Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE #306 (March 2011, Boom! Studios)

Yes, it's definitely "Recreate the Experiences of Disney Comics Publishers Past" Month at Boom! Right on the heels of DONALD DUCK #364's channeling of the spirit of "Gladstone II" comes this latest issue of MICKEY, which reads like nothing less than a "short-stack" edition of a Gemstone comic -- right down to its "bringing back" a visiting character who'll be a complete mystery to anyone who hasn't read her one previous appearance during the Gemstone era. Byron Erickson and Paco Rodriquez' "Catch as Cat Can" features the return of Katarina Kodorofsky, the sexy professional art thief (Inducks calls her a "spy," but that's a stretch) who unwillingly teamed up with The Mouse in WDC&S #687's "Claws of the Cat" (read my review of that first appearance here). We do get an "editorial box" alerting us to Katarina's origin story, but we're not told where the story can be found. (Query: Did Chris Meyer assume that readers would look this appearance up online and therefore didn't feel the need to state a specific issue?) More problematic is the fact that Mickey's ending quip to Minnie will literally make no sense to anyone who hasn't read "Claws," since it is a direct call-back to the conclusion of the earlier story. I appreciate Boom!'s interest in linking what it is presently doing to the work of previous publishers; I just wish that there were a slightly smoother way of doing so.

At the start of "Catch," Kat seems to have reverted to her "default setting" of mistrusting Mickey as an "amateur" art-crook-chaser, claiming that she needs his body rather than his mind (it's NOT what you think, OK?!). Not until we are well into the story do we learn the reason for Kat's unwilling request for assistance: Mickey's presence will help her cover for an embarrassing personal weakness. Or so she thinks. The criminal opposition (a crooked Egyptologist who's been stealing priceless Egyptian antiquities) is, as it turns out, less interesting than the intriguing relationship between Kat and Mickey, which is kneaded and rekneaded in line after line of dialogue. I like Kat because she is a very different sort of ally for Mickey -- a character who could very easily be an adversary if the tables were twisted slightly -- and it's a real shame that, at least according to Inducks, no further stories featuring her have been published. But I do wish Rodriquez would ditch the "poofy lips" once and for all. Perhaps we could send both Kat and Lotus Blossom to the Nip/Tuck guys before they come "on stage" again.

The backup GOOFY story, "Spaghetti and Goofballs," continues the Gemstone vibe by making strenuous efforts to ape one of the enjoyable Sarah Kinney Goof-tales that Gemstone favored us with. The tale even includes references to Doc Static and Goofy's "favorite cartoon critter," Flip the Fish, both of which became very familiar to American readers during the Gemstone era. Unfortunately, writer Maya Astrup is no Sarah Kinney. Apparently having concluded that Goofy's famed "eccentricity" is actually out-and-out insanity, Astrup presents a Goof who becomes obsessed with creating "stuck-together spaghetti" sculptures, to the point that he literally can't stop. Oh, and he cooks the spaghetti in a machine that he "doesn't know how to stop." Uh, what? This is simply too weird and contrived to be believable, even on what passes for "normal" Goofy terms. Goofy doesn't even sound right, speaking perfectly good Mousetonian English. Oh, well, not every Gemstone GOOFY story was a ten-strike, either... and the featured story is strong enough to make MM #306 an overall winner.

Comics Review: DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #362 (January 2011, Boom! Kids)... plus BONUS COVERAGE!

