Evidently, the identity of The Agency's "Big Boss" is, like the Sherlock Holmes story of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, "a tale for which the world is not yet prepared." "Before the Premiere," the new "Double Duck" story arc, instead throws us straight into a new adventure introducing The Organization, which apparently will serve as FOWL to The Agency's SHUSH. Here, Donald is being asked to keep tabs on a former Agency bigwig, orchestra conductor Felino Felinys (who is, against all probability, a bird rather than a cat), whom The Org is apparently interested in nabbing and "reactivating" from his mind-zapped forgetitude. The song-slinging ex-"spook" is presently engaged in preparing the premiere of a forbidding new opera at Milan's La Scala Opera House. Strange doings are afoot, however: there's Bondian tech aplenty in the basement of the grand structure, while Felinys seems oddly insistent (even for a conductor) that "triangle-player" Donald not be "one nanosecond late" to play his one note of the piece, which occurs at the climax of the concluding crescendo. This, combined with occasional slips of the tongue, suggests strongly to me that Felinys has already been "turned" to the side of bad and that we're in for a "sound assault" on someone or something. Could it have something to do with the seemingly irrelevant "Clippedonia election results" reported in the newscast on page one? Perhaps The Org plans to monkey with the results by means of musical malfeasance? It won't take us long to find out, as this story is much shorter than the recently-concluded origin epic. The tale won't be short enough, though, to dispense with the "mundane irritant" subplot. Taking the place of the unpaid parking ticket this time around is Donald's rash promise to give the ever-demanding Daisy a surprise birthday party. Oddly, Donald's frequent lies here trigger mishaps for others, a tic that didn't turn up in the origin story.
Giorgio Cavazzano, the prime influence on modern Italian Duck artists, draws this first segment of the story (and, if Inducks is right, will at least pencil the rest). His loose artwork is an acquired taste for us Statesiders, though WORLD OF THE DRAGONLORDS softened me up to a considerable extent. However, the cohort of Cavazzano-wannabes who drew the earlier chapters of "Double Duck," as well as WIZARDS OF MICKEY, would probably have been hard-pressed to pen the striking reproduction of La Scala seen here (as well as on the cover of TOPOLINO #2767, which I've reproduced above).
As someone who's long had to hear from others about mathematics' inherent power to bore, I couldn't help but chuckle at the implication in the first few pages of this story that classical music bores ALL "normal" males (the poor schlub sitting behind Don and Daisy at the Canasta Club concert is just as anxious to get away as Don is). Part of the chuckle was due to the fact that the opening newscast presents the Milan opera premiere as a news story. If classical music is so irrelevant, then why is such attention being paid to it? Is that news network run exclusively by females?
Be afraid... be very afraid... the legion of Snoopy relatives is now officially on the march! Well, actually, that was the least of Schulz' problems during the mid-1970s. While the cartoonist's craftsmanship remains at a high level, the phenomenon that I earlier described as "the PEANUTS of the absurd" now commands the lion's share of attention. Charlie Brown's baseball mound "floating out to sea" during a rainstorm and "thinking/talking" at a rate that quickly catches up to that of the school building, Peppermint Patty and Marcie flying Snoopy's doghouse to Michigan in the Powder Puff Rally (I though that Patty learned that Snoopy was a dog not that long ago?), and, worst of all, a clueless Peppermint Patty attending the "Ace Obedience School" under the mistaken assumption that it's a private school... next to all of this, the debut of Snoopy's droopy-mustachioed brother Spike in August 1975 seems like a fairly mundane occurrence. Spike, after all, hadn't begun conversing with cacti yet. Snoopy's sister Belle would follow in mid-1976, and the black-and-white-furred die was cast after that, but Spike's two appearances in this volume -- which include a Thanksgiving visit to Charlie Brown's and some royal hospitality dished out by a surprisingly munificent Lucy -- are very enjoyable.
