"Classics" Canned

A post on the Boom! Comics Forum message board confirms that the remaining solicited DISNEY CLASSICS hardcovers -- MICKEY MOUSE CLASSICS: MOUSE MAYHEM, DONALD DUCK CLASSICS: DUCK DANGER, and SUMMER CLASSICS -- have all been cancelled. Personally, I would rather see all the other Boom! softcover/hardcover collections go, while the CLASSICS books are retained. Granted, the collections have sold poorly, but Boom! made the error of releasing too many collections for the available market to bear. I hope that Boom! reconsiders this decision at some point in the future and allows the hardcover format to be preserved for "classic" material alone.

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).

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.

Comics Review: DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #352 (Boom! Kids, March 2010)

(I'm playing it safe and inserting some up-front...

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... for those who haven't yet read the conclusion of the first "Double Duck" story arc and don't want to be unpleasantly surprised by my comments.)

Ah, me... I was always just a little afraid that the mysterious "Red Primerose" would turn out to be our charming Kay K. But I wanted so much to believe that Kay was nothing more than (1) Donald's Agency partner and (2) a potential rival for Daisy that I shoved the notion to the back of my mind until I had incontrovertible proof of her guilt. Said proof was not long in coming in this issue (and, IMHO, I think that Donald was deserving of a much more shocked reaction than merely sticking out his tongue in a pathetic manner akin to Wile E. Coyote just before the falling boulder strikes him). I am, however, legitimately disappointed that all Kay was after was The Agency's money and that the list-of-agents "McGuffin" was merely a ruse. If this "master spy" was willing to go to the trouble of pitting Agency agents and Marlo Burke against one another and impersonating the imprisoned Jay J with the aid of a mechanical robo-suit (does The Brain know about this egregious copyright infringement?), surely she could have had a slightly more sinister plan in mind than simply filching funds? ("Ah, but it's all part of her MASTER plan," replied David Xanatos, with a knowing chuckle.) There does appear to be one ray of hope for poor Kay K. Judging from the full list of existing Double Duck stories and the appearance of the December '09 TOPOLINO cover shown below, we can probably expect to see Kay (1) do battle with Donald and The Agency in future stories and (2) return to the side of the angels, up to and including teaming up with Double Duck once again. I hope this comes to pass; she's a good character and gave Daisy a serious romantic challenge that Donald's frequently exasperating inamorata desperately needs, to keep her humble if nothing else.


While the revelation that Kay was standing in for Jay J was not contradicted by any earlier gaffes of the "fourth Nephew Phooey" variety -- and yes, I did go back and check -- we did get a "left hand unaware of right hand" moment of sorts in that the opening scene of the arc, in issue #347, did not quite match up with what Kay revealed in this final chapter. If B-Berry had learned of Kay's treachery early on, then why, after stealing the laptop, did he warn Jay J that "lots of people are going to get hurt... starting with you!" and that he intended to "bring down the entire Agency!"? The story began and ended with different translators, and I suspect that wires got crossed somewhere during the transition. A pity; this was a surprisingly good read, given my low expectations at the outset.

The arc ends with The Agency's "Big Boss" being revealed to a stunned Donald. Place your bets, folks... mine's on Scrooge. Hey, the precedent was set (in Italy, at least) a number of years ago... and I just read the story in which the idea originated, no less. Watch this space for my review when I tackle the recently released DONALD DUCK CLASSICS: QUACK UP.

Boom! Throws a Bone

A subscriber to the Disney Comics Mailing List has just reported -- and I've independently confirmed -- that Boom! Studios intends to supplement its kid-focused Disney comics line with some collections targeted at adult collectors. To wit:

November 2009: Walt Disney's Christmas Classics Volume 1 (Carl Barks, Floyd Gottfredson, Walt Kelly, and Daan Jippes)
January 2010: Walt Disney's Valentine's Classics Volume 1 (Barks, Kelly, and Jippes)
Feburary 2010: Mickey Mouse Classics: Mouse Tails (Gottfredson)
March 2010: Donald Duck Classics: Quack Up (Barks)

These will be supplemented by re-releases of Don Rosa's LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE McDUCK in two parts (February and April).

Here's the x factor: These collections will be hardbound volumes, rather than trade paperbacks, and retail for $24.99. That's pretty pricey for a set of material that includes a large number of Barks reprints. The Kelly, Gottfredson, and Jippes material will determine whether or not I get these.