The next time you find yourself on a sinking ship (...and NEWS FLASH to Peg Leg Pete: YOUR SHIP IS SINKING!) don't run for the lifeboats before grabbing a copy of DONALD AND MICKEY # 2 from IDW to entertain you while waiting for rescue. These unfortunate folks failed to do so - and LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM!
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In it you'll find the THIRD Donald Duck and Princess Oona story, written by Unn and Stefan Printz-Pahlson with still more superb art from the always reliable Victor Arriagada Rios (Better known as "Vicar") with American Localization by Yours Truly.
Offering the third Oona story as the issue's lead feature seems a trifle odd to me, considering that her FIRST APPEARANCE in IDW's DONALD DUCK # 20, despite being the cover feature, was buried in the back of the book - as was Oona's SECOND APPEARANCE in IDW's DONALD DUCK # 21 - but who am I to argue!
...Perhaps Oona had a little chat with the editors, and they saw it her way!
Anyway, in "Working GRRRL!", Oona continues to wreak her own special brand of primitive havoc on Donald's once peaceful modern world to where Don vows to find her a job, which will lead to getting her own place to live!
Needless to say, 12 pages of job-seeking joviality ensue!
Next up is a wonderful tribute to Floyd Gottfredson and everyone who worked on Mickey Mouse comics from the 1930s thru the 1950s, including Carl Fallberg, Bill Wright, Don R. Christensen and many others!
"Treasure Archipelago" is 16 pages (in two chapters) of true classic stuff with Mickey and Goofy in servitude on a ship commanded by Peg Leg Pete - who (yet again) claims to have gone straight!
It is written and drawn by the great Marco Rota, with Translation and Dialogue by Jonathan Gray, who does "Classic Mickey" better than anyone!
William Van Horn delivers one of his best stories in recent years with "Coff It Up!", where Donald and Neighbor Jones do battle over a winning lottery ticket!
Finally, a REAL oddity! An EEGA BEEVA SOLO STORY! You KNOW I'm gonna love that!
"Pocketful of Miracles" is written by the great Byron Erickson, who goes back with these comics to the very earliest days of what we call Gladstone Series One in the mid-eighties! It is drawn by Fabrizio Petrossi.
Eega, now far more acclimated to "our modern times", AKA "his past", as he's from the year 2447, (all together now) wreaks his own special brand of futuristic havoc on the scientists who originally examined him in his Bill Walsh and Floyd Gottfredson 1947 origin story - and who have now forcibly taken him to conduct further research!
This story makes for a nice "closing bookend" with the opening Oona story, as we have "characters out of their time" - one past and one future wreaking (all together now - again) their own special brand of havoc!
Only difference is that Eega is INTENTIONALLY heckling the scientists, a la Bugs Bunny, while Oona is simply and innocently doing her thing!
So, hopefully by now, rescue has come to all of you of my "lifeboat legion" of readers, you've enjoyed reading DONALD AND MICKEY # 2 from IDW, and are ready to share your experiences in our Comments Section!
Just remember, I do not speak for IDW, or anyone in its employ. I speak strictly for myself as both a long-time fan and as a dialogue creator – and those opinions are strictly my own.
Bon Voyage! Good Night! Sleep Tight! ...And Don't Let the Sharks Bite!
28 comments:
A yummy issue indeed! I'm always glad to see more Marco Rota, and that Eega Beeva story looks a lot of fun! (I'm slightly bothered by the whole "man of tomorrow" idea, because I'm really set in the idea of his being an alien with time-travel technology as opposed to a human from the year 3000, but then again it doesn't seem to matter to the story; all that matter is that the scientists believe it.)
Also, it's baffling how many times people will keep believing Peg-Leg Pete has really turned himself around… it just goes to show Mickey's boundless optimism and naiveté as a character, I suppose. …And that's a good thing! Also, i you won't mind the tangent, I like how the Mickey Mouse video games (the Castle of Illusion remake with Mizrabel, Epic Mickey with the False Blot and Epic Mickey 2 with the Mad Doctor) occasionally show an actual redeemed bad guy — with those events in mind, it's not hard to see how Mickey would so readily believe other scoundrels have had a change of heart. A petty crook being redeemed isn't so hard to believe when you've seen a villainous vivisectionist, an evil sorceress and an ink-and-thinner boogeyman thing who tried to kill you end up having tea and crumpets with your nephews.
