RIP Christine Cavanaugh and Edward Herrmann

I wish I could have waited at least a LITTLE while to do the first 2015 obituary post...

Retired (since 2001) actress Christine Cavanaugh died on December 22 of leukemia at the age of 51.  To the general public, she'll be best remembered as the voice of Babe the pig in the surprise film hit of 1995 -- she got paid a "whopping" $27,000 for that role, remarkably enough -- and her best-known voice-acting role is, and probably always will be, Chucky from Rugrats.  In this precinct, of course, Darkwing Duck's Gosalyn Mallard will forever be the first thing that comes to mind (or ear) when she is mentioned.  I don't know that another voice actress could have pulled off Gos' unique combination of sweetness and snarkiness quite so well. 

Actor Edward Herrmann died on New Year's Eve of brain cancer at the age of 71.  He was one of those peripatetic, all-purpose "hey, it's THAT guy again" performers... appearing in both movie and TV productions of brows both low and high, doing voiceover commercial narration (most famously for Dodge). His casting as Richard Rich, Sr., in the live-action Richie Rich movie (1994) was a bit odd -- he didn't look anything like the Mr. Rich of the comics, and he may have injected a little too much lightheartedness into his interpretation of the character -- but he wound up doing a very solid job, as did many of the other adult performers who strained mightily to make up for the black-tuxedo'ed, Macaulay Culkin-sized hole at the center of the film.  (If Macaulay's performance here didn't murder what was then left of his acting career, then it surely would qualify as an unindicted co-conspirator in the crime.)  I'll say this: Herrmann's turn as the elder Rich was certainly more memorable than that of Martin Mull, who did the honors in the movie's direct-to-video sequel, Richie Rich's Christmas Wish (1998).

Thanks to both of these talented performers for all their fine work, and let's hope that we DO NOT have to do this again for a good, long while.

Book Review: THE COMPLETE DICK TRACY, Volume 17: 1956-57 by Chester Gould (IDW Publishing/Library of American Comics, 2014)... plus RIP Jay Maeder

** SPOILERS **

This latest TRACY collection begins by wrapping up the "Joe Period and Flattop Jr." continuity.  The denouement features one of Gould's most (literally) haunting sequence of images, as the ghost/spirit of a murder victim of Flattop Jr.'s literally attaches itself to his neck and won't let go until he himself is gunned down.  By the time Flattop meets his demise, he is white-haired and completely barmy.  The fact that he is a teenager makes the images particularly compelling.  Joe Period doesn't fare much better, getting arrested by Tracy and crew after scoring his first (and, since he's thereby doomed to the electric chair, only) notch on the old gun-butt.  In another highly effective and eerily mounted series of strips, Joe's grieving mother comes to see him in prison, laments her inability to be a good and responsible parent for her boy... and promptly commits suicide by running out into city traffic.  Gould applies a final twist of the knife when he refuses to let us see Joe's on-panel reaction to the shocking news; all we get is a panel of a guard coming to tell the "juvie" prisoner that something has happened.

The Joe Period/Flattop Jr. tale was the latest one in time order to be reprinted by Harvey Comics' old DICK TRACY COMICS MONTHLY.  From here on in, easily accessible pre-IDW reprints of TRACY continuities will be conspicuous by their absence.  Not quite "uncharted waters," but close enough to smell the salt air.

The year 1957, the very crux of the 50s, was once described as "the year it seemed that everyone graduated from high school -- or at least wished they had."  As for Gould, well, he had certainly had better years.  The Kitten Sisters, a trio of close-cropped, acrobatic, "butch" burglars who take a giant step up on the ladder of crime when they commit a revenge murder, are fairly interesting as characters, but they are almost captured too easily: these are the types of arrogant villains that I would have expected to have gone down in "a blaze of gory."  There's actually more bloodshed in the next continuity, which is supposed to serve as comedy relief, or at least I heard some rumor to that effect.  B.O. Plenty's father Morin Plenty (it only seems as if old B.O. has had as many relatives as Snoopy) spends many weeks of panels touting his amazing new invention, a screw-on shoe heel, only to vow bloody revenge after a pair of would-be swindlers cause the death of his barefooted, teenaged hillbilly wife Blossom.  In his Introduction, Max Allan Collins calls this Gould's worst comedy continuity ever.  I can't bring myself to go that far.  OK, it's far from a laugh riot, but Morin is an engaging, genial sort, with an energy that belies his advanced age, and it's genuinely touching to see him break down after Blossom is killed.  Some of Gould's comedy bits from the 30s -- the ones with half-witted wannabe rube detectives and stereotypical black servants -- were far more annoying than this.  The whole affair comes to a classic DICK TRACY conclusion, with the requisite high body count.  Thankfully, despite his vow of revenge, Morin wasn't involved in any of the carnage.

Atypically, the volume closes on the end of a continuity, the tale of the unfortunate Crystal family and the "mad" mother Elsa.  Child abuse, fire, flood, drug pushing, and a gruesome form of murder all compete for attention in this story.

Several "this could only have happened in the 50s" moments are scattered about.  Tracy and his partner Sam Catchem get crew cuts, and Tracy gets involved in a young men's organization that wants to combat the JD plague by having its members "dress like men," as opposed to outfitting themselves in leather jackets and skintight jeans.  Collins sniffs at the idea, joking that he "must have missed" the day when that was discussed in school.  But now that we have college students routinely coming to class wearing baggy pants and pajama bottoms... who's to say that Gould wasn't onto something?

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This volume is dedicated to NEW YORK DAILY NEWS columnist Jay Maeder, who died in July of cancer.  If any of you are wondering about the origins of my interest in DICK TRACY, you have a combination of Maeder and the first (sort of) incarnation of Gladstone Comics to blame.  Back in the early Summer of 1990, as stores filled up with chatchkas of all sorts touting the Disney-Touchstone Dick Tracy movie and various local TV stations unwittingly set themselves up for various ethnic protests by planning a rerelease UPA's old Dick Tracy Show, Maeder published a paperback biography of the jut-jawed flatfoot.  As fate would have it, Gladstone, trying to keep its hand in the comics game after Disney had stepped in and given the Disney comics license to its own comics subsidiary, had recently started publishing a DICK TRACY reprint title.  Wanting to continue my support of Gladstone, I bought the reprint comics, liked them, saw the Maeder book in a local library, bought it, and thoroughly enjoyed Maeder's virtually year-by-year examination of the progress of Gould's strip.  Having read all of the IDW volumes, I now know that Maeder simplified some things and got some other things wrong, but it was his enthusiasm for the strip and its milieu that grabbed me.  I've maintained that level of interest ever since. 

