DUCKTALES RETROSPECTIVE: Episode 15, "Sir Gyro de Gearloose"

If "Hero for Hire" has a rival as the best stand-alone DuckTales episode, then it's surely "Sir Gyro de Gearloose," which swept to the top of the popularity charts immediately upon its initial broadcast and has maintained that lofty status ever since.  Which of these eps is your fave probably depends upon which you think is the greater feat:  crystallizing a new, made-for-TV character's personality, or building upon the existing characterization of a well-loved Carl Barks character.  It's a tough call, but I'd vote for the former, if only because there are so many variations of the basic scenarios (both "Ducky-dependent" and otherwise) on display in "Sir Gyro" that have turned up in various contexts over the years.  What makes Mark Zaslove's mixing-up and dishing-out of these ingredients so delectable is the great sense of balance and timing in his writing.  I'm fully in agreement with Greg that "this is [an] episode I would show as a teaching tool for all new writers to see."

As Barks fans know, there are a number of classic "discontented Gyro" stories in existence, in which the normally amiable inventor sours on his lot and seeks to make a different sort of life for himself.  In "Man vs. Machine" (UNCLE $CROOGE #47, February 1964), for example, Gyro roars in rebellion against the unreliability of machines:

Ironically, the legion of customers that besiege Gyro's lab at the start of "Sir Gyro" -- and thereby cause the inventor to damn his societal status as a lowly "gadget man" -- also appear to be motivated (at least in part) by anger and frustration at the fallibility of Gyro's own gizmos.  Indeed, Vacation van Honk's ire at his fouled-up "automatic dressing machine" motivates the globetrotting goose to *gasp!* actually manifest a bit of personality.  One must wonder: if Gyro were a better inventor, then would that gaggle of gripers have felt it necessary to beat a path to his door?

One could fairly kvetch here that Zaslove seems to be operating under a misconception of what Gyro's main job in Duckburg is.  Gyro has repaired things in the past, but never before have we seen him so overwhelmed with what he would normally regard as mundane busywork.  Given the fact that most of the rest of the episode will see Gyro slip back into his standard role of inventor, the setup for the ep seems just a touch artificial, like the sudden "press of business" on the normally isolated Scrooge that causes the latter to snap at the start of "Tralla La."  This is not necessarily a criticism, more of an observation. 

I'm torn regarding Gyro's Time Tub: it's such a neat device that I'm glad it was eventually reused (in "Time Teasers"), but I'm glad it wasn't OVERused.  I can see some of the show's less talented writers falling back on the thing as a convenient vehicle for time-traveling plots.  Not that there's anything wrong with such plots on occasion, but I think most Duck fans would prefer for their heroes to encounter manifestations of myth, legend, and adventure in the present day.  The business about the Tub creating "past[s] that might have been" was included, I think, to avoid having to deal with the same kinds of weird backstory scenarios that Darkwing Duck would later create in the episode "Quack of Ages" (in which we were forced to accept the existence of a medieval St. Canard with "King Herb" in charge) and that Barks would occasionally create in his later years (e.g. the "castle of the ancient Mad Duke of Duckburg" in "House of Haunts").  By lifting Gyro and HD&L's adventures in Quackalot completely onto another plane of existence (or dimension, as posited by GeoX), Zaslove ensured that ancient Duckburg would remain pristine (at least, until time-traveling Ducks and on-the-scene pirates appeared in 1687 Duckburg during "Time Teasers") and made plausible the ep-ending dodge in which Gyro manages to get HD&L back home with only one hour having elapsed in real time.  After all, when you're dimension-hopping, what's a little time-tinkering while you're at it? 

The transition of Gyro and the boys from Duckburg to Quackalot is handled pretty clumsily, especially given the quality of the episode as a whole.  The "conveniently falling junk" that knocks everyone into the Time Tub and starts the device on its temporal trek is followed by a sloppily staged sequence in which the Black Knight repeatedly charges down a path towards King Artie and his wizard Moorloon.  The business is animated well enough; the problem is that Artie and Moorloon just stand there like dummies while the Black Knight canters to the top of the alley and bears down on them.  FOUR times, no less.  Here's a hint, guys:  IT'S OKAY TO STEP OUT OF THE WAY, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO STEP ON THE GRASS TO DO SO.  What would you have done had Gyro and HD&L not used their improvised lance to knock the Knight over? 

