Retrieved from Storage: "In the Footsteps of Jules Verne" (Donald Duck Adventures #19, Gladstone, Feb. 1990)

"Starting this month, we've made every Gladstone comic at least a 64-page giant!", Geoffrey Blum exclaims at the outset of the <i>Cross Talk</i> in this issue (and the four other Gladstone comics bearing the February 1990 cover date). He didn't mention that each of Gladstone's Disney titles had only two issues to go, and that The Walt Disney Company's own imprint, Disney Comics, was about to take over. At the time, I had no idea that such an abrupt cataclysmic change was impending. If the Internet had been around, I probably would've. (Although it's worth noting that BOOM! never acknowledged <b>in the comics themselves</b> that any of <i>their</i> Disney titles were soon to be aborted. For a multitude of reasons, though, Gladstone was still boundlessly more respectable and competent than BOOM! as a company later would be, despite some of the fine creators and editors worked for the latter.)

The cover reproduced above (courtesy of a scan located through a Google images search) was drawn by Michel Nadorp. According to Inducks, Nadorp's Disney work has spanned "from 1980 to date" and has consisted of "mostly covers". The latter stipulations explains why, when taking stock of the cover in preparation for this post, I was wondering, "Why don't I know who this guy is? Why haven't I read more stories that were drawn by him?" Thanks to Inducks, I've learned that this cover was produced for the original printing of "In the Footsteps of Jules Verne" (this issue's lead story, as indicated by the title blub on the cover), which was in the Netherlands. The high physicality to the strained, pointedly accentuated poses of Donald and the nephew trying to force him up the ladder, and the damning look in the elephant's eye that's turned toward Donald, is very complementary to the story's art, which is that of Ben Verhagen.

<b>39-page</b> Duck stories are rare enough as it is. The occassion of a 39-page story <b>drawn by Verhagen</b> is on par with a passing of Haley's Comet! (I'm pretty sure I subconsciously picked up the Haley's Comet analogy somewhere else... My apologies to the unknown author!) Jan Kruse' story, Verhagen's images, and Dwight Decker's English translation and dialogue work in tandem as a rich, engaging, satisfying comics-reading experience.

Much like Barks "Race to the South Seas" and certainly echoing "Luck of the North", the plot is driven by a competition between Donald, aided by the nephews, and Gladstone to, starting at the same moment, be the first to travel around or across a considerable part the world. The motivation for this rash endeavor is the friction between the arrogant, smug, cocky Gladstone and the disenfranchised, embittered, schlubbish Donald that quickly becomes worse whenever they're face-to-face with each other ... <i>especially</i> when the presence of Daisy is a variable, touching a nerve in both men's insecurity and/or pride. Kruse's scenario and Verhagen's depiction have an impeccable lock on the ugly, resentful, spiteful nature of Barks' conception of Donald and Gladstone. Their behavior here seems wholly "natural" when one's primary reference is Barks.

Gladstone's luxury automobile and yacht (which, of course, he'd just won) and Donald's house at stake, the challenge to prove which of the rival cousins is "superior" this time is: be the first to "go around the world in eighty days the way that 'Phileas Fogg did it in Jules Verne's book!" Actually, the competitors are only required to make two successive stops while circling the globe back to Duckburg; Verne gave Fogg a much more daunting route. No matter -- this story isn't lacking in the least. The high-strung energy in Verhagen's art is perfect for the fired-up, up-against-the-clock momentum of the story and the desperate, at-any-costs, compulsive, all-overriding determination to best the other that drives both Donald and Gladstone.

There's more reasons to commend this story: in truth, it wouldn't be fair at all to call this a truncated version of Verne's novel; it's practically an original plot! If it weren't for the stipulation of "us[ing] the same kind of transporation that Jules Verne would've", I would have assumed that Kruse was exclusively drawing on Barks' Donald-Gladstone competitions. By no means does Kruse take the easy way out and shadow Verne's original. A lesser writer would have figured that having Donald and Gladstone in a race and how that enabled them to pass through a few distinct locales would be enough to carry the story through, as long as they had passable reasons for the give and take in the two opposing teams' progress. But Kruse does an exquisite job: the singular sequences set in "Howduyustan" and then "Chanmuria" are well-developed; in each, the scene-setting, conflicts, and incidental, local characters are comprehensively-realized enough for these bits to have stood as their own adventures. And yet, Kruse never loses sight of direction of the story as a whole.