Some years after writing the TRACY bio, Maeder took over the writing chores on the near-moribund LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE strip and boldly "reimagined" it for the 21st century -- changing Annie's dress and appearance, giving her a female adventuress for a companion, etc.  That didn't prevent ANNIE from ultimately being "orphaned" for good and all, but it was Maeder's devotion to the idea of the classic newspaper adventure strip that should, and hopefully will, be remembered.  Thanks, Mr. Maeder, for fighting the good fight.

Back Home!

I was finally sprung yesterday afternoon and am now ready to start my home recovery.  It wasn't what you would call a "clean" getaway -- I still have a drain attached to the incision site, which makes it a pain to dress, shower, etc. -- but the kidney itself appears to be functioning fine.

Sorry for the lack of updates after Thursday.  Friday and Saturday were fairly uneventful but I then had a setback of sorts on Sunday morning.  After breakfast, I was standing up for Nicky to give me a wipedown (cleaning with hand wipes) when I suddenly felt horribly dizzy.  As I collapsed back into bed, my lower abdomen suddenly swelled almost out of control, and I felt excruciating pain.  Happily, the day nurse had just come on duty and had just stopped by our room.  She was able to get several other people to help her in short order.  I was put back on oxygen while they tried to figure out what had happened to me.  The most likely explanation is gas that had been building up in my system suddenly getting trapped and finding no place to go.  Bottom line, it took me the better part of two days to feel anything like fully recovered.  I found it much harder to walk because some of the muscles in my lower abdomen must have been strained.  When we got home yesterday, the soreness made it hard for me to stand upright as I was showering and getting set for bed.  Thank God, today the soreness seems a lot more manageable.

I now have a very strict regimen of medications to fight organ rejection and protect me from getting sick due to my immunocompromised state.  I'll also have regular visits for blood work and visits to the post-transplant clinic for a while.  The real danger zone in terms of major complications is the first 90 days after surgery, so, from now until the end of October, I'm going to have to be particularly careful about crowds and other potentially infectious situations.  I'm guessing that Stevenson will ask me to sit out the fall term and come back in February (next January will mark the first time that SU is offering a winter term).  As for getting back to blogging, I'm not going to post anything new until at least August 7, the date of my first clinic visit.  You can get in touch with me via email (kimba_1962@verizon.net) or my cell phone (443 929 6013) or home phone (410 902 8450).  Aside from lab and clinic visits, I'm going to be pretty "house-locked" for a while, so I'd love to hear from you if you get the chance.

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While I was in the hospital, Nicky passed along a bit of sad news.  Our longtime favorite local pizza place, New York Pizza Company, has closed.  Some of you have gone there with us and know about the place.  Luckily, another, and potentially even MORE authentic, pizza and sandwich emporium has  just recently opened near the Owings Mills metro stop.  Joe will be happy to know that it is the closest thing to Ray Bari pizza that we have yet encountered in this area.  In all honesty, the quality of NYPC food had dropped in recent days -- I think that losing one or two of their better cooks didn't help -- and they apparently couldn't make enough money in the Summer to make up for the business they did during the SU school year.

RIP Captain Harvey's Restaurant and Coffee with T.

Two local eateries of Nicky's and my acquaintance closed their doors recently.  Actually, Coffee with T. would be better described as a "nibblery," since its main selling point was -- you guessed it -- caffeinated drinks of various sorts.  After the demise of Owings Mills' Java Journeys a few years ago, Coffee with T. was one of the very few coffee-centric joints within a reasonable distance of where we live.  It was located in Stevenson Village, a collection of eclectic shops and a tiny post office in "the heart of Stevenson" (a somewhat unverifiable claim given that the town of Stevenson doesn't consist of very much to begin with).  I went to Coffee with T. to get lunch on those occasions when I needed to mail something and didn't have the time or inclination to wait in line at the much larger Owings Mills P.O.  I might still be able to do that, since the site has been turned into a satellite of Stone Mill Bakery, a larger (and much more outrageously overpriced) concern of similar type, but I would feel better about patronizing the business if it were still a go-it-alone concern.

Owings Mills itself suffered a much bigger dining loss in early November when Captain Harvey's Seafood Restaurant closed its doors.  The restaurant had existed since the 1930s and had been in its location on Reisterstown Road for 60 years. Though it is one of a relatively small number of higher-end, "non-chain" dining establishments in the area, it took Nicky and I a while before we decided to give it a try.  Perhaps it was the yardarm roadside sign, perhaps the crabhouse attached to the side of the main dining area like an oversized barnacle, but we rarely drove by it without making some joke about the proprietors greeting patrons with "Welcome Aboard!" or there being old fishing nets and crab pots tacked on the dining-room walls.  In downtown Baltimore, there's a seafood place that is literally shaped like a boat, and we figured that Captain Harvey's, for all of its conventional exterior looks, was probably such a place.

When we finally decided to gird our loins (not in public, mind you) and visit the Captain's quarters, the place turned out to be... not that bad.  Since we are not big fish, crab, or lobster eaters, the two big selling points for us were the weekly non-seafood dinner specials (beef tenderloin, fried chicken, etc.) and the everything-included Thanksgiving dinner.  On the few occasions we visited, the food was at least reasonably decent.  The wood-paneled, darkish main dining area and dark patterned rug, however, simply screamed "70s."  Since the place was partially rebuilt in 1972 after it was damaged by a fire, I suppose that we shouldn't have been all that surprised by the decor.  The refusal to change said decor, however, probably made it harder to attract a younger clientele in recent years.  Nicky suggested that the restaurant had to close because many of its key patrons had died off, and that seems a reasonable conclusion. 