This is a work of true intellectual honesty -- and, I'm sorry to say, probably could not be written in the setting of the modern academy. Ruden, a classical scholar who has translated Vergil and Aristophanes among others, here takes on St. Paul, the Apostle most responsible for turning Jesus' message into what we know as "Christianity." Paul has long been in bad odor among numerous progressive types for a raft of supposed sins, including homophobia, misogyny, and a willingness to kowtow to authority. As Ruden demonstrates here, however, these critics have been looking through the wrong end of the telescope all along. In the context of the society in which he lived, Paul's exhortations were radical, not reactionary, in their aim of creating a more inclusive, supportive society. Ruden shows this by the simple device of contrasting Paul's writings with those of contemporary Roman authors and their Greek predecessors, in order to repaint, to as full an extent as possible, the background against which Paul was operating as he wrote his letters to nascent Christian communities. This idea is so obvious in hindsight that it's surprising that it had never been tried before. In Chapter 1, Ruden explains why: classical scholarship and early Church scholarship run on parallel academic tracks. As an unaffiliated scholar (see the interview here), Ruden was able to "think outside the box" and combine the two fields in a unique and eminently accessible way.
The contrast between Scott Gross' wonderful "Cover A" for this issue and the pedestrian artwork within is almost heartbreaking. The quality of the latest chapter of "Around the World in 80 Bucks" doesn't come close to bridging the gap, though whoever was responsible for the English dialogue -- either translator Stefania Bronzoni or whoever neatened up the translation -- made a patently absurd plot a little more enjoyable with some nice banter. Particularly funny are Donald's constant references to his traditionally bad luck. "There's two kinds of lucky," Don moans, "and I'm used to the kind you don't want this far from home!"
No, I haven't gone crazy; the above comic-book cover [from Disney Comics MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES #3, August 1990] really does have a connection to the subject of this book. Remember the famous photo below? (And both times, the headline got it wrong.)
Karabell's argument in this survey of the 1948 Presidential election is that the famous Truman-Dewey conflict (with supporting parts being played by left- and right-wing breakaway factions led by Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond, respectively) was the last election in which all points of the ideological compass were given fair representation. This is a classic case of a reasonable hypothesis making sense at the time but being somewhat superseded by ensuing historical events. Before 9/11, at the supposed "end of history", it was only natural to posit that the differences between the political parties were relatively trivial and most of the major questions about the relationship between the individual and the state had been, if not solved, then at least been reduced to being discussed in quiet voices. (Anyone recall what the "major issue" of the Bush-Gore 2000 campaign was? Neither can I -- a state of affairs which seems ludicrous now.) Now, with the two major parties as far apart ideologically as they have ever been, it seems less necessary to have a Progressive and a Dixiecrat alternative. Karabell tells his story well, treating each candidate reasonably fairly (yes, even Thurmond) and arguing (in my view, correctly) that Truman's nasty "give 'em hell" campaign, while paying off in the short run with a dramatic comeback victory, was a long-term disaster, setting up the Republicans' revenge in the form of Communist-hunting. This is a good, solid survey of an election that, while not considered momentous at the time, was certainly dramatic, and Karabell can be forgiven for not glimpsing what was just under the horizon at the time he penned it.
My review of D&Q's first MELVIN MONSTER collection could just as easily stand as my review of this SECOND collection (issues #4-#6, 1966-67). Stanley continues to mine the "good little monster" vein with fair success but never really comes to grips with how, exactly, the world of "Monsterville" interacts with the world of "human beans." He can't even get straight how one travels from one sphere to the other. Case in point: In "Broom Ride," Melvin falls off his "ghoul-friend" Little Horror's broom and plummets into what appears to be a "human bean" city park. He then gets back home by another application of broom power. This suggests that you need some sort of magic to "cross the border." Later, however, in "Pickapicnic," Melvin and Little Horror (wouldn't it have been great if Stanley had gone for a direct Harvey Comics parody and named her "Little Loatha"?) go on the monster version of a picnic (to wit: getting food by stealing it from others) and run smack into a family of noshing humans. No broom power or magical transport is on display anywhere in this story. This is a good illustration of my friend Brent Swanson's observation in his Amazon review of Volume 1 that Melvin's milieu never really "coalesces." A few more long stories might have fleshed things out a bit, but Stanley sticks like glue (perhaps, the very same glue that caused a number of pages in my copy of Volume 2 to be stuck together) to the six- to eight-page format that served him well during the LITTLE LULU days. D&Q includes no accompanying text, which is a pity.
The one spike in the MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS graph indicates the switchover from MM&F to WIZARDS OF MICKEY. WOM #2 sold about 1300 copies less than WOM #1, which might be due to the "collector's item" reflex but is still bothersome given that MM&F and WOM have been telling a continuing story.