Back to the main topic, there's just one thing — there is precious little to complain about when it comes to the IDW lettering, but it's still extremely off-putting to me whenever random dialogue is rendered as red. Especially a relatively unimportant bit of dialogue — I can see it when one is rendering something like a magic incantation, or an extremely angry shout, but does Pete's See? in the panel you reproduced really deserve to "paint the town red" so literally? I guess the idea is to provide additional emphasis, but I've never seen any other comics do it in the past and it just looks weird to me.
Color-related nitpicking notwithstanding, a great issue and a great review, as expected!
Achille:
I’m perfectly fine with Eega Beeva being “The Man of Tomorrow from the Year 2447”, because it accounts for evolution. We don’t look like the Neanderthals, nor do we speak like them. Eega (and, presumably, the other folks of 2447) do not look like “us” (…or our version of anthropomorphic Mice, Dogs, etc.) and do not speak like us.
Eega’s reverse-communication skills actually evolved as we observed him on panel! Compare his first appearance, with even the later Walsh/Gottfredson strip continuities – much less the comic book stories that followed!
And, just for the record, Eega’s official “Home-Year” (…for the complete and total lack of a better descriptive phrase) is 2447 – “fixed” as coinciding with 1947, the year Eega Beeva first appeared in the Walsh/Gottfredson Mickey Mouse strip.
This was actually told to me when I tried to update it for “Plan Dine from Outer Space” as “2515” to allow for the actual passage of time (to 2015) since 1947.
My thought was to logically advance Eega’s “origin year” commensurate with the passage of time but, looking at it just a tad deeper, there’s not really any need to do that! …I suppose, when you can time-hop the way Eega can, your year of origin can remain constant, even if your “destination year” advances! So, “2447” it remains! …The stuff you learn when you visit TIAH Blog!
…And, if I haven’t confused you all by now (…and I was beginning to become so myself – and I’m the one writing this convoluted critique), I kinda agree with you on the “red exclamations”! But, I think the reason they can be jarring is precisely *because* the lettering is so good!
I’ve always said that “The best lettering is the lettering you DON’T NOTICE!”, and that almost ALWAYS applies to IDW’s lettering (…as, for instance, opposed to some of the American English lettering on some of Don Rosa’s stories – or post-sixties Gold Key Comics that were not lettered by Paul Murry or John Carey)! And the “red” DOES “make you notice” – though I’m certain that is the intent!
It's not so much the concept of Eega Beeva as a man from the future that bothers me. Although I wouldn't make the "caveman" comparsion — cavemen were still subject to natural selection, whereas the moder technology-abled human being likely won't evolve much in the future because any geneitc"weakness" won't, thankfully, be erased by the bearers thereof dying an early death. Instead, if one must accept him as from the year 2447, I have this pet theory that Eega Beeva is what you get with a hybrid of all sapient species in the Disney comics universe (because by then, interbreeding will have diluted all species into a single weird one): the fingerless hands are the remnanet of Clarabelle or Horace's hooves, he has the height of a duck or mouse, the face shape of a cat, and the nose of a Witch-Hazel-style human.
But in truth, it's not so much the concept of Eega Beeva as a man from the future that bothers me. The thing is that there have been a lot of stories showing him unambiguously as an alien (there's an Italian one where Mickey even visits his home-planet, where Eega has become a respected figure as the functional "Ambassador to Earth" and a scientific genius!), a lot of which I like and want to keep a part of my headcanonned Disney Comics Universe; and while an alien with advanced technology could easily account for most stories showing him as from the future (he time-travels through Earth's history as a hobby, and it so happens he was coming from the year 2447 when Mickey met him), the reverse is untrue.
On the 2515/2447 issue… I suppose what you were assuming was that Eega was time-travelling in a linear fashion, periodically zapping back and forth between his "home-time" and Mickey's by perfect 1000-years intervals? Not an unreasonable idea, but it could just as well be that Eega's once-a-month visit to Mickey translate to every day from his 2447 perspective, stretching out time for him. Or, to be honest, maybe Eega and his fellows have time-travelled so much that trying to match their personal timeline to the calendar is meaningless — for all we know he may have grown up in 2448, then zapped back to 2420 when he was twenty, spent his honeymoon between 2876 and 1492, and then settled down in 2447.
