So... about that new DuckTales...

I've considered that there's something about, well, me being me, that I owe it to... to... the world? Myself? Unseen divine forces? Not sure... that reviewing and/or commenting on the DuckTales animated TV series reboot would be the perfect, most logical opportunity/excuse to revive my blog. 

The honest truth is that it wasn't at all planned or intended that tonight/last night/this morning/whatever, I would write upwards of a dozen bulky paragraphs about the new series and expedited-ly post them here or anywhere for the world to see. But I was watching the latest episode, and was incited to post a comment to The Disney Comics Fan Group on Facebook. I added a second comment. Then a third. I had explicitly stated when I started writing that I was just going to post one comment. When I thought of a couple more things I wanted to say and hadn't yet clicked "Post" and ushered forth all the finality that it brings, I spontaneously enhanced each successively added comment as it was added with an elucidatory, introdcutory, contextualizing, additional, secondary comment announcing the addition of -- and contained within a clause of -- the about-to-be-newly-added comment proper. (I should have added a comment that I was adding a comment that I was adding a comment! Why didn't I think of that?!) Finally, and equally spontaneously, I realized, "Actually, I have a whole rant I need to go on here...!", and proceeded accordingly. The self-aware commenting on each newly-added comment was generated more or less in real time, if you will, or I guess it would be better said stream-of-consciously.

Anyway, without further ado, here it is -- it's informal, not comprehensive, and focused on giving my take on the new show's taken on specific characters -- namely, the villains, but I touch on some of the principles, too... but this is it: My Big Comeback!

 Modified revision of my Facebook post:

_________________

A few minutes into my first viewing of "The Beagle Birthday Massacre!" One comment: We did NOT need Joker/Pennywise Beagle Boys.

Okay, a second comment: When Ma Beagle introduced "the classic originals", wouldn't it have been nice if they were Barks'?

...oh, actually, a third comment: Did anyone else suspect -- until she said her name -- that Lena was supposed to be Daisy? I thought it added up especially because she sounded an awful lot like Kath Soucie, at least to my ears. But it's actually someone named Kimiko Green.

...annnnd, well, not done yet after all, jumping back to the subject of Beagle Boys, in what I'll call a P.S.: I meant to bring this up after "Daytrip of Doom!" -- why does this show's Burger Beagle look like the original's Bebop Beagle. The new character so far hasn't evinced any particular traits of either, yet evoking both at the outset, only to come up empty.

I don't want to be the fan coming off like he thinks rules should be imposed upon the show's creators -- and certainly keeping in mind to value the spirit of trying new things creatively -- over the years, starting with Barks (Grandpa Beagle), the allusions to the Beagles' extended clan and the occasional brushes with some of its members have always pointed to there being lots of fun to be mined from that colorful lineage. But I'm kind of disheartened by the wholesale eschewing of Beagle incarnations of the past, both those of the comics and the original DuckTales.

To me, an optimal way of paying homage to Barks would be a devoted attempt to bring his Beagles to animation -- meaning one character design making all of the "main gang" indistinguishable; all of same wearing prison tags formatted _ _ _ - _ _ _ that use only the numbers 1, 6, and 7; calling each other only by those numeric IDs in full or abbreviated to the latter set of three; and lastly, the biggest area of uncertainty and the one factor that never factored in Barks' comics but would be a major consideration on screen: should they all share the same voice _in addition to_ all sharing the same visage? (Maybe give just the prune-loving Beagle a slightly different voice? But NOT a "real" name, only his numeric ID, just as with the rest, of course!)

But since they didn't go the Barks route -- which would be a risky experiment, but I'd be really interested in and supportive of its attempt -- then as this IS DuckTales, after all, not Uncle Scrooge comics! -- I'd like to basically see the original series' Beagles. Yes, we have Bigtime, Bouncer, and a Burger who appears to not eat many burgers, but so far, their characterizations have been pretty thin. Not that the originals were mind-blowingly complex or even particularly clever, but couldn't they just play a _little_more into the nostalgia of a veritable child of the '80s like myself?

Time warp: 1987 abruptly find themselves at an impasse, stonewalled by 2017. 

Painting by Mike Peraza for D23 Expo 2017 limited edition print. 

