(Some of) my assorted thoughts on: Mickey and Donald #1 (Gladstone, cover date Mar. 1988)

Mickey and Donald was, in a way, a quintessential Gladstone I publication; one of the Gladstone I-iest Gladstone I comics of them all. What makes that so? One factor is, of course, the combination of vintage mouse and vintage duck material, the latter -- if I'm not mistaken -- all by Barks except for various one-page gags and such, while Mickey was -- in contrast to the Gottfredson-dominated flagship mosue title -- represented by Western-derived reprints by Murry, Bradbury, Wright, and others. In fact, this premiere issue's proto letter-column', besides a preview image of #2's cover (taking up most of the page's space) and a boldface editorial introduction to all readers and boldface one-line response to the letter-writer, consists of a letter from a reader lamenting the loss of Mickey Mouse Digest and the absence of an alternative vehicle for such Western fare.

Add to the actual comic book content the familiar logo and issue price/indicia, title logo design, and Daan Jippes art on the front cover, and the familiar stoic but humble (giving the comics the dignity they deserve, but not forgetting their cartoonish nature) typeface used in for the letter column and for Cross Talk (and not to mention all of the intelligent, caring letters from fans the world over and the mastery of insight, information, and charming grace of Geoffrey Blum's Cross Talk writing), and you have a Gladstone I comic), and the wonderful texture and aroma of that newsprint, and you have a pure Gladstone I comic -- the most perfect comics ever produced.


As #1 was released in December, it featured a Jippes reworking of the cover to 1949's Firestone Giveaway #9, which Inducks credits to Jim Pabian. I have a sneaking suspicion that Gladstone scheduled this title's debut so as to be able to use this cover. For my money, Jippes' version is an improvement, with a better grasp on the characters' personalities -- esecially Donald's. The original looks like it was by a children's book author of the era who only knew how to imitate the characters' general appearances and draw them smiling.

Cover by Daan Jippes. Recreation/reworking of Jim Pabian's cover to Firestone Giveaway #9, December 1949.

"The Trail to Treasure". Art by Paul Murry. Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #242, cover date Nov. 1960. 8 pages.

I had expected to find that this was from a Dell or Gold key issue of Mickey Mouse -- I've always assumed that any Murry story originating in WDC&S would be a three-part serial. It was preceded by Murry's serialized re-drawing of "An Education for Thursday" and followed by the Fallberg-Murry three-parter "Mickey's Strange Mission" (which was in turn followed by another, "The Moon-Blot Plot" ... which appears to not have had anything to do with the Phantom Blot, alas), so perhaps it was a rare "refresher" perhaps Murry got going again ... or Fallberg wasn't available in time to start writing a new serial. (Both scenarios remind me of how creative team scheduling is done at the big modern comic publishers.)

Even as a child, I felt that Murry's stuff was benign and dull in comparison to Gottfredson's. I still have a certain respect for the serials, though. And even by that margin, this story is still toothless ... especially when you consider that its trappings, uncovered ancient hieroglyph tablets and our treasure-hunting heroes being kidnapped by pirates (led by a bland iteration of, as he's called here, Black Pete) are the making of a rollicking adventure, but instead, they're used to set up an overly cute ending gag. And the stuff on the island involving dropping the ancient artifacts down the mountainside on the opposing teams' heads is just too slapsticky for me.


"New Toys". Written and drawn by Carl Barks. Firestone Giveaway #49, December 1949. 8 pages.

All the charm and yuletide warmth of most of Barks' late `40's Christmas stories. With the nephews at first being greedy and materialistic, it's more akin to "A Letter to Santa", but in the end, when the nephews' give away their new toys to poor children sadly watching them playing, it turns out to have all of the optimism and good will toward men that Barks displayed in "A Christmas for Shacktown".


"Christmas Surprise". Art by Bill Wright. Firestone Giveaway #49, December 1949. 8 pages.

As Blum notes in "Cross Talk", by including this and the above story, this issue reprints the contents of FG #49 in their entirety. It's nice to see Wright art -- I've said before, as Gottfredson's former inker, he's the closest a Western mouse artist ever got to having a Gottfredson-like spark of life to them and a rich, flexible feel to the inking. Also, as essentially a domestic sitcom -- much like Barks' ten-pagers -- it doesn't set the reader up for disappointment the way that "Trail to Treasure" did. And there's real humor here, not cheap slapstick; Mickey's determination to keep Minnie's presents hidden and Goofy's determination not to let his friend down feel like "real" motives, and ring completely true of these characters as we generally know them. And Mickey and Minnie's discovery of Goofy in an unexpected place at the end is silly, but as a result of the character's earnest but self-complicated efforts, it's genuinely funny and endearing.


"Fir-Tree Fracas". Written and drawn by Don Rosa. Original. 4 pages.