Whereas Coffee with T. was at least replaced by another, somewhat similar establishment, Captain Harvey's suffered the indignity of being bought out by the Royal Farms convenience-store chain.  For the moment, the crabhouse is still open, but the place's supplies are slowly being sold off.  It's a sad way to end 80 years in business, but the dining world, like the rest of the cosmos, does move.

RIP Bob Kurland

Bob Kurland, the first great seven-foot big man in basketball history, died the other day at age 88.  He led Oklahoma State (called Oklahoma A&M back then) to consecutive national titles in 1945 and 1946 and also played on several Olympic teams in the 40s and 50s.  He was eligible to do the latter because he never played professional basketball; he worked as an engineer for Phillips Petroleum and played on the company's amateur team.

The funny thing about Kurland is the fact that he was often ridiculed as a player.  A rival coach called him the "Glandular Goon."  Given that he was personally responsible for the creation of the defensive goaltending rule (thanks to his habit of grabbing opponents' shots out of the air as they were about to fall into the basket) and is credited with the first slam dunk in an official game, one can easily detect a combination of resentment and envy in such words.

Pawgetaboudit!

The recently deceased actor James Gandolfini's career intersected with that of Nicky's family a couple of years ago.  Nicky's Uncle Rick has built up a dog-training business with several four-footed "alumni" who have gone on to appear in movies, TV shows, print ads, and commercials.  One of his charges, a Chihuahua named Spidey, appeared with Gandolfini in a commercial for American Airlines.  This commercial still appears on TV from time to time.

RIP Jonathan Winters

Here's the late Winters' most famous scene from his most famous movie role.  I've always loved this movie, overkill and all, and this scene encapsulates why.  Winters' destruction of the gas station is positively operatic in scope.

DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 20, "Send in the Clones"... plus a VERY Belated RIP Joan Gerber

I'm finally "out the other end of the tunnel," final-exam-wise, and am free to do a DT RETRO for the first time in several weeks.  There will be a special addendum to this edition, however.  I had heard rumors last year that Joan Gerber (Mrs. Beakley, Glittering Goldie, the "original" Webra Walters) had died, but I was never able to get an absolute confirmation of the fact.  (Some sources still haven't; Wikipedia's entry for Ms. Gerber, for example, still does not list her death date.)  Now, however, I have confirmed from multiple sources that Ms. Gerber did indeed pass away last August 22.  After Hal Smith, Hamilton Camp, and Kathleen Freeman, she's the fourth principal cast member of DuckTales to have died.  I'll pay a tribute to her following "DuckBlurbs."

Even at this late date, it's possible to engage in reasonable speculation as to why certain DuckTales episodes were chosen for broadcast in the series' all-important first week of syndication (September 21-25, 1987).  "Sphinx for the Memories" probably made the cut to reassure nervous viewers (those who hadn't watched "Treasure of the Golden Suns," anyway) that Donald would have some sort of role to play.  "Armstrong" and "Robot Robbers" had an explicit continuity link (with Scrooge angrily referencing Gyro's near-disastrous creation of Armstrong when he gets a load of the titular automatons in the latter ep), and it therefore made sense to broadcast them reasonably close to one another in time order.  In my post about "Armstrong," I suggested that WDTVA chose to spotlight that episode in the first place in order to showcase its outstanding animation.  "Where No Duck Has Gone Before" placed an homage to Star Trek in a Duck-context -- certainly, a slam-dunk choice to grab folks' attention.  And then, there's "Send in the Clones," which got the honor of leading off that first week.  How come?

(1)  It's a first-rate introduction to Magica De Spell for newbies, and a fine "initial animated experience" with the character for viewers who are already familiar with her.

(2)  Its semi-farcical, mistaken-identity-focused, slammed-door-filled approach provides a nice contrast to the more-or-less "classic" treasure-hunting subject matter of "Golden Suns," giving viewers a hint as to the vast range of thematic approaches that DuckTales would ultimately spread before the camera.   

(3)  The setting of the healthy majority of the episode inside McDuck Mansion provides a similar contrast to the extensive globe-trotting seen in "Golden Suns."  Indeed, given how little we saw of Scrooge's "home life" in Carl Barks' stories -- truth be told, it was hard to tell if Scrooge even HAD a "home life" most of the time -- "Clones" provides an early indication that the world of what Pete Fernbaugh termed "The Domestic McDuck" will get a good deal of attention during the series.

(4)  Despite occasionally shaky figure drawing, the animation is excellent, even flashily flamboyant at times. The animation definitely gets across the idea that the characters are delighted to be starring in a syndicated strip series.  Why, they're positively jumping with joy!

Seriously, did someone involved with this episode take inspiration from Van Halen?

Given all of the frenetic activity (vertical and otherwise) that's to follow, it's not surprising that Magica De Spell comes off as what GeoX accurately terms "entertainingly flamboyantly maniacal" in the opening scene of "Clones."  It is, however, something of a departure from Barks' treatment of the character in the 1960s.  The typical Barks Magica story concluded with a frustrated Magica pitching an hysterical fit, but she generally spent most of the rest of the story acting as a reasonably cool customer.  (One notable exception is "For Old Dime's Sake," in which she works herself up into a lather as she summons various natural phenomena to attack Scrooge's Money Bin.  By that time, with several unsuccessful Dime-glomming schemes already under her garter [and no doubt galling her skin], she could perhaps be excused for working out some of her resentment right off the bat.) In "Clones," by contrast, she's "on" from the off, as if to drill into our brains for all time the importance that she attaches to Scrooge's Old #1 Dime and the uses to which she plans to put it once she gets her hands on it.  It's not exactly subtle, but it's effective.

