract" moments of recent Disney comics history. Duke Hight must have been fooling himself, though, to think that his speedy "heel-turn" wouldn't affect his play for Minnie, who slips quite naturally into hectoring Captain Planet mode when she learns what Hight is up to. The X-factor of the chapter is the stammering, white-haired scientist Baquater, who decided to stay behind with his beloved dinos when his colleagues decided to leave... or so he says. There's strong reason to believe that something much more sinister has happened to the researchers and that the timid, germophobic Baquater is in on the plot. Mickey has had surprisingly little to do in this adventure thus far, but that seems to be about to change. David Gerstein, Jonathan Gray, and Francisco Sperafico continue to do an excellent job of translation to complement the most exciting "hitherto unknown" talent that Boom! has uncovered to date.

Chapter two of "Minnie Runs Out of Time" offers little more than Minnie discovering the dramatic effects that her chronology-chilling coffee maker has had on the suddenly-still citizens of Mouseton. "I heard something like this happened in Duckburg once," she muses, which is true only if you count Don Rosa's "On Stolen Time" as canon but DON'T count DuckTales' "Time Teasers". Since "Time Teasers" got to the idea first, I'd prefer that the reasoning go in the opposite direction, if you don't mind too much. Minnie takes advantage of the situation to essay a few fairly limp "let's adjust things while time is stopped" sight gags, but then sees something that scares her silly. I'm guessing it isn't Keno Don or Anthony Adams (the author of "Time Teasers") demanding royalties (to say nothing of whoever wrote those Mr. Pem episodes of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea). This fragile story is still miles better than "Peg-Leg Pete and the Alien Band"...

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... and, just when you thought it was safe to put memories of that "nonstory" behind you, the just-released paperback edition of Casty's "Mickey Mouse and the World to Come" saw fit to reprint the whole thing as a backup to the main feature! Not only that, but we get a far-too-lengthy series of "previews" of other Boom! collections, as well. Personally, I'd have stuck with the five summary pages of "Graphic Novels Available Now" at the very end of the book and let it go at that. A "leaner and livelier" paperback collection of "World to Come," including only the Casty story and perhaps an extended version of Boom!'s interview with the creator, could probably have sold for a few dollars less and coaxed a few additional people who hadn't read the original story to open their wallets. Suddenly, I begin to understand why Boom! had so much trouble pushing these "collections of stuff we recently sold in another format" and finally had to cancel them.
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On a more positive note -- surely, the most positive tocsin that Boom! has sounded for quite some time in a business-related sense -- DARKWING DUCK #1 sold more copies in comic-book stores than any other Boom! release since the line's first issues of WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES and MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS. (The first DuckTales-themed issue of UNCLE $CROOGE didn't do nearly as well, but, then, its iffy quality didn't merit higher sales than the ones it actually got.) Boom! appears to have itself a "keeper" in the DARKWING book, and I applaud its decision to keep the title going after the current mini-series is completed.

An Update on Boom! Sales

Here's an updated graph detailing Boom! sales to comic-book and specialty shops as of May 2010. (Thanks to Kneon for the updated information.)
Sales for MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS/WIZARDS OF MICKEY aren't included because there was only one additional data point available. WOM #2 sold 3704 copies -- a 27% decline from the first issue -- and the remaining issues covered during this period, WOM #3 and WOM #4, didn't make Diamond's list of the Top 300 sellers. At least WOM fared better than HERO SQUAD, which fell out of the Top 300 after issue #1. The DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS graph is missing a data point for month 6 (issue #352) for the same reason. What would worry me if I were Boom! is that DD&F #352 was the final issue of the first Double Duck story arc, the one which Red Primerose's identity was revealed. By contrast, the final chapter of Casty's "Mickey Mouse and the World to Come" (WDC&S #706) produced a modest, but welcome, uptick in sales. With the declines of UNCLE $CROOGE and DD&F having flattened out at the same time, perhaps we have reached the proverbial "bottom of the ski slope."

The most recent PREVIEWS solicited orders for books slated to be released in September... and HERO SQUAD and WIZARDS OF MICKEY are conspicuous by their absence. Instead, MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS will return for a gala issue #300. There's lots of WIZARDS OF MICKEY material still out there; ULTRAHEROES, not so much. What will Boom! do when/if it decides to revisit these concepts? I wouldn't mind HERO SQUAD being a "filler" in some other book at some point, but there doesn't appear to be enough remaining material to justify restarting the title. Also, wouldn't a return to "classic" practice in MM&F be stepping on the over-sized Mouse shoes of the Casty material currently running in WDC&S?

