The Irritant Jones (Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #693 [June 2008, Gemstone Publishing])

The only thing more intimidating than this issue's cover -- in which a menacing Neighbor Jones bears down on a desperate, soccer-ball-dribbling Donald – is the prospect that Don's eternal antagonist actually fancies himself a soccer enthusiast. Next thing we know, he'll be taking over as sponsor of The Riverside Rovers. The "classic" and contemporary Jones are both featured here, with Carl Barks' "The Purloined Putty" (1944) and Michael T. Gilbert and Paco Rodriquez' modern confection "The Odd Couple" bookending the issue. Both tales are chock full of gags more suited to an animated cartoon, though Barks' effort has a nastier edge to it. Gilbert (who seems rather above using such a trite and obvious story title) dumps Don and Jones onto a cruise ship as the unlikeliest of cabin mates. Battles over the possession of waffles, of all things, put the two neighbors at loggerheads. After Jones (in a somewhat contrived fashion) falls overboard while sandwiched inside an inner tube, the captain and other passengers quickly suspect Donald of foul play. To clear his name, Don goes to Jones' rescue, but the duo must contend with an exaggeratedly cartoony shark before they can get back to peaceful battling on board ship. "Putty" finds Donald and Jones at war over a precious can of caulk. The "back-at-cha" gags escalate until both reprobates are sunk in a pit filled with the gooey stuff. Leaving aside the obvious question of how Don and Jones could be expected to breathe for the duration while covered with hardened putty, this is pretty much the quintessential Barks Jones story. Well, that, or 1943's "Good Neighbors." Your mileage may vary.

Mickey also features in a pair of stories here, though the spotlight on the second actually falls more on faithful Pluto. Noel Van Horn's "Prometheus" finds Mickey, Horace, and Noel's oddly coherent and grammatically correct Goofy caught out in the wilderness with a storm coming on. No problem, it would seem, as each character has a special talent to employ for just such an occasion: Mickey is a whiz at finding safe campsites, Horace can gather firewood like nobody's business, and Goofy has "the power to ignite the densest wood!" This is a "pride goeth" sitch if I ever saw one, and, sure enough, the trio of overconfident outdoorsmen barely manages to survive the night, thanks to a series of potentially deadly blunders. Mickey ends up being the "fall guy" of sorts, but only because his goof happened to be the last -- and the most destructive. The much sedater "Once Upon a Dog," by Jeff Hamill and Cesar Ferioli, is a "Rashomon-comes-to-Mouseton" scenario, with Mickey, Goofy, Minnie, Clarabelle, and Horace all claiming to remember how Mickey came to acquire his beloved pooch – and each of them getting the story only partially right. Pluto tells us… or should that be "thinks us"?... the real scoop on how he helped to save Mickey from death at the hands of Pete and subsequently "adopted" his master. Ferioli sculpts Pete and his unwilling seaman henchman in classic 1930s style, befitting the era that saw Pluto's real debut, and he also tributes Pat McGreal by drawing him into the story as a butcher victim of puppy Pluto's food-filching.

Thanks to LAST KISS, John Lustig may be better qualified to write a DAISY DUCK'S DIARY entry than anyone has ever been, and he's in top form in this ish's "Are You Really You?", drawn with great panache by Daan Jippes. Daisy and a Donald attend a masked ball where they run into a "hussy" (so labeled by an angry Daisy because she's wearing the same dress as Don's prize-hungry girlfriend) – and her husband, a lookalike for the costumed Donald. Donald, for his part, is petrified at the thought that his superior in the "Manly Men Marching Society" might spy him in his effeminate getup. Let the mistaken identities and misunderstood gestures commence! Lustig's "calm and rational" "diary entries" contrast dramatically with Daisy's actual behavior. Jippes' rendering of a ballroom-girdling fight brings Barks' famous "Back to the Klondike" panel of Scrooge's fight in the Black Jack Ballroom immediately to mind. Lightweight stuff, but very expertly done. A 1947 LI'L BAD WOLF story drawn by Paul Murry fills out the book, and it's not half bad itself, as Zeke finds trouble when he attempts to swipe from JACK AND THE BEANSTALK and con Brer Bear out of his cow in exchange for supposedly "magic" beans. At this early stage of his career, Brer B. appears to have a little more brain power than expected. Still, this early melding of the "Bad Wolf" and Song of the South universes holds promise that was amply fulfilled in subsequent years.