As I noted in my commentary on "Magica's Magic Mirror," Magica's adoption of a Russian (or, if you prefer, "European") accent is a small price to pay for the privilege of getting June Foray into the voice cast.  The ditching of the "Italian connection" is also made easier to accept due to the fact that the "Mount Vesuvius" that serves as Magica's base here is clearly NOT the "Mount Vesuvius" on the shores of the Gulf of Naples.  For one thing, it's an isolated island in the middle of a large body of water, as we see in the climactic "backfiring spell" scene.  For another... well, I doubt very much that the Italian government would approve of Magica's "remodeling" of the mountain's summit to suit her purposes.  I suppose we'll just have to count the DuckTales Vesuvius as being a different construct altogether.  At least now, it would make sense for airlines to have "flights to Vesuvius" (as opposed to Naples or some other nearby location).  The idea of "flights" to a natural phenomenon (a potentially dangerous one, yet!) never did seem right to me in Magica stories, but now, one would almost HAVE to fly in order to get to Magica's stronghold.  Strangely, though, in the later "Raiders of the Lost Harp," we see a mailman drive his van right up to Magica's mailbox.  Right hand, left hand...

We also have a bit of a problem regarding Magica's ultimate plans for Old #1.  The "melting" and "amulet" aspects are preserved, but... "taking over the world" with the help of the coveted coin?  Perhaps Magica should have specifically referred to "taking over the financial world"?  I agree with GeoX; this additional motivation simply seems like overkill.  I do, however, think that I understand why Magica claims that she will only turn Poe back into her brother once she's created her amulet.  In the spirit of "pour encourager les autres," I rather think that she's holding out on restoring Poe to his normal self until he, er, "cooperates" and helps her get the dime.  (BTW, if we're going to pull DT's chain for giving Magica a Russian accent, then shouldn't we jump on the series with just as much force for not giving Poe an accent AT ALL?)

If Magica's demeanor, home base, and dime-tactics are rather different here than what a Barks purist might expect, then Scrooge's preoccupation with his public image is just as unexpected.  Despite the perceptible "softening" of his character in the end, Scrooge still had his moments of public asperity in "Golden Suns," reaming out a whistling employee and tossing solicitors out of his office for fun, to take just a few examples.  Even when he acceded to the interview at the candy factory at the end of "Don't Give Up the Ship," he spoke in bland business platitudes and was initially baffled by the TV reporter's question about his family.  In "Clones," however, he opens his mansion to Webra Walters specifically to allow her to do a story on his family.  The Scrooge who howled about having his picture printed in JOLT magazine in "North of the Yukon" would not be amused.  Of course, Scrooge's desire to exploit the interview in an attempt to project a "positive image" makes the clone-caused confusion (and Scrooge's panicked reactions to it) all the funnier.  It must be said, however, that this is purely a DuckTales scenario; it's hard to imagine it occurring in a typical Barks tale.  The same holds true with the episode's heavy reliance on what Greg terms "Cartoon Duck Syndrome."  In order to keep the plot from vaporizing before our eyes, everyone must overlook the Beagle-Nephews' obviously faked voices, Webra must be suspicious enough of the goings-on to create humorous tension between herself and Scrooge but not sufficiently suspicious to blow the whistle on the whole deal, Magica and the Beagles must be unable to hear Huey and Mrs. Beakley's loud voices in Magica's lair, and so forth.  If a hard-core Barks fan missed "Golden Suns" and started his or her DT-watching with this ep, then for him or her to have had a condescending reaction to the "non-Barksian" aspects of the plot would not have been a major surprise.  "Golden Suns" watchers, however, would quickly have recognized a continuation of the "kinder, gentler" Scrooge and the somewhat more "relaxed" TV-animation logic of the pilot adventure.

The Magica/Beagles crossover here is intriguing, but not a whole lot is done to take advantage of the contrast in these characters' villainous styles. No sooner has Magica gotten the Beagles out of the slammer than the clone-scheme is underway and subtle characterization is put aside (partially because the characters are playing the roles of other characters a good deal of the time).  The scene in which the Beagles pridefully sneer at Magica's request that they go after a "measly dime" is the closest that the ep gets to playing with the contrast in any meaningful way.

"Clones" does rather better with another character-based notion -- that of giving one of the Nephews a starring role.  Well, perhaps it would be better to call the role a "semi-starring" one.  Huey's assumption of "extra duties" here is nothing like Dewey's discontent-fueled driving of the key subplot in "Duck in the Iron Mask".  Basically, he just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and is forced to accompany Bigtime, Babyface, and Magica back to Vesuvius.  I would like to think that, had Dewey or Louie been put in the same position, they would have handled it equally well.  Even so, one has to be impressed with the way in which Huey handled his prodigious workload in the final third of this episode: busting knots, climbing the cliff under extreme duress, being forced to play matador and dodge a dragon, flinging dangerous magical chemicals around Magica's lair, and, of course, executing that eye-popping "vertical leap from a standing start" just before Magica grabs him.  It's only fair to add that, when HD&L excitedly relate their "Quacker-Snatcher" theory to Webra, it's Huey who takes the main lead in doing so.  It's almost as if he were able to anticipate what was ahead for him.

Pete Fernbaugh's review of "Clones" includes an excellent discussion of the "domestic" aspects of this episode -- in particular, its emphasis on the importance of family and how that emphasis helped to mellow Scrooge's character for the TV audience.  I think that this episode's climax struck just about the right note in how it handled the choice that Scrooge must make between Old #1 and Huey.  Scrooge's decision to give Old #1 to Magica in order to get Huey back simply seems "right" in context, especially after the events of "Golden Suns" served to cement the bonds of loyalty between Scrooge and his family members (in particular, the boys).  If Scrooge's determination to reclaim Castle McDuck in "The Curse of Castle McDuck" was backwards-looking, focusing on the importance of the past, then his apparent surrender of Old #1 here indicates a willingness to sacrifice for the future -- specifically, for one of his putative heirs.  The fact that Scrooge winds up outfoxing Magica (with the help of a tremendous slice of luck -- that juggling act with the dimes after Huey broke free from the Beagles and disrupted the trade certainly wasn't in his original plan) makes him seem both compassionate and clever -- a nice combination of Barks' "smarter than the smarties" miser and the "nicer than he used to be" Scrooge of the TV series.