Now, I don't expect the exact replication of the designs and voices of the original. (Design-wise, that went out the window well before the new series premiered, when production art was first released!) But with the main cast -- with the exception of the COMPLETELY overhauled Webby and Mrs. Beakley -- despite the obvious aesthetic and audible differences -- and the, er, quirkier(?) characterizations -- Scrooge, Donald, the nephews, and Launchpad have been portrayed in such a way where a viewer familiar with the original is well aware these are new, distinct iterations of each, but they're consistent enough with and thus recognizable as their animation and comics antecedents alike, as well as given enough depth, where it's implicit that even though it's a reboot, these are _same_ characters, the ones we already knew, nonetheless. Think in the sense that they're myths, not modern entertainment franchises, and this is a new iteration of the myth. The new series' trio of Bigtime, Bouncer, and "Burger" have so far left me a little cold.

Ma Beagle in the role of gang leader, and moreover, the VERY CHARACTER HERSELF, were exclusively conceived in the production of -- and to date the exclusive purview of -- the original DuckTales (Ma Beagle coming into prominence with "Super DuckTales" after a few smaller roles/appearances over the course of the first season), So including and making her "Boss" once again (more Don than matriarch this time) is an inspired, well-considered way of signaling, "This IS DuckTales, after all, not Uncle Scrooge comics!" But why not go all the way and deliver the whole package: Bigtime, Burger, Baggy, Bouncer, Bankjob, Babyface, and Bebop, basically in personalty and appearance -- adjusted to the new style, but keeping the innate elements of the original designs -- the louts we know from the original? Yes, the new Bigtime and Bouncer designs basically fit that bill, and even the voices seemed based on the originals', but they're just coming off as generic cartoon thugs. (I know, I know, someone's saying, "That's all the Beagle Boys have EVER been!" :) Oh, and there's been some comedy based around Bouncer's size.... and yeah, I chuckled at his "You even buyin' this?" line to the arcade doorman.

Geez, what was supposed to be just one comments -- okay, two and one "P.S." -- turned into something else entirely, hasn't it. Didn't realize I had so much to say about this one little subject! Well, while I'm at it, I'll mention that as with the Beagle Boys, I wish they'd tried to bring to animated fruition something closer to Barks' Glomgold. Think an equivalency model: as Barks' Scrooge visually is to the new DuckTales' Scrooge visually, take Barks' Glomgold design and translate it to the sketchy style of the new show. Restore his background as being from and based in South Africa. Voice-wise, he might still be of Scottish descent, but PLEASE, don't go the bombastic, over-the-top route the new show took has taken with him in the recording booth. Or figure out what he should sound like if he _isn't_ in fact Scottish -- I'm not sure if Barks ever gave us anything to go on in this regard one way or the other, so as far as I know, there's no voice "type" one could say is adhering to the canon.

Or, once again, there's the "This IS DuckTales, after all, not Uncle Scrooge comics!" approach.They got partway with his basic, standardized clothing outfit (if I just said "outfit", would you know I was talking about what he wears?)... but why, why is he, I dunno, something like 7 feet WIDE?!!! Is it a medical condition, like a tumor or excessive swelling? Anyway, as with the new Bigtime and Bouncer, this clownish Glomgold's voice are based ostensibly on the original series'... but take this Bizzaro Flinty's aforementioned cringe-worthy larynx-generated emanations, which are a blunt aural caricature of a Scottish accent taken to all extremes, blown out of all proportion, and delivered as if on speed, compound that with the torrent of absurdity that in his two (three, depending on how you count) appearances so far (either way, the most recent appearance was a cameo, or actually, a Family Guy-style cutaway, the thrust of the gag being, "HA! He's Scottish!") has been the whole of his function. In fact, with both Gomgold and the 2017 Beagle Boy trio, it's as if they took some rudimentary elements of each characters' counterpart from the original series, but decided they were either going to be a parody (Glomgold) or stock thug (the Beagles). But we're only a few episodes in when there's more than 15 to go -- and that's just this season -- so we'll see what they'll do yet with these characters.

In the meantime, take Webby and Mrs. Beakley: I can at least understand their reasoning in thinking, "There really wasn't much to the ones from the original show, so we can do them ___a whole lot different and a whole lot better___!", and thus at least respect what they're trying to do.

More crucially -- and the end result registers in the green, I'm happy to say -- there's the classic/legacy characters. Naturally, the biggest concern in that department wis Donald. Clearly, they made it a point to get this one right/do the character justice. On the one hand, when appropriate, they run him through comedic, traditional-ish-cartoony-slapstick routines (like the stuff on the mansion-grounds-grounded houseboat in "Daytrip"). He furiously waves his arms around, stomps his feet on the ground in rapid succession, and voices his rage with unintelligible, ceasefire rants and raves. Clearly, they're paying homage to the classic-era Donald Duck theatrical shorts. But when the story beats call for it, they depict him in a more heartfelt way -- as a disgruntled, down-on-his-luck "average Joe", à la Barks. But re: Glomgold and the Beagles, the show seems to be depending on sticking to convention and archetypes, cuing a lampoon, but really just referencing genre fiction's go-to type villains, ones that we all know and recognize right offhand. I'm "not really feeling(, man!)" the spirit of these characters' earlier counterparts, whether they be those in the comics or on the original show. But again, that's only as of yet, and we're not very far out.