Early Rosa. Poor Donald -- he thinks he's completely succeeded at something unique and commendable, only to have disaster fall upon his creation. Who knew that Christmas lights could be the cause of such a wide-scale disaster ... shown so effectively and striking in its devastation because, ironically, of Rosa's grid-like art, reflecting his construction background.

-- Ryan

A heavy metal artist has made an album of songs based on Don Rosa stories! Yes, really!

I don't remember why now, but a couple of weeks ago, I was Googling "Last Sled to Dawson", and as I typed it in, one of the "predictions" that came up was "Last Sled to Dawson lyrics". That gave me pause. There's a song with the same title as one of my favorite stories? I decided to pursue the matter ... after all, Google was inviting me to.

My first move was to pull up the lyrics. From the first two verses, it was apparent that the title wasn't a coincidence -- the song was definitely based on Rosa's first sequel to a Barks classic:

There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting
It's luring me as of old!
Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting so much as finding the gold!
It's the great, big, broad land `way up yonder!
The great, broad land `way up yonder

Haunting him as of old
Yet, it ain't the gold itself
So much as finding the gold
Farewell, White Agony Creek
Farewell, the three long years
Can't leave behind what's in this sled

And besides the dead-giveaway mentions of "finding the gold", "Can't leave behind what's in this sled", and especially "White Agony Creek" -- and the sentiment of "It's the great, big, broad land `way up yonder", which evokes one of the flashbacks early in Rosa's story --  the lyrics to me immediately had an eerie, timeless air to them, that for me, was tapping into the emotional and mythic arc of Rosa's narrative.

Still, I was figuring that this was an obscure song by some folk and/or "adult contemporary" artist that had been released at some point years ago, and no one who's heard it was aware of what had inspired it.

I couldn't have been more wrong. It belongs to an album that in in its entirety is based exclusively and explicitly on Rosa's "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" ... and it was released just last month! And Don Rosa came out of retirement to draw and paint the cover! See: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I38JJ2Q/?tag=nublreus-20

It's a solo release by Tuomas Holopainen, of the Finnish "operatic power metal" band Nightwish, who back when I was into goth music I'd heard of, but wasn't familiar with. Holopainen is a self-proclaimed huge Don Rosa fan, and had the idea for this album back in the `90's, when he first read Rosa's 12-part odyssey.

As unlikely as Holopainen's admiration and his ultimate collaboration with Rosa may seem, it makes sense when you remember how popular duck comics, and Rosa in particular, are in Finland. Apparently, everyone there really does read them!

Music videos for two of the songs -- including "The Last Sled" -- can be found on YouTube:

"The Last Sled":

"A Lifetime of Adventure":

For me, this style of music is a little too synthetic and overwrought. However, I certainly appreciate and identify with where Holopainen is coming from, to say the least. I may even just order a copy of the cd.

-- Ryan

(Some of) my assorted thoughts on: Uncle Scrooge #231 (Gladstone, cover date Nov. 1988)

Our Don Rosa cover is very much in the same vein as Barks' covers for this very same title:

“Too Safe Safe” – Barks ten-pager. Walt Disneys Comics and Stories #171. 1954.

Scrooge task Donald with removing a sole mouse from the money bin … but not because it’s grunt work; Scrooge actually considers the mouse a threat to his cash of the most serious order, but Donald works the cheapest. The Donald-Scrooge interplay is archetypal, especially in the context of Donald working for Scrooge in the bin. Going as far as back as “ , this story certainly belongs to its era; to regular readers; there is a familiarity with the setting and the relationship between its inhabitants. Scrooge, of course, looks down on Donald, while Donald, though his uncle is prone to angering and insulting him, is determined to succeed in his assignment, though he’s just as on edge about failing. In the vein of the classic opening to “Back to the Klondike”, in which Donald nonchalantly stands by as Scrooge loses his nerves, pacing, talking to himself, and forgetting what happened a moment before, Donald comes off well in contrast with his obsessive-compulsive uncle; in fact, Donald looks outright SANE. (This is more apparent to the readers, however; Donald’s self-awareness is too limited to allow him that affirmation, sadly.) The bit where Donald, for some inscrutable reason, nails a pillow to the ceiling above Scrooge’s desk chair, then – once Scrooge has questioned him as to what the hell he’s doing – informs Scrooge of the discovered mouse, resulting in a shocked, alarmed, and outraged Scrooge literally hitting the (now-cushioned) ceiling in the fashion that only a cartoon character can, is hilarious.

Another priceless moment is – Scrooge having JUST sent Donald away, without pay due to Scrooge’s entire fortune now being inaccessible, worried about how he’s going to be able to eat – Scrooge’s realization that, “Wait! What am I going to eat?!” The one-panel lapse between Donald’s departure and Scrooge’s epiphany is timed PERFECTLY. And Scrooge’s facial expression – he looks like a truckload of hardened cement just hit him – is Barks at his comic(al) best.