"Send in the Clones" gets its non-trivial job done in a fun and enjoyable way.  It immediately grabs the viewer's attention, introduces a major villain, brings forth plenty of chuckles, and firmly establishes the series' credibility when it comes to producing self-contained 22-minute adventures.

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"DuckBlurbs"

 

(GeoX)  ...[T]here's an incredibly weird ending: the ducks and the reporter fly away from Vesuvius in a helicopter; Magica is swearing revenge in the distance, to which they all simultaneously shrug their shoulders and declare: "she gets so carried away!" Is it a parody of hokey, self-conscious endings like that, or is it the thing itself? And is it supposed to be some sort of punchline? It looks like it's meant to be a one-liner of some sort, but it's not, I dunno, funny, or meaningful, or anything. A strange and infelicitous way to close the show out.

As a commenter pointed out on your blog, Geo, this was merely the climax to a running gag.  To be sure, one can debate about how good the gag was, but at least they tried to pay it off in a big way, with all of the good-guy characters pitching in to help punch it across.  (It's funny how they all automatically knew to say the line at the same time, however.)

(Greg) [Magica] throws more dust into the fire and notice the middle of the pentagram: There is a circle around it; but if you look closely; you can see the shape of a pentagon around it (thus proving that this is a pentagram). Disney would NEVER get away with this ever again even if they sell a DVD set which contains Ducktales episodes with that symbol.

Ah yes, the pentagram!  You get an even better view of the layout when raven-Magica does her power-swoop during the magical battle...

To be perfectly honest, I never paid much attention to the presence of this figure, and I doubt that even the most hypersensitive anti-occultist did so at the time.  Magica is a magical villainess, so it isn't surprising that her lair would feature some contentious symbolism.  The problem with a later banned episode like Darkwing Duck's "Hot Spells" was that it took what was already a more controversial idea (the use of magic-wielder Morgana as a protagonist -- or reformed villainess, if you want to get technical about it) and then upped the ante with references to the Devil, Hell, and the imperiling of souls.  I don't like the idea of any Disney Afternoon episode being banned, but the contrast between these two very different reactions to "occult material" is quite understandable.

(Greg)  Mrs. Beakly proclaims to Scrooge not to worry because this will be perfect. Scrooge changes the mirror on Mrs. Beakly and leaves as Beakly didn't like that one. Then we get logic break #2 as she was in clear sight of seeing the mirror with the Beagle Boys image on it looking for items. She turns around and orders them to go upstairs which stops the Beagle Nephews from stealing. 

Actually, I think that she's looking past the mirror and therefore can't see the Beagles inside it.  Either that, or she is standing at such an angle that she can see figures moving on the surface of the mirror (which prompts her to order the Beagle-Nephews to go and change clothes) but can't make out who the figures are.

Incidentally, why should Magica's clone-spell have the flaw that "mirrors will reveal [disguised characters'] real identity"?  Shouldn't that little detail have been fixed by Magica some time ago?  Or hasn't Magica reached the relevant page of SORCERY FOR DUMMIES yet?

(Greg)  Burger Nephew hugs Webby's Quackerpatch doll (Aw! Burger is sweeter than the real nephews combined in Webby's eyes now and thus making them heel and Burger babyface by proxy.) and Big Time Nephew grabs onto it blowing him off and then we get the tug-o-war on the doll and it gets racked as Webby protests this outrage...

Every time that I see Webby's Quacky Patch doll, I start to search for some kind of meta-comment on marketing.  Is the tug of war here some sort of unspoken criticism of how consumers fight one another for the "hot marketing sensation of the season"?  Probably not, but the thought itself is more imaginative than anything Charles Schulz came up with for Tapioca Pudding.

(Greg)  So we head back to Magica's Satan 666 Jet of Death (Now there is something Don Karnage should have stolen; just to be cool)...

Considering that Barks' Magica usually seemed content to travel to and from Duckburg on garden-variety airplanes, the DT Magica has a most impressive fleet of airborne vehicles.  The "Satan 666 Jet of Death" here and the claw-footed helicopter in "Raiders of the Lost Harp" should each have been used more than once.  Unfortunately, they weren't.  Indeed, in Magica's final appearance in the second season's "The Unbreakable Bin," she goes "transportationally old-school" and rides a broom.  The diverse array of transportation options seems all of a piece with the "flashier" and "splashier" aspects of the DT Magica's persona.

 
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Joan Gerber

Greg had some comments in his "Clones" review about Joan Gerber's frequently "wooden" performances as Mrs. Beakley.  I definitely got that impression on more than one occasion, and Joan's Mae West impression for Glittering Goldie also had its overly studied aspects (though they were more understandable for a voice that was more highly stylized to begin with).  I wonder whether Joan's prior voice work had conditioned her to employ such an approach.  Certainly, her first major voice-acting job encouraged stylized performances, since the "animation" (if you could call it that) was about as stiff and minimal as can be imagined:

Later, as "The Story Lady" -- think a radio version of Jay Ward's Fractured Fairy Tales, in a highly compressed format --  Joan read "fairy tales with a twist" in a purposefully modulated voice.

By the time of Wait Till Your Father Gets Home in 1973, the pattern was well-established.  As Irma Boyle, Joan gave a solid -- but also fairly stolid -- performance, one reflected quite well in the opening theme song:

All things considered, I think that Joan did the best work of her career for DuckTales.  Mrs. Beakley was a very likable character, and I think it's fair to say that a number of Duck fans, irrespective of their general feelings about the series, latched onto Joan's Mae West-ish interpretation of Glittering Goldie and gladly accepted it as canonical.  It simply seemed that a conniving dance-hall girl "in the days of the great Klondike gold rush" OUGHT to sound like that.  The fact that the Mae West impression made Goldie seem more like a sexpot didn't hurt either.  Who knows, it might even have made an impression on Don Rosa.  Not a bad legacy to leave, Ms. Gerber.

Next:  Episode 21, "Superdoo!".

RIP Michael Rye

Greg Weagle reports that veteran radio actor and voice artist Michael Rye died last week at the age of 94.  We WDTVA die-hards know him best as the voice of Duke Igthorn and King Gregor on Gummi Bears.  He also played supporting roles in the DuckTales episode "Once Upon a Dime" (alas!) and the TaleSpin episode "The Road to Macadamia" (not so much!).