So... Glomgold down...Beagles down... Magica still to go... *gets a little nervous* Don't get me wrong, I don't "require" that they play her exactly as Barks did, nor exactly as the original series did, but I want her to be an ACTUAL and FORMIDABLE villain, not in a tried-and-true comedic relief capacity.

_________________

Remember, in the above piece, I was zeroing in exclusively on very specific aspects of the new series. There's a lot I didn't cover a lot of which I quite like. Case in point: Another group member (who a lot of you know of, and some of you even know!) replied with a comment hinting at a hint -- that is, the biiiiiiiiiiig hint dropped on us at episode's end. (Said hint came in the form of an explicit, much-appreciated visual reference to a fondly-recalled early episode of the original series!) When I got there, I saw exactly what he meant, but I was already pretty excited just by what I'd gleamed from his comment.

Here's my reply... and, and at this point, I must issue a necessary SPOILER WARNING, applicable to what follows below:

_________________

Okay, didn't catch that, but... SOLD! I _do_love how they're building a mythology and teasing upcoming big events. ("Project Blatherskite" -- you bet THAT got my pulse pounding!) A later-to-come big, knock-you-to-the-floor reveal/unmasking like you're hinting at is something I'm ALL about. (Not that anything has actually been given away -- it's all on me and how I read between the lines! [Addendum: If you've seen "Beagle Birthday Massacre!"'s ending, as I now have, IF you know what you're looking at, there's NO ambiguity about it. Thus, not a thing has been spoiled, provided this is being read post having viewed "Beagle Birthday Massacre!" I hope that no one's eyes, unable to resist and avert themselves despite the spoiler warning above -- quite possibly their temptation level significantly raised by it, I regret must be acknowledged is a not-too-unlikely possibility -- haven't fallen here, but... Lena is Magica. The teaser-reveal-coda shows this to the viewer, provided that they recognize that the shadow is very close to Magica's evil(er) shadow doppelganger of the original series' "Magica's Shadow War". (With THAT title, it wouldn't be any other episode, now, would it?) Even many those well-familiar with Magica may not be acquainted with or may not vividly recall that episode, though... so if that's not enough, née Lena refers to herself in the third-person point-blank as Magica.

Reminds me of (er, more spoilers imminent, just in case anyone needs them 20 years on...) when Owen abruptly started spinning rapidly in a Tasmanian Devil-type cartoony-mini-tornado blur, incongruous to the show's realism, only to have a certain Elven trickster emerge, announcing, "Herrrrrrrrrrre's PUCK!" Still one of my absolute favorite moments of any show, ever.

(Most of the rest are from Gargoyles, too, though!)

-- Ryan

New-ish comic review: Uncle Scrooge #419 (IDW, June 2016)

IDW: If you keep having both the A and B cover reflect the contents inside, 

I'll keep buying both! (And glad to help sales that way!)

"Scrooge's Last Adventure" Part 3
written by Francesco Artibani
drawn by Alessandro Perina
lettered by Nicole and Travis Seitler
new U.S. dialogue by Jonathan H. Gray
(Italy, Topolino #2987, February 26th, 2013)

When the support of Scrooe's in Part 2 pushed him out of his post-defeat slump and he vowed to fight back against the cabal that has robbed him of his financial empire and dignity, he meant it. Part 3 finds him practically marching through the Gates of Hell Pluto and into the Realm of the Council of Dark Magic. While Donald is understandably scared and Magica is walking on eggshells around her former masters, Scrooge bullishly confronts the Council like their secretaries or bureacrats standing between him and a rival CEO he's determined to confront -- and the comedic contrast between Scrooge and the more on-edge Donald and Magica is one of Part 3's hightlights. Another is the battle of wits against the Council that Scrooge wins -- a fine entry in the "Hero moves onto the next phase of his Hero's Journey by overcoming an intellectual challenge from a physically large immortal Guardian of some sort" tradition hailing all the way back to Oedipus solving the Riddle of the Sphinx. Kudos to Gray for the intelligence and complexity of this exchange, and how charmingly in-character the asides between Scrooge, Donald, and Magica were.