Kneon includes links to some information on Gemstone sales as well. Boom! appears to be holding its own reasonably well relative to Gemstone's later sales figures, but the downward trend is nonetheless worrisome. I'm especially disappointed in the figures that Kneon reported for the hardback and softcover collections. The first volume of LIFE AND TIMES OF SCROOGE McDUCK barely cleared the 1000-copy mark, and it's the only collection to have done so to date. WALT DISNEY'S VALENTINE CLASSICS scored a paltry 383 copies, a real shame given the high quality of that collection. MICKEY MOUSE CLASSICS did better (785), but only slightly better than CHRISTMAS CLASSICS. Hopefully, bookstore sales will help pump up these figures a bit, especially on the collections that merely reprint material that has already appeared in the monthly titles.
Oh, my gawrsh, Boom! Kids has suddenly "gone slick" on us! This latest issue of WDC&S features honest-to-goodness glossy paper. No hint of an upcoming rise in price, though, which is all to the good; the whole point of these $2.99 titles is to make Disney comics an easier purchase for kids and families.
The Boom! "Classics Division"'s first whack (or should that be "Wak"?) at Donald isn't quite as uniformly impressive as the earlier MOUSE TAILS, but it's eminently worthy of an honored place on the same shelf. The Boom!sters "had me at" the very first page with a beautifully colored new reprinting of one of my favorite Carl Barks adventure tales, "Luck of the North" (1949). This story was one of the "Big Four" in WALT DISNEY'S COMICS DIGEST #44 (December 1973), the venue in which I was first exposed to Barks' work back in the 70s (though I knew neither his name nor his significance until later), and I think it's a severely underappreciated piece of work. Like the earlier "Race to the South Seas" and the later "The Gilded Man," it's structured as a one-sided battle between Donald and his cousin Gladstone that "turns" only at the very last (as in: right down to the last bloody panel) moment. The "big idea" here is that it's Donald's fault that he gets into the mess. Driven beyond the point of endurance by lucky Gladstone's bragging and gloating -- and, given that Gladstone also manhandles Donald physically while showing off his luck in various Duckburgian venues, we can certainly second Don's emotion -- Don tricks his cousin into going off to the Arctic Circle in search of a phony uranium mine, only to suffer an attack of conscience later. With HD&L (literally) in harness, Don dashes North to "save" Gladstone, but the Ducks wind up stranded on an iceberg. An iceberg that holds more than a few unexpected treasures having nothing at all to do with uranium...
First and foremost, "Luck" is a spectacularly drawn story. Mike Barrier correctly notes in his Barks book that Donald's gradual dissolution from flippant indifference to Gladstone's fate into literally being burdened with guilt is a real tour de force of dialogue-free characterization. There's a later panel in the story that, to my mind, is just as impressive. After Don, trying to get the fake map, accidentally grabs Gladstone's horoscope chart, he shows the piece of paper off to the boys. HD&L have the usual (for the era) sentence-sharing verbal reaction... and have three completely different expressions on their faces, all of which are believable under the circs. There are excellent Duck artists who would never have thought of that and would have simply given HD&L three identical "takes." It's a small thing, perhaps, but Barks excelled at the small details during this period of his career. The story's dialogue and gags are sharp and first-rate, as well... especially the opening, which gets us on Donald's side even as he plays a mean trick on his relative.
Alas, this marvelous story, which has never looked so good reproduction-wise, is marred just a hair by some silly political correctness injected by Boom!. On three occasions, characters shout, "We've been gypped!" With Boom! evidently worried about perpetuating stereotypes about gypsies, the line is changed to read, "We've been hosed!" Never mind that the expression is totally anachronistic to those familiar with the original... and do very much mind that the fractured dialogue of the Eskimos who have dealings with Gladstone, Donald, and HD&L over kayaks is preserved intact! Inconsistent much, guys? Then, there's the whole touchy idea of Donald using his Nephews as sled dogs. Thank goodness Don didn't use a whip, or this story would have been buried deeper than Floyd Collins long ago...