Rye also voiced The Lone Ranger -- perhaps his best-known role in animation outside the "kingdom limits" of Dunwyn -- and enjoyed a radio career that spanned several decades.  As Rye Billsbury, he was the "genial Mr. First Nighter" on the popular Broadway anthology show The First Nighter Program from 1945 to 1953.  Give a listen to him here.

RIP Shasta "McSchnoo" Barat

We fought the inevitable as long and as creatively as we could, but, this morning, we had to go to the vet to put Shasta down.  Her kidney problems had gotten slowly but steadily worse since my last post on the subject.  Her appetite came and went but had mostly been absent during the past several weeks.  She also had become quite listless and was having nervous tremors which made it difficult for her to stand up or go outside on her own.  We took her to the vet last night for blood work and learned that several of her "key indicator" levels were way out of whack.  We changed her medication as directed and planned to bring her back for a checkup this coming Wednesday.  Early this morning, however, she appeared to have some kind of a seizure and was obviously in considerable pain after that.  The vet theorized that her kidneys were shutting down and that her body was trying to compensate.  Whatever the cause of the seizure, there was no real hope of improvement.

In truth, Shasta was never the same after Harry died in May.  She seemed to miss the companionship, and I don't think that she took too well to being all by herself when Nicky and I were out of the house.  Shasta's medical problems simply made things worse, but she was at least holding her own on that front until very recently.

Nicky says that this is the first time in at least 25 years that she hasn't had a dog.  We'll certainly get another one at some point in the future, but, for the moment, we need some time to recoup and regroup.

"One Dead in Ohio"?

Oh, how I wish this were a parody on the order of something in THE ONION.  But, no, it's apparently clipped from a "straight" online news report.  This gives the phrase "I don't believe the liberal media!" a whole new meaning.

RIP Neil Armstrong

Now THIS makes me feel old.  I can just barely remember the Apollo 11 flight; my parents had our next-door neighbors in Wilmington over to watch the coverage of the moon walk, which took place late at night.  Try as I might, I can't recall whether I was able to stay awake to watch Armstrong take those epochal first steps on the lunar surface.  Of course, the landing was far more stressful for all concerned, especially the astronauts themselves.

Will I live to see the 21st century equivalent of Neil Armstrong take the first steps on Mars?  It's not looking too good at present.  Still, I have hopes.

Comics Review: RICHIE RICH: RICH RESCUE #6 (Ape Entertainment, 2012)

By Jove, I think they're getting it!  Either that, or there's some mystical significance in the fact that the two best issues of RR:RR to date -- this one and #3 -- are both multiples of three.  I'd certainly like to think that we won't have to wait until issue #9 to top this, the first true "book-length" RR:RR adventure (save for one Warren Kremer gag and a pin-up page) and a tale fully worthy of the extended treatment.  Put plainly, what "Hero for a Day!" in #5 did wrong in terms of "reimaginings" of "classic" RICH cast members, the 22-page "The Loch is the Key" does right.  Richie's snooty would-be girlfriend Mayda Munny and publicity-seeking Aunt Noovo make their series debuts here, and, while both are fairly unrecognizable in a physical sense (Noovo much more so than Mayda), the new uses to which they are put generally make good sense in light of how the original characters operated. Writer Buddy Scalera, who mucked up the intros of Freckles and Pee-Wee and turned Dr. Derange of "Convac" fame into a villain in #5, completely reverses field with this effort, for which I'm quite grateful.  We also see the introduction of Jade Green, Mayda's hyper-talented "personal valet" (is this the mature Kim Possible's future, I wonder?), and learn that Cadbury's past includes an intriguing personal relationship not involving the seemingly inevitable Sir Ruddy Blighter.  The plot does go somewhat wobbly at the very end, and Marcelo Ferreira's anime-flavored art, though probably more suited to the somewhat more serious doings herein than James Silvani's art would have been, again plays some Skeezix-ish havoc with certain characters' extremities (poor Gloria looks particularly anorexic in some shots).  Still in all, there's a whole lot to like here, and I'm starting to have some real hope for the future of this title, provided that this level of attention to detail can be maintained.

"Loch" is both the very first Mayda Munny adventure story of any stripe that I've ever seen and, arguably, the best Mayda story ever, period.  Not exactly a daunting hurdle to vault, I will admit; the Mayda stories of the "classic" era, mostly of the five-page "filler" variety, focused with a relentless fixation on the spoiled "pocket Cher wannabe"'s efforts to get Richie to dump Gloria and become her boy toy, so high drama and physical stakes were not often in play.  (There was at least one "classic" story in which Richie tried to get Mayda to do various physical activities with him, but Mayda proved incapable of even walking through the woods without whining about being inconvenienced.)  Here, Mayda somehow gets wind of the news that Richie's Aunt Noovo (newly recast as a sensation-seeking media "monster hunter") has gone missing at Loch Ness and brings her own rescue team to the Loch to rival the efforts of "Rich Rescue."  It's not made clear whether Mayda, Jade, Mayda's cat Glitter, and Mayda's "highly advanced butler-bot" Serv-O (a reference to a "mechanical butler" of the same name who appeared in an early-70s Ernie Colon-drawn story; unlike that fake factotum, this one is the real thing) have participated in any other rescue missions prior to this one.  Mayda certainly seems to be somewhat inexperienced at this rescue biz; she lacks some of "Rich Rescue"'s equipment (subsequently bellowing, in true imperious fashion, to be given same), finds hiking a chore, falls into a hole in a cave while trying to recover Glitter, and gets her foot caught on a rock, necessitating a Richie and Gloria mini-rescue.  Therefore, it's certainly possible (though not explicitly stated) that she has decided to assume this challenge with the specific purpose of impressing Richie.  For, yes, she is still very much enamored of our hero, though the three-cushion clash between Richie, Gloria, and Mayda is a lot more subtle than that seen in any "classic" story.

