...Or "Blot, Out! II - The Sequel"!
Try and top THAT for detail, I.N.D.U.C.K.S! ...Aw, we're just kidding... We love I.N.D.U.C.K.S! It's the most valuable source for information on the world-wide totality of Disney comic books!
But GCD is no slouch either... and it's got me and a bunch of other dedicated folks bringing you the best coverage of comic books in general. Both should be prime components of any comic book fan's arsenal!
I don't know if I'm "The World's Number One Phan" of the "Phan-Tom Blot", but if I'm not somewhere in the top ten, I've really been squandering my life since 1964!
As part of my overall dedication to "Blot Boosting", I also wrote the "Feature Object" for The Phantom Blot at GCD . You can see that HERE!
...Yeah, that last one is a little much to ask, but indulge me, okay?
However, the REAL focus of this post is The Phantom Blot, and the wonderful, new Fantagraphics book dedicated to him - and one of his most classic artists, Paul Murry.
For anyone who's read the book by now - or would like to - now's the time, and here's the place, to leave your comments and have a good old time "talking Blot"!
See ya in the Comments Section!
61 comments:
Fellow lifelong Duck comics fan Lowell asked me today whether you or any of the experts had any educated guesses about who wrote the Blot stories that are officially "writer unknown." Do you have any hunches you are willing to share?
I think my very favorite comics in this book were actually some of the one-pagers, here in color for the very first time, as I understand it. I really rarely find one-pagers memorable, but a bunch of these are outstanding. Clever visual or verbal gags, e.g. the shadowboxing and the stationers store, and even a rare instance of a sort of continuity, where one one-pager builds on the joke of another: I refer to the two gags involving the Blot cracking a wall safe in Scrooge's mansion. Plus the delightful one where the Blot is vanquished by Grandma Duck! I can see how child-you was inspired to come up with your own one-pager, given how high-quality these are. And I'm chuffed that you were able to include that gag in your dialogue for "Chief Casey's Longest Night," where it did indeed make me laugh out loud!
I do enjoy some of the long stories, and particularly appreciate some of Murry's Visuals of the Absurd: the Beagle Boys masquerading as Blot's multiple mothers (that panel was reproduced on one of those little Swedish gum cards, Joe!), the panel with Blot in his fabulous pirate outfit captaining the Beagle Boys in the rowboat.
I'm a big Mim fan, so I was happy to see her in such a classy publication with such high production values...though it's not the version of her character I'd prefer. I don't mind her being boy-crazy at times, but her infatuation here is quite abject. Still, it was good that Chief O'Hara recognized that "she's strange, but not crooked." I have always believed that comics-Mim (as distinct from movie-Mim, a different character entirely) was not a villain. And I won't let this story turn me sour on Bob Ogle, because of my happy childhood memories of the stories he wrote in Donald Duck 102!
Excellent work on the database entry, Joe! Definitely does justice to this remarkable volume. Remarkable on several levels...the first comic book (as far as I know) to be named after a villain, the revival of one of the most noteworthy villains of Disney comics, one of the most extensive team-ups of Mouse characters and Duck characters (at least, in American Disney comics) since the comic strips of the late 30's and early 40's, the debut in prototype form of a character who would carry his own title well into the late 70's and early 80's, and some of the most wildly imaginative writing ever to grace the pages of a comic book. Much more besides. All of this is contained in one volume and is available for readers who may never have had access to the original comics.
In my childhood, the Blot was more elusive in real-life than he was in the comics, due to the fact that he effectively disappeared from comics after the end of this series. My one and only childhood encounter with the Blot occurred in a hand-me-down copy of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which contained the final chapter of "The Return of the Phantom Blot." I had to wait 30 plus years to read the story in its entirety. And after that, his appearance in new comics was restricted to a tantalizing reference on a puzzle page in Walt Disney Comics Digest (#5, if memory serves) and later, much later, to two return appearances in the aforementioned Super Goof comic book (penned, as I now know, by the marvelous Mark Evanier). The character reappeared in one later single-installment Mickey Mouse story in WDC & S drawn by Paul Murry, and that pretty much sums up the Blot's career at that time. Years later, I finally got to read the original Gottfredson tale in which the Blot made his debut. And years after that, I located the missing chapters of "Return", and years beyond that, I managed to get copies of the Phantom Blot comic book.
Now the Blot doesn't have to be so elusive any longer, with this volume from Disney Masters. At last readers can collect all seven issues of the original Phantom Blot comics. The stories are printed on durable paper in vibrant color. My only major complaint is that the covers, with two exceptions, are relegated to the back pages instead of being printed in front of their respective stories. Why two should merit proper placement and the others should not is a mystery that even Mickey Mouse and Chief O'Hara might find baffling.
The stories themselves, however, are delightful as ever. In a way I envy those who are encountering these adventures for the first time in this volume, because I know what a treat is in store. But whether the reader is a Blot expert (like you, Joe) or a novice (like I was for many years) there is much to savor in this highly unusual and amazing (despite my complaint) book.
"The New Adventures of the Phantom Blot" is a noteworthy volume in that it is a part of the unusual direction that Gold Key started taking the Disney titles. The Mouse and Duck characters were all together in quite a few of these, as opposed to the normal separation they usually had dating back to Donald getting his own newspaper strip. (Many Italian stories would break this tradition as well, especially for Christmas stories). We get to see a prototypical Super Goof, who is quite less than super, but certainly a goof in this story. The story featuring Mad Madam Mim is perhaps the biggest surprise of them all, as feature film characters very seldom crossed over into Mickey and Donald stories.
https://blogs.slj.com/goodcomicsforkids/2021/02/25/mickey-mouse-new-adventures-of-the-phantom-blot-review/ Here’s a favorable review of this book. Apparently the Blot is still an intriguing figure all these years later.
Everyone:
Very sorry, but I had to step away from things for a while, including the Blog where I’ve kept all your comments uncharacteristically waiting. Nothing bad, just very many time-consuming things...one after another! “Horrifically, Horrifically Busy”, if you will.
But, to paraphrase an oft-quoted (and oft-parodied) classic comics exclamation… “IT’S BLOTTIN’ TIME!”… and about Blottin’ time, too!
The Phantom Blot as seen in this book isn’t as much of a frightening mystery man as he was in “Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot” and “The Phantom Blot’s Double Mystery”, but an almost campy villain, mixing it up with the Three Stooges antics of the Beagle Boys as his frequent henchmen. The gag pages cement the lessening of the once threatening foe of Mickey Mouse. Now he can’t even twirl a rope, and twice falls for the comedy safe traps of Scrooge McDuck. He can be easily thwarted by Grandma Duck, knocked out by Chief O’Hara and is even mocked by Goofy, who vandalizes the Blot’s inky warning with his silly graffiti! My, how the mighty have fallen!
That said, this book is a lot of fun and definitely worth reading for its place in Disney and Gold Key comics history.
Elaine:
As with any question on writers of "uncredited comics", there is no hard and fast "official answer". It's really all guesswork. But more "guesswork" than it takes for artists, as their style is mostly evident, and all you need is a name to associate with the style. At least for pencilers. When there are separate inkers, it becomes far more difficult to discern the style of the inker separate from the penciler. But, that’s another can o’ worms, best saved for another time.
Oddly, writers may, in certain cases, be easier to identify than inkers. Though it takes a healthy dose of speculation, linking all sorts of different element threads, making writer-sensitive associations, and plain old writer's intuition. Familiarity with a writer's "other work" plays a big part in it too.
Every writer has a set of "go-to-standards", when it comes to style, subject matter, words and phrases, plot elements, the amount of humor a story is sprinkled with, if that humor of more verbal or physical, how they begin or end a story, reuse of things they've done elsewhere or previously... and so much more.
This even applies to me! For instance, you could pick-out my stuff uncredited based on the above criteria, because you’ve read enough of it to make that linkage and those associations. Puns galore. “Bertram”, “Goat-Ham City”, “Esther”, “ginchy”, recurring numbers or dates that are used for different purposes (like my wedding anniversary – or parts thereof), Lost in Space or Looney Tunes dialogue references, bogus/parody “Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” references, references to other comics/TV/animation stuff, new and original Jr. Woodchuck acronyms, Vic Lockman-like alliteration, and more.
This sort of thing is what differentiates and identifies Vic Lockman from Don R. Christensen, or Carl Fallberg from Michael Maltese, and so on, even when uncredited.
For “The Phantom Blot Meets the Mysterious Mr. X”, I offer a speculation that I’m not comfortable enough with to officially index. I’d be willing to apply that same speculation to the fabled WDC&S serial “The Return of The Phantom Blot” as well. And, alas, that may be all we ever get, as there’s no one left from that period to ever set the record straight. The one-page gags are anyone’s guess (not enough there to really go-on) but, I’d divide them up between Bob Ogle and Vic Lockman on instinct alone.
“…and even a rare instance of a sort of continuity, where one one-pager builds on the joke of another: I refer to the two gags involving the Blot cracking a wall safe in Scrooge's mansion.”
I’ve long thought that, if the PHANTOM BLOT series had a more lengthy run, the “Scrooge safecracking gags” could have been the Blot-equivalent of the classic Carl Barks “Scrooge gets a free cup of coffee from a diner gags”. …Then again, I’d also hoped I’d see my “Victorian Inkblots gag” in that same inside-cover space… , but that had to wait 52 YEARS for “Chief Casey's Longest Night” to finally happen! …But, if anyone in Disney Comics Decision-Making Land is reading this, I’d be happy to write some “Scrooge safecracking Blot gags!” …Let’s talk!
GOOGLE says we must break the comment here!
Now, if it's OKAY WITH GOOGLE, we shall continue...
“I do enjoy some of the long stories, and particularly appreciate some of Murry's Visuals of the Absurd: the Beagle Boys masquerading as Blot's multiple mothers (that panel was reproduced on one of those little Swedish gum cards, Joe!), the panel with Blot in his fabulous pirate outfit captaining the Beagle Boys in the rowboat.”
Murry, an artist not known for a particularly humorous drawing style, really did handle some of Bob Ogle’s absurdities quite well. Makes you wonder how he might have drawn some of Bill Walsh’s 1950s Mickey adventures! …Um, not that I’d trade Gottfredson, mind you… Just thinkin’ with a keyboard here.