…
I like to imagine that if we somehow cornered Eega and asked him "Okay, so are you an alien, a time-traveller from 2447, or something else entirely?", he'd answer "Pfyes" and then move on to asking your pet dog if it had some pickled kumquats to spare.
Achille:
I would imagine that, if we DID corner Eega Beeva and ask him some hard questions, he’d probably heckle US in the same way he heckled those scientists!
I’ve never seen any hard evidence of Eega being an alien, or anything other than a time-traveler from Earth’s future. Certainly not in any of the stories I’d “count”, like the original Walsh/Gottfredson strip continuities and stories I’ve read by Romano Scarpa and Casty.
But, it’s probably an easy thing for some writers to do, casting Eega essentially as “My Favorite Martian”, a once-popular American TV series of 1963-66. Give him plenty of misunderstandings, quirky ways, strangely functioning objects, and even odd personal conditions, pair him up with an “understanding good guy” (the role Mickey fulfills), and watch them go. Indeed, that’s exactly what Walsh and Gottfredson DID, only without any “alien overtones”!
And, that’s exactly WHY I cannot accept any interpretation of Eega as an alien – because all that stuff (sans an actual “other planet” for him to hail from) is already there!
Walsh and Gottfredson “got it right the first time”, and the best of their successors like Scarpa and Casty (and Byron Erickson, David Gerstein, and the rest of us) seem to fully realize that.
PS: LOVE your “Eega-Hybrid-Evolution” theory!
As I said, on principle I'd agree with you — if I had had that sovereign power of worldwide Disney comics that so many of us must have dreamt of, I would have stopped the "Eega is an alien" idea from ever taking root, because it wasn't necessary. It's just that at this point, there are many stories (some of which I grew up with) that use it, and as you may have gathered I'm very much for "absolute continuity" between all Disney comics as far as possible.
Making someone walk the plank on a sinking ship does seem a little bit redundant, doesn't it? What is Pete trying to do, make Mickey and Goofy drown or be eaten by sharks faster? Maybe he wants the pleasure of watching that before his own imminent demise so he'll at least die happy? (Wow, that's morbid...)
That’s Pete for ya, Deb! He might not even MIND going to his doom, as long as Mickey goes first!
Pete may even be SO obsessed with Mickey’s doom that he DOESN’T NOTICE that his ship is sinking! …I tried to tell him in the body of this post, but he just pushed me aside and called me a dad-burned swab-jockey-in’ busybody, or sumpthin’!
Achille:
I suppose that, as long as yer just a-wishin’, having “sovereign power of worldwide Disney comics” ain’t a bad way to go!
Lessee… If *I* had that power, I’d restore the monthly “Core Four” at IDW, revive the SUPER GOOF, PHANTOM BLOT, MOBY DUCK, and BEAGLE BOYS titles – just like Gold Key had ‘em in my beloved mid-1960s (going from a “Core Four” to a “Great Eight”), and have new stories for these titles produced in America… with ME as Editor-in-Chief! (Not “Editor-in-Grief”!) I’ll just have “Final Approval” on everything, and let David do all the real work – because he’s SO GOOD at it! …Who’s with me?!
I was once for “absolute continuity between all Disney comics” myself. But that was when “My Disney Universe” was made up of just Dell, Gold Key, and Gladstone Series I to consider!
Today, I don’t see how such a thing is possible, as different publishing entities all seem to go their own way, adding (and sometimes even deleting) characters and concepts all the time.
Just consider the many different versions of Donald Duck! TNT, MIA, Double-Duck, Duck Avenger/Ultraheroes, and Carl Barks’ original “everyman / parent” and (sometimes reluctant) adventurer. I’m sure I’ve left out several more things – or there are more things I haven’t yet heard of! How the heck can you reconcile all that?!
When he was just Carl Barks’ original “everyman / parent” and (sometimes reluctant) adventurer, it was, at least in some way and with some effort, possible to connect, categorize, and order virtually all of his stories… but no more!