This title has already softened Reggie with a fair bit of success, but the challenge of making Mayda palatable in the RR:RR environment was, if anything, even more daunting.  Self-absorbed, mean-spirited, disrespectful, lazy, and bitchy, the "classic" Mayda had only her looks going for her and was almost completely defined by her desire to wreck Richie and Gloria's relationship.  At least the "classic" Reggie played his pranks on lots of other people besides Richie (his rivalry with Richie also led to a non-trivial number of adventure stories).  Scalera sands off some of Mayda's spiky edges by giving her a few moments of introspection (e.g., she admits dejectedly to Jade that Richie's boyfriendship is the one thing her money can't buy) and, remarkably enough, letting her admit to herself that Richie and Gloria DO in fact "make a great team."  The latter, in particular, goes miles beyond anything seen in a "classic" story.  Sure, Mayda's still very self-centered and can't quite bring herself to thank Gloria to the latter's face, but this reconstituted "baby" has already come a long, long way.  She also gets the humanizing trait of being somewhat boy-crazy in general, falling for one of Aunt Noovo's cameramen after Noovo and her crew have been rescued.  She may not get Richie in the end, but at least she has the potential to have other relationships in this brave new "universe"!  (Reggie certainly hopes so; he appears to be quite smitten with Mayda.)  Ferreira's redesign of Mayda's physical appearance makes her look a bit more "exotic" (with a darker skin tone) while preserving the black hair and ever-so-slightly collagen-ized lips.  The end result is pretty attractive, though, on occasion, a shouting Mayda looks more like Lilo, only all grown up now and with big bucks and gadgets.

Jade Green is also quite attractive, in a "female samurai" sort of way, but we honestly don't get to see her do all that much in the way of physical combat, or anything else proactive for that matter.  (Though I do like the somewhat bemused way in which she reacts to Mayda's comments, demands, etc.)  What we do see is Cadbury and Jade reuniting "after all these years." Evidently, they were something of an item back in the day, said "day" including a time when C&J apparently served as some sort of "agents," presumably of the "secret" variety, and participated in adventures as a team.  Well, I wouldn't even have put it past the "classic" Cadbury to have provided such service, so this isn't really a stretch, though the "personal relationship" angle opens up a whole new can of Spotted Dick, so to speak.  Cadbury also makes a fleeting reference to having attended "the Academy"; to what could he be referring?  Sandhurst?  Starfleet?  I certainly hope that this Cadbury-Jade business doesn't wind up being a one-issue "throwaway."  There are definite possibilities here.

As for Aunt Noovo, there seems to be little relationship at first glance between the heavy-set, bespectacled, good-hearted-yet-intently-image-conscious Noovo of the "classic" era and the skinny, jeans-wearing, top-knotted, acerbic "monster hunter" introduced here... but, hold on a minute.  It must be admitted that the new Noovo is at least somewhat akin to the old in that she seems to be "all about the image."  For the RR:RR Noovo, self-proclaimed "beloved TV personality," getting the story is the thing, and looking good doing it is just as important.  She even sends Gloria DVDs of her series as birthday gifts, for crying out loud.  I'd be willing to bet that Scalera at least considered the original Noovo's personality when crafting this new version of the character.

The character dynamics here take up so much of the oxygen that it's easy to forget that there's a plot going on, too... and here, we find a few soft spots.  The inevitable appearance of the Loch Ness Monster and the explanation of its connection to the Rich family and Greymoor Castle (another reference to a "classic" tale; Buddy is nothing if not diligent in these subtle references) is handled OK, albeit in a rather predictably PC-ish sense, but Richie, why the heck didn't you tell your team about what they were going to encounter once they got to the Loch?  You may not have known what happened to Noovo, but you surely could have alerted "Rich Rescue" to the rest of that setup and avoided numerous surprises, perils, and headaches.  You're fortunate that Gloria didn't punch you out after you told the backstory on the final page.  I also really feel that some explicit explanation should have been given as to why Mayda was involved in "rescue ops" to begin with.  Simply having her show up, and then appear with her crew in the "Munny Matters" pin-up at the back of the book, doesn't quite cut it, I'm afraid.  Finally, what's with the green ghosts on Ferreira's cover, which are conspicuous (or as conspicuous as incorporeal entities can ever be) by their complete absence in the story proper? 

BTW, Ape, good show in tributing the recently deceased Sid Couchey on the credits page here.  You may have messed up his name and confused some of his credits in past issues of RR GEMS, but this goes a long way towards redressing those (from a fanboy's perspective) grievances.

UPDATE (8/22/14):  This is the LAST issue of RICHIE RICH: RICH RESCUE to be released to date.  It's fairly safe to say that we have seen the last of this title, I think. 

RIP Dick Beals

Veteran voice actor Dick Beals passed away on May 29 at the age of 85.  The "big little man" of the business (at four feet tall and 70 pounds) was perhaps best known for his commercial voice-overs as Speedy Alka-Seltzer.  Here are a trio of vintage 1950's Speedy ads co-starring the legendary Buster Keaton.  

In the field of animation, Beals famously did the voices of Ralph Phillips, daydreaming star of several Chuck Jones-helmed Warner Bros. shorts, and Roger Ramjet's kid sidekicks Yank and Dan. He was also prominently featured in Ken Snyder Productions' earlier "educational" series, THE FUNNY COMPANY.  Betcha didn't know that he also served as a voice director for at least one PEANUTS special, that being You're in Love, Charlie Brown (1967).  Somehow, I can see him being a very effective coach for the young and inexperienced kids who made up the voice casts in the classic Bill Melendez cartoons.

Beals was still in there pitching in 1987 when he voiced an unnamed (yet still well-characterized) pigface Junior Woodchuck who is among those chivvying Doofus in the DuckTales episode "Superdoo!"  When I first watched the ep, I remember instantly recognizing Beals' voice and just as quickly wondering, "What the heck, is that guy STILL working?"

Beals appears to have been a cheerful, upbeat sort who took his "disability" (which he clearly didn't regard as such) in stride and built a 50-year career in voice acting out of it. He supplemented that by doing everything from leading cheers at his alma mater, Michigan State University, to sailing a custom-fitted yacht in his old age. Thanks for the memories, Dick.