I *really* loved Mim in that story. Pairing her (of all characters) with the Blot was pure genius! Then again, Ogle probably wrote most, if not all, of those early Mim stories in WDC&S with the Beagle Boys, so the foundation of the “innocent-criminal-association-thing” was already set – and this was the ultimate manifestation of it! And Mim is NOT a “villain” here, just as she was not when associating with the Beagles! Though her “removal and/or isolation from ordinary civilization” will allow her to be misled. Just not for long!
I don’t believe there were any more Bob Ogle stories after 1966. That’s probably why Vic Lockman wrote the final Blot issue, took over Super Goof, etc. Such a pity Ogle spent a relatively short period writing for Western (1963? – 1966, between more-profitable animation gigs, I’ll assume), because we really could have used him as the sixties wore on into the seventies.
Scarecrow:
You write: “Excellent work on the database entry, Joe! Definitely does justice to this remarkable volume.”
Thank you! An extraordinary book like this deserved the best index entry possible, and I did my darndest to make that happen. A serendipitous by-product of this lengthy and detailed entry is that I took the opportunity to port much of this material into the respective indexes of the original seven issues of THE PHANTOM BLOT, so they are at their optimum information level as well.
Oooohhh, nooooo! In my view, you could not have had a worse initial “Blot-sperience” (if you will) than reading Chapter FOUR of “The Return of The Phantom Blot” first… and years isolated from the rest of it. Knowing the great surprise that awaited us at the end of Chapter Four… but not knowing what led up to it, thus lessening it AS a “great surprise”!
In the spring of 1964, I read that story, chapter-by-chapter, month-by-month, and I don’t think I ever anticipated an ongoing comic story like that again… until the “Death of Superman/ Funeral for a Friend/ Reign of the Supermen” mega epic in the early ‘90s! …And, the anticipation over the Blot may STILL have been greater, because time moves so agonizingly slow when you’re a kid! (…Sure wish it would do that NOW!) Of all the common experiences we seem to have had, I truly wish you had this one too!
One correction: “The character reappeared in one later single-installment Mickey Mouse story in WDC&S drawn by Paul Murry, and that pretty much sums up the Blot's career at that time.”
Actually, once the Blot was finally revived by Mark Evanier in the pages of SUPER GOOF (a fittingly full circle journey, considering where the “Super Goof concept” originated), the Blot appeared in a number of those 8-page Mickey Mouse backup stories by Murry in WDC&S throughout the later ‘70s, rotating with Pete, Emil Eagle, and many one-shotters. One of those Blot stories even co-starred Super Goof!
The Blot continued to appear into the 1980s – and literally up to (and into) the last issue in 1984 – and beyond! “Beyond” in that there were two remaining unpublished Murry Mickey stories that never saw print. One of them was titled “The Phantom Blot Task Force”. I’ve seen it, so it DOES still exist. I suggested that it be included in the Disney Masters volume as a bonus but, alas, there was no room. …And I don’t really see anywhere else it could possibly appear, as things currently stand.
Oh, well… if even my “Victorian Inkblots gag” finally found a future home, there’s always hope!
Deb:
You write: “‘The New Adventures of the Phantom Blot’ is a noteworthy volume in that it is a part of the unusual direction that Gold Key started taking the Disney titles.”
Indeed, it was, Deb! It was essentially the start of the last great period of innovation American Disney comics would ever undergo. New titles and new characters, exploded over those Gold Key pages between 1964 and 1967!
Titles for The Phantom Blot, The Beagle Boys, Super Goof, Junior Woodchucks, Moby Duck, all ancillary to the original “Core Four” of “Mickey Mouse”, “Donald Duck”, “Uncle Scrooge”, and "Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories”!
Creation / revival of The Phantom Blot, Super Goof, Mickey Mouse as a “Super Secret Agent” (let alone his stint as “The Red Wasp”), recurring “specialty Beagle Boys” like Supersensitive 666 and Intellectual 176, the Beagle Brats, Newton Gearloose, Shamrock Bones, Captain Churchmouse, Dangerous Dan Mc Boo, Idjit the Midget, Emil Eagle, the integration of Madam Mim into the comics, the series of “Fantastic Time Machine” stories for Mickey and Goofy, the introduction of Fethry into three Donald Duck stories, Barks’ revival of Neighbor Jones – and, if you’re willing to go one month into 1968, Dimwitty! …Or, maybe not quite that far!
If I’ve omitted anything, please feel free to add it.
In the 1960s, pretty much everything was (or was “turning into”) camp! And I LOVED every minute of it! Still do! I’ve long said that “Bill Walsh’s 1950s Mickey stories were sixties, before there were sixties”! For the Phantom Blot, perhaps that was part of the “road to acceptability” that allowed him to be a villain starring in his own Silver Age series. You didn’t see that at DC or Marvel at the time.
…And, ya gotta admit, what he might have lost in “mystery”, he more than made up for in the fun of characterization! Thinking about it, in contrast with Gottfrtedson and Scarpa’s Blot, I don’t think it could have been done any other way at the time, and have been sustainable over a number of years.
Thank you especially for the link to the review of this Disney Masters volume! HERE it is for all to see!
Gasp! You mean, there are later 70's and early 80's Murry-drawn Blot stories that I haven't read? That is amazing news! I always thought the one I saw was a one-off. I'm glad the character continued for a while yet. I always liked the way Murry drew the Blot--always with the appropriate touch of menace and mystery. I would love to see some of those later stories. Maybe there's enough material to justify a Disney Masters "70's and Beyond Blot Collection"? One can always hope!
As a self prescribed antidepressant I’ve purchased the new Disney Masters volume and it hasn’t disappointed! I agree with scarecrow that I would have preferred for the covers, stories and gags to have been grouped together by issue however given that the content of all 7 issues have been included here, albeit out of order, that’s a very minor complaint. So far I’ve only read the first story “The Phantom Blot meets the mysterious Mr. X” however I have so many thoughts about it I figured I’d post em’ here.
I adore how the writer (who, according to your GCD page, was most likely Del Connell and/or Bob Ogle) gets Unca $crooge and Mickey to team up. U$ summons Mickey Mouse, renowned detective/adventurer, to investigate a threat from an international thief because Mickey is already aware of Mr. X’s M.O.! I LOVE IT! I like how it props Mickey’s character up as an internationally aware detective. Taking this route also serves as an explanation for why U$ doesn't just ask Donald and the boys for help… then again Mickey seems to care less than Donald does about getting paid so maybe this is just an example of Uncle Scrooge being a shrewd businessman :)p
Something else that interested me is that this story appears to have both the Mice and Duck characters living in Duckburg. I’m basing this assumption off of Donald running into Mickey (thankfully not running OVER him with his car) during the traffic jam, and Chief O’Hara's involvement in the case. I’m not a continuity lunatic (not that being a continuity lunatic is a bad thing) so this doesn't bother me but it did make me wonder how this affected the headcannons of Gold Key’s readers. So Joe, when you first read this story in the 60s did you think Mickey and Donald both lived in Duckburg or had it already been established in the Dell/Gold Key comics that Mickey and Donald lived in separate towns?
Speaking of continuity, something I have mixed feelings about is how Goofy gets involved in this story. Goofy’s fascination with Mickey’s original phantom blot case seems to be an attempt at continuity with “Return of the Phantom Blot” however none of the characters ever reference the events of ROTPB. The problem isn’t Goofy, since he doesn't recall his time as the Blot, it’s Mickey. Mickey’s forgotten about Goofy’s PB newspaper clippings and he doesn't cite Goofy’s prior experience as the Blot in his decision to hypnotize Goofy. Instead he cites Goofy's knowledge of the Blot from newspapers (which Mickey is acting like he’s just found out about). I’ve come up with two explanations for this: 1) These were attempts at callbacks but the writer forgot the specifics of “return”. This makes me wonder if “Return” and “Mr. X” were written by the same fella or if they were written by different authors. 2) These aren’t callbacks, the writer just wanted to reuse the premise of Goofy being the Blot. I understand why the writer did this as he got a lot more mileage out of Goofy being the blot here than “Return” did. In “Return” the Blot’s identity is a mystery whereas in “Mr. X” we know the fake blot is Goofy. This allows the writer to play with the reader’s expectation by showing Goofy’s inner struggle as the Blot, setting up multiple comedic and dramatic twists.
Given that the rest of the story is so excellent I wish I could simply overlook this as a minor continuity flub however there is a more troubling aspect to Goofy being hypnotized as the blot. Mickey hypnotizes Goofy without his consent. In “Return” Goofy accidentally hypnotizes himself by tripping however in “Mr. X” Mickey personally decides to hypnotize his friend, without asking for permission. In turn Goofy is deprived of sleep for multiple nights. Now before you say it I know... this is a kids comic book from the 1960s. I’m looking at this story through a more nefarious modern perspective. And given that is published in an archival series such as Disney Masters this absolutely doesn't ruin the story for me. In fact, overall I REALLY enjoyed this story! “Mr. X” moves at a brisk pace, has good comedy, and an exciting conclusion!
I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the volume and sharing my thoughts here! Before I go I’d like to echo everyone else's sentiment and say that you’ve done an exceptional job on the GCD page! The contributions of all individuals who worked on these comics should be preserved and not just for the sake of history. Their work on these comics influenced a lot of kids. They made an impact on the world and the (largely positive) impact matters.
Also, I envy that you’ve seen Murry’s unpublished Blot story! Maybe it could be a bonus feature in the next Murry Disney Master. Finally I have two last questions for you. In the comments you mention all the character gold key revived in the 60s. One of those was Captain Churchmouse, another Gottfredson creation. This makes me wonder if some of Gold Key’s writers were fans of the Mickey Mouse comic strip given that they had revived two characters from it. You also mentioned Barks’ revival of neighbor jones. I know that fans had gotten in touch with Barks prior to his retirement however I don’t recall WHEN that was. Do you know if fans had encouraged Barks to bring Jones back?