Integral threads are woven through the plot that are expertly established, kept on hand, and finally, as the story races to its climax, brought back to the fore and played to their in a biting, knockout-punch way. E.g., Donald and the nephews being tasked by Scrooge with delivering a historically significant hat to the Chanmuria museum (for considerable recompense, of course)... only when they've finally made it there after numerous setbacks, obstacles, and close calls with mortal danger, and thus now rejoicing that luck and good fortune finally seems to be on their side... they suddenly realize that they don't have the hat anymore... and out of the blue, Gladstone struts in, characteristically having had the luck to have found the hat where Donald had left it and decided to hold onto it! Or at the story's conclusion, the photos that the nephews had taken during their encounters with Gladstone being used to undo him. Or the recurring appearance of the sea captain from whom Donald originally bought the ship that he and the nephews use for the first leg of their journey: shortly after Donald and the nephews set sail, we see that the captain is ironically also responsible for Gladstone's transport across the ocean to Howdoyustan; and later, at the story's climax, when looks that Donald and the nephews not only failed in the race but their fate is a bleak one, the captain unexpectedly comes to the rescue, in a veritable instance of <i>deus ex machina</i>. In fact, the ingenuity of Kruse's craft here (and Verhagen's, too, on the visual level, bringing so much vitality and richness) is on a near-Barksian level!

Moreover, Donald and the nephews being stranded at a remote point on the ocean before a miraculous rescue, and there being a clever twist of fate in which Donald is vinidicated and Gladstone gets his comeuppance, was a motif learned from "Luck of the North" and put to good use, at least IMHO.

Also, in Howdoyustan and Chanmuria, with the ducks darting about trying to get somewhere and accomplish something while passing through precarious, unpredictable foreign locales, impeded by various impetuous, petty, fickle, foolish, self-absorbed, incidental characters, Hergé's Tintin comics came to mind.

By telling you that Verhagen's ducks are cartoonishly exaggerated, one might think Cavazzano, etc. But Verhagen's characters' exaggeratedness only really comes out when the story beats call for extremities in behavior. Plus, their faces and heads have a soft, globulous quality, in a sense the complete opposite of Cavazzano's or Flemming Andersen's jagged, spiky characters. And unlike the stark style that they and other artist used for the three-tier-per-page digest stories, Verhagen's backgrounds are detailed and realistic, more in keeping with Barks and Rosa (and Jippes, but from what I understand, Jippes would kill me if I likened him in any way to Rosa!). Probably closer to anyone else in the Duck comics milieu, Verhagen's backgrounds, in addition to their detail, have a rough, sketchy charm, but not implying any of those terms' negative connotations.

...*phew*! And here I'd told myself I would just write a short review! Well, considering how much substance and and how many virtues I found this story to have, I guess I couldn't have accounted for it all in a restricted amount of space!

A coincidence, or a "missing link" found?

A few years ago, going on the recommendation of a friend who since high school has been one of my closest, I perused the work of film director Werner Herzog. This post is off-the-cuff, so to introduce Herzog, I'll cite Wikipedia: he is "one of the greatest figures of the New German Cinema", and "[h]is films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature."

After binging on a fraction of the Herzog filmography, at some point during the ensuing couple of years, for one reason or another, my thoughts fell upon Herzog. I began turning over in my mind my memories of the several of his movies that I'd seen. Suddenly, it struck me that some of them had a difficult-to-pinpoint but distinctive air of ... Carl Barks! I'll quote again, in part, one or more Wikipedia author's characterization of Herzog's work: " ... heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields ... " Might that not be apt things to say about, say, Scrooge McDuck or Gyro Gearloose?

In particular, there were two Herzog films that I'd seen, Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982) -- incidentally(?) both starring Klaus Kinski -- that stood out as Barksian. Especially Fitzcarraldo. Take into account the Wikipedia entry's (as of this writing) introductory synopses of the film: "It portrays would-be rubber baron Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, an Irishman known as Fitzcarraldo in Peru, who has to pull a steamship over a steep hill in order to access a rich rubber territory. The film is derived from the real-life story of Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald." I ask you, does that not sound like a plot that would be seemlessly transposable for an Uncle Scrooge story? Perhaps in particular, given the harrowing tone of Herzog's film, a Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge story?

