(Some of) my assorted thoughts on: Mickey and Donald #2 (Gladstone, cover date May 1988)

For the second issue of Gladstone's first double-billed (...er, only one has a bill...) ongoing title, the proper -- much more Gladstone I-esque -- front cover title logo is introduced; in his recreation of the 1948 Firestone Giveaway cover for M&D #1, which just happened to designate itself as Mickey and Donald, Daan Jippes closely mimicked the original's lettering design.

 This time out, we're treated to yet another vintage cover -- this time, a reprinting and recoloring (with some new background effects) of Walt Kelly's cover for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #41 (cover date Feb. 1944).

As we'd expect of Kelly, the art is full and rich, featuring very appealing renderings of the characters that are both iconic but not devoid of personality.

The gag that Kelly's drawing is based around is a variation of the familiar "Mickey as Golden Boy, whereas Donald exists so as to suffer" trope. I have to wonder, when did this whole thing actually begin? In the golden era of studio's theatrical shorts (i.e., "Clock Cleaners", "The Band Concert"), Donald was certainly the butt of his fair share of jokes, but Mickey was no charmed angel. From what I can surmise, it came about as the studio began producing fewer Mickey shorts, he -- as David Gerstein has described in his writings for the Gottfredson Library -- became more of a square, and then with the advent of the Disneyland/Walt Disney Presents/Wonderful World of Disney anthology TV series and The Mickey Mouse Club, in the way that the characters were portrayed in what original animated sequences there were, where Mickey is some sort of aloof, above-it-all ringmaster. All I can think of is the short (or was it something produced for the anthology series? That's the only place I've ever seen it, and I was very, very young) where Donald becomes insanely jealous of the nephews' enthusiasm for The Mickey Mouse Club, and hijacks the television set to replace it with "Donald Mouse!"


"The Grounded Air Taxi". 8 and 3/4 pages. Written by Call Fallberg, drawn by Jack Bradbury. From Mickey Mouse #64 (cover date Feb. 1959).

Speaking of Mickey as straight man ... no, I like this a lot more than the Bradbury story that led off #1. It features minimal adventure story trappings (unless you count a biplane), so it doesn't really disappoint. It's curious that Goofy seems to acknowledges Gottfredson continuity by suggesting that Mickey teach him to fly, but "preppy" Mickey has lost any of his plucky ambition, frequently lamenting in thought balloons things akin to, "Oh, great! ANOTHER one of Goofy's harebrained ideas!"; "I should get out of this before things go awry"; etc., even though he and Goofy mutually conceive of and pursue the ice taxi service. Mickey seems to subconsciously need to differentiate between himself and Goofy. Hmm, it seems he has a rather negative image of his supposed friend! Interesting. Very, very interesting. And telling. *takes notes*

A very simple story structure: on a couple of occasions, Mickey and Goofy (NOT Goofy alone, Mickey) lose control of the plane, and it wreaks havoc on around the lake, sending the ice fisherman and some children that had been building snowmen fleeing. Mickey and Goofy are forced to run and hide from an angry mob (who are so irate, one guy is ready to take his ax to the plane, paying no heed to racking up a vandalism charge), but everyone forgets that they were mad at them when they're able to use the plane's propeller to blow the snow off of some skiers who'd been buried in an avalanche. Interesting how the mob was out for blood, but then suddenly are so compassionate toward some complete strangers. Now, you could argue that in their eyes, the skiers were innocent, or at least hadn't "wronged" the locals the way Mickey and Goofy had, but, still, does the minimal effort Mickey and Goofy put into rescuing the skiers absolve them of their "crimes"?

On its surface, the story gives off an old-fashioned country homeyness; the aim is to instill in the reader's mind the picture of a morally black-and-white world, in which justice is so swift and prompt that if there's any sort of misunderstanding arising in animosity and conflict between individuals, someone else nearby will suddenly have their life placed in mortal jeopardy, allowing the innocent but socially-put-on-trial part(ies) to redeem themselves by coming to the rescue. And taken at face value, the plot is ready-made for a children's storybook, and charming in its rural winter setting. But it has a whole other side. The moral questions discussed above linger, and -- though fleetingly, and played off lightly -- we see man's base nature in all its rashness and fickleness. Disturbing, indeed. ...no, I'm kidding. I really did make these observations, but I'm not about to go all How to Read Donald Duck on you. That wouldn't be fair to the story's eight-and-3/4 pages, and I happen to like the old-fashioned country winter homeyness.