And, hey… based on this issue of DONALD AND MICKEY, why not add a solo title for Eega Beeva (as long as I’m joyously hallucinating), going from a “Great Eight” to a “Fine Nine”! …Any ptakers?
An Eega Beeva comic? Only if Mickey is a regular in said fantasy book, even if he isn't the focus of it. (Kind of like "Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny" or "Daisy and Donald"). Perhaps it could begin with a story where Mickey visits Eega in 2447 instead of the other way around. Or Eega meeting Scrooge McDuck (and becoming ill from all that "munee").
He could even meet OK Quack. Or Eega meets Fethry. I can't see Eega carrying a solo book monthly, but maybe quarterly.
Pdream on...
Deb:
I still say that Eega Beeva would be a great subject for a solo title, and it doesn’t need to be a monthly. Even just an occasional “one-pshot”!
Love all your suggestions – even the one about Fethry, though the “annoyance quotient” would likely go through the roof.
I’d especially like to see Eega’s 2447, how HE fits into it (Is he a genius or a kook? Or even just “Pjoe Average”?), and how 2447 fits in with “further futures” as seen in these comics! I have not one but TWO “far future” stories in the can at the moment – both of which make 2447 look as close as 2020 – and in one of them (at least in one line I added) I reference Eega’s 2447 in relation to this way distant year! …No more spoilers!
But, if we’re in a time where the venerable DONALD DUCK and MICKEY MOUSE titles must be smooshed-up into the title that is the subject of this post, I don’t give a title for Eega Beeva a “pghost of a pchance”!
On the subject of "absolute continuity": being that I had a more international outlook from the start, I never "gave up hope", so to speak. I know it's a herculean task, but that's what makes it fun, and part of what I'm doing with the Wiki. As to different Donalds… yeah! He does have a lot of alternate identities! (Although DoubleDuck actually happens in the close future of the "present-day" of PKNA, itself set in the close future of the regular Duck Avenger-abled stories… so that brings down the number of people he is at once just a tiny bit. And chronologically, you'll note that Donald only becomes the Duck Avenger after 1967!) But that's acceptable within the same mindframe that accepts a 10-galaxillion-dollar-rich Scrooge, I think. A French editorial, as I recall, even ran with that nonanswer — a reader asked about how Donald could have so many different alternate identities at once, and was answered that "Donald is like a swiss army knife: a duck of all trades and master of just a few… although then again, there's a reason he always wants to oversleep when he's his regular everyman self!"
I'll also pipe in those discussions of an Eega Beeva solo book and what 2447 would look like. I can tell you that Mickey travelled to 2447 in an Italian Christmas story, and found that Eega-style tech was very common there… although there was no one in sight who looked like Eega. There are also several Brazilian stories that take a third approach, so to speak, to the "alien" or "time-traveller" ideas, by having him live in a futuristic underground world to which the cave Mickey found him in was connected; and because of some pseudoscientific Relativity babble, time passed faster there, hence why it was already 2447 to him. Point is, as far as I recall, he was a paferage pjoe there. Finally, in one of the "he's an alien" stories, an Italian story I have half-scanlated and dubbed Eega Beeva and the Macguffin from Outer Space (which is sort of a sequel to The Atombrella and the Rhyming Man), Mickey and Goofy travel to Planet Beeva, and in that version Eega is a respected scientist on Beeva, in part because of his inventions, and in part because of his Earthological work.
And I do believe a solo Eega Beeva book could work once in a while, taking its cues from those Brazilian and Italian stories as to the characterization of Eega's family. Maybe one could have him interfere with various time periods, ala Doctor Who? With Pflip and Pflip II going along on the trip, of course. Hell, Eega could even team up with Atomo Bleep-Bleep! Now there would be a sight!
Ohhhh, Achille:
You’ve made this “old gray head” (now with a new matching gray beard) hurt a tad too much for one morning! :-)
Perhaps one day, you could do for the entire Disney Comics Universe, what Don Rosa did merely for Scrooge McDuck! Tie all the astoundingly disparate elements of different publishers and different countries together into one largely coherent whole! …And, from some of this, it looks like you’re well on your way!