Tonight, I re-read Uncle Scrooge #249 (Disney Comics, Dec.1990), featuring the book-length story "The Puffer", plotted by Paul Halas (according to Inducks -- this credit is absent in the issue itself), scripted by Gary Gabner (update: per Joe Torcivia, both Disney Comics and Inducks are incorrect in crediting the dialogue to Dave Angus), and drawn by Daniel Branca -- a rare treat, indeed, a book-length Daniel Branca story! Revolving around a steamboat race pitting Scrooge and his nephews against Argus McSwine, it draws heavily from ... well, logically, Barks' "The Great Steamboat Race", originally printed in Uncle Scrooge #11 (Dell, Sept. 1955). The villain in Barks' original one of his many McSwine prototypes, here dubbed Horseshoe Hogg.

Two-thirds or so of the way into tonight's reading, I suddenly got a strong sense of an impending plot development, and my heart skipped a beat ... or I gasped in shock ... or a chill went down my spine ... well, I'm not sure if any of those literally happened, but it was like one of them had! ;) Sure enough, just as in Fitzcarraldo, the aid of a native tribe is enlisted to construct over a stretch of land to a river an extended platform upon which they'll tow a terra firma-stranded steamboat until it's asail in said river!

(See the resemblance/commonalities?) ;)

I have no idea if Halas, Angus, or Branca had seen or even knew of Fitzcarraldo. But directly inspired by the film or not, it works fantastically as a homage to "The Great Steamboat Race" and an original, well-crafted -- but still Barksian -- Scrooge story, yet also, at least to some degree, affirming my sense of an "odd couple" kinship between Barks and Herzog and Fitzcarraldo's adaptability to an Uncle Scrooge comic!

If you're a Barks fan and Herzog and Fitzcarraldo at all appeal to you, I urge you to seek it out!

-- Ryan

Retrieved From Storage: Donald Duck Adventures #19 (Gemstone, July 2006)

I've mentioned in past posts that for most of the Gemstone era, I'd quit reading and collecting comics for the second (and, as far as I'm concerned at the present moment, last) time in my life. Over the past couple years, I've been catching on what back issues I've been able to find in a couple shops in Connecticut.

Recently, I read this issue for the first time. I enjoyed it, and found much to commend in it, more so than on average. Here's the cover, attributed by Inducks to Massimo Fecchi:

The style in which the regular characters, Donald and the nephews, are rendered, especially with the slick digital coloring and the shading effects, resembles how they would appear in (relatively) modern, "official" Disney studio-produced animation, no? (I suppose DuckTales -- especially the more cartoony, elastic-y later episodes, or the series of Christmas-themed direct-to-DVD specials, would have to be our primary points of comparison.) The immediacy of the perspective and the emphasized action also contributes to the drawing's (psuedo-) animated quality.

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With its depiction of the ducks being menaced by a Viking warrior, the cover shown and discussed above represents the lead story, "Where's the Bin Been?", written by Pat and Carol McGreal and drawn by Flemming Andersen. Dominated by time travel, it's a compelling (and worthy) counterpart to "The Bathtub at the End of the Unverse"/"The Bathtub at the Edge of Forever", published only two issues earlier, in #17, and which I wrote about (and gave high praise to) in a previous post. Interestingly, "Bathtub" was also drawn by Andersen, but written by Michael T. Gilbert. Nonetheless, both stories share similar characteristics of inventiveness, sharp plotting and characterization, and balancing high-stakes drama with humor that seems to naturally proceed from the plot and characters.

Time travel stories are commonplace in comics and other mediums in which genre fiction prospers, but to my delight -- avoiding spoilers -- the time travel scenario that the McGreals devised here is original and exceedingly clever. (Hint: the dilemma/conundrum that spurs the plot rolling is inevitably resolved at the end, by way of a twist reveal. Let's just say that the history of the money bin's presence in Duckburg ends up considerably retconned!)

Of course, a lesser writer would send the ducks on this particular mission, assume that the plot could carry them, and have them act more less like robots acting together as one. Of course Scrooge wants to figure out where his fortune's gone and recover it ... but his shifts between, depending upon how things develop from one beat to the next, despair, gung-ho determination, and mortal fear are dead-on (especially with Andersen's exaggerating renderings -- when appropriate, Scrooge's visage is comparable to the famous painting by Evard Munch, "The Scream"!)