Gyro, in one of his earliest appearances, functions as a plot device, providing the impenetrable wax that Scrooge’s entire bin is sealed in. (You would THINK that Scrooge would have enough foresight to realize the problem this would create, but not only are Barks’ characters all too human in their flaws – in this case, Scrooge is SO focused on protecting the contents of his vault from Federal Reserve note-nibbling rodents, he is unable to see any factors of the project external to tis primary objective. Additionally, Barks’ world is just cartoony and whimsical enough where such logic breaks [thanks, Gregory] are permissible.) Gyro isn’t yet the meek, somewhat downtrodden but generally cheery, relatable tinkerer we would come to know in the Barks’ Gyro-solo stories. Here, he’s more of tertiary joke in and of himself: he’s just some crank who claims that he can only get invention ideas when he knocks himself on the head. his role here is only to be the object of this recurring gag and to facilitate the impenetrable wax’s entry into the story. Don’t get me wrong, it is a funny portrayal, and he’s not unlikable, but we’re not given an opportunity to identify with him here. The evolution from Gyro’s more angular, raggedy appearance here to the more composed and upright character design Barks would settle on seems to parallel the evolution of his characterization, which may have been subconscious on Barks part; before the reader could identify with the character, its creator had to, first.

Of course, Barks had mastered the nephews by this point (I might even take a hardline, Don Rosa-ish position and state that not only are Barks’ nephews definitive, but he actually created them, and the rowdy little brats in the shorts never existed). Although they don’t show up until the final page, their appearance is quintessential Barks’ nephews: they’re shown as having taken – virtually parental – responsibility for feeding their bungling two uncles, admonishing them for their irresponsibility.

_________________

“Fear of Buyin” (original title translates to “Loss Day Found”) – 8 pages. Plot: Joel Katz. Script: Tom Anderson. Pencils: José Cardona Blasi. Created in 1985, first published in 1987. Denmark.

Uh oh! This story includes a non-Barks flashback to Dawson that is invalidated by the very existence of Life and Times … and worse yet, it posits a life-defining moment that Scrooge has rued ever since! If it were just a few panels showing some generic depictions of Scrooge prospecting and walking past the saloons and dance halls of Dawson, I guess that’d be relativity innocuous … but this inferior story actually has the gall to invent an important and event – and even date!!! – in Scrooge’s life. I should repent for even having set eyes on it! And … quick!!! Any and every existing copies, scans, and the original art (if it even still exists) should be destroyed, per an international mandate!

No, I’m only kidding … and not at all in an anti-Don Rosa sense, mind you; see my comment above about Barks’ conception of the nephews. I’m a self-admitted continuity nut, and if anything, I’m poking fun at myself, if not “our kind” in general. Even Barks’ own “Cold Bargain” doesn’t seem to jive with “Back to the Klondike” (Rosa even had to retcon its placing of Scrooge’s far-north prospecting days in Alaska.) But whereas I was actually annoyed an Jippes gag piece that BOOM! published because it showed young Klondike Scrooge wrassling with a bear that looked exactly like Goldie’s Blackjack, there’s nothing about “Fear of Buyin’” that bugs me. I can understand objecting to the notion that a greenhorn Scrooge even had ONE millisecond of weakness and gave in to gambling’s lure, enough emphasis is placed on it being just that – a weak moment – and that it was a result of Scrooge hitting a low point and fearing failure (remember, he had barely his first dime, let alone a fortune, at this point – he surely had to have spats of self-doubt) is well-considered and demonstrates enough understand of the character that I commend it.

And, besides, it’s only the story’s set-up! Scrooge’s staff rejoicing at actually being dismissed early, the figurative dark cloud that hangs over Scrooge each year on this date (see? This IS the Scrooge we know – if he DID actually make such a youthful indiscretion, he WOULD regard it in this manner), his anxiety over having to adhere to his vow to abstain from all business for the day’s duration, his inability to avoid anything that reminds him of money, and his frantic roping in of Donald to be his “guardian”, and Donald’s flubbing things at the auction are all prime Duck story transpirations, and are by-and-large Barks-worthy. (The work-base bickering between Scrooge and Donald compliments the preceding story nicely, too.)

Okay, the “can’t avoid anything that reminds him of money” sequence is a bit hackneyed, but nearly inevitable. Sue Daigle – credited with scripting the U.S. version, the only instance of her doing so that I’m aware of – may even improve the gags with the pun book titles that Scrooge jumps away from. Presumably, they were completely different titles in the original version, but still jokes or puns – just different ones. Otherwise, the gags just wouldn’t work.

Standard, perfectly fine Gutenberghus/Egmont art. Of course, Gladstone only accounted for Cardona Blasi with "Produced by the Gutenberghus Group". I have a feeling that Blasi could have been on Vicar's staff of "ghost" artists.