With King Artie's blessing of "Sir Gyro de Gearloose"'s unorthodox knightery, we enter familiar territory, creative ground that has been trodden for 125 years, at least: that of the introduction of modern technology and attitudes into the medieval past.  Mark Twain gave us the Ur-version of this story in A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT (1889), Ford Madox Ford followed with LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES (1911), and the subgenre was well and truly launched.  Disney itself churned out two live-action versions of the story, The Unidentified Flying Oddball (1979) and A Kid in King Arthur's Court (1995).  In lesser hands, "Sir Gyro" might have wound up as superficial and forgettable as were those latter gobs of Gothic gauze.  But Zaslove refuses to let it happen, for several reasons.  The most important of these is his broad-minded attitude towards both the representative of modern technology (Gyro) and the denizens of the medieval realm (King Artie and company).  Most of the serious attempts at this subgenre were created with clear satirical intent.  For example, in A CONNECTICUT YANKEE, Mark Twain wanted to ridicule outdated notions of chivalry, which he claimed had helped bring on the Civil War by influencing the development of the hierarchical, battle-loving Southern culture.  LADIES WHOSE BRIGHT EYES took the opposite approach, with the modern interloper growing to appreciate the charms of medieval culture to the extent that he "went native" and tried, much like Gyro, to become a knight.  Zaslove builds his story around Gyro's desire to find his true destiny in the past, but he also provides the all-important counterweight in the form of Moorloon, who is just as unappreciated in Quackalot as Gyro is in Duckburg, and is every bit as sympathetic a character as is Gyro, despite his attempt to enlist the would-be usurper Lesdred in a kidnapping scheme.  In helping the betrayed and imprisoned Moorloon to realize that he IS, essentially, Gyro in a different time and garb, HD&L perform their one absolutely vital duty of the episode. Tempting as it may be to think that this episode might have worked as a Gyro solo, I don't think that it would have; Gyro was simply too focused on his desire to become a knight, and Moorloon was too obsessed with jealousy over Gyro, to come to the realizations of their parallel roles without assistance.  As Gyro's sympathetic friends and as "outside observers" of Moorloon's plight, HD&L were perfectly positioned to be "moral guidance facilitators."  (Also, unlike Gyro's Helper, they have the power of speech!)

    

Giving a particular urgency to HD&L's efforts to help Gyro and Moorloon is the easily overlooked, yet undeniably creepy, fact that Gyro actually appears to be winning the battle against his "true nature" as the episode moves along.  When King Artie and Moorloon are attacked by the Black Knight, Gyro's first instinct is to whip up an invention "in a jif" (as Gadget would say) and save the day.  When the dragon arrives to attack Quackalot, however, Gyro's helping instinct seems on the bum, as he only reluctantly agrees to build the cider pump to douse the dragon's flames.  Artie's ill-received suggestion that Gyro build him a gadget to make "crown-shaped party hats" serves as a tipping point of sorts.  After that, Gyro is completely focused on becoming a worthy knight, even if he has to momentarily surrender to his atavistic instinct for mechanical creation and build a training wheel to help him guide his lance.  He even begins to dream of knightly deeds, indicating that his subconscious is also undergoing a basic transformation.  Given how close Gyro appears to being completely captured by his dream of knighthood, HD&L's decision to spy on Moorloon, and their discovery of Moorloon's plotting with Lesdred, couldn't have come at a better time.

The "magnetic" climax, of course, provides one of the series' most memorable scenes, and it remains so despite Dewey's horrible pun about "magnetic personalities."  (I remember when a DARKWING DUCK story in the unfortunate Disney-Marvel DISNEY AFTERNOON title used that same gag; oh, the catcalls it got.  Perhaps it was because Drake Mallard's "magnetic personality" was presented as the literal reason why he got magnetically stuck to a garbage can.)  I would also love to know how Gyro BUILT the Duck-gone thing.  Even granted that there would be a lot of chain mail lying around Quackalot, how would one "unchain" it to create that giant metallic sphere...  and without tools, yet?  This makes the use of golden planks, ropes, nails, and sails in "Wrongway in Ronguay" seem positively...  believable, don't you think?  Well, however Gyro got the thing put together, the depiction of its influence on Lesdred's legions is exceptionally memorable... and, of course, extra credit goes to Zaslove for foreshadowing this climax by introducing and employing the (much smaller) magnet earlier in the episode.  That there's good writing, folks.

"Hey, Usurper!  I got yer Purple Reign right here!"