And said next phase consists of -- a surprise new encounter and new outing with the Terries and Firmies(!!!) Scrooge and Donald in order order help the subterranean part-bowling ball ones solve a major environmental crisis that'd beset them, the culprit turning out to be none other than... Glomgold. This reveal nicely ties Terry-Fermy episode into the wider story arc as a whole. In my review of Parts 1 and 2, I compared "Last Adventure" to the ill-realized "Rightful Owners" DuckTales four-parter. That disaster had attempted to revisit a couple of classic Barks adventures, too... but Artibani's return to the land beneath the ground is succintly and fully-realized, and packed with the requisite "mass roll" action by Perina, its place in the larger story balanced and in the proper scope, a deflty-paced and rollicking run-up to final chapter. Scrooge even has his top hat returned to him! (...wait, are you sure Don Rosa never had that happen?!) ;) Gray does a perfect job with the Terries and Firmies' country music FM radio-"learnt" speech -- it felt as though I were reading the original!
_______________

"The Stick-Up"
written, drawn, and lettered by William Van Horn
(New to the U.S. First appearance anywhere in Norway's Donald Duck & Co. #2010-09, March 1st, 2010)

Another Rumps McFowl-oriented Van Horn short making it U.S. debut. Rumpus, inexplicably left in charge of Scrooge's office while he and his nephews are off on yet another adventure (funny setup, that, to have an entire one of those happening off-panel), nearly blows it by making some frivolous decisions to use McDuck funds toward an attempt to win a television promotional contest -- but inadvertently foils a near-successful Beagle break-in plot, while winning the contest... which ends up benefitting Scrooge, since he owns the company hosting the contest! Genuinely kooky, clever, quickly-paced, funny stuff, replete with some wacky, calamitous syrup-based purely Van Horn visuals!

-- Ryan

New comic review: Uncle Scrooge #3 (#407) (IDW, June 2015)

IDWs Marco Rota "A" cover for Uncle Scrooge #407, which originally graced an Italian 2008 reprint of the 1961 Romano Scarpa story that Scrooge #407 presents using Joe Torcivia's newly-Americanized title "The Duckburg 100":

In contrast with his other stories presented by IDW thus far, Scarpa's "The Duckburg 100" is a relatively humble, down-to-earth, domestic, Duckburg-based story. Almost a pure character piece, its lack of big set pieces shouldn't be mistaken for a lackluster read -- its execution is more complex than the premise might suggest. (The most "adventurous" thing that happens is a Beagle Boy robbery during which they accidentally kidnap Donald, and it's mostly played for laughs: the Beagles are just doing what they can't help themselves from doing, and Donald's stumbled into quite a jam, ho-ho!) While the hook -- the bank's contest -- is frankly dry, to the point that it can only be relayed via dialogue, the closest to a  visual representation being promotional posters that Scrooge is pleased to see as he nears the bank... really, just more text! In many modern duck and mouse comics, the MacGuffin is something visual and wacky, which can make a story seem contrived and gimmicky. "100"'s more conscientious (and real-world plausible) situational (rather than conceptual, i.e. gimmicky) premise triggers reactions and an ensuing series of event that make Duckburg more believable than usual. Of course, this illusion hinges upon Scarpa's grasp of these characters, which here is wildly apparent. The end result is a quasi-social satire that isn't acidic and vitriolic, but certainly acute.

It's completely logical and in-character for Scrooge to be anxious to the point of obsession, allowing Scarpa to show us -- and amuse us with -- Scrooge in one of his panicked, skittish, somewhat neurotic modes. But Scarpa's Scrooge, like Barks', has varied moods, and so once he's processed the situation, Scrooge quickly turns energized, driven, and determined in taking efforts to ensure that the three contestants each a prove winning bet (on his end of the deal, of course). To pull off such a drastic transition in temperament as part of staggering a character's reaction to a plot development, keeping the character so true to what makes him tick, is testimony to Scarpa's talent and intuition. And I've almost overlooked how at first, Scrooge was all in favor of the contest and personally commending the bank's manager, only freaking out when he realizes that he owns the bank -- a variation, I believe, of a gag I'm pretty sure Barks used at least once, here executed with a quick setup and then, bam, a blunt turned-on-its head reveal so stark in its irony and so precisely "acted" as to be worth of Laurel and Hardy.