I read this right after reading the previous Disney Masters MM volume featuring "The Phantom Blot's Double Mystery". And I'm glad Fantagraphics saw fit to collect this short-run oddball title. That kind of sent me off on a quest to track the intermittent and disjointed history of the Blot in comic books. I know this book was already pushing it in terms of page-count, but it seems a real shame that they couldn't reprint the WDC&S serial "The Return of the Phantom Blot" that served as a lead-in to PB getting his own title in the same book -- despite the fact (which I only just discovered after finally tracking that story down) that The Phantom Blot really does NOT return in that story at all! Sort of a disappointment for me to discover that.
The American version of PB is kind of strange, but it fits the Gold Key comics mid-1960s sensibility. It's fun to see more interaction between the different corners of the "Disney-verse" as it then existed at Western Publishing. Mad Madam Mim seems like an odd inclusion until you realize she had a concurrently-ongoing feature at that time in WDC&S. Personally I would have loved it if they could have found a way to work Zeke "Big Bad" Wolf into one of those epic 32-page epics! Or Magica de Spell!
I have to be honest and say I much prefer the TOPOLINO version of the Blot as retooled by Romano Scarpa in 1955. But what the heck, why can't there be more than one Phantom Blot? As the American one sits in State Prison, the police apparently never bothered to identify him by name or fingerprints, or make him take off his mask, so what the heck -- just let him wear his costume all the time in jail. You can't prove or disprove that he's the same guy or not as in the Italian stories!
A couple of comments on Gottfredson's original Blot story seem appropriate at this point. I like the way that he's "an agent for a foreign (i.e. European) syndicate", I love the way Gottfredson endowed him with the uncanny ability to appear as if from nowhere, or creep right up behind someone perfectly silently without their being aware. He pins notes to Mickey's or Chief O'Hara's back as they're sitting in locked rooms without them ever being aware! Lots of notes, written beforehand in a way that the Blot could almost anticipate exactly what his adversaries were thinking ahead of time. The way the story was plotted all of the Blot's actions seem to be nonsensical, which I think is a very good quality to retain in PB stories. Most importantly -- and I've NEVER seen this used in another Blot story -- is the Blot's personal squeamishness regarding killing. He can contemplate the most diabolic ways of constructing elaborate death-traps, but will never sully his own hands, and can't even stand to personally witness his victim die. In rare conversations he can seem urbane and even excessively polite. Gottfredson really imbued the Blot with some interesting quirky characteristics that if feels like NO subsequent stories ever employed. Maybe I just haven't read those stories, or there have been too few, but the Italian stories from TOPOLINO at least seem to capture the spirit of the original Blot the best.
Maybe someday there will be a Disney collection of all the best Blot stories from TOPOLINO, but until then I'm glad to have "New Adventures of the Phantom Blot".
Taking them in reverse order…
Great observations, Dennis!
Seriously, this – and similar such comments I receive from so many interested and thoughtful folks – is why I still enjoy doing this for over a dozen years!
Reading the Scarpa story directly before these must have made for an interesting perspective, and very much the opposite of how these stories came to me. Essentially, my order was “The Return of the Phantom Blot” (1964). The PHANTOM BLOT Gold Key series (except for #2, which I somehow missed – 1964-1966). Floyd Gottfredson’s originally untitled Blot newspaper continuity of 1939 – in 1978 via the Abbeville Press hardcover book MICKEY MOUSE. PHANTOM BLOT #2 (1983). Finally, Scarpa’s "The Phantom Blot's Double Mystery" when Gladstone printed it in 1988.
In a way, I was part of “the intermittent and disjointed history of the Blot in comic books” because, as a then-influential fan, I was responsible for Gladstone running that story – which I had initially seen in a German pocket-sized book, and desperately wanted to be able to read in English. You’ll note that Gladstone was not in the habit of running Italian-created stories before that.
But, before that story could be run, the great and responsive editors at Gladstone told me, Eega Beeva had to be properly (re)introduced to the American comic book audience. So, a few issues earlier, they ran Walsh and Gottfredson’s “The Man of Tomorrow” in the very same MICKEY AND DONALD title in which ran the Scarpa Blot story.
So, while I won’t take credit for more-or-less permanently reviving The Phantom Blot in American comic books, I *do* take great pride in my part in the introduction of both Eega Beeva and Romano Scarpa (present-day character and creator mainstays) to American comics. Never mind the mind-blowing absolute privilege of later getting to work with the character of Eega Beeva and stories by Romano Scarpa in later incarnations of these comics!
While nowhere near achieving the place in “Blot-history” that it deserves, the two-part tale from Disney Comics’ MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES #7-8 (1990), by Lee Nordling and Stephen DeStefano is VERY MUCH worth checking out, as likely the last-ever Phantom Blot vs Mickey story created in America, and a harkening-of-sorts back to the Gottfredson Blot – with a rather unexpected twist in Part Two.
As Gold Key was the first Blot I saw (…and I suspect that may be true of many Americans of my age, who read comic books in the Silver Age), there was little or nothing “strange” about this Blot… It was the ONLY Blot I knew – but he, and the title bearing his name, was extraordinary for all the reasons to be found at this Blog and in the Fantagraphics book itself. Other wonders, as discussed, would come later – and be just as appreciated as part of one great blotted-tapestry (if you will).
Everything you say about the Gottfredson Blot served to make him unique among Disney comic villains and, of course (to one extent or another), found their way into every subsequent incarnation… even if you have to look a little harder to find it.
Fantagraphics has assembled an amazing tribute to this character, it’s Silver Age creators, and the quirky-yet-unforgettable stories themselves! I’m happy to say that, certainly to *my* knowledge, it’s drawn universal praise from those as familiar with these stories as I am, and from those reading them for the first time.
PS: I would gladly have paid quadruple the 12-cent cover price to have seen how Zeke Wolf could have been worked into a 32-page Phantom Blot story! …But, I’ll bet Vic Lockman would have found a way to do it, as he did with Super Goof.
Maybe we could eventually see the last two unpublished Paul Murry stories in a Paul Murry “Odds and Ends” volume of Disney Masters, showing off some of his one-shots, S-coded stories and work for other Disney titles. I think Murry has drawn some Donald Duck stories.
Deb:
Murry has drawn a fair number of Duck stories for Western, including some longer adventures, and they might make an interesting collection… but, in view of the Phantom Blot volume, I say why not a “Super Goof by Paul Murry” companion volume.
Murry drew many of the good early ones, and they would probably fit in a similar size volume to this. And, his odd “two-vertical-semi-diagonal-panels-per-page” Super Goof stories from WALT DISNEY’S COMICS DIGEST could probably fit two original pages for every one Fantagraphics size page! As those are unlikely to ever be seen again, due to their truly oddball format, this would be the one and only place to do so!
…You’d also get more Del Connell, Bob Ogle, and Vic Lockman at their Silver Age peak, just like in the Blot volume!
Ryan:
Awwww… LOVE the dog! …And, as I can attest from experience, the Blot CAN indeed have great value as “a self-prescribed antidepressant”, and a Great Big Book of Blot couldn’t have come at a better time!
While I feel I have a knack for writer-IDs, as explained above, I don’t feel I can make the “Connell vs. Ogle call” with enough certainty to meet the standards I hold myself to. So, that one officially remains a mystery, and probably will forever more, alas. But, narrowing it down to a mere TWO potential writers is still something worthwhile derived from my years of research and analysis. For what it’s worth, I feel “The Return of the Phantom Blot” and “The Phantom Blot Meets The Mysterious Mr. X” ARE by the same writer – and that writer would be one of the two named suspects.
Further, I feel your two offered thoughts on the matter of Goofy’s hypnotic state are probably a hybrid of what likely occurred in actuality…
“1) These were attempts at callbacks but the writer forgot the specifics of ‘Return’. This makes me wonder if ‘Return’ and ‘Mr. X’ were written by the same fella or if they were written by different authors. 2) These aren’t callbacks, the writer just wanted to reuse the premise of Goofy being the Blot. I understand why the writer did this as he got a lot more mileage out of Goofy being the blot here than ‘Return’ did.”
My guess is – and EVERYTHING is a “guess” when it comes to this stuff… Yes, “Mr. X” *is* a callback to “The Return of the Phantom Blot” and also… Yes, the writer wanted to further explore the premise of Goofy being the Blot! But this “callback” was done in the only way possible at the time!
In 1964, there was no one place to get every comic book you wanted. It was hit-and-miss, and you had to scour a LOT of little stores to do it. While there might have been some “pioneering dealers” doing mail order at the time, there was NO actual back-issue comic book market to speak of. If you missed something… you missed it and it was gone! As I mentioned above, PHANTOM BLOT #2 didn’t come my way until the ‘80s!
That meant that every story had to be largely self-contained! DC and Marvel “called back” with “editor’s notes” directing you to a previous issue being referenced (whether you could FIND it or not), but that wasn’t Western’s style. So, “Mr. X” emerged as the best possible way (under those circumstances) to tell that story – expanding upon four issues of WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES that the readers of PHANTOM BLOT #1 may, or may not, have had.
I suppose that Donald and the kids were sufficient (and cheap) enough to deal with the Beagle Boys and Magica DeSpell, or traverse the occasional teeming jungle or frozen wasteland, but, when it came to the likes of The Phantom Blot and The Mysterious Mr. X, Uncle Scrooge knows to call-in the big-gun professionals like Mickey. Besides, Mickey is paid as a freelance detective by Chief O’Hara. Win/win for Scrooge!
At that time in 1964, at least for me, I operated under the assumption that they all lived in Duckburg, shared the same police force, etc. Duckburg was the only “named-city or town”, and stories like these Phantom Blot entries were formative in that belief. It wasn’t until 1990, and Disney Comics’ MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES title that “Mouseton” as an entity came into being. To its credit, the name and concept stuck, and successfully retconned its way into overall continuity.
Yeah, I guess Mickey *did* kinda, sorta, maybe put his best pal in more than a spot of peril, but making the tough decisions is why he makes the big bucks.
I’LL PUT THE REST OF MY RESPONSE IN THE FOLLOWING REPLY…
Ryan (again):
Murry’s unpublished Blot story was one of those eight-page shorts that ran in the back of Gold Key and Whitman’s run of WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES for most of the ‘70s thru the end in 1984. That’s why I hoped it could have fit. I will keep pushing for its inclusion in some future volume. Who knows… my pushing for a Murry Phantom Blot Disney Masters came to fruition!