With the apparent shelving of the "New Direction" titles for the nonce and the concurrent commitment to DuckTales material in UNCLE $CROOGE and an ongoing DARKWING DUCK title, Boom! might be said to have redefined its target audience. With HERO SQUAD and WIZARDS OF MICKEY, Boom! aimed for the "kid" audience brought up on a diet of superhero movies and HARRY POTTER novels. The current Disney Afternoon gambit seems to be attempting to reach those young adults (and, of course, a couple of us young-at-heart older ones) whose first sustained, consistent exposure to "Disney product" came through watching the "Golden Age" TV series. Judging by the early reports on the brisk sales of DARKWING DUCK #1, this may not have been a bad strategy. Aside from the "goosing effect" that nostalgia has had on sales, the older readers of the TV-based comics might encourage their own children to become interested in the old series. Were the various divisions of Disney not so rigidly segregated, I might even dare to hope that this might lead Disney DVD to rethink its decision to abort its releases of the "Golden Age" DVD collections.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #707 (Boom! Kids, May 2010)

For the longest time, Boom! plugged this issue's contents as "TOP SECRET", but the editorial decision to follow up the immensely enjoyable "Mickey Mouse and the World to Come" with Andrea Castellan's second major MICKEY MOUSE epic was the easiest "call" since the hapless Orioles' latest defenestration of their manager. Given the parlous state of Boom!'s UNCLE $CROOGE to date, the desire to propitiate the longtime Disney comics fans was simply too strong to resist. (Not that the "sourdoughs" had a perfectly satisfactory week... Read on to find out why.)

Part one of "Mickey Mouse on Quandomai Island" cuts right to the chase, with a cruise ship carrying Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, and Pete and his paramour Trudy van Tubb (who appear to have come on board to... steal people's wallets?! Wouldn't it have been easier, and far more cost-effective, to have stayed in Mouseton and done that?) cracking apart under the duress of a typhoon. The gang wash up on a tropic isle that appears to have been inhabited by scientists not that long ago. Given that "half the lifeboats exploded" (sic) during the storm, I have to wonder how many folks weren't so lucky. Hopefully, the "Rule of the Disney 'Universe' Titanic" was in effect, and there were just enough lifeboats to save everyone. One bloke who definitely survived is the debonair Duke Hight of Konseet, accompanied by a mute body-servant, Maximus. The Duke already seems like a highly suspicious character, given that (1) he was putting the moves on Minnie before the wreck, much to Mickey's discomfort; (2) he is a gushing fount of long-winded stories of past "good deeds"; (3) despite the big talk, Maximus appears to perform all of the Duke's chores. Were this a Harold Gray story, the Duke's fate would be sealed right now. To be fair, though, he's only been an annoyance thus far. The flip side of Casty's cover (not pictured above) suggests that we're in for a gay old "prehistoric creatures on a deserted island" time, not unlike Floyd Gottfredson's classic "Land of Long Ago," but Casty has already proven adept at funnelling new wine into old Gottfredson-vintage bottles, so I think we have a few big surprises in store. One very modest gripe: what kind of cruise ship charges passengers for everything? Don't most cruise lines provide meals and "basic essentials" as part of the package, only charging for such "extras" as massages, alcohol, etc.? Nicky and I should know, having been on a couple of cruises.

As with "World to Come," we get a back-up story that will presumably accompany all the chapters of "Quandomai." "Minnie Runs out of Time," however, already promises to be roughly, oh, one quintillion times better than "Peg-Leg Pete and the Alien Band." In the noble tradition of DuckTales' "Time Teasers," the (ahem) remarkably similar Don Rosa tale "On Stolen Time," and the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea adventures featuring the evil Mr. Pem and his pocket watch, Minnie acquires a device that appears to have the power to stop time. It's not a time piece, however, but a coffee maker (espresso or cappuccino? Such things matter, given that this is an Italian story) with a clock attached. Minnie is in "complete bafflement" mode at the moment, but hopefully she'll be able to use the old bean (groan) to dope out the gizmo's secret.


Speaking of stopping time, the final inside page of the issue appears to have reversed time: we get a honest-to-gawrsh letter column, rather than an in-house discussion/interview feature. In the "return of MICKEY'S MAILBAG," Editor Chris Meyer lets slip the tantalizing news that a return of MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS may be on the cards, just in time to celebrate issue #300. That happy piece of information was quickly neutralized later in the week when I browsed through the "Extended Forecast" section of ComicList. According to the site, a whole slew of Boom! reprint hardcovers have been cancelled, including... gulp... DONALD DUCK CLASSICS VOLUME 2, which was supposed to appear in late July. (MICKEY MOUSE CLASSICS VOLUME 2 is still on the docket, but it has already been delayed for over a month, so it may also have been axed.) I sincerely hope that Boom! sees fit to reverse this decision or, at the very least, considers continuing the CLASSICS series in a less expensive format, akin to the softcover WALT DISNEY TREASURES volumes published by Gemstone. Boom! may have been inconsistent in its handling of "classic" material in the $2.99 books, but its selections of material for CLASSICS can hardly be faulted. If the company is dead set on sticking to hardbacks, then might I suggest putting an end to the relentless reprinting of material that has already appeared in the regular comics? That would "goose" sales of the $2.99's (since the option of "waiting for the collection to appear" would be taken away) and allow Boom! to reserve the hardback format for material that is truly worthy of the higher price. The "Extended Forecast" report also carried the news that STAR COMICS ALL-STAR COLLECTION Volume 4 has been cancelled by Marvel, which would be a shame, but nowhere near as disappointing a one as losing the Boom! CLASSICS line, the best thing the line has had to offer to date (sincere apologies to Casty).