*** SPOILERS BELOW: PROCEED WITH CAUTION! ***

It may sound like a backhanded compliment, given my general opinion of some of the previous issues in the "Kung Fu Donald" sequence, but this issue -- the last of the rice wine, as it were -- turns out to be a pretty good conclusion to the short-lived cycle. In "Return of the Titan of Tae-Kwon-Duk," scripter Joe Torcivia picks up where he left off in "Titan of Tae-Kwon-Duk!", the enjoyable backup story in #360, by, strangely enough, going in temporal reverse. Torcivia cabooses the unrelated 1990 Paul Halas-Tom Anderson-Vicar story "Malicious Mallard" onto the backside of the original "Titan," which Egmont actually released over a decade later, and creates a Barks-flavored mini-epic in which Donald's difficulties, rather than those of some "does-he-or-doesn't-he-really-exist?" relative in feudal Japan, drive the plot. Actually, Donald is more of a victim in "Return" than anything else, since Halas and Anderson stick Don with a case of amnesia at just the moment when a lookalike lowlife, the bad-assed, karate-kicking Mangler Mallard, escapes from jail. Torcivia enlivens what could have been (and probably was in the original incarnation) a truly dreary cliche-fest with some inspired name-dropping (e.g., the amnesiac Donald's boss, who thinks the zoned-out mallard is the real Mangler and uses him to commit robberies, is named Handlebars McTwirlsneer) and some snappy repartee between Mangler and the recovered Don as they have a sort-of-set-to in a junkyard. (The use of "Ajax" as the junk company's name is a clever shout-out to the "Acme" simulacrum used in Mickey Mouse Works and Disney's House of Mouse.) Donald earns an unexpected triumph -- though not one without a barb in the very end of its tail -- so we get an ending that can be ranked as satisfying, for all of Don's travails. Torcivia's success in hooking up the two unrelated stories is pleasantly reminiscent of Disney Comics' creation of "The Time Tetrad" from a quartet of Duck tales that ran across four different titles dated October 1991. Disney Comics "imploded" soon after "Tetrad" appeared; let's hope that isn't an omen...

Janet Gilbert, ably assisted by artist Francisco Rodriquez Peinado, gives us an equally amusing back-up, "A Star is Hatched." As those of us who enjoyed her GOOFY stories during the Gemstone era can attest, Janet has come a very long way from the bad old days of having a bored Scrooge join the circus. Here, it is entirely believable that a glory-hungry, martial-arts-obsessed Donald would try to horn in on director Quackie Chan's action film. Don has to settle for the role of a lowly "production assistant" (read: all-purpose goofy "gofer") but winds up filling a hole in the cast after he inadvertently puts one of the stars out of action. The kicker: the star is actually a starlet. The extra kicker: Don's reaction once he learns that he's become a comedy smash is frankly surprising. Very funny and very well-drawn, with a positively grotesque depiction of the starlet's demise thrown in. "Goof-Jitsu," a two-page MICKEY MOUSE strip gag from 1948, is the "cherry blossom" on top of an enjoyable package that finally does a little bit of belated justice to the whole "Kung Fu Donald" concept.

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The trade paperback versions of "DARKWING DUCK: The Duck Knight Returns" and "DUCKTALES: Like a Hurricane" have recently been released, and some oddities -- both minor and major -- are immediately apparent. For starters: Why is the DUCKTALES volume slightly smaller than the "Duck Knight" volume? Not in terms of page count, but in terms of actual, physical size? Is this meant to indicate some sort of "aesthetic difference" between Boom! Studios releases and those carrying the imprimatur of Boom! Kids? If so, then the policy is apparently not being applied uniformly, since the advance notice for the collected "CHIP AND DALE'S RESCUE RANGERS: Worldwide Rescue," slated for release in July, lists dimensions that are slightly different from those of "Duck Knight."

After its early struggles, I had thought that Boom! had weaned itself off of major editorial gaffes, but the "Like a Hurricane" collection is the messiest, least logically constructed thing that I've ever seen the company release. Recall that "Like a Hurricane" was the "umbrella title" used to envelop the DUCKTALES material in UNCLE $CROOGE #392, #393, #394, and #395 in a clumsily awkward embrace. Aside from recognizing the use of the phrase for trade-paper packaging purposes, I gave it no mind, but now it appears that I should have done so -- or, at least, tried to. As bizarre as it seems, "The Curse of Flabberge," "The Everlasting Coal," and "The Pyramid of Prak-ti-Kal Dioker" -- in that order -- are presented without separate story titles here, as if they were some sort of continuous narrative. Unlike Joe Torcivia's efforts with "Tae-Kwon-Duk," however, there isn't even the slightest attempt to believably create linkage. Indeed, on page 2 of "Flabberge," there's a reworked editorial sidebar reference to "Prak-ti-Kal Dioker," which originally was released before "Flabberge" in "real" UNCLE $CROOGE time but appears after it in this volume. I didn't know that sidebar references could be used to predict the future. If this isn't enough to make one's head hurt, consider that "The Littlest Gizmoduck" and "A Switch in Time" are used as "filler" material with their titles still intact. Honestly, did the proverbial "pack of monkeys typing randomly on typewriters" have a hand in putting this together? I suppose that I ought to be pleased that the positioning of "Flabberge" at the front of the book might represent a recognition of sorts that David Gerstein's ambitious use of an existing story to "achieve closure" on the tale of Carl Barks' Brutopia was, in fact, the high point of the DUCKTALES era of UNCLE $CROOGE. From all appearances, however, putting "Flabberge" first might literally have been because someone "rolled a six."

