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PIPELINE COMMENTARY AND REVIEW #22
02 November 1997
by Augie De Blieck Jr.
http://www.nic.com/~augie/pipeline
"Lotsa Ducks, A Dragon, A Kaboom, and some Acclaim"
Gladstone recent issued a pair of new titles, mainly for distribution
reasons. It's not bad enough that Disney stacks the cards up against them to
begin with, but with the market for high-quality comics what it is today in
America, Gladstone has resorted to some neat tricks. The latest is the new
bi-monthly titles, UNCLE SCROOGE & DONALD DUCK and THE ADVENTUROUS UNCLE
SCROOGE McDUCK.
The former is one of the best regular-series issues Gladstone has put
out yet. It's got two terrific stories in it. The first is "Ten Penny
Opera," the first American printing of David Gerstein's excellent
slapstick/musical/parody/spoof/farce story. It's hard to categorize neatly,
but you get both Magica and the Beagle Boys in this one. There's a lot of
funny stuff going on, including a background gag or two inserted by artist
Daniel Branca, who is evidently a Marx Brothers fan. (Good man!) It
basically involved $crooge trying to fake his way through an opera review in
order to buy the building. And all sorts of things conspire against him.
Hilarity ensues.
The second story is a reprint of Don Rosa's "The Crocodile Collector."
It's a slower-paced tale, chock full of informational geographical tid-bits,
and comes complete with a couple of breath-taking half-page panels.
Wrapping it up is an editorial by ace Disney analyzer, Geoffrey Blum,
where he explains some of the history behind Don Rosa's story, as well as
what makes "Ten Penny Opera" so fascinating and unique. I can't recommend
this one to you enough.
THE ADVENTUROUS SCROOGE McDUCK also contains a pair of stories, one new
and one old. The first is Carl Barks' classic, "The Twenty-for Carat Moon."
It's a wonderful morality play. The second story is entitled "Time
Bandits," by some unknown European creative team. I haven't read this one
yet, but the art is interesting, and more cartoony than the usual Barks
clone. A Geoffrey Blum editorial explains the stories behind these stories,
as well.
Didja notice something strange above? Neither title includes the dollar
sign in Scrooge's name. It's not "$crooge," but "Scrooge." What does this
mean? Not much, but it did strike me as curious.
In something more of a super-hero vein, we have THE SAVAGE DRAGON #42,
which as of this issue is now covered as "SAVAGE DRAGON," on the theory that
it's easier to pick up on off the stands. Erik Larsen details herein the
first adventure of the Special Operations Strikeforce, the new government
superhero team headed up by Dragon, formerly of the Chicago Police
Department. Erik Larsen continues to show a lot of thought being put behind
the stories he writes. The S.O.S. is a multi-level team operation, with
Dragon a forceful leader, who gets his way with the government when it comes
to keeping the team clean. For now. There's also some wonderful character
bits, such as with Frank Darling and Smasher. The story itself becomes a
wonderful tribute, almost, to some of Jack Kirby's more cosmic work,
something which Larsen acknowledges in the letters column.
I was a bit critical in my review of KABOOM #1 last month. It wasn't so
much that I thought it wasn't inventive or fun to read, but rather that it
had the feeling of "being done already," especially in light of Acclaim's
NINJAK. Well, issue 2 is a step in the right direction. Much of the
Ninjak-parallel is a faded memory now, and Jeph and Jeff seem to be having a
lot of fun with this one. Some mysteries are cleared up, and a bunch of
others are opened. Matsuda's art has never looked better. His money shots
are amazing, even the computer-aided ones. (That two-page spread near the
middle of the book looks amazing.)
Speaking of which, NINJAK #12 ended the series, and it did go out on a
high note. While it was obviously rushed a little in the story department to
sew up some loose ends, it did bring to a head everything Denny had learned
over the previous 11 issues, and showed us all that there was a plan behind
the whole thing after all. It's a damned shame that the numbers proved fatal
for this book. Poor sales killed it.
And while we're speaking of Acclaim, what's left to read over there?
Well, I still get QUANTUM & WOODY and TROUBLEMAKERS, but that's it. NINJAK's
been cancelled. I grew tired of TRINITY ANGELS, and now that's getting
canceled. X-O MANOWAR never got me really excited, and not the last of its
original creative team - Brian Augustyn - is leaving, too. I lost track of
TUROK. SHADOWNMAN, MAGNUS, and BLOODSHOT did nothing for me. Oh, well...
Next week: I'm not entirely sure, but I might do an in-depth piece on
why Jim Lee's DIVINE RIGHT is a perfect example of everything which is wrong
with story-telling in comics today. =)
-Augie
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