_________________

The Beagle Boys – “Soured on Sweets” (original title translates to “A Sweet Tooth”). Plot: Neville Jason. Script: Bob Bartholomew. Pencils: Daniel Branca. Created in 1984, first published in 1987. Denmark.

The chocolate factory slapstick, the cliché of having to go through a million (actual number not stated – but odd how EVERYTHING that came off the production line went to ONE tiny local shop) assembly line products to find a misplaced, greatly desired object, and the silly coincidence of the Beagles running into not one but two other womanat the zoo each holding yet ANOTHER box of chocolates? Meh. Daniel Branca’s art? YEAH!!! I think I’ve said this before, but he pulls off the feat of drawing Barksian Beagles who are more expressive and “flexible than Barks’ (who usually were pretty stiff, but it was part of Barks’ comical conception of them, not a fault), but doesn’t fall into the heavily stylized, angular, absurdly cartoony European digest style.

_________________

“Shaping Up” – one-page gag by William Van Horn. Original.

Van Horn still getting his feet wet. Donald comments that Scrooge, upon exiting a gym, looks healthier … not because of a workout, because he turned down all of the very expensive fitness courses that the gym had to offer. (Expensive being the operative word.) A relatively simple but tightly-paced and in-character gag.

_________________

The entire letter column is taken up by one GREAT letter chiming in on a debate that had been going on at that time in Gladstone’s letters columns – written by a lawyer in Michigan, making a serious, monetarily complex argument but with (most notably at the end) a fantastically dry wit.

-- Ryan

(P.S. Yes, the Aladdin reviews will continue -- just trying to make sure that I don't lose my [very few] regular readers!)

Less than a week away!

If all goes according to plan, I'll be at New York Comic Con next weekend, doing what Don Rosa's seen doing here, at this year's San Diego Comic Con:

(If this isn't foreign territory to you and aren't sure what exactly he's doing...he's carefully browsing through boxes of old comics, looking for ones that he wants to buy!  This is at one of the many, many dealers on the convention floor.) 

(This picture was taken at last year's San Diego Comic Con.  Someone at DCF linked to where they'd found this picture, but it part of a lonnnnnnnng thread of pictures, and I had wait a long time for the whole page to load, and scroll forever to find this one.  So, I wasn't eager to bookmark the page -- snatched up this picture, and got out of there!  But because of that experience, regretably, I can't give credit for this photo to where it's due.)  (Well, I could, if I really, really felt like sifting through DCF to find the thread where I'd originally followed the afore-mentioned link, and enduring that bloated photo thread again to single out whoever posted this one of Don [amongst hundreds of others...])

It's not likely that Rosa will be at the New York convention.  But I really hope that I get to meet him someday, and show him my very first comic (same copy!), Uncle Scrooge's Adventures #5, which featured "Last Sled to Dawson", one of his earliest stories!

A History of DuckTales Comic Books, Part Three: DuckTales Magazine and Disney Adventures

From the summer of 1988 to the fall of 1990, as licensed by Disney, Welsh Publishing Group produced DuckTales Magazine on a quarterly basis.  It was entirely geared at children -- going by memory, its contents were along the lines of activities, games (e.g., simple mazes and crossword puzzles...you get the idea...), short stories told in prose with illustrations, fluffy articles, and silly, vapid columns (am I correct in remembering there being an Ask Webby feature, or something of the sort): 

The cover art was usually pretty nice, though.  (That reminds me -- as a child, I had an '88 or '89 DuckTales calendar, each month bearing a painting the ducks in some form of adventure and derring-do, some -- or all? -- of which were used as covers for the magazine.  My copy of the calendar ultimately had a child's scrawlings all over it, and is long-gone.  But I'd like to find a clean copy.)  Here's the first issue's cover:

The only component of this periodical of relevance to this history is its four-page comic stories -- one per issue (presumably starting with the second issue, as Inducks lists nothing for the first).  In spite of being credited to such honorable names as Joey Cavalieri, Héctor Saavedra, and Cosme Quartieri, the format's brevity -- and likely editorial preferences -- were incredibly constricting; from what I recall of them, these stories were simple, excessively light in tone, lacking in wit, and their pacing (understandably) felt rushed and truncated.  Carl Barks' strengths as a writer and artist were never compromised by doing 10-pagers or 4-pagers...which is why I suspect that the editors wanted written "down" to children. 

...I mean, DC's 1990 three-issue Bugs Bunny mini-series was written by Cavalieri.  It demonstrated cleverness and wit, and narratively, was acute and relatively subtle...especially in comparison to these four-page DuckTales comic stories!  So it's not like Cavalieri couldn't do funny animal stories. 