"A Sound Deal" by Van Horn.  4 pages. Original.

Essentially, a succession of gags each with the same motif: Donald, having taken up the job of bugle salesman, is at someone's doorstep, and each person, by their own quirk or distinguishing feature, rejects Donald or drives him away. Some of these gags are of the "Huh? Where'd that come from?" nature, but you can't say that any of them are unoriginal (except the vicious guard dog ... or is that a wolverine? Well, some sort of killer guard animal is still just as much of a cliche). The concluding twist is pretty much the very best that could be done with bugles being the sales item in question. Kudos to Van Horn, on the whole.


"Raven Mad". Story and art by Daan Jippes. Translation and script by Byron Erickson. Originally published in the 3/31/72 of the Netherlands' Donald Duck weekly. ("No. 13" on the cover, but that means its the 13th issue of 1972, which is why Inducks has it designated as "#1972-13", natch.)

Jippes doing a Mickey story! Why didn't he do this more/why doesn't he do it more! It looks GREAT! From very early in his career, so rough in comparison to his later work (especially, say, his Junior Woodchucks redrawings) -- but has more energy, momentum, elasticity, and dynamics than most anything else! The premise and gags wouldn't be much by a more limited artist, but Jippes REALLY breathes life into them. His Mickey reminds me of `40's Gottfredson ... though he's wearing the traditional red and yellow-buttoned shorts, they're "big" -- more pronounced at the bottom, bringing to mind Gottfredson's "pantsed" (I kind just made that up.) mouse. And this Mickey is no dull cipher leading a seemingly charmed existence -- he's prone to frustration, irritation, embarrassment, anger ... the story even ends with him in jail!

Just for kicks, let's look at a run-down of the comic in which this story originally appeared (cited above), per Inducks:

-- 3-page Donald story with art by Carol Voges

-- 2-page text piece using panel by Barks, Bradbury, and Strobl that seems to be some sort of faux newspaper about the Disney characters

-- Mickey strip from 2/22/62 -- I think this appears at the end of 2-page text piece

-- 4-page L'il Bad wolf story with art by Ed van Schuijlenburg

-- "The Looney Lunar gold Rush" Part Two (!!!) -- only 6 pages! They serialized it!

Only 20 measly pages. But with it being a weekly, they get more pages per month of one title than, on average, we ever have. But I would still be irritated to have the Barks stories broken up like that, and would envy Americans for getting them all in one book.


"Turkey Trot at One Whistle" by Barks -- Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #162 (cover date March 1954).

A 10-pager in which Donald is actually successful and heroic! A lesser-known story, yet with Barks, even those are gems. It's a train hold-up story with no irony intended, and its romanticism is catching. Some gorgeous scenic art.


There's two Donald Duck newspaper strips, one on the inside front cover, and the other on the outside back cover. Each is completely exemplary of its respective creators and era. Since there's only so much that can be said about them, I'll just show them to you...

Inside front cover (no letter column yet; old-school comic fans know the drill with letters usually appearing until a third issue) -- "The Bus Stops Here", 2/11/38drawn by Al Taliaferro, and Inducks says that the writing was by Homer Brightman (it seems that the original newspaper version's title was "Home, James!"):

And from the back cover (this would've appeared on all of Gladstone's books that month, so it's not really a proper part of this issue, but, aw, what the hell?) -- "The Ice Have It" 12/10/83, written by Bob Foster, art by Frank Smith:

Have a nice week, guys!