I think one of the greatest SHAMES in all of Disney Comics (…In addition to “Bird-Bothered Hero”, that is – I’ll just never let that go, will I?) is that Bill Walsh sent Eega Beeva back to “wherever it is he came from, now that there are multiple interpretations” , without ever taking Mickey and us readers for a trip to 2447!
I would love to have seen what the wonderfully bizarre imagination of Walsh, as Eega’s creator along with Floyd Gottfredson, would have come up with for “The Man of Tomorrow’s World of Tomorrow”! And, at story’s end, Eega could have decided to remain behind, making for a FAR MORE MEMORABLE EXIT than Walsh gave him in the strip!
Well, for constructing a story in which Mickey Mouse (and maybe Pluto) visit Eega's future, personally, I'd want to write it in a Bill Walsh/Romano Scarpa style, and would definitely use The World of Tomorrow as a starting point. We could spend some time with Mickey's pculture pshock about daily life in 2447, before bringing in why Eega brought Mickey in to help. Maybe somehow the Phantom Blot could be mixed up in this as well, having stumbled upon the way Eega travels between time periods, and has somehow become the ruler of Eega's city (which of course would be revealed much later in our story). Just an idea for a tale that will never see the light of day (unless someone who writes for a Disney license wishes to use it).
Tis a shame indeed… although Bill Walsh did get to present his view of the far-off future in Uncle Wombat's Tock-Tock Time Machine (https://inducks.org/story.php?c=YM+127) years later and it was just as bizarre as we could hope!
For the record, I have unearthed an american Disney comic story that I deem in some ways much worse than Bird-Bothered Hero, although I suppose one could say it does at least have the merit of being entertainingly bad more than Bird-Bothered Hero. My rant about it is here (http://featherysociety.proboards.com/thread/385/worst-disney-comic-beware-ranting) on the Feathery Society forum.
Awww, Deb…
Now you’re REALLY making me want an Eega Beeva title – now!
Though our neglected-in-this-thread-friend Princess Oona, is wondering why no one has any comments on her life-changing employment experience! Now, that’s she’s finally out of Donald’s hair (feathers?), even I am wondering what comes next for her – and I write all of her American dialogue!
Achille:
I am aware of that story, and say what you will about the “logic” (…as that’s always just a matter of opinion anyway), I still epically-fail “Bird-Bothered Hero” on THREE COUNTS!
Poor story, uncomfortably large unpleasant-to-look-at lettering… and most of all – ART!
That single four-panel sequence that I might have ironically made famous – where an-almost-unrecognizable-grade-school-level-drawing-of-Donald-puffs-up-a-storm-of-gulls-and-the-badly-drawn-spy-boat-unconvincingly-crashes-on-some-poorly-drawn-rocks – is without doubt the WORST ART I have ever seen in a Disney comic!
Tony Strobl could do better art NOW (Many years after his passing!) than in that sequence! There’s no way you could possibly compare the two, even if isn’t Strobl’s best art – a far better example you can see in THIS POST!
Folks have always said I am often “kinder” to the Western Publishing material than others might be (…and I won’t deny there’s any truth to that) but, to this day, I still feel let-down and unjustly ripped-off by Western and its undeniably slipping values (starting in 1969 – and worsening irrevocably until its end in 1984) for having parted with FIFTEEN CENTS for any comic containing the abomination they called “Bird-Bothered Hero”!
Read my comments in the link to that story and, no matter what you think of “Family Fun”, it is still far and away superior to “Bird-Bothered Hero” - in every respect!
Besides, I grade “Dell Giant” stories on a sort of “different curve”, because they were not created to be good (or even average) stories for a specific character – but were created to “satisfy a concept”!
That “concept” could be Christmas, Summer Vacations, Halloween, Back-To-School, Trips-to-Disneyland, Family Gatherings (as it was in this case), etc. …And, when you’re writing from THAT perspective, rather than what works best for a specific character or series, sometimes you end up with things like “Family Fun”! …Anyone else notice this, or feel the same way? …I’m curious!
On the plus side, depending on the skill and deftness of the WRITERS, you end up with the type of stories Carl Barks did for Christmas or Vacation Parade, or Don R. Christensen did for Bugs Bunny Christmas Funnies! So, it’s a mixed-bag – even though more such “Dell Giant” stories were “concept-obligatory” than good-to-great!