"Duck Knight" is a much more pleasing package, in large part because it has a couple of surprises lurking within. For one, there are no ads for other Disney-related Boom! products. This makes some sense, given that (1) DARKWING is being released under the Boom! Studios banner and (2) Boom! is clearly trying to "hook" mainstream superhero fans here as well as Disney comics fans, but a one-page preview of the "Worldwide Rescue" collection, as well as that of the ongoing "Crisis on Infinite Darkwings," might not have seemed out of place. Following the cover gallery, we find two bonus items that more than make up for the PR omission: two pages of character sketches by DARKWING artist James Silvani and a three-page article on "The Origin(s) of Darkwing Duck" by none other than DW's creator, Tad Stones. For the Stones piece alone, with its priceless bits of "inside infor" on how "Double-O Duck, Starring Launchpad McQuack" mutated into the "terror that flaps" that we know and love, this volume is worth getting, even if you already own DARKWING DUCK #1-#4. Did you know that Gizmoduck was originally going to be paired with "Double-O" Launchpad? I didn't.

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As we gear up for the official launching of "Boom! Kids 2.0" and the promised "return of the classics," word has come of some unfortunate cancellations elsewhere in the Boom! "universe." Read the entire thread for some interesting observations and revelations. I didn't read the Pixar and Muppet books but heard many good things about them. Could Disney be planning to shift these titles to Marvel?

Halloween Hash-Over (Comics Reviews: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #695 [August 2008, Gemstone Publishing] and DONALD DUCK HALLOWEEN MINI-COMIC)

Every October 31st, talk-show host Michael Medved and his wife Diane put aside the issues of the day and argue the pros and cons of America's zaniest, most content-free holiday. Michael thinks it's a waste, Diane insists otherwise. Well, the lead stories of both of these Halloween-themed comics (you shouldn't let the August cover date of WDC&S fool you by this time) appear to be engaged in the same wrangle, using Donald as a cat's-paw. Marco Rota's "The Halloween Huckster," the lone offering in Gemstone's annual trick-or-treat giveaway, finds Donald ridiculing the holiday as kid's stuff and wondering how any adult could take it seriously. The grinning, glad-handing Kasper Kanterville, door-to-door "spooktacular salesman," spins Don's attitude around 180 degrees by displaying his quick-change costume transformations. Soon, Kasper and Don, clad in costume, are darting around Duckburg racking up scares by the score, including "attacks" on Scrooge, Daisy, Grandma, and Gyro. They finally meet their match, so to speak, when they invade a supposedly "haunted" house that's been staffed by HD&L for the duration and stuffed with fake frights for passersby. From the beginning, Kasper seems rather too enthusiastic for his narrowly defined job, so the ultimate revelation of his "true identity" is not really a surprise. For a Rota gag story, however, this is pretty decent, and much of the credit should go to David Gerstein, who provides the dialogue. Rota's plotting is sufficiently uneven that it needs the support of a strong dialoguer, and David certainly comes through here, peppering the dialogue with references to color-coded terrorist alerts, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Barack Obama (one scare at a time, please, David!). The tale is an excellent choice to advertise the advantages of Gemstone comics to newbie kids.