Even the one written by Don Rosa ("Back in Time for a Dime", in the spring 1990 issue) was completely generic and unimpressive.  (Looking at Inducks' scan of its first page, I note that Quartieri's art was inspired, though.)  (To read Rosa himself referring to DuckTales Magazine's comics -- one infers, even his own! --as "mindless drek", and his explanation of how Disney not allowing Gladstone to return his art to him had forced him look for work elsewhere -- I guess because he sold his own stuff to collectors? -- culminating in freelancing for the magazine this one time, visit the DCML's "Don Rosa on himself" page, and scroll down to "Story for DuckTales Magazine [script only]".)  (Curiously, "for a Dime" features Bubba -- I don't think he appeared in any of the magazine's other comics, andf that Fenton/Gizmoduck never appeared!  One would think that Rosa would've been reluctant to include characters created for the series, so his story being the exception in this respect is odd.)

[ADDENDUM: Regarding Bubba appearing in Rosa's story, David Gerstein added some vital information, and invaluable insight, in his comment below, reproduced here:

"Editors altered Rosa's story to add Bubba after Rosa submitted it. From my perspective, it was an incredibly damaging alteration: when the whole point of the story is to draw a distinction between modern Duckburg and the Stone Age, it confuses everything to have a caveman in the 'modern' scenario.

"The editors also altered Rosa's opening gag about the tremor running through the house, but at least I managed to restore that when we reprinted the story at Gemstone."

Because of David's thoroughness and dauntlessness, the "director's cut" of "Back in Time for a Dime!" -- rectifying the opening panel so that Scrooge's dialogue is what Rosa had originally written (the tremor gag to which David refers) -- was included in Uncle Scrooge #369 (Gemstone, Sept. 2007).

Thanks again, David!]

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In November 1990, two months after the advent of both The Disney Afternoon and TaleSpin, and just as DuckTales Magazine was being phased out, Disney launched another children's magazine, this one a monthly: Disney Adventures.  Disney Comics promoted it and had some editorial involvement, but I'm not sure to what extent.  It seems likely that the non-comics portions of it were produced by another staff/department/division entirely.  It had far more distribution and more success than the Disney Comics line proper, early in its run making its way to being on display in grocery and department store checkout lines, right alongside the tabloids and TV Guide. 

Each issue boasted on its cover a currently-"hot", recognizable-to-kids celebrity; that, above all else, compounded with its popularity and its presence in checkout lines, should tell you the nature of the magazine, and why we need not concern ourselves any further with its non-comics contents (which were the majority of its contents.)  Needless to say, its target audience was not Carl Barks fan.

Because the magazine's launch was concurrent with the Disney Afternoon's, Disney saw an opportunity to further the hype surrounding the latter; during its first couple years, in the case of most issues, the celebrity featured on the cover was posed interacting with one or more characters from one of the four show in TDA's current lineup.  From the outset, each issue included three or four (give or take) comics.  At first, DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, and TaleSpin comics were featured exclusively.  When Darkwing Duck joined TDA, DW comics were incorporated; the same in the case of Goof Troop, and so forth.  As each year TDA dropped its oldest series, the older series' comics were phased out from Disney Adventures, but between the two, there wasn't a perfect concurrence in this respect.  Which properties were featured in comics form varied from one issue to the next. 

Prior to the official first issue, its launch was promoted, ca. late summer/early fall 1990, with a Kellogg's tie-in -- mail in so many proofs-of-purchase, and you would receive a special giveaway issue!  Being eight years old at the time, I was quite eager to take advantage of the offer, and feel quite nostalgic now as I recall raiding my grandparents' shelves to cut the UPC barcodes off of their Kellogg's cereal boxes!  

Not only did that "pilot" issue include two DuckTales comic stories, the cover was an unqualified DuckTales cover, uncorrupted by not a single celebrity!

Pretty cool, eh?  (Trust me, this is the only Disney Adventures cover you'll find me saying that!)  (Note how they forgot to color Launchpad's hair -- looks odd, doesn't it?)

One of the two included DT comic stories was a whopping 18 pages, divided into two chapters.  Here's Inducks' scan of part one, page one:

And part two, page one:

Inducks cites no creator credits for this comic.  Unfortunately, my Disney Adventures collection is long-gone (overall, good riddance!), so at present, I'm not able to reread this story in its entirety.  But going by memory, and judging by these isolated two pages, it was decent.  Think I'll start watching for this issue on ebay.

In the official first issue (cover date: November 12th, 1990), DuckTales was represented with an eight-page comic story, "The Dream Scheme".  Again, Inducks' scan of the first page:

Once again, I have no way of reading the rest of the story, but going by this scan, it seems it could've been decent.  The dynamics of the art, and the jump-right-in, off-the-ground-running narrative hook, are better than DuckTales Magazines' comics, to say the least.  (It's certainly worth noting that it was written by Bob Langhans!)

I don't particularly remember this story.  Same goes for most of the DuckTales comics created for Disney Adventures.  Generally, I think they ran from decent to mediocre; sometimes, perhaps a bit worse.  In all fairness, I'd have to re-read them to be able to say anything definite about them.  But given how enthusiastic I've always been about DT and yet how none of these comics have proven memorable...well, that speaks for something, no?