Captain Churchmouse was revived in the Mickey Mouse WDC&S serial “The Treasure of Oomba Loomba” which itself was a more “sixties-fied” remake of sorts of the 1937 Gottfredson continuity “Mickey Mouse In Search of Jungle Treasure”. It’s believed to be Cecil Beard’s (and Alpine Harper’s?) first shot at writing Mickey, coinciding with the departure of Bob Ogle – most likely to write the (good) first season of Filmation’s “Archie Show” that would premiere in September 1968. It also coincides with the end of Beard and Harper’s long and successful writing run on DC’s THE FOX AND THE CROW.
For this late 1966 serial in WDC&S #313-316, Beard created Dangerous Dan McBoo and Idjit the Midget, who would become recurring villains throughout the remainder of the ‘60s thru the ‘70s, to replace Gottfredson’s use of old foes Peg-Leg Pete and Eli Squinch. But, Gottfredson (even though I’d never heard of him or his amazing seminal works in 1966) was at the core of this particular adventure, and certainly on Beard (and Harper’s?) mind – or editor Chase Craig’s mind – when this story was created. And that would seem to explain the revival of Captain Churchmouse.
And, if that 1937 Gottfredson tale seems like a long time ago, consider that story would have been as recent a memory for Cecil Beard in 1966 as… say, “Batman the Animated Series” or some of Don Rosa’s middle-stories would be for us in 2021. Past classics to be sure, but still very much remembered.
The same would have applied in 1964 to Connell or Ogle with Gottfredson’s 1939 Blot story – but with the added memory-jog of its having been reprinted and/or redrawn in the late ‘40s and mid ‘50s.
As for Barks and Neighbor Jones, that *would* have more-or-less coincided with “first-fan-contact”, but I have no idea what might have resulted from such contact. I didn’t even know there were OTHER FANS back then!
Finally, thank you so very much for the kind words on the GCD page! “The contributions of all individuals who worked on these comics should be preserved and not just for the sake of history. Their work on these comics influenced a lot of kids.”
I was ONE of those “kids”, as you all know… and what you say is the primary reason I work with GCD – and a lot of why I do this Blog! To share the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years, and to give credit – and thanks – to those creators who made my world a better place.
Scarecrow:
About a few thousand words back, you wrote: “Gasp! You mean, there are later 70's and early 80's Murry-drawn Blot stories that I haven't read? That is amazing news! I always thought the one I saw was a one-off. I'm glad the character continued for a while yet.”
I don’t know how many of them you might have, but those mid-1970s-onward Gold Key and Whitman issues of WDC&S – the ones with all the Barks ten-page reprints – represent the Blot (in terms of appearance numbers) fairly well. Not overuse, by any means, but so much so that I wonder why the character ever “went away” after 1966!
Admittedly, you cannot do justice befitting such a character in a one-off, self-contained eight-page story, but Murry still made ‘em look good and worth a gander (not Gladstone).
"I always liked the way Murry drew the Blot--always with the appropriate touch of menace and mystery.”
Like I said, “Murry still made ‘em look good” – and maybe worth Gladstone after all!
“I would love to see some of those later stories. Maybe there's enough material to justify a Disney Masters "70's and Beyond Blot Collection"? One can always hope!”
I would tend to doubt it, if for no other reason, the bite-size length of the stories! But I’d be thrilled if we could find a place for those sixteen (8x2) unpublished pages of Murry’s Mouse! I’ll continue to beat that particular drum as the situation allows.
…And maybe “drum” up some traction for Super Goof as well!
I'm glad you commented on the plot similarities between “The Return of the Phantom Blot” and “The Phantom Blot Meets The Mysterious Mr. X”, Joe. That's one of the prime reasons I feel like that story should have been included in the Disney Masters HC collection, for comparison purposes. What particularly struck me is that in the former story, Mickey inaccurately refers at one point to Goofy being "hypnotized" or something. Actually, he's not hypnotized, he just hit his head when he accidentally ran through the screen door of his house. But in "The Return", at the end of the story Mickey is clearly getting some ideas, and besides not revealing that Goofy was actually the Blot all along to the police, he's thinking that Goofy made such a convincing Blot that this talent could come in handy sometime used against the real Blot. I was amazed to read that, since it REALLY seems like the writer was already thinking ahead to THE PHANTOM BLOT #1, foreshadowing where Goofy actually IS acting under the influence of hypnosis due to Mickey's manipulation.
I'm not quite buying the theory that the editor at Western Publishing was making sure that the later story wasn't directly tied to the earlier one, because of that ad for the Phantom Blot's own comic at the end of the WDC&S serial. Sure you could have missed the earlier story in WDC&S, but then why even have serialized stories in the first place? Any reader could have missed ANY issue of the four-part "Return of the Phantom Blot". Seems like if Western was that concerned about readers not being able to find earlier issues then they'd have eliminated serials in WDC&S altogether, and made all stories complete in a single issue. It would have made sense if there were some gap in time between "Return" and issue #1 of THE PHANTOM BLOT, but there's no gap at all.
I'm pretty sure that the Disney comics, or most of the animated titles anyway, were being edited on the West Coast, while Western also had an office on the East Coast, where most of their original adventure titles were being edited. Is that right? And I get confused about who edited what... Chase Craig or Del Connell. Wasn't one primarily responsible for the adventure line of titles and another primarily responsible for the animated line of titles, and which one was based on which coast? Or was it just a question of one was editor earlier, and one later?
Another important point to make is that virtually NOBODY reading "The Phantom Blot Returns" in 1964 had the slightest idea of where the Phantom Blot was returning from! That applies equally to THE PHANTOM BLOT #1-7. Not UNLESS the reader had read Gottfredson's original Mickey Mouse newspaper story from 1939, or its reprint in DELL FOUR COLOR #16 in 1941, or the redrawn, retold version of that story that appeared in WDC&S #101-106 in 1949, or MICKEY'S RAINBOW PARADE in 1955... and all of those readers would have been adults in 1964. It's amazing that THE PHANTOM BLOT was given his own comic at all. But it could well have been seen as a loss-leader for American audiences, when its true value lay in reprints for the foreign market.
The Phantom Blot: “Secret Sea Raider”...oh my gosh is that one something else. The Blot’s pirate costume, his flying pirate ship...but it’s all topped by Uncle Scrooge’s crew aboard his ship...trained apes! You really begin to wonder if old Scrooge has cracked under all the pressure of watching over his fortune.
Deb:
There, in a ebon-cloaked nutshell, is “The Magic of Bob Ogle”!
Deftly combining the weirdness of Vic Lockman with the sort of jokes and dialogue that would later influence me… long before I even knew he wrote it.
The “Cast Off, Men!” gag (in “Secret Sea Raider”), for instance, has literally been with me since the day I first read it in 1966! …And, don’t think I haven’t considered “borrowing it” for use in one of my translation-and-dialoguing efforts should a suitable opportunity ever arise.
A pity Ogle’s time with Western (1963-1966, as my best estimate) was so short – but coincided with (and certainly contributed to) what I regard as the absolute height of Gold Key Comics – 1964-1966!
If you’d like a taste of what Ogle did before leaving his stamp on Mickey, Donald, The Phantom Blot, The Beagle Boys, Madam Mim, and Super Goof, check out this DICK TRACY cartoon from 1961 “The Onion Ring”!
Sorry for the quality, but it’s the best I could find. And I couldn’t find “Rocket Racket”, which is my favorite – but “The Onion Ring” is a great example too!
Consider the punch-line of “The Onion Ring” and the punch-line of “Super Goof and the Vanishing Zoo”. and you can see how they were clearly the product of the same writer.
Dennis:
I’m afraid that if all four chapters of “The Return of the Phantom Blot” were included in the Fantagraphics book – along with my own request for the Murry “Phantom Blot Task Force” and the kind-and-much-appreciated requests of others that my text piece be given more page space – the book would have become cost prohibitive. Better the seven PHANTOM BLOT issues get collected in such a prestigious package than not… much, much better! I never thought I’d even see THAT, when I initially proposed it! So, thanks to everyone at Fantagraphics for making my “dream book” happen!
Besides, just two years prior, “The Return of the Phantom Blot” was reprinted in THIS BOOK, along with some Gottfredson, Scarpa, and a wonderful Christmas story by Casty (with my dialogue) that has not been published elsewhere in the USA.
“I'm not quite buying the theory that the editor at Western Publishing was making sure that the later story wasn't directly tied to the earlier one, because of that ad for the Phantom Blot's own comic at the end of the WDC&S serial. Sure, you could have missed the earlier story in WDC&S, but then why even have serialized stories in the first place? Any reader could have missed ANY issue of the four-part ‘Return of the Phantom Blot’. Seems like if Western was that concerned about readers not being able to find earlier issues then they'd have eliminated serials in WDC&S altogether, and made all stories complete in a single issue. It would have made sense if there were some gap in time between ‘Return’ and issue #1 of THE PHANTOM BLOT, but there's no gap at all.”
But, consider the placement of that ad… At the VERY BEST POSSIBLE SPOT – the end of the Mickey Mouse serial with perhaps the greatest surprise ending of all! You couldn’t have had the readers hunger for more Blot than at that moment! I wouldn’t be surprised if a tier was even removed from somewhere in Chapter Four to make space for that ad!
As far as the Mickey Mouse serials are concerned, they were a primary feature of WDC&S since Issue #1 with the “breaking-up” of long Gottfredson newspaper strip reprint continuities into more manageable segments. The practice goes back even further into MICKEY MOUSE MAGAZINE, the predecessor of sorts to WDC&S.
Once the Gottfredson reprints were halted (just before the coming of Eega Beeva, alas) the new, original stories simply continued in that mode to maintain the established long-adventure tone. So, it just went along according to “tradition” – and there were always recaps at the start of each chapter to fill-in what you may have missed. On a personal note, there were MM serials where I missed earlier chapters, but could still enjoy the endings – and some I never found the endings to… until discovering the back-issue market in the early 1980s. It was just part of the game.