When "Sir Gyro" appeared, I immediately dubbed it the best Gyro story ever done... but, in the intervening years, one worthy challenger has appeared: Pat McGreal and Santiago Scalabroni's "Little Gyro in Quarkland" (UNCLE $CROOGE #314, October 1998).  This is yet another entry in the "rebellious Gyro" sweepstakes, and it's a particularly dark-complected one.  The inDucks English summary of the plot claims that it is motivated by Gyro's despair at all the pollution in Duckburg, but the inventor's despondency appears to go much deeper than that:

No rushing off into "Utopia Elsewhere" is possible here: Gyro realizes that every other country on Earth has "its own share of problems."  He decides to shrink himself down to microscopic size and escape "in into space," but he discovers that the universe is essentially one great big circle; after shrinking through "Quarkland," he emerges into the Milky Way Galaxy and lands right back on Earth.

This is a profoundly conservative message, I think, in that small-scale change serves to combat large-scale despair.  I think that "Sir Gyro" carries a similar message.  Thanks to his journey to Quackalot, Gyro learns that his talents are needed in Duckburg every bit as much as Moorloon's are needed in his own time.  The whole idea is to take advantage of your time, location, and unique talents to make your "little corner" of the world a better place.  "Little Gyro in Quarkland" now stands as my favorite Gyro story in the medium of comics... and I don't think it's an insult to claim that it's every bit as good an effort in its medium as "Sir Gyro" is in its medium.  Yes, it's true, you recalcitrant "old sourdoughs":  DuckTales produced an episode that was SO good that it could be used as a measuring stick against which to judge a high-quality Duck comic-book story of a similar type.

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DuckBlurbs

(GeoX)  Anyway, in The Past, the waterfowl fall in with "King Artie" and Gyro impresses him with the power of Science. The local wizard, Moorloon, gets jealous, however, especially when Gyro's able to stop a dragon and he isn't (though looking back, it's hard to say why not, given that Moorloon is indeed shown to have totally sweet magical abilities later on).

I think that Moorloon claimed that he "[didn't] do dragons," not because he couldn't handle the situation, but because he wouldn't.  Already, we can see here that Moorloon is more concerned with making "that upstart Gearloose" look bad than in performing his supposedly sacred duty of protecting King Artie.  And he hasn't hit bottom yet, of course.  

(GeoX) It's sometimes a little hard to tell who's talking, but it's pretty clear that, when HDL are climbing down a drainpipe and getting captured one by one, the names get mixed up.

Yeah, I think you're right.  It sounds as if Louie says "Louie?" right before he gets grabbed by the Black Knight.

(GeoX)  The exaggeratedly-breathy crane-woman who in the beginning snaps at Gyro when he can't immediately fix her toaster and then at the end hits on him is kind of amusing. Make her a recurring character! Gyro needs a love interest!  

Admittedly, it would be nice for him to have one, but this girl is rather... flighty, don't you think?  (And I'm not saying that just because she's a bird.)  Her overreaction to the failure of Gyro's toaster fix bespeaks a rather high-maintenance personality.  She does come back in the end, which is a credit to her, but how will she react when she and Gyro go on that all-important first date and Gyro suddenly gets an inventor's brainstorm?  Will she be able to go with the flow, or will we see the hauteur and the stamping feet once again?  Too bad we'll never get to find out.

Come up and singe me sometime!

(Greg)  The black knight blocks with all his might and his armor and shield melts...and then we cut to King Artie's castle before he burns to ashes. Which indicates that the black knight inside is dead. Cinema 101 people! When will we learn that?! 

Cinema 101?  How about Physiology 101?  There was a very abrupt cut following the "red-hot armor" scene, so something may have been trimmed here.  Still, unless Lesdred has two or more of those ostrich fellows hanging around, the end product of this scene should have been "Scratch One Black Knight."

(Greg)  I betcha the red dragon comes in through the open window and burns Dewey wieners (both ways) to ashes. I check the DVD....Damn; I'm good. And HOLY CRAP; that flame actually made contact with their heads and they come out with minor injuries which looks like small cuts that are trying to bleed; but cannot. Okay that's it! I'm officially declaring the nephews NUTS! I thought Kit Cloudkicker's one inch bullet away from the head in Plunder andLighting Part Two was nasty?! If this doesn't get cut by Toon Disney; then Disney ought to be ashamed of themselves.