Donald's eagerness to get this particular adventure underway at first strikes one as being a bit out-of-character. But the McGreals sell it once it becomes apparent that his pop culture indulgences have inspired him to brazenly, myopically pose as a brave adventurer. Once the ducks are faced with the Viking threat, Donald even goes so far as to pose as a Norse god ("Those bozos are a superstitious lot! They believe in gods like Thor! I should know! I read the comic books!"), delusionally certain that he'll immediately scare them off. (And then it goes nothing like he'd thought it would. Who ever would have seen that coming?!) Jeopardizing the mission and causing Scrooge several more heart attacks, the dissonance between Donald's slacker "unseriousness" with Scrooge's disciplined, shrew, miserly "seriousness" is well in keeping with Barksian tradition, expertly staged in a way that's unique to and integral to this story. All the more admirably, the failure of Donald's disguise proves to not be an arbitrary, passing gag, but a well-laid-out plot thread, and the crux of Donald's role in the story, coming to a head as one of the mutually complementing multi-twists of the climax and denouement.

Like so often in Barks' stories, the nephews are dedicated to assisting Scrooge in his objectives, scrambling to solve problems when they arise and more than once making deductions before the two adult ducks do -- in other words, being exemplary Junior Woodchucks. However, the McGreals -- and possibly even more so -- Andersen never mistake the nephews for conditioned, reflexive little soldiers. When the ducks are in a jam and a solution isn't yet apparent, the nephews are obviously worried and/or afraid. They're human (...for all intents and purposes!), after all.

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Make no mistake -- I thought that "Where's the Bin Been?" was great. Still, the story that really solidified my favorable disposition to this issue was its second feature, a Mickey Mouse story, "The Wind of Azalai", written by Augusto Macchetto and drawn by Guiseppe Dalla Santa. Though I'm not familiar with either creator, they did a bang-up job! I am perfectly fine with, in general, the heavily exaggerated, highly stylized art that typifies many, many European Disney comics, and I consider folks such as Andersen (as evidenced above), Cavazzano, etc. to be exemplary cartoonists. Nonetheless, I'll admit, sometimes it's just plain refreshing to see these characters, and an entire story, drawn in a "conventional", more "straight" fashion, as Dalla Santa does here!

Furthermore, this is a classical adventure story, set in the unforgiving Sahara and replete with an ancient mystery, a hidden civilization, the revelation of unexpectedly advanced ancient technology and science, and ruthless desert-dwelling hordes of rogues/bandits! In other words, it's right up my alley! The plot point of Mickey and Co. getting lost in a ferocious sandstorm and winding up held captive in the aforementioned "hidden civilization" brought to mind DuckTales' "Master of the Djinni"! Consequently, at first, I was sure that the storm had transported back in the time, and some of the more dramatic score music used heavily in DuckTales' adventure-dominated first season crept in to my head, and stayed there `til the end of the story!

Admittedly, it's a bit more contrived than "Bin Been?" But the ultimate solving of the "gold and salt" enigma is clever and original enough. The story's strongest point is Macchetto's conception of, and Dana Salla's depiction of, the underground wind tunnel and air-raft.

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Most issues of Gemstone's Adventures digests encompassed three lengthy, solid European stories. However, after "Azalai", the rest of the issued is filled out by a few shorter works and a smattering of gags, ranging in length from one to several pages. When I realized this, I balked, but overall, I discoverd that the material held up quite well.

A Beagle Boys story, "The Black Sheep" entailed qualities of whimsy, absurdism, and yet kind-natured earnestedness that reminded me of Sergio Aragonés. Writer Francesco Artibani's posits two Beagles Boys' relating to Grandpa Beagle how it happened that they "blew another caper!" Their narration is contrasted against a visual flashback that the readers, but not Grandpa, are privy to, revealing what they're leaving out and how they're downplaying their follies. Somewhat Rashomon-esque, Artibani gives the time-tested "disparate account" trope his own spin. Realized via Silvia Ziche's distorted art, in which little is rounded, opting for pointy angles and blocky shapes, and favoring over-the-top, frenzied poses and facial expressions, this is a tasteful example of slapstick and comedic characterization.

The standout of the issue-rounding-out lot, to me, was "Inside Donald Duck" -- another Andersen-drawn story, this one written by Mark and Laura Shaw. Yet again, Scrooge and Donald's differences are played up, this time to the hilt -- the phrase "oil and water" doesn't even begin to capture how badly things go here, all as a result of them being unable to get along and driving each other (...or, perhaps more aptly, themselves?) incrementally crazier and crazier. In fact, the story's opening brought to mind that of "Back to the Klondike": set in the bin's office, something -- naturally, involving his money -- goes wrong, and Scrooge panics, to the point of hysteria ... though in "Klondke", Donald was a bemused bystander for Scrooge succumbing to his neuroses, here, they're i.e. at each other's throats. The blundering escalates, resulting in the necessitation of a visit to the doctor's office -- the next scene, which we promptly cut to.