The contrast between Don's grumpiness at the start of "Huckster" and his behavior in Terry Laban and Paco Rodriques' "Trick or Treatment" in WDC&S #695 couldn't be starker. A fanged, cloaked Don actively participates in trick-or-treating (!), even pushing HD&L beyond the natural level of their willingness to engage in such activities. Don's desire to beg from just one more street lands him in a peck of trouble when he meets Bella, a sexy female in a witch costume. The nubile necromancette prevails upon Donald to be her date at a Halloween party (hopefully Daisy never gets wind of this), and the ghouls and goblins at the fete prove to be, you guessed it, the real thing. The unsuspecting Donald is soon being used as a pawn in a gambit to foil the schemes of Bella's horny (there's no other way to describe it) sister, who has used a spell to steal away Bella's vampire boyfriend but then quickly sets her overheated sights on Don (thereby giving Bella the chance to neutralize the other enchantment). Amazingly, Donald doesn't lose his temper over being exploited in such a fashion, though steam does come out of his head in one panel. I guess the "spirit of the holiday" was still in possession of him. The "spell" holds until Don is zapped home, at which point he has a delayed reaction and ends the story a quivering mass of nerves. Artistically, Bella has the same virtues and flaws as Rodriques' Lotus Blossom -- a real babe, but with disconcertingly "poofy" lips. I never liked it when Minnie displayed those big lips in the old days, and it's still rather a turn-off. Don's childish glee in trick-or-treating is sort of in character for him, I suppose, but I think that his cynicism in "Huckster" is a little more believable.

Most of the rest of the stories in WDC&S are Halloween-related by proxy, with one major exception. That would be Romano Scarpa's "The Sacred Spring of Seasons Past, part 1", dialogued with flair by Jonathan Gray. Atomo Bleep-Bleep, having been introduced to American audiences in MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES #11, makes his debut in a standard comic here. He, Mickey, and Chief O'Hara's absent-minded, antique-dealing cousin Heath end the table-setter in hot pursuit of a Native American clad in prehistoric garb who's made off with an artifact that could unlock the secret of how North America was settled via Alaska -- not to mention provide a key to finding the immigrants' treasure horde. Unbeknownst to the trio, the thief has stowed away in their rickety biplane (where's Launchpad when you need him?). The story has that tell-tale Scarpa weirdness smeared all over it but looks very good otherwise. Elsewhere... Tom McKimson draws a good BRER RABBIT story from 1946 in which the bun visits a witch to get his mental mojo back. Turns out he never really lost it. Carl Barks' "Going Buggy" (1947) is related to Halloween only in the sense that HD&L and Don both get to dress up in wacky costumes. HD&L get most of the duty, donning bug costumes to convince their uncle that his home-brewed bug spray has created mutant vermin. Don gets wind of the subterfuge and scares the bejeezus out of the boys with a bird costume. He gets a rump full of buckshot for his pains but does come out on top in the (ouch!) end. Don's "win" is entirely justified in this case, of course, because the boys started the whole thing. Finally, Kari Korhonen and Vicar dish up a one-page gag in which Donald forces HD&L (who are wearing the same Halloween costumes they sported in Barks' "Trick or Treat") to leave their treat-friendly neighborhood and even -- horrors! -- suggests that they skip the usual door-to-door routine entirely. Don isn't being a Scrooge or the Halloween equivalent thereof; he's merely redirecting the boys' attention to Grandma Duck's "one-stop trick-or-treat pigout!". What fun, a pro-gluttony gag. Wasn't the point of those Halloween mini-comics to discourage people from giving kids too many sweets?

Mocha Ado About Nothing (Comics Review: UNCLE $CROOGE #380 [August 2008, Gemstone Publishing])