To my knowledge, this scene has never been cut from any print of "Sir Gyro."  A little of the edge is taken off of the scene by the fact that, while HD&L have soot on their faces, their caps are not burnt.

Interesting Moment #1: So we head to Moorloon's room as he is in agreement with Gyro for a change. HAHA! Moorloon tries to bang the magnet on the table; but no dice because it is not metal see. HAHA! However; the real funny part (which for moralists it was heinous) was when Moorloon bangs it on the table he yells: “WORK! WORK! WORK!”. On the DVD version; this is what Moorloon said. In the first run syndication; this is what he said as well; however, the Teutonic/ German accent of Moorloon had him sounding more like “F***! F***! F***!”. And yes; it rhymes with duck. Donald Duck seemed to have the same problem in his shorts in the past. This was the infamous F-Bomb episode of Ducktales (and probably started the Donald Duck F bomb scare later on since no one but Peggy [Charron] watches DTVA allegedly.). And since it was clear as day that the accent was trouble; in the second run syndication it was re-voiced without the accent to make it sound like what Moorloon was going to say in the script. 

Thankfully, the "F-Bomb" version can still be found on YouTube.  I don't know if Barry Dennen did the re-voicing, but the "cleaned-up" Moorloon sounds very little like the original voice of the character.  An unfortunate price to pay, I'd say!

Next: Episode 16, "Merit-Time Adventure."

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #698 (November 2008, Gemstone Publishing)

A real hodge-podge of an issue this time, so I'll start with my favorite "supplementary" feature: the SCAMP tale "Useful Things (and How to Use Them)" by the creative team of Lars Jensen, David Gerstein, and Daniel Perez, who brought this character back to the American comics pages in such delightful fashion in WDC&S #665's "Just Like Pop." This tale is less ambitious than that one but no less charming for all that. Jock is ashamed to admit that he doesn't know the purpose of an old metronome he's found, so he and Scamp set out to discover what it can be used for. We get some nice cross-references to the rotating animal supporting cast of the SCAMP daily strip as a gopher and Cheeps the bird make brief appearances. Mr. Ger-r-r-r-stein tr-r-r-ries a bit too har-r-r-r-rd to mimic Bill Thompson's Scottish accent for Jock, but that's hardly a fault.

The issue actually begins with a couple of items that are almost as "dated" as the early-1900s milieu to which Jensen, Gerstein, and Perez have returned Scamp and friends. Carl Barks' "Donald's Bay Lot" (1944) features an "explosive" climax as Donald goes to rather extreme lengths to make a shabby beach shack, sold to him by a sleazy real-estate agent, a more attractive item for buyers. Since this was a wartime story, I'm surprised that Don didn't wind up arrested for unauthorized misuse of government -- or would that be enemy? -- property. Part one of the Floyd Gottfredson MICKEY MOUSE strip continuity "The Boxing Champion" (1931) casts us back even further in time. Mickey plays something of a secondary role here to Ruffhouse Rat, who bears the proud title of "heavy-light-weight champion," though how he earned it I don't want to think; he exercises while reading Shakespeare, gets battered by fence boards and chickens, and uses heavy hammers to crack nuts. Mickey, tasked with managing this paragon's next bout, learns to his dismay that the opponent is "gorilla-grappler" Creamo Catnera. The "coming next issue" blurb indicates that Creamo will wind up fighting Mickey, rather than Ruffhouse, so Creamo should at least get some sort of reasonable challenge, if only because Mickey is nimbler. I can't help but think that Gottfredson was influenced in some way by the contemporary THIMBLE THEATER Sunday strip's use of Popeye as a "s'prize fighter"; many of the boxing and training gags are in the same spirit as Segar's.

The next story, "Donald Duck's Fouled-Up Fairy Tale," is the subject of this issue's cover, which highlights Daisy and her nieces. I wonder when April, May, and June last appeared on a cover? David Gerstein told me that this was one of the earliest stories he wrote for Egmont, and it's a good one, though a little contrived. AM&J, who are presently working through an obsession with fairy tales, decide to dress up and act out some of the stories, even as the on-the-lam Beagle Boys seek to raid the Ducks' "getaway cabin" while clad in animal disguises. Interestingly, the Beagle Boys appear to think that lions qualify as common "forest critters" in this particular neck of the woods. Did I say a little contrived? I stand corrected. You can pretty much figure out what goes down from here. Donald seems unusually competent in this story, figuring out that the "animals" are actually Beagles in disguise and dispatching several of them with fairly extreme prejudice. Daniel Branca's artwork is great, as usual. David was still smoothing out the rough edges in this story -- he wouldn't get nearly as cutesy-wootsey as this in most of his later efforts -- but you can see the promise.