From a Dell classic, we move to a happy reminder of the best days of Gladstone Comics with the reprinting of "The Master's Touch," a late-70s story plotted by Egmont writers, drawn by "Dutch masters" Daan Jippes and Ben Verhagen, and, most significantly, dialogued by Geoffrey Blum. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that Blum reinvented the whole notion of a Duck story as a highly literate, even educational experience when he worked for Gladstone in the late 1980s. Here, he takes a pretty straightforward "mastery" tale (to wit: accomplished photographer Donald, who specializes in prettifying ugly reality, comes unglued when he comes up against a subject that represents the ultimate challenge) and gives it a patina of extra class. "I found the great truth in the camera obscura of life!" Don gloats to HD&L before his big fall. For those like me who first read newsstand Disneys in the "Gladstone I" era, Blum's work established a level of quality that we've since come to expect from American writers. That's not to say that I take his work for granted -- far from it, in fact. All I have to do is dip into a new Whitman Duck comic from the late 70s or early 80s to realize what a quantum leap Blum's work represented.
Bob Gregory, author of this book's third reprint, "The Paper Route Panic" (1959), was also a fine writer in his heyday, but his reputation has suffered from the unfortunate fact that he drew, as well as wrote, a number of his stories, most notably those in DAISY AND DONALD. The D&D opi can only be termed "clunky," and that's a shame, as Gregory's work for the DONALD DUCK title in the late 50s was, if not up to the level of Barks' contemporary work on UNCLE $CROOGE, at least within shouting distance of same. "Panic," drawn by the fecund Tony Strobl, follows the Gregory template of tying seemingly disparate strands of plot together in a neat bow by the end. Here, Don messes up the absent HD&L's paper route while working on an invention that ultimately leads to a new hit record for the boys' favorite singing star, Paisley Mantee. Scrooge gets involved as a potential investor for Don's brainstorm, but his presence really isn't necessary; Donald could have sold his invention to anyone. Most lead stories in DD during this period included Scrooge, probably because his title was a better seller, and "Panic" doesn't do as good a job of incorporating Scrooge into the action as did other Gregory efforts of the era. Even so, it's a good, solid read.
Presumably, Boom! didn't see the irony of reprinting Barks' censored ten-page story, "Donald the Milkman" (1957), in the same volume in which it turned a gypsy insult into (I guess) a Canadian one. This is the third reprinting of a story (the first was in 1990, during the early Disney Comics era) that was originally rejected by Western Publishing because Donald was "too mean to the villain." Actually, the same dynamic that led us to root for Donald in "Luck of the North" despite his dishonesty is in play here, and amplified roughly 100-fold. In his efforts to become a "perfect" milkman, Donald shows no hubris whatsoever, remaining "humble and lovable" throughout, and so we're fully behind him when he finally "goes lactic" and takes revenge on the vicious pig character who's been trying to trip Donald up so that he'll get fired and the pig can claim his job. Truth be told, the "meanness" that gave Western the willies is downright silly, rather than offensive. Censorship is such an inexact science...
The Italian story "Moldfinger: or, The Spy who Ducked-Out on Me" (1966) goes on for 30 mostly tiny panels, and it's rather a slog, even given the fact that I'd been fully "prepped" for the casting of Donald as a "secret agent" thanks to DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS' "Double Duck" saga. It's not really the fault of dialogue men Joe Torcivia and David Gerstein, who do the best they can with the raw material. No, this spy spoof has two big debits that can't be expunged: the artwork of Giovan Battista Carpi and writer Carlo Chendi's shameless swiping from Goldfinger (1964). Carpi was a contemporary of Romano Scarpa, and, while the Italian "Maestro" had his awkward moments artistically, they're minor when compared to Carpi's inartful inconsistency. The Beagle Boys appear first as roly-polies, then lose fully a quarter of their body weight within a few pages. Eric Moldfinger, the would-be looter of Scrooge's Money Bin, smokes a cigar roughly the size of a Hickory Farms Beef Stick and indulges in all manner of wild gesticulations. A human lackey suddenly appears at Moldfinger's hideout for no apparent reason. All I can say is, thank goodness the panels were so small. As to the plot, Donald the MIA (McDuck Intelligence Agency -- "The Cheaper Secret Service!") agent acquits himself reasonably well, but Moldfinger's scheme to "gas" the Money Bin guards hardly needed to be locked away for safekeeping, since it was lifted straight from the Bond movie. Joe and Dave made this one enjoyable in the end, but it was a close shave.