Carl Barks' one-page "filler" gags, like those produced by his contemporaries at Western Publishing, generally rated a few chuckles and then were quickly forgotten by readers impatient to get on to meatier fare. Honorable exceptions were the quartet of gags Barks produced between 1952 and 1956 on the theme of Scrooge tricking a diner counterman out of a free cup of coffee. Aside from being clever gags in and of themselves, the gags made a cogent point about Scrooge's personality: rather than being annoyed by his unwillingness to pay for the java, we marvel at his sheer ingenuity (and, by so doing, gain additional appreciation for his "sharper than the sharpies" philosophy). Given the popularity of these gags, it's somewhat surprising that an entire story on the theme wasn't produced until 2006, when Kari Korhonen brewed up "A Case of One-Cupmanship." Joe Torcivia's inspired dialogue -- which Joe admits flowed quite naturally from Kari's natural humor sense and pacing -- only serves to accentuate a plot that takes the simple scenario of the diner gags and runs with it as if it had received an extra shot of espresso. Scrooge has "unbent" to the extent that he's willing to pay 75 cents for a cup at Joe's Diner, but he more than negates the largesse by commandeering Joe's prize booth and digesting the daily papers at his extreme leisure. With the percolator-predating pinchfist oblivious to the situation, a desperate Joe hatches scheme after scheme to turn the tables (those not bolted to the kitchen counter, that is). The harried hash-slinger only succeeds in alienating the rest of his clientele without budging Scrooge. By the end, you're definitely rooting for Joe to have just one small victory, but his final effort backfires when his niece Carrie unwittingly duplicates his strategy. You'll have to buy the comic (and DON'T try to scam the dealer out of it, either! He has to make a living!) to find out how everything shakes out. Barks' original diner gags, reprinted in order of original appearance, are sprinkled throughout the issue, with Kari and Joe's gem at the end.

The front of the ish isn't bad, either. Don Rosa's 1993 story "Island at the Edge of Time" was one of the last stories Keno Don produced before committing himself to "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck," and its refreshing lack of pretension is just one of its virtues. Scrooge and Flintheart Glomgold race to the Pacific to claim the rights to a newly formed volcanic island that's literally oozing solid gold. The kicker: the infant islet is perched on the International Date Line, so who really did "get there first"? The sadly bungled "Ali Bubba's Cave," the final chapter of DuckTales' "Time is Money" saga, should only have handled the denouement so well (though the ultimate fate of the island is clearly telegraphed for those paying attention). Rosa cleverly injects himself directly into the story through the medium of an extraordinarily verbose third-person narrator, whose constant references to "Time!" finally prompt a frustrated Scrooge to bust the "fourth wall."

Per Hedman, Travis Seitler, and the artistic team of Francisco Rodriquez and Enriqueta Perea next serve up a somewhat truncated but nonetheless entertaining epic, "The Legendary Crown of Queen Kazabra," in which Daisy is possessed by the war-mongering spirit of the headlined monarch during Scrooge's hunt for Kazabra's buried riches. Unfortunately, all of the armored Daisy's "yeeks" and "screeches" can't drown out the little voice in my head that keeps asking: How could a "barbarian warrior queen" have existed anywhere near Duckburg? (And I thought the "Mad Duke of Duckburg" in Barks' "House of Haunts" was a stretch.) I put this questionable conceit down to the fact that the story has a European origin.

After the Beagle Boys are forced to break back into jail to tie up their latest caper in Pat and Carol McGreal and Nunez' "Back to the Big House," we get a hidden gem, the Dutch story "The Treasure of Alexander the Great." It's easy to be put off by Jose Ramon Bernado's strange-looking art and plot-spinner Piet Zeeman's unseemly haste to get the main event underway (to wit: thanks to Gyro's convenient appearance with a "time shifter" device, Scrooge, Donald and HD&L are whisked off to Alexander's time before the first page is turned), but stick with the story and you'll be rewarded. Scrooge/HD&L and Donald, having returned to ancient Macedonia to discover Alexander's supposed cache of loot, soon find themselves fighting on opposite sides of the war between Alexander's army and King Darius' Persians. What's more, thanks to Scrooge and Donald's advice, the armies are soon resorting to such anachronistic innovations as gunpowder and steerable battle wagons! "The Battle at Hadrian's Wall," Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl's fine late-60s venture into ancient Britain, had much the same ambience as this story, but "Alexander" is much subtler and cleverer in its humor (as rendered by the dialogue of John Clark). The ending twist is quite ingenious, as well. With a "cup of coffee to go," it makes for a fine conclusion to a strong issue.

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.