After Scamp and Jock's "metro-nomadic" search and a two-page BRER RABBIT story, we come to the ish's one undeniable stinkeroo, Pat and Carol McGreal and Vicar's DONALD DUCK story "The Fizzy Pop Fiend." Donald's obsession with the titular soda pop wouldn't be funny even if it were original, which it isn't; see Barks' "Bubbleweight Champ". "Unca Donald's got a problem!", HD&L intone as their addled uncle becomes increasingly desperate in his quest to acquire enough Fizzy Pop labels to make a killing in a sweepstakes in which the big prize is a year's supply of the sugary substance. The boys, Scrooge, and Daisy finally perform an "intervention" and have Donald sent to a health farm, where he's soon on the "Road to Wellville." But there's still the result of that contest to consider... Suffice it to say that this story is struggling for scraps of humor when it uses a massive belch as a centerpiece of one scene. We're also expected to believe that Donald's spilling some Fizzy Pop in a very small area of Scrooge's Money Bin obliges Scrooge to have "every bill" in the Bin dry cleaned. The McGreals appear to be aiming for a somewhat cynical ending, but it doesn't come close to the overall nastiness of "Bubbleweight Champ," in which Donald was characterized as completely pathetic, rather than merely obsessed. "Fiend," I'm sorry to say, is one soda story that was "flat" from the very beginning... and, with that, I'll mimic Dale from the Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers episode "The Case of the Cola Cult" and bid you "soda-long" for now.

Mocha Ado About Nothing (Comics Review: UNCLE $CROOGE #380 [August 2008, Gemstone Publishing])

Carl Barks' one-page "filler" gags, like those produced by his contemporaries at Western Publishing, generally rated a few chuckles and then were quickly forgotten by readers impatient to get on to meatier fare. Honorable exceptions were the quartet of gags Barks produced between 1952 and 1956 on the theme of Scrooge tricking a diner counterman out of a free cup of coffee. Aside from being clever gags in and of themselves, the gags made a cogent point about Scrooge's personality: rather than being annoyed by his unwillingness to pay for the java, we marvel at his sheer ingenuity (and, by so doing, gain additional appreciation for his "sharper than the sharpies" philosophy). Given the popularity of these gags, it's somewhat surprising that an entire story on the theme wasn't produced until 2006, when Kari Korhonen brewed up "A Case of One-Cupmanship." Joe Torcivia's inspired dialogue -- which Joe admits flowed quite naturally from Kari's natural humor sense and pacing -- only serves to accentuate a plot that takes the simple scenario of the diner gags and runs with it as if it had received an extra shot of espresso. Scrooge has "unbent" to the extent that he's willing to pay 75 cents for a cup at Joe's Diner, but he more than negates the largesse by commandeering Joe's prize booth and digesting the daily papers at his extreme leisure. With the percolator-predating pinchfist oblivious to the situation, a desperate Joe hatches scheme after scheme to turn the tables (those not bolted to the kitchen counter, that is). The harried hash-slinger only succeeds in alienating the rest of his clientele without budging Scrooge. By the end, you're definitely rooting for Joe to have just one small victory, but his final effort backfires when his niece Carrie unwittingly duplicates his strategy. You'll have to buy the comic (and DON'T try to scam the dealer out of it, either! He has to make a living!) to find out how everything shakes out. Barks' original diner gags, reprinted in order of original appearance, are sprinkled throughout the issue, with Kari and Joe's gem at the end.

The front of the ish isn't bad, either. Don Rosa's 1993 story "Island at the Edge of Time" was one of the last stories Keno Don produced before committing himself to "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck," and its refreshing lack of pretension is just one of its virtues. Scrooge and Flintheart Glomgold race to the Pacific to claim the rights to a newly formed volcanic island that's literally oozing solid gold. The kicker: the infant islet is perched on the International Date Line, so who really did "get there first"? The sadly bungled "Ali Bubba's Cave," the final chapter of DuckTales' "Time is Money" saga, should only have handled the denouement so well (though the ultimate fate of the island is clearly telegraphed for those paying attention). Rosa cleverly injects himself directly into the story through the medium of an extraordinarily verbose third-person narrator, whose constant references to "Time!" finally prompt a frustrated Scrooge to bust the "fourth wall."