Breaking away from the "Back to the Klondike" parallels, the doctor fails to help Donald ... thus, the really bad thing that Donald had happened is still really bad, and so he's nervous wreck, and the really bad thing gets worse and even more worse, and it turns out that this is one of those "Donald tries to do something right, but he messes up, and before you know it, he's left a path of destruction clear across Duckburg" stories. And it's one of the highest order! It's tightly plotted, and masterfully executed on the visual end of thigns by Andersen -- I'll repeat what I said said about Ziche's "Black Sheep" art: with Andersen's "distorted art, in which little is rounded, opting for pointy angles and blocky shapes, and favoring over-the-top, frenzied poses and facial expressions, this is a tasteful example of slapstick and comedic characterization."

As the issue winds down, we encounter a six-page Romano Scarpa Mickey Mouse story. To me, it tries a little too hard to be some sort of humorous moralistic fable, but it comes off as hamfisted, and its attempts at twist plot points and irony are a bit too forced. Originally from 1973, the incidental dogface characters (a crook and two police officers, the crook and one of the officers with the portly shape Scarpa often uses that I think was inspired by Gottfredson's Chief O'Hara) hint at Scarpa's funny animal cartooning at its best. But on the other hand, Mickey looks a little strange -- it looks like his snout's been mangled! Finally, just who the heck is this "Ellsworth", an apparent sidekick or partner of Mickey's!

And then, the issue closes out with two decent/average one-page gags. To keep things proportionate, that's all I'll say about them! :)

In hindsight, how portentous both of your musings were, oh ye letter-writer and ye editor...

Inevitably, during my latest grad school residency, which was held earlier this month, I visited the nearby Wonder Cards & Comics in Barre, VT, and emerged from it with a modest (heh...) stack of "new" (to me) "old" comics...which I'm still working my way through.

Just now, I'd made it as far as the letter column on the inside front cover of one of said excursion's acquisitions, Uncle Scrooge #230 (cover date: October 1988). Here's it's (quite, quite nice) Daan Jippes-drawn cover:

One letter in particular, in conjunction with its editorial reply, was very striking, due to how this exchange is obviously (as you'll see) a product of pre-mid-'90's Duck fandom. 

If the provisions of SOPA will permit, here's the second and last paragraph, reproduced in full, of a letter written by one Orlando J. Almodovar of Rosedale Queens, NY:

Can you make and print a story about Scrooge coming from Scotland, earning his #1 dime, and building up his fortune? That would be an extravaganza!

The editorial response (skipping its first paragraph, which deals with a separate question Mr. Almodovar had asked):

The story you're asking for would be a mighty long one [indeed!!! -- Ryan], and some of the details on how Scrooge earned his fortune have already been covered in past stories [...and little do you realize, Don Rosa's brewing big plans based around such flashbacks and dialogue-based passing anecdotal references ... well, I don't think Don realized his destiny, either, but suspect he had a considerable amount of his research already in the bag by '88, just by sheer first nature! -- R.], but it might be nice to do a shorter piece on exactly how Scrooge got his first dime [...involving time travel, perhaps? ;) -- R.].

...little did they realize...! ;)

So, Orlando, if you're out there: were you still reading by the time Gladstone serialized Life and Times? Were you excited at the time? Did you like it? Since then, has your perspective in regards to it changed at all?  :)

Ryan

R.I.P., Vicar

ThereAt present, there's a lot of uncertainty in my life. It's been far too long since I've updated this blog, and I realize that I have to compose and post the final entry in the History of DuckTales Comics series (and I think there's one or two other things I'd been saying I'll be posting about...) I didn't expect to post today or that I'd be writing about our present subject, but I would remiss if I didn't proceed as follows...

Learning, tonight, of the passing of Vicar (the alias of Víctor Arriagada Ríos) hit me in a way I didn't expect. Honestly, I wasn't even sure if he was still alive or still working. But when the news reached me, I felt a noticeable sense of loss...felt the absence of something that had always been present...kind of like someone had torn out the hundreds of Vicar pages from my collections of Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and Walt Disney's Comics and Stories...no, that's a bad analogy! The realization and sensing of this loss didn't entail such hostility or aggression. It was more as though the spirit of all those comics had suddenly been whisked away to another realm, for which our realm is now to forever be more barren.