-- Ryan

(Some of) my assorted thoughts on: Uncle Scrooge #320 (Gemstone, cover date August 2003)

During the earliest months of the Gemstone era, to which this issue belongs, I was in college, and, though a few years earlier I had lost interest in comics as Gladstone II was easing into its prestige format-exclusive final leg, I was still excited about the return of the comics that I had grown up reading and loving. But, the whole reason that I had gravitated away from comics in the first place is because during high school, I got this notion in my head that the only way to be sophisticated was to like bleak music, art, and literature created by (totally never posturing) tortured souls. So, Gemstone's bright, colorful aesthetic and the light-hearted, good-natured-but-not-naive, sometimes-subtly-cynical-but-never-outright-despondent stories just didn't jive with me. Why did I remember these comics as being substantive, when now, I could only get very little out of them? 

Well, the problem wasn't the comics -- it was me. I had completely failed to realize that part of the process of growing up was getting stupid ideas and making stupid decisions, and then taking a while to figure out that they were stupid. (Some people never figure that out, I'm afraid...) I was preoccupied with image and a superficial notion of what an intellectual and "artistic" person should be. I'm grateful that in the years since, I've matured and become more well-rounded. And being more centered, I can see an issue like this for what it is: a very solid one, brimming high-quality, quietly satiric, witty, well-crafted stories. 

First up is William Van Horn's 16-page "Fools of the Trade", which is very un-Barksian in the sense that it centers around a one-shot character whose an object of completely fantasy and whim: a talking dragon. Of course, it's Van Horn's wont to engage with outlandish content ... but always with a decided sense of irony and parody, and this story is certainly in keeping. The idea is that that "high-tech" defense systems have invariably failed in staving off the Beagle Boys, so Scrooge has decided to go "old-school", and import a dragon "cloned from the claw of" one of its antecedents. (So, Van Horn has gone a semi-scientific route -- it's not like he's just having dragons suddenly romping around in abundance in the modern world. And it's consistent with his absurdist approach that this explanation is tossed at us dismissively and in passing.) To Scrooge's disappointment, the dragon -- "Figgy", "short for Figment", a clever Disney reference -- turns out not at all as expected, not much larger than one of the nephews and to have a dopey, aloof personality. This twist has a Jay Ward flavor to it.

(The deliberately anti-climactic -- turning the convention on its head -- half-page splash of Figgy nonchalantly strutting out from the darkness of the crate in which he was delivered demonstrates perfect comic timing. I think it'd have me in a slight fit of giggling if instead of exclaiming, "Howdy do, folks!", Figgy were to utter simply, "'sup?" [There's a Paul Dini-scribed issue of Detective Comics that uses basically the same gag, but with the Joker.'] However, I'd probably be adverse to the use of such overly contemporary slang.)

Writers of lesser skill might (in probably a considerably shorter story) have the revelation of Figgy's non-threatening presence be the entire punchline, and maybe, if at all worth his or salt, proceed to end on a gag in which Figgy is able to keep the Beagles away from the bin after all, just not in the way Scrooge had originally hoped. (Taking an aspect of Van Horn's superior version, Figgy's diet consisting entirely of beans, it could be Figgy's breath being really repulsive... or... well, fart jokes aren't really a part of duck comics, so...) Fortunately, Van Horn's talent has given us a much busier, more complex tale involving the Beagles' scheme to acquire Scrooge's cash with a matter transmitter going awry due to their own bungling and complications arising from Figgy getting mixed up in it, resulting in a storm of confusion on both the ducks' and the Beagles' ends. This is a first-rate, silly-but-clever, slapsticky-but-witty Van Horn spoof! The Beagles' being sick of eating beans and accidentally transporting Scrooge's bean supply to their hideout strikes me as a Barksian twist, although I can't help but think that Barks would've saved it for a master stroke a the very end. However, Scrooge does tie things in with a bean-alluding closing one-liner -- and that remark being couple with the last panel's depiction of the Beagles' punishment, and their "Should've been careful what you wished for"-begging remarks that they're sick of the very sight of money, has enough of a Barksian tinge to it that it's still makes for a strong conclusion. Actually, one could say that it's Van Horn enough to be a strong ending, or that it's just a strong ending, period.