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #706 (Boom! Kids, April 2010)

Andrea Castellan's "Mickey Mouse and the World to Come", which wraps in this issue, is the best original material Boom! has presented to date, and "there is no second" -- at least, not yet. The Rhyming Man's scheme to refashion the world to his twisted liking through his mastery of high-tech and "the world equation" comes to grief, as we all knew it would. Before "all iss done und said," Mickey, Minnie, and Eega Beeva get their heroic licks in, and, right at the climax of the action, a Tale Spin episode suddenly breaks out as King Kontinento of Illusitania and his daughter Silvy lead the Illusitanian Royal Guard in an aerial assault on The Rhyming Man's massive turbo-prop plane. "Rhymes" even wears a Napoleon hat and epauletted jacket and brandishes a sword for the occasion, coming off like a Don Karnage with a better grasp of poetic meter (though, in fact, his rhyming shtick does disappear at several moments, with Minnie inadvertently completing one couplet in the best Bucky Bug tradition). The "retro" look of the big air battle is entirely fitting, as this entire story is the functional equivalent of a Floyd Gottfredson adventure from the fanciful Bill Walsh era. "Casty" (with help from translators David Gerstein, Jonathan Gray, and Stefan Bronzoni) is clearly the best thing Boom! has going for it right now insofar as fans of "classic" Disney comics material are concerned, and Boom! just as clearly recognizes the fact, as WDC&S #707 will bring us a new Castellan adventure. My hope is that either "Casty" gets the entire book next time or we get a non-Mouse backup of higher quality than the woebegone and forgettable "Peg-Leg Pete and the Alien Band". (I mean, we never even got to see Pete actually perform in concert. We deserved at least that minor payoff.)

One minor quibble about Castellan's story coda. King Kontinento's decision to scrap the entire "World to Come" project is entirely understandable, coming complete with a "greenish" comment about humanity needing to realize that "we are zis world's guests, not its masters!". But did it really have to be "all or nothing"? Couldn't the technology be used on a smaller scale to fix earthquake faults, calm volcanoes, bring water to parched deserts, and the like? I think that there was room for consideration, at least, of the "Open your borders some of the time!" option (cf. the Speed Racer episode "The Fire Race")... provided that security was much tighter, that is.

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #705 (Boom! Kids, March 2010)

Oh, my gawrsh, Boom! Kids has suddenly "gone slick" on us! This latest issue of WDC&S features honest-to-goodness glossy paper. No hint of an upcoming rise in price, though, which is all to the good; the whole point of these $2.99 titles is to make Disney comics an easier purchase for kids and families.

Speaking of sheen, Andrea Castellan's "Mickey Mouse and the World to Come" really burnished its credentials in this bailiwick by revealing that mathematics lies at the heart of the plan to create "The World to Come." In chapter 3, Mickey and Eega Beeva journey to Illusitania and finally get the straight dope from King Kontinento himself. It seems that many years ago, a "ponder" of scientists (including our own Doc Static) discovered that, in words familiar to fans of a certain CBS-TV series, "everything is numbers." Learn how to manipulate parameters with "denumerization cannons" and the ability to remake the world is at your fingertips. Alas, the "world equation" proved far too difficult for 1960s-era computers to work out, so the giant robots and their built-in "cannons" have lain dormant for years, waiting for all the numbers to be crunched. The scheming Crown Prince Nikolai, unbeknownst to his dad, has upgraded the technology and is about to "get (finished) with the program." Niky's eager to exploit the world-kneading wundertech to "cover ze globe in roads und factories!", but his treacherous erstwhile ally, The Rhyming Man, who's located all of the "denumerization" robots, has a simpler agenda: to "watch the world burn" and rule it at the same time. I smell a forthcoming "forced alliance" between Mickey, Eega, Minnie (who's still in Rhymes' clutches), King Kontinento, Konty's young female offspring Silvy, and a chagrined Niky... but will it coalesce too late for it to make any difference?

You can imagine how the whole notion of a "world equation" intrigued me. The sketchier recesses of mathematical history teem with cranks who have claimed to have discovered a formula, or set thereof, that will "explain everything." Maxwell's electromagnetic equations and the search for a unified field theory take the idea more seriously. It would have made sense for Doc Static and friends to have tackled their own approach to the problem in the 1960s, when the "military-industrial complex" that arose after World War II was still thought of as being relatively benign, and "Big Government" and "Big Science" could work together in relative harmony without much mutual recrimination. What I wonder is why, when it became obvious that a (literal) "global" tack wasn't working, Doc Static et al. didn't follow the advice of George Polya and try breaking the "world equation" into smaller parts, working on each one in turn. Instead, it seems, they simply gave up and walked away. No wonder Doc S. wanted to leave this part of his past behind; it must have been embarrassing for him to look back on it. But even unsuccessful "tampering in God's domain" leaves the door open for those who, like The Rhyming Man, have considerably less benevolent intentions. Take heed, you stem-cell seekers and cloning gurus!

In "Peg Leg Pete and the Alien Band," we learn that, uh... Pete used to play the drums when he was a kid. Very loudly. I realize that any backup story for "World to Come" would have seemed shallow by comparison, but really, now...