I began reading those comics in the late '80's, when -- as you may well know, if you're reading this -- their publisher in America was Gladstone. Thus, as long as I've known, the work of Vicar has been a regular presence in contemporary Duck comics. Had my childhood been a decade earlier, I wouldn't be able to say that.

Vicar, per the Inducks link above, began working for Egmont (formerly Gutenberghus, formerly Egmont), a major European publisher and Disney licensee, in 1971. However, at that point, in America, Western Publishing still held the Disney comics license, as they had since the '30's, and would until they closed shop in 1984. In the meantime, they continued to use creators on their own payroll for new material (which took a serious dive in quality during that last decade-and-a-half stretch...at least, that seems to be the near-unanimous consensus amongst fans!), but more and more falling back on reprints from their earlier decades (when Carl Barks, Bill Wright, Jack Bradbury, and others were in their prime; in other words, what by the '70's were Western's bygone glory years....at least, that seems to be the near-unanimous consensus amongst fans!)

Thus, stories that Vicar and other Egmont/Gutenberghus artists had drawn were not imported to the U.S., translated into English, and dialogued for American readers by talented folk such as Geoffrey Blum and Byron Erickson until Gladstone had assumed stewardship of Disney funny animal comics. During Gladstone's first run, any story that an American like me now recognizes as the handiwork of Vicar or Daniel Branca was generically credited to "the Gutenberghus Group". I've been told that was per Egmont/Gutenberghus' request. However, when in 1990 Disney started publishing their own comics, the credits became specific and individualized, and we became very familiar with Vicar's name.

Earlier this evening, the solemn tidings came to me by way of Chris Barat's blog. Shortly after reading the personalzied eulogy that Chris had written, I discovered that Joe Torcivia and GeoX had paid also posted tributes. (GeoX did so by reviewing a select Vicar story. The review is a veritable article or essay...presumably, Geo cranked it out in less than two days, possible within but one; given the thorough chapter-by-chapter Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck series of review that he burned through in less than one month, I'm envious of how he keeps up his dizzying, constant output of in-depth content!) [Update, 1/7/12: Joseph Adorno, the author of the ComicBookRehab blog, has also said his peace, as has Pete Fernbaugh of Caught at the Crossroads.] As I had no doubt I'd found, there's a DCF thread dedicated to the loss of an artist whom has been such a mainstay in our collective comics reading. Also, the person who started the DCF thread included a link to what appears to be an obituary on a Spanish-language comics web page.

My reflections on Vicar's work is similar to those of Chris and GeoX; Vicar's work was very steady, but I can't say he was one of those creators who made his mark with showstopping blockbusters that became lifelong favorites. I must confess that, as I grew up, I saw his work as being just there, and even found many of his stories boring and forgettable.

However, very recently, revisiting Vicar has made me realize how much I'd always taken Vicar for granted. The Barks influence abundantly clear in his art, his stories are well-crafted, while free of bombast and ego. It's just not true that he was a bad artist or that the average Vicar story was a bad one. In fact, because he was such a staple Gladstone, Disney Comics, and Gemstone's respective runs (and BOOM! gave him some time, too), Vicar's consistency has, in a way, between the premiere of Don Rosa epics, the American debut of a Romano Scarpa classic, etc., single-handedly been responsible for the overall consistent quality of these comics over the past 25 years! I'd have a hard time explaining this to someone who hasn't been reading these comics for their entire life, but first turning the pages of an Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, and Mickey Mouse comic, there's certain "cues" that tell you that you're "home". And Vicar frequently hit those cues!

You can see me coming around and realizing that I owed in Vicar his due in one of this blog's earliest posts, from this past July. In part, I wrote:

I remember some gripings in the letter columns of the Disney Comics era about Vicar being a Barks-imitating hack.  Nah.  ...I mean, yes, as I've noted here, Barks was a major (and that's an understatement) preference point for Egmont creators like Vicar, but the latter's just as good as any of his peers -- as demonstrated throughout this story...  [...and, I proceeded to expound on the story's numerous good points...]

In response to the post, Joe posted the following comment:

If there WAS a predisposition toward Vicar and Branca in the early Gladstone days, please recall that awful Kay Wright and Bob Gregory art were the new story “duck standard” at Gold Key and Whitman for the previous 15-20 years!