[...]

...there's one, DEFINITE, exception.  I will never, ever forget the five-part serial entitled "The Legend of the Chaos God", written by Bobbi J.G. Weiss and David Cody Weiss, and drawn by Cosme Quartieri, who's name should by now be familiar, and printed in the June, August "23rd" (there'd been a plain ol' August issue, but "Chaos God" Part Two was nowhere to be found therein; more on that below.  The August "23rd" issue was in lieu of the September issue...ya got me!), October, November, and December 1994 issues. 

In the all-too short run of Disney Comics' Tale Spin, Weiss had made some ambitious, commendable attempts at deepening the series' mythology, such as a story tackling Kit's past.  And an editorial comment in one isssue's letter column that a multi-part serial, courtesy of Weiss, delving into the "origins" of the Air Pirates' airborne fortress, the Flying Vulture was in the near-future; alas, this story was still slated for later when TaleSpin became a victim of the Disney Implosion.  (And again, I ask: how much work was done on the material for the next few issues before they were cancelled, and does any of it survive?)

And with this serial, Weiss once again "thought big".  And by all rights, the end results should earn a place of reverence amongst Disney Afternoon fans for all time.  What's the big deal?  "Legend of the Chaos God" is a veritable Disney Afternoon crossover...or quasi-crossover: it follows a jewel possessed by an ancient warlike, vengeful god as it makes its way from Cape Suzette (Part 1) to wherever the Rescue Rangers live (Part 2)(the "humans" are dogfaces in this case -- creative license taken so that the Rangers could exist in the same world that the other series do!) to Spoonerville (Part 3) to Duckburg (Part 4) to St. Canard (Part 5).  In each case, the malevolent god, Solego, manages to possess someone (or something -- a car, in the Goof Troop intallment), but doesn't escape the jewel until Part 5, only to then be defeated by Darkwing and Gizmoduck -- for at the end of Part 4, Solego had taken possession of the Gizmoduck suit and departed for St. Canard, with Fenton vowing pursuit!  The fanboy in me can't help but revel in how unabashedly "awesome" this transition into Part 5 is!

...see??!!!  ;)

Thus...the adjacency of the serial's DuckTales and Darkwing Duck installments, and Gizmoduck's bridging the two, is incredibly pertinent, because: BOOM!'s imminent DuckTales-Darkwing Duck crossover is actually not the first one that's ever even officially happened...nor is it even the first one that's ever officially happened in comics!

Bobbi's handling of the DT-DW "timeline" is very logical and simple: Launchpad's not in the DuckTales chapter because he now lives in St. Canard, where, sure enough, we find him in the Darkwing chapter, in the same capacacity that he is in any Darkwing story.  Thus, we infer that Bobbi's assumed that the entirety of the DW series takes place after the entirety of the DT series, and "Chaos God" (besides Part 1) is set well into the timeline of the DW series -- at least after Darkwing and Gizmoduck's first encounter.  So, this is a rare DuckTales story in that it's consciously set after the series and during the course of DW -- and the only exception that has to be made is that Launchpad's not in the DT chapter.  Otherwise, life seems to have continued as normal in Duckburg.   

Seems the obvious way to go, no?  But for some reason, BOOM! seems to have really muddied up this matter.  But we'll see how they address it once the actual crossover is underway.

Here's page nine of Part 5 -- Darkwing and Gizmoduck's (Fenton having by now reclaimed the suit) (and Launchpad's...kind of) showdown with the now-freed Solego!

This scan, and one from Part 4 above, iare courtesy of this site -- which, wonder of wonders, hosts scans of every single page of the arc!  For once, I can direct you to a place where you can easily access the entire thing, and, unlike almost every other comic that ever appeared in Disney Adventures, I have accesss to it myself!

Inducks notes that Part 2 is the last Rescue Rangers story to ever appear in Disney Adventures.  No such note is made in their entry for Part 4; however, by this point, DuckTales comics appearing in the magazine were few and far between, and after "Chaos God", there weren't many, if any.

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I'll do either one or two "History of DuckTales Comics" posts on the BOOM! era, and one post spotlighting a certain story that's never gotten much attention or fanfare.  And I want to write about other subjects, as well.  But when any of that will appear, I'm not sure.  My sister's weekend is to take place during this coming weekend, and my work and school commitments are considerably demanding.  So, it might be a little while before I post again...but I hope I don't once again go longer than a month without a new -- and proper, full-fledged -- post!

Shades of Bizzaro World (or, perhaps slightly-kind-of-sort-of-but-not-really more fittingly, the Negaverse?)...

I know, I know, I've heard it time and time again.  Duck comics are unfathomably popular in places like Italy, Finland, and Norway.

...to the point where, apparently, when Don Rosa visits Finland, he's treated like royalty on their equivalent of Good Morning, America.

