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PIPELINE COMMENTARY AND REVIEW #59
20 July 1998
by Augie De Blieck Jr.
http://www.nic.com/~augie/pipeline
I just want to mention some good words this week for Gladstone
Comics. I can do this because I finally got around to picking up the
past three months' worth of their Duck titles a couple of Fridays ago.
While I haven't read everything just yet, WALT DISNEY'S COMICS & STORIES
626 and 627 do deserve special mention.
The highlight is the two-parter that spreads across both issues
entitled "One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing." It's written by Pat McGreal
and drawn by my favorite Mickey Mouse artist of the current time, Caesar
Ferioli. While it draws obvious inspiration from Michael Crichton's
JURASSIC PARK, it's a completely different tale and one set firmly in
the pantheon of Mickey Mouse stories. It highlights beautifully
Mickey's sense of adventure, as he rides a dinosaur bareback for almost
the entirety of the two parts, and has a blast doing it. Look at page
five of the first part - the penultimate panel. Mickey's face is just
perfect, conveying both the sense of excitement and sense of awe at his
own adventures. The situation builds up to several 'smaller' climaxes
before its grand finale. The story is smart, exciting, and well drawn.
Meanwhile in issue #626, Byron Erickson writes a tale entitled "Off
On A Comet." While the sense of Christmas in July is a bit weird, it is
also a wonderful story, with some great adventure, although this one
played a little more fast and loose with scientific fact. You have to
stretch the imagination a bit more with this one than you do with the
cloned dinosaurs in the previous story. In the wake of ARMAGEDDON,
though, your suspension of disbelief should be plenty well stretched
anyway. To top it off, it's drawn by Noel Van Horn, William's son.
While he shows some minor touches of WVH's work, it's still all his own.
This is some great storytelling, with some clear artwork, and easy to
look at characters.
UNCLE $CROOGE #311 contains what I'm sure is another fine
masterpiece by Don Rosa, "The Last Lord of El Dorado." I just haven't
read it yet. I'm waiting to read the original Barks stories it's based
on first.
UNCLE $CROOGE #312 contains some of the most consistantly well-done
artwork I've ever seen in an anthology-type series, as this series is.
And I can say this despite the absence of any work by Rosa, Barks, or
Van Horn. Scary, eh? There's a real wealth of talent over in Europe
that we just don't get to see every month in these titles. Maybe some
more of those in favor of the endless Barks reprints...
In any case, the first story is "The Hands of Zeus," which owes as
much to Duck Tales as "One of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing" owes to Jurassic
Park. It's well done, with some expressive artwork by Bas Heymans, who
does a great job in keeping all of the characters looking busy and
interesting in every panel, even when they're doing nothing. The story
is by Jan Kruse and David Gerstein. There's some nice dialogue in here,
and plays on words.
Jose Colomer Fonts provides the crisp artwork in "Cold Duck." His
style reminds me very much of the DuckTales-type artwork we saw when
Disney took over production of the titles. However, this doesn't have
all the annoying heavy areas of black ink, but does contain all the
business. Believe it or not, I mean this in a good way.
Daniel Branca does the final story in the issues. He's perhaps
best-known for redrawing Barks' WOODCHUCKS stories. He does have a
wonderful Barksian flavor, but some of his perspective shots do need
work. In the meantime, this is some good stuff.
Finally, there's a picture on the back cover of two young ladies in
front of a Barks painting. The first I instantly recognized as Michelle
Yeoh, who recently starred in the Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies."
(Tangent: Just watched that movie on my new DVD player this past
weekend. It's one of the best DVD transfers I've seen on my computer.
And the action sequences are fun to watch. I think I'll get GOLDENEYE
this weekend.) The other I joked to myself must have been the
publisher's daughter. It's Gina Geppi. Close enough. And not terribly
hard on the eyes, either...
Anyway, before this column goes in an altogether wrong direction, I
shall wrap this up. I'm still bagging and boarding the acquisitions
from the fifty cent bins at the New Yorker Hotel yesterday. I'm anxious
to read some of this stack, too.
Good night.
-Augie, once again not proofreading, and will probably regret this in
ten minutes
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