When Western finally “got-wise” to this matter in 1973 (when the Whitman bags began to take hold, and eventually outstrip the Gold Key newsstand comics), the serials were ended in favor of self-contained eight-page stories – still mostly good, but far less interesting than the longer adventures. It also coincided with Western ceasing all mail subscriptions to Gold Key titles.
GOOGLE says we must break the comment here!
Now, GOOGLE willing, we shall continue...
The matter of editors was always a but sketchy to us outsiders, and largely remains so today!
Both Chase Craig and Del Connell worked out of the West Coast Office. From somewhere about 1950-1975 (generality, not claiming true accuracy on these dates), Chase Craig was the primary editor, with Del Connell joining him along the way. After Craig’s retirement, Connell served alone in that position until the end in 1984. Before that period, there were also such names as Eleanor Packer, Alice Cobb, and Carl Buettner, but Chase Craig may have left the largest and longest-lasting stamp on those comics.
For editors, there seems to be even less known about New York. Bill Harris, Wally Green (who I met in 1983 – a really nice guy), Himilce Novas, and Michael Teitelbaum are some of the names. Yes, as you say, primarily on adventure and mystery titles – but, as those titles became fewer in number, TWEETY AND SYLVESTER and YOSEMITE SAM were shifted to New York from the West Coast. Oddly, those titles then had funnier stories, but weirder art. POPEYE and BEETLE BAILEY were also New York books, both in their ‘60s and late ‘70s-‘80s incarnations. The Jay Ward and Terrytoons books too.
There is probably much more to be discovered regarding editors – but I doubt we ever will!
As for “Where The Phantom Blot Returned From”, I asked that question back in 1964, and didn’t have an answer until 1978 – as you can see in this oft-linked early post of mine, which formed the basis for some of my Fantagraphics text piece.
I don’t think Western was nearly as interested in the foreign market as all that. Unfortunately, Disney WAS, and created the “S-Code” program, for which they raided lots of Western’s top talent – later kicking them to the curb for cheaper foreign talent – and doing-so after 1984, once there was no more Western for them to return to! Yes, that’s how one good Western artist who defected told me it happened. …And that’s why we ended up with Kay Wright and Bob Gregory’s inferior art, while the rest of the world got SOOO much better product! (Sigh!)
Thanks for the insightful comments, Joe. After reading the Disney Masters HCs of "The Phantom Blot's Double Mystery" and the collection of PB's own series, I went off on an ongoing search for further information on the Blot and what stories he's appeared in over the years (which ironically led me to your site eventually). I may have read any number of these since the 1980s, but I never paid as much attention to the Mouse (apart from those Gottfredson strips reprinted) as to the Ducks -- probably true for a lot of people, since the main attention seems to focus on Duck stories by Barks, Rosa, and Van Horn, maybe a couple of others.
In the midst of doing that over a week or two, I was also trying to catch up on some of those IDW collections released in the last couple of years that had been back-burnered on my reading list, so I'd read the MM 75th Anniversary Collection -- but not until after I'd already looked up the earlier "The Return of the Phantom Blot" in MICKEY MOUSE #285 (from 2006). The new coloring really impressed me, though some may not like it. Also your comments on the story printed in the letters page of a subsequent issue! It's probably too late to do now, but a nice one-shot would have been to combine the redrawn "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot!" (note exclamation point!) from WDC&S 101-106 with "The Return of the Phantom Blot" from WDC&S 284-287 in one of those bookshelf-format (cardboard-cover, squarebound) things.
Hey, here's a question for you that you may or may not know the answer to. Another MM collection from IDW (that I don't think reprints previous stories from the floppy comics) that I caught up on was "The Search For the Missing Memories", which starts out in the aftermath of some earlier battle between Mickey and the Blot. Unfortunately, IDW gives no credits as to where the story in "Search For the Missing Memories" first appeared, but there are eight 20-page chapters to it, so I suppose there could have been stories that immediately preceded it in continuity. Was there an actual story featuring Mickey vs the Blot that appeared somewhere from which Missing Memories spins off, even if not reprinted/translated in English?
First off let me just echo Dennis’s desire to have the lil’ and big bad wolves involved in a phantom blot story! Heck, let’s get Bucky Bug in there too! Joe, I think you have a premise if you ever wanted to write Phantom Blot #9. Sure Disney wouldn’t produce it but it’d be fun. Besides you’ve already localized issue 8 of the blot so the next logical step would be to write issue 9 :)
Also keep pushing for a Super Goof Disney Masters! Although, and I mean this as no insult to Paul Murry, I would prefer to just have a compilation of the best Gold Key Super Goof stories regardless of artist. Then again, maybe you could convince those mad lads at Fantagraphics to reprint the entire super goof run, although that’d probably be a tougher sell.
Thanks for throughly answering all my questions. I think you’re right that there are a combination of reasons for the continuity blips. Since the author couldn’t directly reference a prior issue he prob wasn’t too concerned about getting all the details right. And with a premise as good as Goofy being the blot, continuity was prob the last thing on his mind. Especially since continuity has only become a big deal for modern Disney comics fans.
Upon reflecting on Mickey not getting Goofy’s consent I realized that, while this aspect of the story undoubtedly hasn’t aged well, it’s not actually that bad because kids couldn’t replicate it. I mean I don’t know much about hypnotizism but I doubt a child could pull it off.
Moving on you write “Captain Churchmouse was revived in the Mickey Mouse WDC&S serial “The Treasure of Oomba Loomba” which itself was a more “sixties-fied” remake of sorts of the 1937 Gottfredson continuity “Mickey Mouse In Search of Jungle Treasure”.” Ok NOW you got me curious. At some point I oughta seek those issues out. I could probably write an interesting article comparing the two stories.
“And, if that 1937 Gottfredson tale seems like a long time ago, consider that story would have been as recent a memory for Cecil Beard in 1966 as… say, Batman the Animated Series” That really helps me understand their frame of mind. Nowadays I’m so used to most people not even knowing about the Mickey Mouse comic strip that I’d forgotten that in a pre-TV world comic strips were a mainstream form of entertainment. Now people remember 20 year old tv shows so then people must’ve remembered 20 year old comics.
While on the topic of Gottfredson you mention Dell’s decision to move from comic strip reprints to original stories. Do we know why they stoped reprinting the comic strip? Was remounting and editing the strips for comics books more expensive then writing and drawing original stories?
Oh yeah -- Since I'm tracking down the PB stories published in the US for myself, it occurs to me this list might be of use to Ryan or someone else. Specifically with regard to the PB stories (after PB #7) which appeared in Western/Gold Key/Whitman titles from 1975-1984:
The Great $$$ Giveaway (W SG 33-01), Super Goof 33 (March 1975)
One Nation in Dirigible (W SG 36-01), Super Goof 36 (December 1975)
The Ghost Noises (W WDC 442-04), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 442 (July 1977)
The Secret Key Mystery (W WDC 449-02), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 449 (February 1978)
Wax Museum Mystery (W WDC 460-04), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 460 (January 1979)
The Invisible Blot (W SG 51-02), Super Goof 51 (February 1979)
The Blundering Blot (W SG 52-03), Super Goof 52 (April 1979)
Phantom City (W SG 55-01), Super Goof 55 (October 1979)
Detective Pluto (W WDC 472-04), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 472 (January 1980)
The Cat's Meow (W WDC 474-04), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 474 (March 1980)
The Riverboat Mystery (W WDC 477-04), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 477 (June 1980)
The Phantom Blot Plot (W SG 60-01), Super Goof 60 (July 1980)
Rescue of the Super Planet (W SG 60-02), Super Goof 60 (July 1980)
Too Many Blots (W WDC 478-04), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 478 (July 1980)
Whale of a Mystery (W MM 210-01), Mickey Mouse 210 (February 1981)
The Sinister Cyclox (W SG 64-01), Super Goof 64 (July 1981)
The Micro Ray (W SG 71-04), Super Goof 71 (1982)
The Blot Blips (W SG 74-01), Super Goof 74 (1984)
The Remote Control Caper (W WDC 510-04), Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 510 (1984)
The above (partial) listing courtesy of the collective internet genius of
https://inducks.org/character.php?c=pb&view=5&countrycode=us
Anyone else needing a list of PB stories from other countries can just go to that page and select the country of interest to them from the dropdown menu. Or you can wade through the master list of PB stories (complete with cover or title page images) at
https://inducks.org/character.php?c1=date&c=pb&view=4
What would we do without the internet and internet indexes??
Ryan:
I’d like nothing more than to write an original Phantom Blot story – and to have it become “Unofficial PHANTOM BLOT #9” – but, given the little available time I would have to give it my best, and the total lack of anyone in an official capacity asking me to do it, I doubt it would ever happen.
However, if I *did* want to combine Blots ‘n’ Wolves, I’d probably have The Phantom Brat meet Li’l Bad Wolf (say, on some summer camp outing) and spin it out from there! LBW could lament that his pop is incorrigibly bad, while the Brat could extol the naively perceived virtues of her dad being “The Good King”. (See MICKEY MOUSE ADVENTURES #8, 1990.) Impressed with the (sadly mistaken) “goodness” of the Brat’s dad, Li’l Wolf arranges to have his pop meet this benevolent Phantom Blot! All sorts o’ stuff could happen from that point on!
But, that’s as far as I’m willing to go… for now, anyway! It’s MY idea, please nobody steal it. :-)
I think a “Super Goof by Paul Murry” (or, at most, expanding it to include Tony Strobl) is as good as it is likely to get… mostly because the art is really not so good in the rest of them (lots of Kay Wright), and the stories eventually become shorter and inconsequential. So, it would become a “tougher sell” indeed!
I read “The Treasure of Oomba Loomba” about four decades before reading “Mickey Mouse In Search of Jungle Treasure” - and I thought “Oomba Loomba” was great THEN! My appreciation for both versions has only increased over time. Yes, do check it out.