After enduring all that – and for so damned long – I’m sure they wanted something that would look GOOD! And, it sure looked good to me!

I became concerned that I'd come off as though my opinion of Vicar, as it stood, was negative, when in fact, I had intended to be praising him! And now, I feel as though, retroactively, I've inadvertently speaking ill of the dead! (I hope that Vicar himself hadn't, at some point in the last several months, happened to have seen my posts, saw the part about me having not been much of a fan of his, and didn't catch the part where, ultimately, I'd changed my mind!  That's an unsettling notion...)

I'll close by recounting my memory of reading Uncle Scrooge #254 (Disney Comics, May 1991).

This issue's feature story was the Vicar-drawn "The Filling Station. Courtesy of Inducks, a scan of the first page:

In the tradition of Barks classic like "The Paul Bunyan Machine", "The Money Well", and, in fact, the feature attraction from the very first issue of Uncle Scrooge, "Only a Poor Old Man", "The Filling Station" concerned the Beagle Boys executing an elaborate scheme to steal Scrooge's fortune, and Scrooge's counter-strategy, both sides using over-the-top subterfuge and stealth in disguising the true nature of their (implausible, humorously over-the-top) wide-scale operation.

But, the thing was...while reading the comic, I was actually under the impression that I was reading a Barks story!!!!!!

Some Barks fans and scholars might be mortified that I could have made such an egregious error. But, I was only nine years old; at least a few people have noted Vicar's talent at drawing in a Barksian fashion (as mentioned in the quote above from that post of mine from this apst July, I vaguely remember people commenting on the resemblance in Disney Comics' letter columsn; and, in Joe's aforementioned post written in homage to Vicar, you'll note, several paragraphs down, that he attributes Vicar for evoking Barks of 1953 specifically!); and I'd far from read all of Barks' stories yet (...I think I still haven't! *behaves sheepishly*), let alone have the encyclopedic knowledge to immediately know that he'd never written and/or drawn a story entitled "The Filling Station" So, come on, give me credit for being such a sharp reader at such a young age to have recognized the story's formula as a quintessentially Barksian one!  ;)

In all seriousness, I'm using my age at the time to excuse that I'd unwittingly, totally, without question believed, for the story's 24-page duration, that I was reading a Barks story. But considering that I was astute enough to recognize the variation of a plot/premise that Barks himself had reinvented a few times, I was clearly a bit beyond a mere novice by that point. Thus, "admitting" the fact that my ever-so-scrupulous nine-year-old self was utterly and completely "fooled" (...by all rights, not just by the artist, but also by Gail Renard, whom Inducks credits for "plot", and Donne Avenell, whom Inducks credits for "script") is perhaps the ultimate tribute that I can pay to a Barks fan and "disciple" like Vicar!

...but, that slights him, really. I've enjoyed pages and pages of his stories, on their own terms. And there's still plenty of back issues I've yet to read, others that will inevitably be re-read, and, if another publisher ever takes on the American license for Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck comics and continues them in the Gladstone-Gemstone tradition, I believe there's still plenty of Vicar stories that have yet to see print in the U.S. And even if we Americans aren't fortunate enough to have that happen, I think it's safe to say that, as the old adage goes, throughout the world, Vicar will continue to be read, and in that respect, he'll live on, continuing to keep Disney comics "steadily", consistently "good".

A numerological curse?

I knew well in advance that the conclusion of "Dangerous Currency" was also going to be the bow-out of the Darkwing Duck comic. 

So, a certain fact has been staring me in the fact for literally months, but the significance of it didn't register with me until during the past few days...

Certain folks will know exactly what I'm talking about...  Now, let me ask you, how many issues total has Darkwing ended up having?  What was the number assigned to the final issue?

Think about it for a second....

...you see what I'm saying.  YEAH. 

*cue Twilight Zone theme* 

I guess the timestream has a way of balancing things... ;)

DuckTales #6 and Darkwing Duck #18: Immediate Thoughts

I regret having not posted in a while.  Unfortunately, my life has been more chaotic and ungrounded than I'd like. 

Soon, I'll be posting posting the final entry in my "History of DuckTales Comic Books" series -- consider this a prelude...

It's the end of an era" I've just read DuckTales #6 and Darkwing Duck #18, Parts Three and Four of the "Dangerous Currency" story arc, and the last two regular issues of any Disney comic series that BOOM! will publish.  (I believe there's still a couple trade paperback collections on the slate.) 