While I would qualify "100" as a character-oriented story before I would a social satire I would say that there is an element of social satire at play. It's predominantly character-driven in that the entire premise is a juxtaposition of the frugal, disciplined, finance-literate Scrooge against three, count 'em, THREE foil types: Jubal, the con artist; the Beagle Boys, who are no-muss, base-level thieves; and Donald, who is (at least in this portrayal) a pure fool. The pop culture-infatuated, financially inept, adult responsibility-oblivious, completely infantile Donald in this story doesn't exactly contradict his general comic book characterization; these traits have been shown, but here, it's just that he's been so completely consumed by these tendencies. I suppose we can chalk it up his obsession with Captain Retro-Duck being a relatively new phenomenon. In other words, a case of, "Oh, it's just a phase -- he'll move on, eventually."

...oh, but I was trying to make a point about the satirical aspects of the story. Basically, Scrooge and his three foils each represent an archetypal human trait/tendency. And each is used to show how money, and moreover, the institution of banking, rules our material existence. Now, I'm not sure if any point is made about this societal situation, which is why ultimately, this is an exercise in showing how these characters each react to a given situation (Scrooge from a different perspective than the other three). But there's at least the framework of a social satire built in to the story.

There is, of course, Scarpa's stab at modern art... which is an easy target, admittedly, but when an actual artist curmudgeonly vents about it in his own work, it has a particularly relishable sting to it. (And evidently, Scarpa and Barks were fellow curmudgeons, sharing a similar view on this "medium"!)

Is there a moral? Since Donald in the end gets as a reward the very thing the very thing he wanted in the first place, perhaps the moral is, "It's okay to be a fool; just don't be a con man or a low-rent thief." How does Scrooge make out? With all of the angst and obsessive effort he goes through, you might think that there might be some ultimate message about Scrooge being too whatever... but in the end, he gets what he wants, too: he hasn't lost anything. Are Scarpa's sympathies actually with Scrooge? Is he actually endorsing Scrooge's ways? I'm not sure, but I wonder.

One of Scarpa's many clever accomplishments in his plotting is the way that each of the three contest participants' efforts "cross over" with and impact each other, leading to the outcome of the story. These scenarios are fully developed enough to not feel contrived; in fact, they play a major part in the story having a tone of tasteful and thoughtful whimsical farce. (However THAT is conceivable!) Jubal's storyline is actually phased out, wrapped up prematurely in dialogue between Scrooge and the bank manager -- during which Jubal is off-screen, and after which he remains so. But even that kind of just falls away in the flow of things. The only plot turn that I found abrupt was how easily and quickly things were wrapped up once the nephews got the info via walkie-talkie from Donald, hiding in the Beagles' midst. I expected Donald getting discovered and the Beagles getting the upper hand again, resulting in one last major obstacle to overcome. I commend Scarpa for using what at first seemed like a lark,  Donald's being enraptured by his new  toy, as an integral plot device, in the dramatic tension afforded by the nephews turning off the walkie-talkie Donald left at home and in how its ultimately the ironic means by which the day is saved. But once Donald finally gets through to the nephews, it's a matter of about three panels before the Beagles have been apprehended (off-screen!), Donald is rescued, and Scrooge has regained the contents of Jewel Vault #3. Nothing to it, easy as pie! Anticlimactic, yes, but at least not as ludicrous and un-sellable as the ending of "Gigabeagle". And not even half as abrupt.

Now, I could pick on Scarpa for the Beagles' giant suction hose thing being a shortcut intended to expedite the vault robbery scene, and for the awkward, clumsy design he came up with for it... but in the former respect, he actually made the right call, because the story beats felt just right. In fact, I'm surprised by now that I haven't brought up how it's easy to imagine this story's premise as a Barks or Barksian ten-pager.  Though it's longer, I guess between the pacing of 10 Barks pages with four tiers each and 33 Scarpa pages with three tiers each, things somehow more or less even out.

For his first turn at a lead story in an IDW Disney comic, Joe Torcivia's dialogue is actually less archaic than that of some of his other recent Americanized scripts... but that's not to say that it's ever dry or straightforward. Take page 8, panel 2: "Hey, you punks! I want my gold nibs!" "Oops! Old stealing habits die hard!" Straightforward in comparison to, say, the daunting alliteration that opened "Meteor Rights", but imagine what the panel in question could have been: "Hey! You stole my gold nib!" "Oh, sorry! We didn't know it was yours!" Or the last panel on the same page: "Gadzooks! The hundred's here! In one lump sum!" What if that had just been, "Wow! Just what I needed, a check for $100!" It really can be the little things that make one's reading experience with these considerably smarter than could easily be the case.