When discussing this stuff, perspective is everything! And, unfortunately, no one has a complete perspective on it all. Given the amount perspective that I *do* possess, I make my best effort to put myself into situations such as Cecil Beard’s or Chase Craig’s memory of, or familiarity with, Gottfredson’s “Jungle Treasure”, and try to take it from there. Because there’s really no one left to provide first-hand accounts, alas. …And, we didn’t document anywhere near enough of it, while they were around! That includes me, who could have asked many more questions when I had the opportunity, darn it all!
Once again, we’ll never truly know (unless some paperwork exists somewhere) but, as you suggest, it was probably less expensive and labor intensive to eventually produce new Mickey Mouse serials than to obtain, edit, remount, etc. the Gottfredson originals. The good news there is that it brought Paul Murry to whatever level of prominence he holds today. The bad news is that American comic book readers didn’t get to meet Eega Beeva until the late 1980s. All-in-all, though, I feel it worked out well.
PS -- I cannot take credit for the idea of putting Zeke Wolf in a story together with the Phantom Blot. Dan O'Neill & Gary Hallgren did it first in AIR PIRATES FUNNIES #1 (1971) in the story "Silly Sympathies presents The Mouse". The story was a semi-sequel of sorts to Gottfredson's "The Mail Pilot" which teamed up a coalition of MM villains: Sylvester Shyster, Peg-Leg Pete (both of whom had appeared in "The Mail Pilot"), Phantom Blot and Zeke Wolf. In the next chapter in AIR PIRATES #2, they added the Bat Bandit (of Inferno Gulch) to the mix. Unfortunately Zeke doesn't get to do all that much in the story.
Apart from a brief sex scene with Mickey & Minnie, and some common vulgar language, the whole thing comes off kind of like what the call in Japan "doujinshi" - sort of an amacomic fanfic. Can't imagine how they thought they'd get away with it... they even had subscription ads for the comic on the back covers... talk about confidence! And they even managed to put out two issues in two months!
My idea for a Phantom Blot story would go something like this:
The Blot decides that he's always failed in the past because he concentrated on specific crimes which he planned and carried out all by himself. He decides he needs to "Think Big" in terms of an entire network of criminal schemes, and involve others to carry out the dirty work (and take the risks, of course). In short, he needs underlings, minions, henchmen... pawns. To that end, he assembles a crew consisting of Peg-Leg Pete, the Beagle Boys, the Big Bad Wolf, and the Bat Bandit -- plus he's got Sylvester Shyster and Mr. X and his right-hand men (auxiliary brainpower, as it were). As the obvious criminal genius of the bunch, the Blot plans the crimes and takes 50% of the proceeds, and the rest split the remaining spoils.
Zeke Wolf only really cares about filling his bottomless gullet, but something like robbing the Bank of Calisota translates into a lot of pork chops and bacon. He's of use to the Blot because he's got that huff'n'puff super-lungpower. In fact in this story Zeke begins to get delusions of grandeur and starts dressing like an old-time gangster in a pin-striped suit and wide-brimmed fedora and carrying a tommygun; he's "upwardly mobile" in the world of crime at last! No longer just a punk predator from the Podunksville...
Of course all of the Blot's criminal schemes employing the others as minions are just a feint to distract from his own personal diablolical master plan; if the others are successful, then great -- MORE money! But if not, they are all ultimately... disposable. Blot is keeping secrets from all of them, and perhaps each of the Blot's crime schemes involving his underlings contributes in some small, undiscovered way as a factor towards his secret ultimate long-range goal.
I'm imagining this would have to be a fairly long story (40-60 pages at least), broken down into several chapters, involving Mickey, Donald, Goofy, Scrooge, Practical Pig (contractor/consulting detective), Chief O'Hara and Casey and maybe even a couple of other Disney heroes in smaller roles (maybe some lesser-used ones like Ludwig Von Drake or Atomo Bleep-Bleep).
Of course, one by one the Blot's minions and individual crime schemes all get defeated by our heroes, leaving him alone and finally revealed to our heroes as the Master Planner! Some clues connect all the crimes together and Mickey realizes that THIS can only be the work of... THE PHANTOM BLOT! "Idiots! Numbskulls! Incompetents! Lamebrains! Nincompoops! Useless!! Worthless!! I should have known I could only rely on MYSELF!" But the minions have all served their purposes as distractions and a delaying tactic, so that the Blot's Insidious Plot is already well in motion! NOTHING can stop it now!! Mu-OOOh-hah-hah-hah!!!
... I know it's just a bare-bones framework of an idea, but that's all I got so far ...
Dennis:
Lots to reply to, so let’s get going…
I have the Blot to thank for many things… Now, I can add his leading you to this humble Blog to that very long list.
Yes, one Blot-aspect that has truly become “forgotten” over the decades would be the WDC&S redraw. By my reckoning, it would be the only pre-1970s Blot manifestation that has not been reprinted in the USA.
Funny thing about that, too… I have always loved Dick Moores’ art on Mickey, ever since reading the reprint of “The Wonderful Whizzix” (a great story you should check-out, if you haven’t read it) in its ‘60s reprint in MICKEY MOUSE #100 .
But I just didn’t think his art was right for the Blot story redraw. Bill Wright did only one of the middle chapters (while Moores did the rest), but his style was perfect what would have been a then-contemporary redrawing.
“The Search For the Missing Memories” did not sound at all familiar to me but, after looking it up at GCD, I now know why…
Since you’re relatively new to this-thing-we-do-here, you may not know this, so I’ll quickly recap. After being with IDW since the beginning of their Disney comics line in 2015 (and with the two publishers before that), our “translation and dialogue” team – led by David Gerstein, and with Jonathan Gray, Thad Komorowski, and yours truly, were suddenly and unceremoniously cast out toward the end of 2018.
I’ve never been given a reason why, and our work was always very well received by the American audience we served (evidence of which is all over this Blog), but we four were replaced by a single individual whose subsequent “translation and dialogue” was almost universally panned. You can get most of the story HERE, with examples of the bland and inferior dialogue. That IDW appears to have silently ceased publication of these titles speaks to the folly of that decision – and, of course, I’m speaking strictly for myself on this matter!
So, given all that, it is small wonder that I am unaware of “The Search For the Missing Memories”. However, we shall turn to that “fount of inexhaustible knowledge”, not the Jr. Woodchucks Guidebook but GCD, for our answers! HERE is what I found.
It appears to have originated in TOPOLINO # 3286 – 3293. Though no Blot pre-quel can be gleaned from this index. Perhaps one of our European readers can confirm or deny. A pity, too, as I would have liked to have read this one capably translated, as were any and all IDW issues of MICKEY MOUSE from 2015-2018. That’s the fullest extent to which I can answer your question, hope it helps!
That’s a great list – coincidently encompassing all those Blot stories mentioned above that were not reprinted in the USA!
HERE and HERE are the two links Dennis provides to INDUCKS.
“What would we do without the internet and internet indexes??”
Besides sleep better and exercise more, I have absolutely no idea! :-)
We’ll pre-emptively break here BEFORE Google tells us to… and be back on the other side.
It’s “The Other Side”, and we’re back!
I have long known of “AIR PIRATES FUNNIES”, but have never read it. Primarily, as a comics traditionalist, I have great disdain for that whole “Underground” movement! But, even more so in this case… WHY would you purposely wish to disparage such universally beloved creations in such a way?!
Satire or parody is one thing! There’s even a smattering of “self-parody” in my own work, such as the references to phony, made-up chapters of Don Rosa’s “Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” scattered about stories I’ve dialogued. That sort of thing is almost *expected” today. For instance, try to find a contemporary Scooby-Doo story that *doesn’t* have an instance of self-parody in it!
But vulgar language, sex scenes, and I *do* recall seeing at least one image of Zeke Wolf being shot through his bloody head… what’s the purpose of that? …Heck, I can’t even bear to see these characters badly dialogued, much less dragged through THAT kind of obscene mud!
To me, it shows a base lack of creativity, and profiting (to whatever extent they did) by selfishly and arrogantly exploiting the honest work of others! I have NO respect for that! Create something original, enhance in a positive way the work of others, or go home! …Stepping off soapbox now!
As for your story… It seems the Blot isn’t the only one to "Think Big"!
But, while "thinking big", I would also advise caution. Big ideas like that can sometimes spin out of control and become at best “diffused”, or at worst a great big mess! One of the best examples of that was the year-long "Zodiac Stone" mega-story that began the run of IDW’s WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES! …And I say this knowing that it was done by “Our Team”, AND had The Phantom Blot in it!
It started off with a great idea, but went off in too many different directions to fit any definition of the word “coherent”, and eventually emerged as little more than an excuse for “getting a lot of characters together”!
Contrast this with the 1960s Paul Murry Blot stories you’ve just read. Not a single one of them felt like an excuse for “getting a lot of characters together” – even though they DID “get a lot of characters together”!
For all I know, your story idea could turn out to be the greatest Phantom Blot story ever written, though it would have a LOT of competition, but I think I’ve just seen this sort of thing done in WAY too many superhero comics, and a few too many modern-era Disney comics to believe it would turn out well.
Please note, it is not your IDEA that draws my criticism. It’s actually a great idea that I can’t recall being done before, beyond recruiting the Beagle Boys in PHANTOM BLOT #3! It is the “bigness” of the whole thing – and the potential for it to become another "Zodiac Stone", or the multi-part "Scrooge’s Last Adventure" of a few years ago, which featured Glomgold, Rockerduck, Magica, the Beagle Boys, underworld demons, and even the Terry-Fermians! #BigAndBloated
Besides, I have no doubt that, had Vic Lockman continued to write the PHANTOM BLOT title beyond his one “Disappearing Diamonds” story in the final issue, he would have found a way for the Blot and Zeke to meet (in issue 8, 9, or dare I dream 10), and made it work without crossing several different books and utilizing a cast of thousands! #LeanAndLockmanLooney
The last story in this book “The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds” is quite an unusual one. The idea behind it is almost epic, Mickey, Goofy, Donald and Pluto trailing the Blot to a foreign country to prevent a war, yet the execution is all over the map. You almost wonder if Bill Walsh wrote this one, as it’s full of strange gags and plot twists that threaten to pull you right out of the story at points. (Pluto as a secret agent? Mickey, Donald and even Goofy make sense, but Pluto?) It’s certainly a very busy 32 pages. Yet despite the inconsistency of this one, it is probably one of the best stories in the book. The Blot really feels like a threat in this one, and a lot of the weird ideas are used well. It’s a shame we don’t know who wrote it.