HERE is Achille’s link for “Uncle Wombat's Tock-Tock Time Machine”.
And HERE is the link for his Fethry-Comments.
As long as we're talking about awesome stories that will probably never happen, and since you mentioned Oona, I have long wondered what it'd be like if Oona met Bubba Duck. There's no information on what exactly happened to Bubba past the events of Original DuckTales and Darkwing Duck (he obviously wasn't living with Scrooge anymoreà , but we're never told that he went back to his time period; perhaps Mrs Beakley took him in as an adopted brother for Webby? Either way, his circumstances are so similar to Oona's that a meeting would certainly be entertaining.
On a purely out-of-universe level, I do wonder if there was any narrative filiation between Bubba and Oona — with Oona as an attempt to "do Bubba right", perhaps? The resemblance is certainly there, though caveman-stuck-in-modern-times is certainly a common enough trope that it might be a coincidence. (Captain Caveman, anyone? And Franco-Belgian had their own specimen with the Onkr comic-strip, which was so popular in its day that "Onkr" became the go-to name for a caveman in French culture. You'll find a panel of it here: http://i12.servimg.com/u/f12/11/04/03/28/onkr10.jpg )
Achille:
Once I got the assignment for the first Oona story, and saw the character for the first time, I thought that Oona was “Bubba Done Right!” I’m sure I’ve even said so somewhere on this Blog.
Oona was a character I wanted to see more of… Bubba was not. I think that Oona needed to be removed from Donald’s domestic life – and the story in this issue did exactly that!
That's a key difference between Oona and Bubba. Bubba didn’t find “a separate place for his continued existence”… if he HAD to “continue existing”, that is!
So, I actually am interested in Oona’s further escapades, as long as her appearances are kept in their proper place and in their proper perspective. On that score, I’d say – So far, so good!
“ There's no information on what exactly happened to Bubba past the events of Original DuckTales and Darkwing Duck…”
I would like to think that Bubba was picked-up by The Great Gazoo, when he left Bedrock at the end of his only Gold Key Comics appearance and the two of them exist happily in some alternate dimension with Scrappy-Doo, The Simpsons’ “Poochie”, Animaniacs’ Katie Kaboom, Hard Haid Moe… and any and all references to “Ultraheroes”!
HERE is Achille’s Onkr link. The more I see of those Franco-Belgian comics, the more I like! They have a solid, but very pleasing, look to them!
While I agree with the general dislike for Bubba, Poochie and Katie, and (to an extent) Ultraheroes, I never could bring myself to hate Scrappy. It must be said that one of my first exposures to Scooby-Doo (and one I liked) was through The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo.
And I've never seen Hard-Haired Moe on a list of "scrappies". If anything, he seems to have sunk into obscurity more than anything else, except in Brazil where he is in fact rather well-liked as a foil to Fethry (and from what I've seen of those stories, they're usually pretty okay!).
Achille:
Oh, I don’t really “hate” Scrappy! As “add-on-characters-created-to-keep-a-long-running-series-fresh” go, he’s actually quite amusing in his own annoying way. Kinda like the way I regard Fethry.
His inclusion was admittedly more “playing off the generally-held disdain of others” type of writing shorthand, than born of any genuine such disdain of my own.
Since I initially watched, on first-run airings, the original SCOOBY-DOO WHERE ARE YOU? thru THE NEW SCOOBY-DOO MOVIES (…and isn’t it amazing that Frank Welker has been through EVERY incarnation to date?!) - and later discovered, returning to the property in my late twenties, that “a bunch of Doos, Dumbs, and even Dees” had been added, I reflexively thought… WHY? The original concept was good enough.
I once explained to David Gerstein that my fondness for the original (and any later incarnations that resembled it – or at least took its cues from it) was because it was the first time that I saw anything resembling the beloved old “Dell Funny-Adventure Style Comics” translated to TV animation.