Happily, QUACK UP ends on a bright note with Lars Jensen, David Gerstein, and Cesar Ferioli's "Nothing New" (2007). Like a Mobius strip, the Ducks' "universe" bends back on itself here as Donald's second cousin Hackney McWebfoot, the burned-out author of the PUP COP! (read: SCOOBY-DOO) comic book, gets some fresh ideas simply by observing the Duck clan in action during an eventful trip to a county fair. Alas, "Unca Hack"'s plan to create a "universe" out of his relatives' world is nixed by an exec who claims "Nobody wants to read comics about Ducks!" (In the context of Duckburg's "ethnic" makeup, wouldn't this sentiment be considered, well, rather racist? Or perhaps "speciesist" is the proper term.) The funny conceit makes the tale work despite the odd fact that most of the specific activity in the story has nothing to do with the ultimate payoff. Oh, and Ferioli rules. I'd love to see previously-unseen Ferioli-drawn stories become a recurring back-of-the-book feature in these "Classics" titles. Despite the faults of "Moldfinger," this particular "Classic" lives up to the line's high standards.
The most notable things that have been said about "Tiger Tea" -- by far, George Herriman's most notable "experiment" in the KRAZY KAT daily strip -- are either demonstrably false or completely unprovable. It is not "Herriman's great adventure story," as some folks would have it; it's more like a running theme that recurred at intervals for almost a year (May 1936 to March 1937), probably because Herriman was able to mine more gags out of it than he had expected at the beginning. I also rather doubt that it was Herriman's surreptitious lobby for legalizing marijuana or celebrating its use, as some of the great cartoonist's "artsy-fartsier" fans would no doubt like to believe. Herriman was probably aware of the existence of hallucinogenic substances, thanks to his friendship with the Navajos of Monument Valley, but, as Michael Tisserand (the author of an upcoming Herriman biography) admits in Craig Yoe's introduction, there is no evidence that Herriman ever "indulged" in any way, and that he simply took the idea of an elixir that caused individuals to act out of character as a convenient excuse to have some fun with his cast. I'm nonetheless happy to have the entire (?) collection of "Tiger Tea" strips between hard covers at long last. It doesn't measure up to the spectacular work Herriman did in his Sunday pages, but, as a window into Herriman's thoughts on the whole subject of continuity, it is a valuable piece of work.
We seem to be no closer to "closing the loop" on the Ultramachine saga in HERO SQUAD. Thanks to some quick thinking by Duck Avenger, The Phantom Blot loses all control of his motor functions (ewww!) and the Ultraheroes are able to finally claim control of Ultrapod-5, helping make up for Super Daisy and Iron Gus' inability to keep Roller Dollar from spiriting away Pod-6. Just when Eega Beeva (who has contributed absolutely squat of note to the Ultraheroes' campaign, I might add) is declaring the contest a draw (and thus, a victory for the turf-defending Ultras) in between puffs on his gum bubble, the other shoe drops as Emil Eagle gleefully announces that The Sinister 7 have captured Mickey. (Remember, Mickey went in search of Scrooge? Remember?) I foresee the Ultras having to give up their Pods in exchange for Mickey and then breaking their necks to prevent The S7 from completing the Ultramachine. Duck Avenger and the "liquified" Blot have a nice battle in the sewers, but that's it insofar as action goes for this ish.
In WIZARDS OF MICKEY, after an attempt by The-Villain-Who-Supposedly-Was-Destroyed-But-The-Joke's-On-You-He-Really-Wasn't to "rig" a multi-handed sorcery match and win a whole bunch of Diamagics has failed, our heroes get a call for aid from the mysterious magic-wielding dragons. It seems that "The Warlock Robot" and its minions have swiped a dragon egg and intend to probe it to provide TVWSWDBTJOYHRW with additional magical resources. Here, we see the influence of Tolkien peeking through, with a villainous adversary willing to employ "technology" as well as magic. Wizards of Mickey proved their bona fides to the dragon lord by (1) caring for the dragon puppy Fafnir and (2) using their smarts to defeat a team of oversized warlocks named The Giant Gonzos (no, this is not a crossover with Boom!'s MUPPET SHOW titles). Mickey, Donald, and Goofy probably could use the help of "Team Diamond Moon" on this mission, but, alas, Minnie, Daisy, and Clarabelle were left behind (along with "Team Jinx," which got surprisingly little to do in the wrapup of the latest completed chapter). Contrary to Boom!'s blurb for WOM #3, the dragons have not yet officially declared war on the "scaleless" over the theft of the egg, but the fires will be stoked if Wizards of Mickey do not succeed in their mission.