Okay, you just answered my question about who wrote that last Blot story in this book before my post even appeared.
Deb:
It seems that no one thought to check with me before the printed credits were issued. Even INDUCKS has this wrong. If nothing else, all credits are correct – or are identified as educated guesses – in the GCD index that this post links to! That goes for the missing Bob Ogle credits for “Culprits, Inc.?” and “Crown of Tasbah” as well. …At least you’ll find ‘em at GCD, for both the Fantagraphics collection AND for the individual issues themselves!
“Disappearing Diamonds” is clearly Vic Lockman, evident in the dialogue. Repeated use of “Eh?”. Also: “You cad with an itchy-bleachy trigger finger!”, “Quit splatting us weeth Blotty stuff, you dog!”, “Bah! Who would have thought I’d end up a successful loser!” and more. Though it does have a “Walsh-ian” feel to it, it’s also very “mid-sixties Lockman-ian” – before he went full-on-loopy in the '70s and '80s!
As for Pluto being a secret agent… Consider this caption: “And so… one by one, the F.I.B. rounds up a ‘team’ for Mickey… of others who have helped him in previous encounters with the Blot…”
….And, recall who “helped him in previous encounters with the Blot” in Issue #4, the Madam Mim story! Enter “Secret Agent Pluto”… he may not have a “License to Kill”… but at least he has a license!
I did figure that because of his previous experience that Pluto was chosen as an agent of the F.I.B, although what seemed odd is that he was acting on his own, after years of seeing him as Mickey's companion. Poor Uncle Scrooge was reduced to a walk-on in two scenes, despite having been in more Blot stories than Pluto. Although it's hard to imagine Scrooge taking orders from anyone. As quirky as it is, the story does make a good grand finale for "The New Adventures of The Phantom Blot".
Deb:
Uncle Scrooge was not about to go to some far-off corner of the world to combat the Blot, when he could stay home with his money!
While he may indeed may have had the aforementioned “previous encounters”, those encounters involved him and his money! Those were “different”, don’t cha know!
Pluto wasn’t as independent as all that… He was a member of Mickey’s team, and took orders from him via walkie-talkie (…Just like Captain Retro-Duck would have!)!
Besides, Pluto already has an “FBI pedigree”… as seen HERE in yet another GCD index I wrote.
I think "Crown of Tasbah" (in slightly edited form, but nicely re-colored) was the only feature story from PB to have been previously reprinted, in DONALD AND MICKEY #26 (Nov. 1994). But there WERE a couple of those one-page PB gags which were reprinted in WDC&S and UNCLE $CROOGE (again, using the same type of coloring) around this same time. It's interesting to compare.
Methinks the greatest sin of Zodiac Stone, and of many "villain team-ups" is that it just spins off into a series of disconnected vignettes. Each character in the "crossover event" actually just interacts with one or two characters, does their literal runaround, and then is forgotten about as we move on to the next vignette. Ultraheroes suffered particularly from that fallacy, as I recall (even setting aside the other flaws in the premise!), and so did the half-baked "villains team-up" aspect of Boom!'s DuckTales: Rightful Owners (but not, it must be said, of their Dangerous Currency, or at least not as much).
What the 1960s Blot or Beagle Boy team-ups did was deliver the goods promised by the premise: fun interplay between the characters, bouncing their personalities and aesthetics off of each other. By that same reasoning, the Blot teaming up with Zeke OR with the Beagles OR with the Bat Bandit would be interesting in each individual case — but for it to be worth it to do it as a "big multi-player team up", rather than three different stories, you have to make sure there is actually something worth exploring in putting all of these characters in a room together and watching the sparks. There might be, at that; for example, you could imagine things devolving into an argument between the “old-school thug” types (Zeke, the Beagles, Peg-Leg Pete) and the “costumed supervillain” types (Blot, the Bad Bandit, Mr X). But that is the question that needs to be considered when planning such a team-up.
Sorry again, to everyone!
Circumstances, once again, have forced me to step away from the Blog for several days, while your comments accumulated. There’s nothing I appreciate more than your comments, so let’s get to ‘em!
Dennis:
Actually, a good few of those Blot stories were reprinted in the Gladstone era.
GCD only shows ALL instances of reprintings on the index of the ORIGINAL issue! So, if you want to know if the story in PHANTOM BLOT #1 was reprinted in the USA (…it was), you would look up PHANTOM BLOT #1 – or take the reprint link in the Disney Masters Phantom Blot index to get there!
“The Phantom Blot Meets the Mysterious Mr. X”, “The Phantom Blot Meets Super Goof”, “The Phantom Blot Meets the Beagle Boys Culprits Inc.” (script modified) “The Phantom Blot Meets Mad Madam Mim”, “The Crown of Tasbah” (edited for length) were ALL reprinted by Gladstone – although some of them were in digests, and those that were not were otherwise altered.
To me, it’s just a dream to see all of this, as originally presented, between one set of hard covers!
Achille:
You write:
“Methinks the greatest sin of Zodiac Stone, and of many ‘villain team-ups’ is that it just spins off into a series of disconnected vignettes.”
HEAR, HEAR!
“What the 1960s Blot or Beagle Boy team-ups did was deliver the goods promised by the premise: fun interplay between the characters, bouncing their personalities and aesthetics off of each other.”
HEAR, HEAR!... HEAR!
That is precisely why I pick on the story we know as “Scrooge’s Last Adventure”!
A team-up of just Glomgold and Rockerduck would be fascinating – if handled by the right translator/scripter… and that would have been ANY of the “Core Four”! But it became diffused with The Beagle Boys, Magica, the demons from hell, and the terry-fermians.
Each of those could have been good-to-great SEPARATE STORIES but, smooshed all together, it was just one great big mess – save for the heroic efforts of Jonathan Gray!
I think the problem with the Disney Masters series is that the concept only allows for collections of stories by the same artist. While very occasionally that might result in a character-centric collection like The Phantom Blot or Duck Avenger, most of the time it's not going to, apart from a broad division into Mouse or Duck stories. I'd love to see a collection of Ludwig Von Drake stories (at least the four issues of his own comic, if nothing else), but I doubt that's going to happen. I would love a collection of those Junior Woodchucks stories written by Barks and drawn by Daan Jippes. I just checked and it looks like a William Van Horn DM collection is slated for later this year -- what took them so long? It seems like there should be a way to do themed collections centered around specific secondary characters or subseries (drawn by various different artists), but then it doesn't fit the title "Disney Masters". That said, getting The Phantom Blot series collected in a single volume seems like a major milestone.
I liked “Scrooge’s Last Adventure”, although it felt like it was a bit of an expanded retread of Don Rosa’s “A Little Something Special”. “The Search for the Zodiac Stone” never really gels as a cohesive whole, but is enjoyable if you just take it as a bunch of connected stories that showcase different aspects and concepts from Italian Disney Comics of the year that it was published. It feels more like an anniversary celebration for Topolino magazine than an actual multi-part story. Perhaps “Last Adventure” was also intended the same way, to commemorate a publishing milestone and to generate sales.
Sorry again, folks!
More things than expected keep getting in the way of my timely posting of comments and responses!
Nothing bad, mostly home décor and renovation matters, and a little Fantagraphics stuff! But I have more comments to get to and that will happen soon!
Please don’t take this as a plea to halt your valued commenting… quite the contrary, in fact! Keep ‘em coming and we’ll celebrate all of them as soon as I can!
Thanks for your patience, and continued commenting!
WE’RE BACK (whew!), AND LET’S GET TO THOSE COMMENTS!
Deb:
You write: “I liked ‘Scrooge’s Last Adventure’, although it felt like it was a bit of an expanded retread of Don Rosa’s ‘A Little Something Special’.”
YES! And presented without the storytelling skills of Rosa! It keeps coming back to one reason why I abandoned DC, after being such a “DCU Diehard” (…if I’ve just coined a phrase) for decades.
Just as “Scrooge’s Last Adventure” was a retread of Don Rosa’s “A Little Something Special”, so “Zero Hour”, “Infinite Crisis”, “Final Crisis”, “Flashpoint”, "Convergence”, “New 52”, “Rebirth” and now “Future State” (and probably MORE that I’m leaving out) would be retreads, to one extent or another, of “Crisis on Infinite Earths”! As I’m so fond of saying: “If EVERYTHING is an event, then NOTHING is an event!”
This sort of hyper-event storytelling has finally worked its way into Disney comics, where it was never intended to be.
In contrast, “The Wonderful Wishing Crown” was not a hyper-event, but just a perfectly-fitting anniversary story for Scrooge. Major, but not overblown to the point of becoming diffused - or repetitive!
“The Search for the Zodiac Stone” suffers from that same mentality! Stuff and cram way too much into a story, and label it as an “Event”! Honestly, aside from being seriously unrelated, they weren’t even very good separate stories! Yet, here they were, stitched together like Frankenstein’s Monster! But I suppose WDC&S had to “return with an event”, and that one was just available.
Dennis:
I suppose the showcase for “collections of stories by the same artist” was the selling point for getting Disney Masters greenlighted in the first place. And it’s been a good idea, working well within the concept, providing us with many stories we might never have otherwise seen.
It even works well with the division of characters, more or less allowing for some Duck-centric, or Mouse-centric, content to coexist in a fair number of issues – unless, of course, the artist in question exclusively, or largely in the case of Paul Murry, specialized in one or the other.
I doubt you’ll see “a collection of those Junior Woodchucks stories written by Barks and drawn by Daan Jippes”, but take heart!
Four of them, including the “Black Forest” and “Whale” stories, will be included in Fantagraphics’ next Carl Barks release! I know because I wrote the text piece for them! And those two stories (the leads in the first two Barks-written issues from 1970) are two of the very best!
I’ll let you know when I receive my author’s copy, so you’ll have an idea of when to look for it.
Finally, once again… The Phantom Blot collection is “an impossible dream come true”! The sixties-kid who devoured those stories couldn’t ask for more!