Per Hedman, Travis Seitler, and the artistic team of Francisco Rodriquez and Enriqueta Perea next serve up a somewhat truncated but nonetheless entertaining epic, "The Legendary Crown of Queen Kazabra," in which Daisy is possessed by the war-mongering spirit of the headlined monarch during Scrooge's hunt for Kazabra's buried riches. Unfortunately, all of the armored Daisy's "yeeks" and "screeches" can't drown out the little voice in my head that keeps asking: How could a "barbarian warrior queen" have existed anywhere near Duckburg? (And I thought the "Mad Duke of Duckburg" in Barks' "House of Haunts" was a stretch.) I put this questionable conceit down to the fact that the story has a European origin.

After the Beagle Boys are forced to break back into jail to tie up their latest caper in Pat and Carol McGreal and Nunez' "Back to the Big House," we get a hidden gem, the Dutch story "The Treasure of Alexander the Great." It's easy to be put off by Jose Ramon Bernado's strange-looking art and plot-spinner Piet Zeeman's unseemly haste to get the main event underway (to wit: thanks to Gyro's convenient appearance with a "time shifter" device, Scrooge, Donald and HD&L are whisked off to Alexander's time before the first page is turned), but stick with the story and you'll be rewarded. Scrooge/HD&L and Donald, having returned to ancient Macedonia to discover Alexander's supposed cache of loot, soon find themselves fighting on opposite sides of the war between Alexander's army and King Darius' Persians. What's more, thanks to Scrooge and Donald's advice, the armies are soon resorting to such anachronistic innovations as gunpowder and steerable battle wagons! "The Battle at Hadrian's Wall," Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl's fine late-60s venture into ancient Britain, had much the same ambience as this story, but "Alexander" is much subtler and cleverer in its humor (as rendered by the dialogue of John Clark). The ending twist is quite ingenious, as well. With a "cup of coffee to go," it makes for a fine conclusion to a strong issue.

The Irritant Jones (Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #693 [June 2008, Gemstone Publishing])

The only thing more intimidating than this issue's cover -- in which a menacing Neighbor Jones bears down on a desperate, soccer-ball-dribbling Donald – is the prospect that Don's eternal antagonist actually fancies himself a soccer enthusiast. Next thing we know, he'll be taking over as sponsor of The Riverside Rovers. The "classic" and contemporary Jones are both featured here, with Carl Barks' "The Purloined Putty" (1944) and Michael T. Gilbert and Paco Rodriquez' modern confection "The Odd Couple" bookending the issue. Both tales are chock full of gags more suited to an animated cartoon, though Barks' effort has a nastier edge to it. Gilbert (who seems rather above using such a trite and obvious story title) dumps Don and Jones onto a cruise ship as the unlikeliest of cabin mates. Battles over the possession of waffles, of all things, put the two neighbors at loggerheads. After Jones (in a somewhat contrived fashion) falls overboard while sandwiched inside an inner tube, the captain and other passengers quickly suspect Donald of foul play. To clear his name, Don goes to Jones' rescue, but the duo must contend with an exaggeratedly cartoony shark before they can get back to peaceful battling on board ship. "Putty" finds Donald and Jones at war over a precious can of caulk. The "back-at-cha" gags escalate until both reprobates are sunk in a pit filled with the gooey stuff. Leaving aside the obvious question of how Don and Jones could be expected to breathe for the duration while covered with hardened putty, this is pretty much the quintessential Barks Jones story. Well, that, or 1943's "Good Neighbors." Your mileage may vary.

Mickey also features in a pair of stories here, though the spotlight on the second actually falls more on faithful Pluto. Noel Van Horn's "Prometheus" finds Mickey, Horace, and Noel's oddly coherent and grammatically correct Goofy caught out in the wilderness with a storm coming on. No problem, it would seem, as each character has a special talent to employ for just such an occasion: Mickey is a whiz at finding safe campsites, Horace can gather firewood like nobody's business, and Goofy has "the power to ignite the densest wood!" This is a "pride goeth" sitch if I ever saw one, and, sure enough, the trio of overconfident outdoorsmen barely manages to survive the night, thanks to a series of potentially deadly blunders. Mickey ends up being the "fall guy" of sorts, but only because his goof happened to be the last -- and the most destructive. The much sedater "Once Upon a Dog," by Jeff Hamill and Cesar Ferioli, is a "Rashomon-comes-to-Mouseton" scenario, with Mickey, Goofy, Minnie, Clarabelle, and Horace all claiming to remember how Mickey came to acquire his beloved pooch – and each of them getting the story only partially right. Pluto tells us… or should that be "thinks us"?... the real scoop on how he helped to save Mickey from death at the hands of Pete and subsequently "adopted" his master. Ferioli sculpts Pete and his unwilling seaman henchman in classic 1930s style, befitting the era that saw Pluto's real debut, and he also tributes Pat McGreal by drawing him into the story as a butcher victim of puppy Pluto's food-filching.