   

There's a lot I haven't liked about "Dangerous Currency"  The plot was illogical and relied too much on derivative giant monster invasion/apocalypse spectacle, and characterization was off.  (I don't think Ian Brill is very familiar with DuckTales...) 

[Memo to BOOM!: In case you didn't see me proclaiming this at The Old Haunt, if in the "Dangerous Currency" trade you correct the relevant dialogue so that Drake and Fenton acknowledge having met in "Tiff of the Titans" and it doesn't appear that Ma Crackshell has ever known her son's secret identity -- even though she has from Day One! -- I'll buy the trade, even though I've bought every one of the individual issues.]

But by the final few pages, rather than disgust and the sensation of cringing, I was, surprisingly, overwhelmed by sentiment.  Not because the story was moving (or even particularly good), but because I became acutely aware that I had reached the last several moments of a distinct era of my life. 

Don't get me wrong -- I'm glad to be done with BOOM!  They were unknowledgeable and mismatched in regards to Disney comics, contemptuous toward and resentful of life-long fans, and their overbearing, bombastic hype/PR style was insufferable. 

Nonetheless, for the past two years, for better or for worse, my regular visits to the comic shop and many of the Internet-based discussions that I followed (and sometimes participated in) centered around BOOM's Disney comics.  At first, I boycotted the respective titles during the Wizards of Mickey/Ultraheroes/Double Duck, or "Yeah, THIS is the kinda thing kids'll think is WAY COOL!!!!" phase -- but ended up catching up on all of them to enhance my reading of Chris Barat's reviews.  (Yes, the comics were supplemental to the reviews, not the other way around -- oh, the irony!  And testimony to the hold this hobby has on me, and the value I put on the fan community in general and certain friends' writing.)

I was floored when, in March of 2010 -- still mired in the "Yeah, THIS is the kinda thing kids'll think is WAY COOL!!!!" stranglehold on the line, it was announced that BOOM! would begin publishing a Darkwing series and that starting with #392, Uncle Scrooge would be devoted to DuckTales content.  It's an understatement to say that this development was completely unexpected.  I reiterate: this was 2010.  Neither DuckTales nor Darkwing had been in contemporary productions for close to 20 years, and were completely nonexistent in the public eye.  Of course, we now know that it was a gentleman by the name of Aaron Sparrow who was responsible for the launch of these comics.  Darkwing was an instant success -- yet for some reason, Sparrow was fired by BOOM! even before #4 was out...  (Sparrow has shared a lot of behind-the-scenes details here...)

More often than not, when I purchased a new issue of Darkwing (and BOOM!'s short-lived Rescue Rangers comic, launched in the wake of Darkwing's success), I'd read it as soon as I got back in my car, before driving home!  I'd been dreaming about new Disney Afternoon comics for 20 years; it was inevitable that I'd be captivated...

When Darkwing's second and third story arcs suffered harsh criticism at ToonZone's Disney Pixar forum, I would stick up for BOOM!, rallying, "Guys, just be happy someone's doing these comics at all!"  And before long, between the Disney Afternoon titles and the content of Uncle Scrooge, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck during the "Classic are back!" era, it seemed that the line had attained near-perfection.  But things started to sour when, early this year, the "classic" titles were cancelled, without there having been, to this day, any official acknowledgement from BOOM! on the matter.  Rescue Rangers didn't make it past #8...and even before it was cancelled, it had already evinced drudgery...as became the case, more and more, with latter-day issues of Darkwing...  And meanwhile, DuckTales was given its own title, but we all know how that went...

Anyway, for all of the writing's flaws, as "Dangerous Currency" was winding down, I found myself once again thinking, "Well, this is it.  I guess I should just be glad someone made these comics at all!"  Silvani's double-page spread of various DuckTales cameos was largely the impetus for this...Bubba!?  Genie from
DuckTales: The Movie?!  Coming full-circle, I marveled, "This is 2011?!!"  Never thought I'd get to see a full-blown DuckTales-Darkwing Duck crossover.  In spite of the MAJOR continuity gaffes, in spite of the inane-ness of the nephews and Honkers being transformed into giant monsters, I've relished it as much as I can.

Ian: I believe you gave this your all.  James Silvani (and Amy Mebberson, whom word on the street is contributed to the crossover's art...): your work shines and inspires!  Aaron: thank you for fighting so hard to get these comics off the ground, and your continued dedication to them!  I hope that they're picked up by another publisher in the near-future, and you're at their helm!