(From Here)
Now featuring Mickey Mouse, since I'm apparently now picking that one up regularly as well. I would include Ducktales, but it just seems pointless to look at individual issues, given the inevitable trade paperback.
Donald Duck 367
After all this cool stuff with pirates and Pedrocchi, DD finally returns to earth with what is definitely this month's least interesting offering. First, the Jippes re-do of "Whale of a Good Deed." Can't complain about the Jippes part of that (though I recently looked through the Wright version, and it doesn't strike me as being quite as egregious as "A Day in a Duck's Life"), but eh...it's a pretty limp story. Also, note that the entry claims that "the Junior Woodchucks show [Scrooge] the error of his ways," which totally doesn't happen in this story, unless the changes in the Jippes version are more drastic than anticipated. For backup, it's new Van Horn! Hey, wait a minute...this is OLD Van Horn! Boo! Not that it's a bad story, but still...and even as reprints go, this is an odd choice. This will be the fourth time it's been printed in the US, which may be a record for Van Horn stories. There are a whole bunch that have only been printed once.
Mickey Mouse 309
Apart from DD, it's Wacky Italians Month at Boom! Here we have Scarpa's "'Treasure of Venice,' a globetrotting adventure never-before-seen in the U.S. guest starring Goofy, Pete, Phantom Blot, and even Scrooge McDuck!" Whee! Actually, having read a few of Scarpa's Mouse stories, I have to agree that he's generally better in this milieu than he is with ducks, which is why I'm looking forward to this more than...
Uncle Scrooge 404
Another book-length Scarpa, this time a duck story. Always a dicey prospect, though at least the basic concept--Scrooge gets a whole bunch of money bins--seems amusing enough.
Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 720
This time, Cavazzano provides the wackiness, as the characters get trapped in a Dali painting--seems like a thin premise for a book-length story, but we'll see. The cover makes it look like Cavazzano's affecting an old-school art style, which could be interesting.
Geo:
ReplyDeleteOne reason the Kay Wright version of “Whale” might not look so bad is that is NOT Kay Wright – but John Carey!
There isn’t anything Kay Wright did during that period that wasn’t horrible – and seriously below Western’s standards of the fifties thru mid-sixties.
In fact, I can never decide who was worse… Kay Wright or Bob Gregory. At least Gregory was a fairly decent writer.
And, badly drawn as the Disney comics became, the Warner Bros. comics were often worse.
I can only conclude that a primary reason these comics went totally to hell in the seventies and pre-Gladstone eighties is the absolutely dreadful art they routinely exhibited – Paul Murry, John Carey, and Pete Alvarado excepted.
Wow, that’s pretty negative for me (Mr. No-Negativity-at-my-Blog)… isn’t it?
Joe.
Whoops--right you are. I would've sworn I checked that, but apparently not. It may well be that the reason I didn't feel as strongly negative about Wright's art as most people was that I was confused about what he did and didn't draw. Gadzooks! Still, it could've been worse--Lockman could've been doing his own drawing, which of course he did for a handful of stories for Gladstone II, about which the less said the better.
ReplyDeleteJust browsing through your archives when I stumble upon that comment:
ReplyDelete" he did for a handful of stories for Gladstone II, about which the less said the better."… from the same guy who wrote that witty, lengthy, snarky review of one of these stories.
Make up your mind ! ;)