Book Review: KRAZY AND IGNATZ 1922-1924: AT LAST MY DRIM OF LIFE HAS COME TRUE by George Herriman (Fantagraphics Press, 2012)

With this release, Fantagraphics wraps up its packaging -- in this case, as in the case of the last several volumes of the series, "repackaging" is the more appropriate word -- of Herriman's KRAZY KAT Sunday pages.  The book would be thicker than normal in any case, because three years' worth of strips, rather than the standard two, are included here.  But FG also goes the extra mile and plumps the thing out to near-"brick"-like (see what I did there?) proportions by including several other previously unreprinted Herriman strip series.  Indeed, 1903's MRS. WAITAMINNIT, unearthed by Herriman's soon-to-be biographer Michael Tisserand, is a genuine find, as it appears to be Herriman's first continuing daily strip, running through roughly 20 installments in September and October 1903 in the New York EVENING WORLD.  The conceit is simple (a dithering lady unknowingly causes chaos for her hapless husband), and Herriman's figure drawing was still rather crude and inconsistent at this time (Mrs. W. never quite seems to look the same from strip to strip), but traces of Herriman's tradework verbal facility are already apparent, and the vaudeville-style slapstick gags are punched over with verve.  Tisserand provides a useful page of background text on the strip, in addition to contributing to the "Ignatz Mouse Debaffler Pages" at the back.  If this find is representative of the average level of quality of research that Tisserand has put into his Herriman biography, then that forthcoming book should be something.

Following the Kat-Mouse-Pupp-brick main event, Jeet Heer presents a complete color reprinting of US HUSBANDS, a Sunday domestic-comedy strip from 1926-1927.  This is perhaps the most "normal," not to say mundane, Herriman production that I've ever seen, spinning entire pages out of casual incidents and minor disagreements in married life.  The production was casual to the extent that Herriman didn't even bother to keep names and faces of his supposed "main characters" straight.  Just as well, as the wives, husbands, and "confirmed bachelors" here are pretty interchangeable.  In his text introduction, Heer speculates that Herriman cooked up the US HUSBANDS in order to convince the powers that were at King Features that, just in case William Randolph Hearst ever withdrew his personal "patronage" from the esoteric (and not all that popular) KRAZY KAT, then Herriman could, too, contribute more commercially "salable" material to the syndicate's manifest.  This theory seems reasonable to me, given Herriman's known level of insecurity.  (It was probably for the same reason that Herriman also pitched in to help with the panel feature EMBARRASSING MOMENTS at around this time.)  The standard "topper strip" for US HUSBANDS featured anachronistic husband-vs.-wife conflict in a vaguely medieval setting ("oh, thou rogue, thou hast snuck out to ye poker game agayne?!").  This isn't strange; what's strange is the strip's title: MISTAKES WILL HAPPEN (often with a following "." emphasized for some reason).  George, I love ya and I know that your mind worked in mysterious ways at times, but I can't for the life of me figure out how you fell upon this title for that particular scenario.  A meta-comment, perhaps, on how frustrating you found all this extra work to be as these two strips' brief lives slid by?

The end of this series is unfortunate enough, but an additional melancholy note is sounded with a tribute to the recently deceased Bill Blackbeard, Editor-in-Chief of this series from the start and so much more besides.  Blackbeard's role in the gradual, and often grudging, recognition of the comic strip as a legitimate art form -- one worth preserving, studying, and displaying -- over the last 40-odd years was immense.  He was quite literally one of the first people to bring the qualities of strips like E.C. Segar's THIMBLE THEATRE and Floyd Gottfredson's MICKEY MOUSE to the attention of the wider public.  Since a good deal of the material used to produce the KRAZY KAT volumes came directly from Blackbeard's collection, it seems a real shame that he didn't see the entire project through to this triumphant finish.

RIP Harry Barat

In the end, we didn't get a chance to say goodbye.  As some of you know, Harry had been having heart problems in recent days; he suffered several TIA's (transient ischemic attacks) and had a buildup of fluid around his heart.  With the help of blood pressure meds, however, he was basically holding his own and seemed to have several years of life left in him, his loss of eyesight (due to cataracts) notwithstanding.  On Saturday evening, he began having some kind of digestive issue -- moaning, refusing to eat or drink, constantly going in and out of the dog door to try to go to the bathroom -- and it seemed serious enough that we decided to take him to the emergency animal hospital in Carroll County on Sunday morning.  X-rays revealed that he had somehow swallowed a metal screw, so we asked the docs to remove it from his stomach.  Given Harry's advanced age (he was already 7 when we got him from Jack Russell Rescue in 2004) and heart issues, surgery was a calculated risk, but we really had no choice in this case.  Harry had the surgery on Sunday afternoon and seemed to be doing well, and we planned to pick him up this morning.  Last night at 10 p.m., the hospital called to tell us that Harry had gone into cardiac arrest.  They tried open-heart massage, but couldn't get his heart going again for more than a couple of seconds.  Obviously, Nicky and I were both devastated that Harry had to die in an unfamiliar location, and in such a manner.  But what could we do?

Having come from a home in which a man treated him poorly, Harry was understandably skittish around me when we first got him.  Once, he even bit me on the nose when I leaned over him and accidentally disturbed him from his sleep.  But over time, we developed an... interesting synergy, I guess you would say.  Certainly, the little "howling routine" in which he and I participated was unique to us.

We'll always love you, Harry. Rest in peace.

RIP Dick Clark

You probably know about most of the things he did; here's one role that you may have forgotten about, or, for that matter, may never have known about. An extremely funny one, at that.

I was never much of an American Bandstand watcher -- I knew better than to try to extend that Saturday-morning cartoon-watching time into the early afternoon -- so my primary exposure to Dick Clark came through The $25,000 Pyramid and his New Year's Eve shows. While I admired his willingness to appear this past New Year's Eve, I couldn't help but wince when I saw what had become of him. Sadly, "eternal youth" can only be sustained for so long before the heavy hand of Time descends.