It's not the idea of putting a lot of characters together that's bad. Rosa certainly crammed enough of them into "A Little Something Special". There were others that did so at somewhat longer length, but I still enjoyed them. Pat and Carol McGreal's "The Orb Saga" (originally "The Millennium Saga") was a fun interconnecting story that didn't begin knitting the pieces of the chapters together until half-way through. Another one I liked (from Boom) was "The Hunt for the Old Number One" which managed to work Magica de Spell, the Beagle Boys and Flintheart Glomgold into its 6 sixteen-page chapters as Scrooge took a European tour through (not coincidentally) six countries with the biggest Disney publishing operations. I'll concede that "The Zodiac Stone" pushed everything to ridiculous extremes, but the mere concept of putting a whole bunch of characters together isn't bad in itself -- again, Rosa's "Something Special".
On the other hand, I agree about the retread concept. "My First Millions" is just a totally un-neccessary re-do of Rosa's "Life and Times".
Wait a minute... why are they printing Daan Jippes stories in the Carl Barks Library when they're only up to 1960 (as of "Island in the Sky")? How far ahead are you working if you're already on a volume from 1970?
And WHEN (before I die, please) are they going to collect those first 4 volumes? I understand why they might not have wanted to lead off with the very earliest stories, but I would have expected them to release them one by one, scattershot along the way -- it's been ten years! Are they waiting until they reach the end of Barks' career until they go back to the beginning?
My concept for a Phantom Blot story wasn't to have much interaction between the Blot's various "minions". I figured they might be together in some big meeting at the beginning, then each gets his own personal crime plan from the Blot. I was thinking each chapter would be its own plot with a different minion, but each of the minions would find themselves facing some different good guy, or combo of, than usual. Then there would be another overall plot involving how Mickey and the other good guys figure each different subplot somehow fits together and indicates that the Blot is behind the big crime wave, but what is his REAL objective? The Blot would spend his time in each chapter avoiding the heroes (that's what the pawns are for), while carrying out his own skullduggery behind-the-scenes, and only at the end would he take center stage as the revealed (to the heroes) Master Planner. I wasn't thinking about how many characters I could cram into a single page like it was a George Perez story.
Dennis:
Few writers of this material have the skills of Don Rosa, and that’s why so few of them succeed at writing overstuffed, overblown, and overcomplicated stories. Rosa COULD INDEED write overstuffed, overblown, and overcomplicated stories – and often make them not seem so! And, even when they DID seem so, the pains he took, and the abilities he demonstrated, made them enjoyable – and memorable – nonetheless! I’ll give props to Pat and Carol McGreal as well. They’ve also navigated some complex stuff well.
Regarding the Barks/Jippes Junior Woodchucks stories, this is not going to be “a volume from 1970”! There wouldn’t be enough material from 1970 to fill such a book. I’m not involved in any editorial matters, so I really cannot speculate as to why, but “Peril of the Black Forest” and “Life Savers” (both from Issue #6), “Whale of a Good Deed” (Issue #7), and “Bad Day for Troop A” (Issue #8) will be in the next volume. And, since I haven’t heard otherwise, the text piece I submitted for those stories will accompany them.
As for those missing volumes, I know as much as you do. If I learn something, which is doubtful, I will let you know.
I dunno… while I expect it would be a far more cohesive story than “Zodiac Stone”, too many separate and distinct bad guys committing too many separate and distinct crimes, while the Blot just observes as if he were “The Monitor” (George Perez reference right back at ya!) seems like the sort of thing I’ve been railing against. …But, I could always be wrong, and presently surprised!
Where did I say that the Blot just observes? The whole point would be that while the heroes are distracted by the minions' crimes (of which I count only 4, for Pegleg Pete, Bat Bandit, BB Wolf, and Beagle Boys), the Blot gets on with his own nefarious activities, with heroes kept otherwise occupied and unaware of his involvement in anything. Not a single taunting note or clue to alert Mickey to his plans and activities! I mean, he doesn't have some compulsion forcing him to do that like the Riddler... When minions are thwarted and captured, they're under a post-hypnotic suggestion to forget anything about the Blot.
Anyway, pulling out "The Zodiac Stone" as if it were a fairly ordinary example of when things go wrong... it's just too easy to look at an extreme and atypical example of how to mess things up. 360 pages!! How many other Disney stories can you name of that length? That's about 3 or 4 times the maximum limit for a story!
Okay... so 1970 Barks-written stories go in an otherwise-chronologically 1960-1961 volume? It's a head-scratcher, but I can't complain about the stories.
Dennis:
My misinterpretation, perhaps… But I think the simplest way to prevent this from spiraling much further is to simply declare that I’ve seen more than enough of this sort of thing in superhero comics – and, in more recent years, bleeding into Disney comics where it really doesn’t work for me without the skills of a Don Rosa (or, maybe Casty) – and I’ve progressed into a general distaste for that sort of thing, just by seeing too much of it.
Seeing “too much of anything” most often leads to a general distaste for me. That’s just my personality, and not necessarily a reflection on the quality of “the thing there is too much of”.
Honestly, I was surprised when the Barks volume content list was released to authors to “choose their preferred stories” for text essays. But I wasted no time in reserving the Junior Woodchuck stories, as they are favorites of mine – especially the longer “Black Forest” and “Whale” stories.
Also adding to the… um, “special-ness” was the personal fact that I bought the “Black Forest” issue on the very first Earth Day in 1970! Things like that, I never forget!
All I'm going to say is that any analogy between Disney comics and the American superhero comics market is something I would consider to be a huge stretch. Disney comics stories are not being predicated on market forces that virtually require regular "event" storylines, nor are stories featuring several familiar characters in them anywhere near as ubiquitous -- nor anywhere near as badly done, on average. In fact, if you were to sit and count the number of actual characters in a typical longer Disney comics story, you'd find the main difference between those stories and the ones featuring several different reoccurring characters is that in the typical stories, most of the characters are not reoccurring, with a number of them having been created specifically for that one story.
How much is "too much"? I guess it's entirely subjective. For me, a couple of stories featuring "The Phantom Brat" were two stories too many. (And possibly a third, although the connection wasn't made entirely explicit but was left to the reader to infer.)
Dennis:
…So, whatcha been up to this last month? :-)
I feel like a couple of (new) old friends picking up where they left off, as if no time has passed.
And where we’re “picking up” is one of those things where we will simply have to “agree to disagree”, “your mileage may vary”, and all sorts o’ stuff like that there!
To begin “where I actually began” (reading comics of the early Silver Age and onward), if you take the type of storytelling found in Dell Comics and in DC Comics (the only true comparison that could be made at the time), they were of very different styles – save the occasional outliers such as equating The Fox and the Crow to Daffy Duck.
To me, that difference is simply not as great today. The gulf has narrowed too much for my particular tastes, with things like Duck Avenger (especially the modern version) Ultraheroes, Double Duck, and the general type of story I describe as “overstuffed, overblown, and overcomplicated” appearing far more often in modern Disney comics.
You never saw anything like that in Dell and Gold Key!
It makes some sense that it would move this way, as I doubt any original readers of the Gottfredson continuities are still with us, and even Barks’ original readers are now 60-plus (like me). Today’s creators come at this, not with Dell as a template, but with more modern sensibilities.
Don Rosa, Casty, and some others have the skills and abilities to make it work. To my mind, more often it does not.
How many stories with the Phantom Brat are there? The original 1990 story which was amazing in its audacity, and I recall an oblique possible reference in “The Return of Phantom Bob” (another concept that I loved, Stephen King’s “Misery” with Mickey and the Blot) – but nothing definitive there. What am I missing, and was it printed in the USA?
Finally, “Let Sleeping Bones Lie” will also be included that Barks volume. I revised my text to include a discussion of it.
Another Blot blog!
Joe: "Thinking about it, in contrast with Gottfrtedson and Scarpa’s Blot, I don’t think it could have been done any other way at the time, and have been sustainable over a number of years."
Well it depends. Scarpa's Blot is really Martina's Blot, and that story, although it was certainly impressive, was not the end of the Italian exploration of that character. In most of the Italian stories he appeared in from the 60s and 70s, he doesn't wear the cloak at all. So that may be a bad thing depending on your taste. But! He's still clearly a real menace, more so than Pete (who was not as watered down as today either).
Dennis: "the Blot's personal squeamishness regarding killing"
This one has been tackled over the years. Both in Egmont's stories (which range from the quite good like "Triumph of the Phantom Blot" to the asinine) and some Italian ones.
"Search For the Missing Memories" starts out of nowhere - which is intentional; certainly, in Italian stories, situations like the one at the beginning are very well known, the point is where it develops from there. See Inducks: https://inducks.org/issue.php?c=de%2FLTBPRP+2 / https://inducks.org/issue.php?c=us%2FMMQMM+1
That was a cycle made not specifically for Topolino, but for the international market ("Disney Publishing Worldwide").
"Perhaps “Last Adventure” was also intended the same way, to commemorate a publishing milestone and to generate sales."
Not to my knowledge. While Artibani got involved with those (see above), this one was really just that - a long story centered around the team-up of Glomgold and Rockerduck. I think that's precisely why it's still so well regarded; it was NOT the kind of thing where editors tell writers to create something epic for the anniversary, or football (soccer) tournament, it was simply something Artibani wanted to write. And personally, I enjoy it much more than "A Little Something Special", a story that WAS tied to an event.
Spec-Spec:
I prefer the Blot cloaked though, like any "living being", he would (and should) have to take it off some of the time. Being largely masked for COVID-19 can actually give you something of a realistic perspective on that! I still wear my mask everywhere when I go outside the house, despite being vaccinated. With all the variants still lurking, you can't be too careful.
...And the funny thing is, after a while, I don't even realize I have it on! The Blot could feel that way about his cloak.
I wouldn't mind seeing an American English version of "Search For the Missing Memories" by a skilled and knowledgeable translation and dialogue provider (as WAS the case with “Scrooge's Last Adventure” ) but, as it would have appeared here, I would probably rate it more negatively than the original story deserves - due to it's translation. ...Yeah, call me "intractable", so what? ...Though I prefer to think of myself as "possessing discriminating tastes"! :-)
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