Thanks to LAST KISS, John Lustig may be better qualified to write a DAISY DUCK'S DIARY entry than anyone has ever been, and he's in top form in this ish's "Are You Really You?", drawn with great panache by Daan Jippes. Daisy and a Donald attend a masked ball where they run into a "hussy" (so labeled by an angry Daisy because she's wearing the same dress as Don's prize-hungry girlfriend) – and her husband, a lookalike for the costumed Donald. Donald, for his part, is petrified at the thought that his superior in the "Manly Men Marching Society" might spy him in his effeminate getup. Let the mistaken identities and misunderstood gestures commence! Lustig's "calm and rational" "diary entries" contrast dramatically with Daisy's actual behavior. Jippes' rendering of a ballroom-girdling fight brings Barks' famous "Back to the Klondike" panel of Scrooge's fight in the Black Jack Ballroom immediately to mind. Lightweight stuff, but very expertly done. A 1947 LI'L BAD WOLF story drawn by Paul Murry fills out the book, and it's not half bad itself, as Zeke finds trouble when he attempts to swipe from JACK AND THE BEANSTALK and con Brer Bear out of his cow in exchange for supposedly "magic" beans. At this early stage of his career, Brer B. appears to have a little more brain power than expected. Still, this early melding of the "Bad Wolf" and Song of the South universes holds promise that was amply fulfilled in subsequent years.

Is It "Bedtime" Again Already? (Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S VACATION PARADE #5, May 2008 [Gemstone Publishing])

Eighteen years on, the influence of the Disney Comics title MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES can still be felt. Without MMA's reestablishment of Mickey Mouse as a truly viable adventure character -- no offense intended to longtime Mouse artist Paul Murry, but Mickey's escapades as a "private detective" had long since grown enervated and stale by the time Murry retired in the mid-1980s -- one can hardly imagine Mickey's dramatic comeback in the Egmont-produced comics of the late 1990s and early 2000s ever taking place. Thanks to Byron Erickson, David Gerstein, a passel of talented (and primarily American) writers, and a phalanx of artists (led by Cesar Ferioli and Noel Van Horn) who successfully married Mickey's contemporary look to an old-fashioned Floyd Gottfredson attitude, Mickey is once again a front-rank comics star.

Of all of MMA's many fine stories, none packed quite the wallop of the two-part 1990 tale "The Big Fall" and "A Phantom Blot Bedtime Story," in which Mickey faced off against The Phantom Blot in a full-blooded throwback to the original Blot story of 1939. This classic, written by Lee Nordling and drawn by Stephen DeStefano and Gary Martin, finally gets an overdue reprinting at (unfortunately) the back of the recently released WALT DISNEY'S VACATION PARADE #5. (Actually, we were fortunate to see it at all, as the 1943 Ken Hultgren adventure "The Seven-Colored Terror" was originally scheduled to run in its place.) In "The Big Fall," The Blot, arguably closer here to his 1939 persona -- with one intriguing exception (see below) -- than in virtually any other story one could name, matches wits with Mickey for possession of a valuable gem, only to be foiled in the end. Making his escape at the end of the story, The Blot seeks revenge, and what a revenge he cooks up -- a death trap that makes the "barber chair" and "footstool" death traps of the original story seem like children's parlor games. Dumped into a bizarre revolving maze that's a cross between an M.C. Escher print gone mad and the chaotic rotating stairwells of Hogwarts Castle, Mickey labors to save Pluto and Goofy from certain doom. The Blot would have gotten away with it, too, if not for the fact that the venom-emboldened villain tries one ruse too many. Legendary artist John Byrne provided cover art illustrating The Blot's labyrinth, but DeStefano and Martin do an even better job of bringing the maddening maze to ghastly life.