A Super "Duper" Issue! (Comics Review: UNCLE $CROOGE #378 [June 2008, Gemstone Publishing])

Enough "fast ones" are pulled in the latest issue of UNCLE $CROOGE to satiate even the most jaded thimblerigger or scofflaw. Scrooge himself gets the proceedings off to a sleazy start in the 1962 Italian story "Taking the Plunge," in which he strongarms Donald into taking the place of a missing cliff-diver who entertains guests at Scrooge's Mexican "mega-cafe." To make sure Don doesn't weasel out, Scrooge employs a guardian goat to watch him -- a quintessentially loopy touch from a decidedly weird era of Italian Disney comics. After one dive to near-doom, Don falls into the clutches of the Beagle Boys, who're seeking sunken treasure ships and are nabbing divers to do their "clean" dirty work. Scrooge and the goat climb to the rescue, helped in no small part by the convenient fact that the Beagles' hideout is literally on the other side of the mountain from the original diving site. That's either arrogance on the part of the Beagles or laziness on the part of writers Abramo and Barrasso; I suspect the latter. Scrooge claims the treasure, but, before cashing in, he "gets his" for being so sneaky -- and no prizes for guessing how he pays for his sins. Romano Scarpa and Rodolfo Cimino handle the artistic chores and do a good job of making the goat a legitimately amusing character.

Scrooge, Donald, and the Beagles are again on hand for Marco Rota's "The Legend of the Spanish Fort," with each using the services of Seminole Indian guide Foxy Badger to seek out an abandoned Floridian outpost. The B-Boys use it to cache stolen loot, while Scrooge and Don are intrigued by Badger's tale of a legendary lost Spanish treasure supposedly hidden at the fort. Badger requests no pay for his services and disappears at odd moments, which leads the reader to believe that a con job is afoot long before Badger's ulterior motive is revealed. The story is decent enough but never really takes off, and it's tough to decide whether to blame the measured pace of Rota's original narrative or John Clark's blase dialogue.

In Carl Barks' 1961 tale "Boat Buster," a conniving Scrooge seeks an "edge" that winds up cutting both ways. Determined to show that McDuck Super-Zow Gasoline performs better than the Ramfire Petrol manufactured by combative tycoon John D. Rockerduck (whose only appearance in a Barks story this was), Scrooge enters a boat in the Yellowrado River Water Derby. Alas, Scrooge makes the foolish mistake of trusting to luck to choose his driver, and Donald gets the duty. Don does his legitimate best despite suffering the expected setbacks (with the Nephews amusingly ready to help him in a pinch with backup plans), but Scrooge wants the sure win and gives his gasoline to 98 of the other 100 boats in the race. Improbable disaster ensues, and guess whose craft Donald winds up piloting home? I'm tempted to compare this story to the LAUNCHPAD McQUACK epic "Fool for Fuel" that I dialogued for Gemstone not too long ago, but I'm not going to go there. "Buster" isn't one of Barks' best, but not even a healthy dose of Rockerduck's "Hypersonic Element K" would've helped the original plot of that LAUNCHPAD story very much.

Michael Gilbert and Euclides Miyaura's GYRO GEARLOOSE tale "Leonardo da Gearloose" provides a nice contrast to the sleazy doings seen elsewhere between these covers. Determined to become a multifaceted creator in the tradition of Leonardo da Vinci, Gyro takes up painting, but he can't seem to shake free of a mindset devoted to "science, science and more science!". Gyro's yen to transcend his role as "gadgetman" has been explored before, of course, in stories like the classic DuckTales episode "Sir Gyro de Gearloose" (hmm, methinks Gilbert might have been influenced by that ep's title, at least). In this case, I have to agree with Donald and Daisy: even a modestly imaginative Gearloose invention is inherently more artistic than the "throw-up art" championed by Gyro's demanding art instructor, Mr. Slapdash. I'd rather go to "Gyro's Scientific Art Gallery" than a showing of most modern art any day of the week.