And, while it may not have been “Carl Barks’ Donald and Scrooge” (WHAT WAS?), there were certainly flashes of Western’s “Mickey Mouse and Goofy”, “Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig”, and “Andy Panda and Charlie Chicken” Dell-style adventures in there! Scrappy may not have fit into that kind of classic story structure (even then, I thought as a “writer”), but that’s probably his greatest sin. Overall, he can be enjoyable – even if he must be one of those characters “you love to hate”…which I do not!
Soooo… maybe I’ll walk it back a bit on Scrappy! But, the ONLY way “Ultraheroes” could ever be redeemed in my eyes would possibly be if I (or one of the other great translating talents at IDW) were to write it in the humorously ridiculous vein of FREAKAZOID! or the BATMAN 1966 TV Series. And, even then… (all together now) EVERYONE SHOULD NOT BE A SUPER HERO! Super Goof? Fine! I don’t care for it but, Duck Avenger? Also fine! …But, down to Daisy and Gladstone? NUH-UH!
Finally, as I’ve said elsewhere on this Blog, Hard Haid Moe (despite being a HUGE favorite of David Gerstein) is, to me anyway, is an unfunny mash-up of Yosemite Sam and Snuffy Smith – and a “human” to boot! Such a character is really an odd fit for the Duckburg/Mouseton Universe, wouldn’t you say?
I would've loved a more over-the-top take on Ultraheroes, but I will say that Super Daisy/Paperinika was not created for Ultraheroes; she was actually a long-standing character as a rival for Donald in the 70's Duck Avenger stories. She fell by the wayside later on because she was a rather tacky "token feminist" character (not only in concept but in behavior; her whole shtick was to beat male ruffians, and Donald, armed with "feminine intuition"). But even then it's unfair to lump her (and Fethry's Red Bat) together with the really stupid ones like "Iron Gus" and "Cloverleaf".
As to Hard-Haid Moe… now that you mention it, yeah, he's kind of a ripoff of Smith and Sam, isn't he? And not as funny as either of them. On that I must agree with you. But on the other hand, there never was a character of that archetype in Disney Comic lore, so I can see why something like Moe would spontaneously appear to fill that void. His design never struck me as odd — between Witch Hazel, Madam Mim, and Barks's occasional humans (like the mad scientist in Ancient Persia), it always seemed normal to me that full-on human beings were one of the many species coexisting in Calisota, albeit in much smaller numbers than dognoses. To be clear, he was never a favorite of mine, but he seems fine. I see him more as a "recurring Disney comic presence", kinda like Mayor Hogwilde or (let's be honest) Chief O'Hara — a character with little personal interest, whose main quality is being a recurring part of the setting.
Awww… Achille…
Ya had ta go ahead and remind me of “Iron Gus”, didn’t ya!
Given his nature, wouldn’t “Lead” have been more of an appropriate motif than “Iron”?
“Leaden Lad”, anyone?
Hard Haid Moe isn't just Smith and Sam; he's also Ragtime Cowboy Joe, whose song he rips off in his first appearance ("I'm a hifalutin slicker-shootin' son-of-a-gun...") and whose behavior, and relationship with his animals, he often imitates.
One reason I like Moe may have something to do with Disney comics scholarship. Back in the early 1990s, the primordial Inducks group online found a mystery in the origin of "the hillbilly character": his name unknown, but seen often in Italy in the 1960s and in Northern Europe in the early 1970s. Another mystery was "Hard Haid Moe," whose name some of us saw on a list of characters created by Dick Kinney, but couldn't identify. Then there was an Australian fan who remembered a Hog Haid Moe... but nobody could remember who he was, exactly.
Most of us knew a deep dive into the S-coded stories could answer these questions, but at the time it seemed there was no good source for the early ones in English. Disney hadn't done the best job of saving the English manuscripts; neither had Italy.
First a Swedish comic turned up where a signboard near the hillbilly's shack was accidentally left untranslated in one panel and mentioned "Moe." Then, after being hired at Egmont, I did a deep dive into its own S-coded archives, finding some English materials. Then better-networked Australian connections found many more. All of this effort finally put together this character whom I found hilarious in some ways because he was so unlike everything I'd seen in Disney comics before.