The very idea of the Beagle Boys relocating the contents of the bin to their hideout immediately brings to mind the DuckTales episode "The Money Vanishes". The resemblance is all the more closer because in both cases, t he Beagles are using an apparently abandoned urban building (whether it had originally been used for offices, tenements, warehouse or storage, or what have you, it's not clear in either case; the one on DuckTales -- which appeared in multiple episodes -- is worn down and boarded up, while Van Horn's is merely nondescript; the DT one is three stories high, while its hard to tell if the one in Van Horn's story, and those on either side of it, are one or two stories), and in both cases, the Beagles ultimate undoing is that their building becomes overloaded with cash and it bursts out onto the street.

Oh, and I think I might know a guy whose family owns the bean company that Scrooge orders Figgy's pay/feed from! ;)

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"Fools" is very well complemented by the 15-page 1981 Disney Studio production "The Big Break-In", written by Carl Fallberg and drawn by Romano Scarpa -- an international collaboration! Unlike many of Scarpa's duck stories that have made it to the U.S., this one actually makes sense -- I guess its to be expected that a U.S. writer such as Fallberg would be more on the same page as a U.S. audience. The proceedings here are notably sillier than Fallberg's average Mickey Mouse adventure-mystery, although perhaps it's Scarpa's exaggerated, tense poses and expressions that play up the frantic energy the story projects. Taking into account the notion of Scrooge's safe combination tumblers not lining up right because the money in the bin is imbalanced and causing a tilt, and Scrooge counting on the Beagles succeeding in breaking in to solve his problem and sitting back against a tree and taking a nap while he lets them go to work, the high-strung Gyro scrambling to find a solution while the calm Helper accidentally discovers one, and Gyro blindly bringing Helper's solution right into the Beagles' hands, this is a very acutely written, original story -- basically, all of the adjectives that I used for the Van Horn story apply here! The characterization is dead-on, too ... Fallberg should've done more duck stories!

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Barks eight-page "The Madball Pitcher" from one of his Gyro Gearloose issues of Four Color (#1095, 1960) is certainly preferable to those Huey, Dewey, and Louie soccer stories that Gemstone would later feature. However, I question that Gyro never feels guilty for helping both teams virtually cheat ... but in a way where the two inventions cancel each other out! This might be explained as Gyro's exasperated, miserable, "I'm in for it either way" attitude eclipsing any moral concerns that he might have. (I also have a feeling that the way Gyro's characterized here is a reflection of his creator, who revealed a certain degree of self-deprecation fuddy-duddiness in interviews.) But notably, the ending finds both teams at each others' throats -- in a way, both get their comeuppance, but at the same time, they don't seem to have realized that they both committed the very same crime. Safe to say, one of Barks' more cynical moments!

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Geoffrey Blum's writing and Daniel Branca's art guarantee a fulfilling read, but "World Wide Witch" dares to do something I'm inherently wary of: "bring the ducks into the modern world". In fact, the technological references that this story is saturated with are now dated and quaint! Furthermore, it still feels very much like a duck story; even a Barks story. (And it's certainly more tasteful than all of those recent Italian stories that I've seen in which the ducks and mice are seen using smartphones and Facebook-type social networking platforms.) 

Blum treats us to a very thoughtful, insightful, enjoyable one-page article explaining the origins and goals of his story. Blum's observation that Scrooge and Magica "are two sides of the same coin" turns into a confession that he identifies with both on the terms that they're "self-dramatizing outsiders laboring away at specialized careers and venturing into society mainly when they need something from it". Personally, I identify to a T with Blum's self-description personified as his personal interpretation of two of Barks' creations ... which corroborates with the understanding of the characterized that I've acquired over the course of my life to date, and, by extension, to their creator. Thus, it all kind of adds up here: why Blum has always been so well-suited to writing about Barks, and while I've always been drawn to Barks, and to Gladstone/Another Rainbow's Blum-dominated contextualizing of Barks. (Perhaps it's more true than not that I've actually grown into relating to all of this.) ...hey, how did this review become so much about me?! I feel so naked now!

-- Ryan