Okay.  Someone's just plain messing with me, in the unbeknowst-to-me-I've-actually-for-my-whole-life-been-in-a-situation-similar-to-that-of-the-lead-character-in-The Truman Show sense.

Don Rosa's "The Black Knight" and "The Quest for Kalevala"

Away at a grad school residency. Forgot to bring my Challengers of the Unknown collection…so the “Riddle of the Star-Stone” entry is postponed. But, what’s stopping me from writing about something else?! And I do have other books and comics with me, so…

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For various reasons, I was MIA throughout the latter, prestige format-only phase of Gladstone II, and virtually the entire Gemstone era. A couple years ago, when some sense finally came back into my head and I was drawn back to comics, one of the first things I did was track down all of the Don Rosa stories I’d missed. But, I got hung up on waiting to read all of his work in chronological order. So, until a couple of days ago, I’d had a bunch of Rosa-authored adventures -- ones I’d still never read -- filed away for far too long. While packing for my present excursion, I thought, “What’s something, if for some reason I’d really need some grounding, that I’d just love to read?” Hmm, a couple of long-form Rosa Uncle Scrooge tales that would be completely new to me?  Seemed like I couldn’t go wrong there!

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By chance, both of the stories that I've brought along with me on this trip, being from the last several years of Rosa's career, are rare exceptions in that neither one is a sequel to a Barks classic, nor a “Life and Times” sub-chapter, but instead utilize original premises and are (mostly) self-contained.

First up is “The Black Knight”, featured in Uncle Scrooge #314 (Gladstone, Oct. 1998):

　
　
The titular character of "The Black Knight" (the story not represented in any way on the cover seen above, alas) is a mysterious, elusive criminal who has flabbergasted the world with a series of inexplicable safe-crackings and vault-breachings.  Without any mistake on Rosa's part, it's entirely transparent that the Knight's alter ego is the pompous, self-important Arpin Lusene, a caricature of a snooty French “sophisticate”. The Knight sets his sites on the money bin, for he sees it as posing the ultimate challenge -- one that, if surmounted, would ensure his legacy.  And when he gets his hands on some of Gyro Gearloose’ Omnisolve (a substance that will evaporate anything it touches into complete nothingness; introduced in Rosa’s “The Universal Solvent”), he uses its near-invincibility to strike at his target.  Nonetheless, Scrooge scrambles to obstruct the Knight’s determined one-man assault on the bin.

In many of his stories, Rosa plays up the ducks as archetypes belonging to a divine mythology, with an abundance of self-aware, winking-at-the-reader references to Rosa's encylopedic, meticulously-construced Barks-based continuity. (See my comments below on “Quest for Kalevala”.)  "Black Knight" is a rare occasion where the latter-day Rosa’s ducks seem more “down-to-earth”, closer to Barks’ employment of them; each of Barks' stories were completed insular, and in any one of them, the ducks entered its situation as their “everyday selves”.  There was no undercurrent of some sort of over-arcing, cosmic greater whole. Here, Rosa simply pits the ducks in an all-new, unprecedented conflict, divorced from any earlier story, and discretionately has them react to it more or less as we’d expect them to.

It’s also a prime example of Rosa as, pure and simple, a good cartoonist.  Standouts:  1.  The magnified facial expressions indicating the shifts between anger, irritation, exasperation etc. as Scrooge and Donald bicker.  2.  The sight gags depicting the skulking Black Knight repeatedly continuously dodging the ducks as they're in the very act of seeking him but are oblivious to the fact that he’s right under their noses.  3.  The Black Knight, prompting a succession of double-takes from the scenery, barreling through Duckburg, his wonton wielding of his Omnisolve-coated sword leaving a path of destruction in his wake -- a path that heads straight for the money bin, and plows on going right inside.  Rosa depicts these occurences in several panels that use wide-angle perspectives, drawing to the fore his architectural training.  In particular, see the two oversized, unconventional, vertical panels portraying a puddle of Omnisolve’s rapid descent through multiple levels of the office wing of the bin.

And I delighted in the characterization of an overwrought Scrooge: at first, horrified to near-paralysis when he realizes the Knight’s campaign is already underway; then, as the undeterrable, daunting foe draws near the heart of the bin, Scrooge’s last reserves kick in, and, reinvigorated, a gleam arising in his eyes, he makes a hell of an “I’m-going-out-fighting!” last stand, allowing us to witness Rosa's McDuck in top form.

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The other story to be accompanying me in my travels is “The Quest for Kalevala”, printings of which were dispatched throughout the United States via Uncle Scrooge #334 (Gemstone, Oct. 2004):

On the inside back cover is printed an informative, measured article by Jukka Heiskanen on “The Quest for Kalevala”, explaining Rosa’s popularity in Finland, and how his Finnish fan base had sparked this story by urging him to create a Duck story based on the Finnish epic poem Kalevala.