A significant but necessary amendment to the story that Torcivia has made is the entire "Captain Retro-Duck" angle. Until just now, when flipping to the relevant pages, I hadn't put together that there was no superhero or action TV star of any type shown on Donald's TV screen even once during the story. Thus, if I deduce correctly, Captain Retro-Duck, who is referenced in Torcivia's version of the voiceovers for the walkie-talkie promo spots Donald salivates over, was conceived to justify for contemporary American readers why in the age of Google and iPhones Donald or anyone would get so excited in the first place about a walkie-talkie set. It's not that Captain Retro-Duck is a retooling of the TV action star in the original version; there was no TV action star in the original version! In that case, when Donald wanders off from home lost in "playing" Captain Retro-Duck, does that mean in the original, he was just playing some sort of generic make-believe spy game? I can't help but think that his frivolities seem more justified in Torcivia's version. And the nods to TV/comic book/superhero/sci-fi etc. fandom that he worked in are an added bonus, as are all the punny variations of the prefix "retro". Exemplifying both, we have "Sinister storage tanks! Just like the dreaded Eviloid in Episode 213: 'Captain Retro-Duck and the Retro-gressive Gas!'"

_____________

Scrooge #407 wraps up with a two-page Tony Strobl gag created for the Disney Studios program. In contrast with the nephews' chastisising and being considerably wiser than Donald in the lead story, here, they're shown as being completely on the same page and virtually standing as one with Donald against Scrooge. The gag boils down to Scrooge "programming" a parrot to say a series of things to "brainwash" his nephews, and in retaliation, they "reprogram" it to say the things that Scrooge decidedly doesn't want to hear. It reduces the characters to one-note roles... but that's sort of the nature of gag pieces. And as far as gags go, it's decently constructuted, as crass as it makes the characters seem. And I am glad that it's finally be printed in the States, for better or worse.

(Hmm, it just occurred to me... with Strobl, it's kind of as if the characters had been done by Hanna-Barbera. Or the Disney characters done by the artists who drew Western's Hanna-Barbera titles... one of whom I'm sure was Strobl. But he was also a product of his era. I can see some commonalities between him and even the original animation featuring the classic Disney cartoon characters produced for framing sequences of the Walt Disney Presents/Wonderful World of Disney episodes that were made up of select theatrical shorts. But I digress... )

_____________

Though I definitely think of Marco Rota's "A" cover, above (at the start of this post), as the "definitive" cover of this issue (for its "classic" duck comic look), I couldn't help but also purchase a copy with James Silvani's "sub" cover variant. It hit me in a soft spot for evoking DuckTales (i.e. due to the dynamic of Scrooge and the nephews sans Donald, and how, rather than their shirts being "blacked in", the nephews are sporting their DT-canonized red, blue, and green shirts), and "Treasure of the Golden Suns" in particular. The Junior Woodchuck coonskins were prominent in that serial, which may have been the first time the nephews were seen wearing them in conjunction with their non-blacked-in, then-newly-canonized-color scheme-complying shirts. So the aesthetic of their being so attired has a distinctly DT air to it.

-- Ryan

New comic review: Uncle Scrooge #1 (#405) (IDW, April 2015)

Despite the four-year interim and the change in licensee, Uncle Scrooge #405 is pretty consistent with #404: the spotlight is on a Romano Scarpa-drawn story from 1996, represented with a new cover by Giorgio Cavazzano. David Gerstein was working on the book then, as he is again, but he's reclaimed his archival editor title from the Gemstone days. He's accompanied by Jonathan Gray and Joe Torcivia, two of his teammates from the "classics"-branded aspects of the 2009-11 licensee (though not US #404 in particular), further closing the gap, and bringing a certain level of reassurance to fellow fans who know them.

Rodolfo Cimino and Scarpa's "Gigabeagle: King of the Giant Robot Robbers" (its new American title, paying homage to Barks' own Beagle Boys-giant robot story from only a year earlier, and I suspect that the "Giga" prefix is a reference to some of sort pop culture giant robot that that I don't know about) definitely has a gargantuan Beagle Boy robot stomping across Duckburg and making off with the money bin, but there's not much of a plot facilitating those events. The setup is arbitrary on multiple fronts: we open on Scrooge freaking out arbitrarily over the general existence of the Beagle Boys ... not because of a specific recent  threat from them, and not from news of a prison break or intel on their latest scheme, but from the lack of any news about them. The nephews arbitrarily decide that they will set Scrooge at ease by bringing him to Donald and their house, where for some reason he wolfs down all of the food they can pile on his plate (Scrooge has a binge eating disorder? Or does he just normally starve because he's so cheap?), and then arbitrarily decide that the ultimate solution to his anxiety is to take him camping. The actual plot reason for this camping trip is for the ducks to discover the robot ... because that only could happen if they went camping, right?