Lending a touch of pathos to this otherwise straightforward story is the introduction of The Blot's black-clad daughter. Yep, you read it right. "The Phantom Brat" (cf. editor David Cody Weiss in the MMA letter column) appears in the last panel of "Fall," sobbing over her Dad's apparent plunge to doom. It seems that The Blot meant to give the gem to her, all his stories about being forced to steal the stone to propitiate a kidnapper being so much Blots**t. The wee one's role in "Bedtime Story" is even more arresting. Already in custody at the start of the story -- but given a chance by Mickey to say goodbye to his daughter -- The Blot couches the story of his a-maze-ing battle with Mickey in the form of a fairy tale in which he ("The Good King") crosses swords with and ultimately falls victim to Mickey ("The White Knight"). This fairy tale isn't fractured, it's positively twisted beyond the point of recognition. Adding to the surreal feel of the framing sequence, "The Phantom Brat"'s toys all sport the same cloaked heads as "The Brat" and her Dad. "The Brat" -- now bearing the name "Alberta" -- appeared in at least one other Egmont story following her debut, but it's safe to say that this was the high point of her brief but memorable comics career.

As great as this narrative is, certain flaws are now apparent that were not so visible in 1990. The biggest of these lies in the characterization of Mickey. Oh, he's certainly not a weak character of the "happy bandleader" mold here; his characterization just isn't quite as distinctive as that of the Mickey that would blossom in the later Egmont stories. Mickey basically plays the stalwart hero, impressing The Blot no end ("How durable of you!" the villain responds after Mickey has evaded death yet again) but showing relatively little of the Floyd Gottfredson-inspired flavor that later writers such as Gerstein, Pat and Carol McGreal, Stefan Petrucha, and Noel Van Horn would emphasize. Of course, in the context of 1990, simply showing that Mickey could handle heavy-duty action and suspense and not only survive but thrive was more than enough of an accomplishment for Nordling, who would go on to pen "Space Mickey and the Throgg-Ray Wars," an epic space adventure, for DISNEY ADVENTURES DIGEST (more's the pity) before gradually fading from the scene.

The rest of WDVP #5 isn't too shabby, either. Carl Barks' 1949 adventure "Trail of the Unicorn" isn't usually put on the short list of his greatest stories, but it's full of action and good running gags (Donald: "Yes, Uncle Scrooge!"). Sent to the Himalayas to corral a unicorn for Scrooge's zoo, Donald and HD&L must fend off Gladstone, who, strangely, not only trusts to his famous luck but also actively tries to scam Donald into purchasing a worn-out nag instead. This could be considered a logic break, except for the fact that Gladstone himself regrets actually working to con his cousin and goes back to lying in the lap of Lady Luck. The story also features one of the Ducks' all-time great near-death experiences, as Dewey barely saves himself from being skewered by the rampaging unicorn by proffering a moss-covered rock to the (supposedly) mythical beast. A grateful Dewey totes the rock home, and, unsurprisingly, the souvenir ends up helping the Ducks trump Gladstone in the end. Might this story enjoy a better "rep" if Scrooge had come along, as opposed to simply using Donald and HD&L as gofers? Could be...

The Scrooge of Kari Korhonen's "Treasure Treachery" is perilously close to becoming a basket case -- ceaselessly badgering his employees and stressing out to the max. The Ducks cook up a bogus treasure quest to an exotic island in order to shake Scrooge out of the rut, but Donald, true to form, doesn't want to stop the good times from rolling and ups the ante by tossing a fake treasure map into the mix. Little does he know that Scrooge has gotten wise to Don's deceit and is planning a revenge scam of his own. It's another good, solid Korhonen effort with lots of character-based humor -- and, unlike "Fall"/"Bedtime" and "Unicorn," it actually has something to do with a vacation. So, too, does Jack Bradbury's 1955 LI'L BAD WOLF story "Back to Nature", in which Zeke tries -- and mostly fails -- to prove his mettle as a he-wolf during a camping trip with his son. Even the Dick Kinney/Al Hubbard DONALD AND FETHRY story "Preserve Psychiatry" contains a nod to summer fun (hmm, now there's a name for a Disney quarterly...) as Don heads for a hunting and fishing frolic in The Everglades, where he runs smack dab into newly-anointed "conservationist" Fethry. There's no doubt, however, that the highlights of this issue transcend any particular season.