With a title that hits the right cues (I mean, a declarative, direct title that uses the “Quest for [arcane-sounding something]” format sets certain expectation) and a whopping 33 pages, “The Quest for Kalevala” entices one with the prospect of a classic, timeless Duck adventure. And, it certainly proves to be marvelous. I would attribute a varying degree of realism to both Barks’ and Rosa’s work.  And yet, certainly, the former was known to draw from myths, and implement the fantastical into his stories. However -- ironically, given his dogmatic adherence to being realistic in terms of a timeline and continuity -- Rosa takes the larger-than-life, sword-and-sorcery aspects of Kalevala and runs with it, giving the Lucases and Jacksons of the world a run for their money.

Still, in spite of an arguable breach of Barks/Duck comics Puritanism, this story is tightly constructed and remarkably drawn. Rosa displays ample craftsmanship in the way that he opens with something as simple as Scrooge digging up a long-forgotten, still-unpaid I.O.U., which becomes the first in a succession of leads that the ducks pursue.  As they do so, they gradually realize that there’s something “bigger” at play behind the connections they’re starting to make, until they almost unwittingly walk into the thick of a series of a outlandish, literally mythic, cataclysmic transpirings.  In other words, Rosa peels away, one-by-one, a series of layers, until, at the story's core, all is enveloped by mighty, monumental, ferocious sights and occurences.

The unnatural means by which Magica and Gyro are instantly plucked from their respective dwellings and (literally) dropped into the fray, the warring gods and the riled, running-amuck sea monster are indulgences in show-stopping escapism that I can’t imagine Barks -- Rosa’s idol -- would have ever found tasteful…again, he used myth-based subject matter, but not to this extreme. (Rosa has a way of creating Barks-type stories, but cranking the amp up to 11.)

And then there's the way that -- so I deduce -- found that some of  Barks' characters were echoed in some of the characters in Kalevala, and part of the conflict becomes that the ducks' bodies are inhabited and controlled by spirits of their Finnish epic poem counterparts -- this is the whole reason that Gyro and Magica are abruptly shoehorned in when the action is already well-underway.  This is the whole commemorating-Barks'-characters-by-turning-them-into-archetypal-versions-of-themselves thing that I was talking about...

But again, the story is masterfully plotted: there’s a seamlessly measured timing in how the mystery unravels -- eventually, the onset of an unearthly maelstrom is imminent, and at just the right spike on the tension meter, the blockades give way, and the gods and monsters burst forth with a grand theatricality.  Living up to the epic conceits, the panels that carry out the story’s climax actually are, in fact, truly, outright epic.  And it’s a joy to see the ducks on such a spectacular, magnificent adventure -- even if we can’t help but nag at ourselves, “But Barks would’ve never let so much magic and so many supernatural entities run rampant all at once, and especially for so many pages!”

And I’m sure Rosa’s aware of that…just take the final scene: the battle has subsided, and the gods and the monster have vanished into the ether without a trace.  The ducks again cross paths with the eccentric, elderly, mountain-dwelling, harp-playing local that they’d met earlier.  Here, Rosa does a nice job of bringing the ducks “back to reality”, and the scene's tone has an effective “just a moment ago, the storm suddenly desisted…um, did any of that really just happen?!” quality to it. And because of the ambiguities of the peculiar local, the story ends on a sort-of Twilight Zone-like, “Huh?  ....oh!  Hey, waaaiiiiiiittt…!!!” note.

The series of panels, rendered in a woodcut-like style, recounting the story of Väinämöinen are a nice variation of Rosa's usual aesthetic.  (Not that I have ever objected to Rosa's art!  Alwasy been a fan.)   I was really compelled by how at the climax, Väinämöinen was still drawn in the style that the flashback had been, in sharp contrast to the ducks...and pretty much everything else that was in-frame, really. And in the quarter-page splash panels showing Väinämöinen ascending in his ship to the heavens, because of the way that he was shown in profile, giving the impression of a flat “cutout” superimposed over the internal “reality” of Rosa’s Duck universe, I thought of the portrayal of the wizard Shazam in the very first Captain Marvel story...and even more so, the way that Shazam's appearances in that "debut" story was paid homage to in Alan Moore's Tom Strong.  Naturally, I couldn't help but wonder if Rosa had the original in mind.  (I know he's very knowledgeable when it comes to Golden and Silver Age comics, and I'm not talking just ducks!) 

One last observation: Scrooge desperately clutching Kavela until it's finally torn from his grasp, leaving him to plummet through the clouds to the Earth below, definitely had me thinking of his expulsion from Merlock’s citadel at the climax of DuckTales: The Movie!

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The other night, I had the fortune of reading both of these stories, each for the very first time, one right after the other. There’s only so many individual Rosa works I’ve yet to peruse…I’d say it’d behoove me to stagger my still-awaited initial communings, so that it's not so soon that I'm left with none to look forward to.