But this fast-and-loose, half-assed plotting has nothing on the story's resolution: "Gigabeagle" has gotten away free and clear with the bin, and so it would appear time for the final act of the story, in which the ducks will figure out a way to take down (or take control of, as Scrooge did in this story's Barks precedent) the marauding skyscraper-sized motorized machine with the visage of a Beagle Boy and regain possession of the money bin. Suddenly, in one fell swoop, "Gigsie" is destroyed and the money bin is back on Killmotor Hill. Gigsie's explosive end delivers on some clever foreshadowing. I'm not sure if the "he was programmed to think like the Beagles, and so it was their greed that in the end brought about their defeat" angle was in the raw translation, but kudos to Jonathan Gray if he layered it in. However, I have a nagging suspicion that Gray saved the restoration of the money bin from being a jaw-droppingly absurd, improbable coincidence. Going by the art alone, it would appear that the explosion hurls the money bin over Duckburg and right back into its original position. This is only justified by the "big underground magnets [that] hold [the] bin to its foundation" mentioned by one of the nephews on pg. 3. Since these magnets, as far as I know, have never existed in any other story, and because they're only mentioned in passing in this new English dialogue but never shown, yet, at least as we Americans are reading it, are so crucial to the story's resolution, it seems to me that Gray salvaged an atrocious ending. However, if the mentions of the magnets are in fact mirroring the original Italian dialogue, I'll stand corrected.

(There's also the matter of the nephews for some reason signaling the police with the tiny flame of a common wax candle, but I'm gonna chalk that up as just some Italian thing.)

Nonetheless, Scarpa's art, which has a lot of busy, frantic, exaggerated, comedic hijinks, is a lot of fun. His big, bold, sweeping style certainly works well for giant robot action. Between that and all of the electrified panels of the ducks scrambling to stave off Gigsie's attack on the bin, things move with a rollicking momentum, ensuring that IDW has made a big splash in bringing back to the States not just Uncle Scrooge but the whole classic Disney comics line.

The best of Scarpa's art, with all its zest and zing, is brought out by the zing and zest of Gray's dialogue, which demonstrates that he knows duck comics inside and out, and not just because of the many references to the medium's past ("Wak!" is never exclaimed in this particular story, but the radio station that Scrooge tunes into uses the call letters "K-WAK"; when Scrooge bashes his own head against the wall to get ideas, he acknowledges that a similar technique is used by a certain inventor; the Beagle Boy love of prunes comes up, as is only right; and even a reference to the title of Barks' first Uncle Scrooge adventure), but due to the Barksian dialogue -- and by that, I don't just mean particular phrases like "Good work, infants!", but the cadence and rhythms, and the way tone and timbre signifies characterization, which is perfectly consistent with the characters that we know. And though there are some modern quirks (a reference to a Red Bull advertising slogan and terminology like "A.I."), there's a lot more absolutely delightful eccentricities that would seem to belong to Barks' or even Gottfredson's era but as far as I can tell, are original: "GREAT HOWLIN' CRASHWAGONS!", "Hot crawdads, Unca Donald was right!", "We need that salty codger alert!"  Gray also does a fine job continuing the tradition of comic book tradition onomatopoeia, both in the expressions used and the way they're puncuated.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Gray's DuckTales references: there's a variation on Scrooge's "Jumpstart my heart!" and a pun on the name of the Beagle Boy who most of often led the gang on the show. It should go without saying that I appreciated these!

The original Italian title of #405's backup story translates to "The Secret of the Coat", a dry title that evokes the mystery-adventure genre, when the story is actually more in the sitcom vein. So Joe Torcivia's new, comedic title, "Stinker, Tailor, Scrooge and Sly" (I just figured out what that's a pun on -- it's something I'd never heard of; I won't give it away, so that if you have, you can relish it; and if you haven't, do your own damn Googling!) is more fitting for this light-hearted romp with the mismatched "odd trio" of Scrooge, Brigitta, and Jubal Pomp built around a cliché: finding a treasure map drawn on one's own piece of property and unraveling its mystery while clashing with a mysterious villian who who has shown up out of nowhere and we learn is connected to the map's past. Now, this is the stuff of countless exciting, full-developed stories in feature film, pulp novel, and duck comic, but this particular narrative offers little more than a couple chase sequences, with the good guys and the bad guy sparring in a game of "hot potato" (or football) with Scrooge's coat, and the villains' anticlimactic surrender to the police ... for which Scrooge and Co. are basically just bystanders!