Joe, your dislike of Moe for being a human was not unique; that's why he came and went in the Egmont territories, where editors considered him out of place. But hey—they didn't want to use Ludwig either, so nobody's judgement is sacrosanct. Almost any one of us creatives can think of interesting ideas for the character someone else thinks is useless... (and hey—before discovering the S-coded stories, I myself didn't like Fethry!)
David:
Thanks for chiming-in with “equal-time” for the “Moe-Supporters”!
In all the years we’ve talked about all things Disney comics, I never knew your tale of “Moe-ology Research”. It must have been fun, and very satisfying, to put it all together.
Perhaps I should reevaluate Moe, now that I’ve grown a beard myself! …Still don’t own a shotgun, just yet! Maybe when Fethry comes-a-callin’!
Oh, and here’s “one of us creatives” who’d like to show the world that Moby Duck isn’t “useless”! Hint! Hint!
Well, I like Moby Duck as well! I always liked the Italian Chronicles from the Bay stories, too. And I dearly wish Disney would make some of their animated specials available on DVD… be it a lot of long-forgotten hilarious Ludwig Von Drake material, or "Pacifically Peeking", where we see a Ward-Kimball-animated Moby Duck voiced by Paul Frees!
Achille:
I read Moby’s first appearance in THIS COMIC off the newsstand, and saw the Moby TV special when it originally aired – though, when they ran head-to-head on Sunday evenings, I almost always watched VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA over the Disney show… except on those (alas, too rare) occasions when Disney had an animated program. …So, needless to say, I’m a Moby fan!
I occasionally push for those Italian Moby stories at IDW... as recently as yesterday, in fact! But, the prevailing argument – and it’s one I quite understand – is that, because of their length, there is no appropriate place to run them in an IDW title, as those titles are presently constituted.
I very much like and appreciate that the IDW titles are essentially Scrooge, Donald, and Mickey-centric, and I would do them in a similar fashion, if such things were up to me. I truly think it is the best way to go in a very crowded (and, frankly, not so robust) American comic book market.
But, unfortunately, that means there are a lot of things I would like to see that simply have no place… Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Fox and Crow, Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear (…Oh, would I love to write that!), and, on the Disney side, Super Goof (though he manages to get into IDW occasionally as an adjunct to Mickey)… and Moby Duck!
Joe:
Super late comment but I finally got around to reading this issue and over all I really enjoyed it!
It was great to get another Oanna story. Her role as an agent of chaos has so many comedic possibilities; especially when she’s playing off a character with a temper like Donald.
As always your diagloue was highly entertaining, though I have a question about it.
In the panel where Ooano’s job as a plumber dosen’t work out their’s a “CENSOR” bar over Donald’s beak. Was that a part of the original comic or was that part of the localization? Regardless I found it’s placement really funny so I guess it dosen’t really matter.
I also loved the Mickey story. It really was a throwback in terms of plot, pacing and over all feel to the Gottfredson strip. I especially liked how Rota’s art called back to Gottfredson’s art style from around “Outwits the Phantom Blot”.
Achille:
Your idea of eega being the result of cross breeding is really fascinating! Although I’d rather not think too hard about, err, the particulars of that occurring.
That said I have to disagree with your assessment of Chief O’Hara being less a character and more a part of the setting. To me O’Hara functions as a kind of father figure/mentor to Mickey and I find their relationship very entertaining and endearing.
Debbie:
Oh man I would PLOVE to see your outline for “Mickey in 2447” turned pinto a preality
Clapton:
There’s no such thing as “Super Late” around here and, as long as there’s no such thing as “SUPPER Late”, I’d say all is well!
Oddly, and for once, it was the localization doing the “censoring”, and not the other way around!
This was a tribute (as so many of these things are) to two things.
1: A particular panel in Carl Barks’ “mailman in winter” story from WDC&S # 150 (1953) where Donald is buried by a snowplow and the word “Shucks!” is seen in a black banner covering the contents of his dialogue balloon! I laughed out-loud, when first reading this in 1971, as a reprint in WDC&S # 366!
2: The Popeye cartoon “Shape Ahoy” (1945), an exceptional entry in the series (particularly for the post-war period), and its unique ending image! It’s not on authorized DVD (Thanks, Warner Home Video!), so look for it on YouTube, or sumpthin’!
…Glad I could give you a taste of what I experienced in 1971!
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