On top of the banal narrative, this is recent, slicker, more on-model Scarpa, which I find duller than his squashier '50's and '60's work. By far the most vital, entertaining part of the story is the dynamic between Scrooge, Brigitta, and Jubal, with Scrooge having an aversion to both (but for different reasons), Jubal making no secret of his distaste for (and envy of) Scrooge, Brigitta's crush being tempered by her indignance at Scrooge's stinginess and his contempt for her, Brigitta and Jubal agreeing to suck upand  pander to Scrooge in the hopes of cajoling him into investing in their business, and Scrooge tolerating their scheming so as to use them for his own ends -- first for a complementary coat mend, then the use of Jubal's car when chasing the villain, which Jubal and Brigitta join Scrooge in, hoping to get a cut of the treasure. In the last panel, it appears, via the illustrated thought balloons, that all three parties have played each other and made the right compromises so that each is (at least anticipating) getting what they want. If it weren't for these visuals, the Scrooge-Brigitta-Jubal dynamic would have been out of play at the end of the tailor shop scene, for their tagging along for the arrest and subsequent finding of the treasure would be, as Scrooge describes Jubal in my favorite of Torcivia's jokes in story, "superfluous" to the plot.

Torcivia steadily delivers puns and various other types of wordplay, references (including ripping on Minnie Mouse -- more the Minnie Mouse of mass merchandising than anything -- and her taste in clothing design), and irreverent goofs on everything from "mall cops" to the fashion industry, giving American readers a feisty read. As Gray fixed what I was suspect was a massive hole in the lead story, Torcivia not only ties Barks' Brutopia into the villain's back story, but with said back story, assures us that the map has only been a part of Scrooge's coat for 10 years and not since he acquired it, avoiding any flirtation with dicey continuity. Based on the characters' poses and instructions, the characterizations of the "odd trio" were very much part of the original story, but with all of the insults, jabs, and acerbic sarcasm thrown between them, Torcivia maximizes the potential. I'm not sure why this unexceptional story (though Torcivia has added a lot of tasty seasoning for flavor) was selected for this issue. But if the idea was to begin IDW's run by establishing to the readership Brigitta and Jubal as characters, and moreover their entrepreneurial partnership (for we've seen a fair amount of Brigitta here over the years here, and not too much of Jubal), then it's a very suitable choice.

Gerstein closes the issue with an editorial reviving the "Crosstalk" banner, which definitely made this fan feel at home. After giving some background info on the Beagle Boys, Brigitta, and Jubal, Gerstein closes by sharing a sentiment that affirms that these comics are in expert, loving hands.

-- Ryan

Who let all these cretins and floozies in the money bin?!

Scrooge is gonna have to pull a "'Back to the Klondike' flashback scene" whenever he gets back from wherever he is!* (Uh oh ... you don't think they have him held captive somewhere, do you? ... maybe in Guantanamo?!) :-O

(Not sure of the cartoon's origin, but I came across courtesy of We Are Change, who have "shared" it on Facebook.)

* (Actually, Scrooge has no right to be upset -- none of it's his. He didn't built it.)  ;)  :D

-- Ryan

Scrooge McDuck's political values (...my take, anyway!)

Just read "Time of Reckoning", written by Andreas Phil and drawn by Massimo Fecchi, by way of a newly-acquried copy of Gemstone's Donald Duck Adventures #1 (Jully 2003)

The scenario: Scrooge has been teleported to a dystopian future, where Duckburg has fallen under the tyranny of an artificial intelligence. Scrooge has found refuge with the surviving "natural-born duck" resistance fighters. For a particular reason, the following exchange, on page 17, jumped out at me:

___________

I.D. (the enigmatic resistance leader): "Ego abolished all forms of currency, replacing them with credit cards and electronic banking. As a symbol of the new order, he destroyed all your bills and coins!

Scrooge: "I'll turn that chip-head into a waffled iron for this!"

I.D.: "You see, we have the same goal -- the return of cold, hard cash to Duckburg!"

___________
...well, now more than ever, I'm convinced that Scrooge would be inclined to voting for Ron Paul!  :D  ;)

 

(And I can see Scrooge as a former Rush Limbaugh listener, until it was obvious that Rush had become an entirely compromised, yet shameless party shill, despite the fact that "both" of the establishment parties are beholden to the same bailed-out, "too-big-to-fail" banks*. Thus, naturally, Scrooge now tunes in to hear the broadcasts of Alex Jones instead.)  :D  ;)

* (Those crooked, corrupt, untouchable international banks, with their Mafia-like operating practices, are, of course, owned by Rockerduck! Hehehe!)

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…

___________________

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!

___________________

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.

___________________

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!

___________________

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.