"The Chirikawa Necklace"

What I want to do now is talk about some of these early-sixties Scarpa MM stories that were never published in the US.  Oh, they would've been: Gemstone's plan, unless I'm mistaken, was to publish one in every other issue of Mickey Mouse Adventures.  But alas, this plan was for naught, more or less.  "Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension" appeared in MM11, but that was as far as it went.  Scarpa's follow-up was all set to run in MM13, but then the MMA series was discontinued.  You can even see what would have been the cover of that issue:

Ultimately, it was printed in two parts in WDC, so all was not lost, but that was as far as it went--there are a good half dozen Mickey adventures Scarpa wrote in this time period--before he mostly stopped writing his own material 'til the seventies, in 1963--that have never been seen by American audiences.  These are all really highly-rated on inducks; not, as we've seen, that that necessarily means anything, but "Delta Dimension" was a classic for sure, and I was just consumed with curiosity to see what else the man had been up to.  Most of these had been published in France--and most of those in 1998, when Hachette decided, for Mickey's seventieth anniversary, to celebrate by printing a vintage Scarpa story in each issue of Mickey Parade (the French digest) for the year (good call, guys!), so I ultimately collected a LOT of them, and now I'm itching to talk about them--to at least provide some idea of what we missed out on.  I'm not envisioning that these will be hugely in-depth entries; just a general overview with whatever highlights and lowlights seem salient.

To be clear, I am NOT translating these; that would be incredibly time-consuming and--more to the point--I don't want to step on any toes by doing stories that would be likely to be printed officially were there a US publisher (even as that hope appears more and more threadbare by the day).  Won't say I'm not sorely tempted, though--my localizations would be GREAT!  I can handle things! I'm smart!  Not like everybody says!  Well, maybe if no one else steps up to the plate in the next decade or something…anyway, that said, I AM translating the panels I'm putting up here, which seems much more elegant than my previous strategy of just sticking Italicized translations underneath.

"The Chirikawa Necklace" was sort of built up into the most awesome thing EVER in my mind because I had a hell of a time tracking down a copy of it (I could've gotten one from 1984, but I wanted one that does not engage in the time-honored tradition of alternating between color and black-and-white pages).  Also, I'd swear (though I can't find it now) that one of those crazy-ass Alberto Becattini essays that Gladstone published refers to it as the most awesome Scarpa Mickey story EVER, not that I should be trusting anything Becattini says.

With this in mind, it's probably unfair to call this story a "disappointment."  It may not be quite as great as I'd hoped, but it does some interesting stuff, and the central mystery is compelling, even if it doesn't resolve in a wholly satisfactory manner.

So the idea as we start is that Mickey starts experiencing spells of VERTIGO for no discernible reason.  Ver-ti-go…

If you think this plot point was inspired by Hitchcock's movie, well, you're probably right, although the stories don't intersect beyond that.  It is determined that Mickey needs rest, so he goes out to stay at his Aunt Topolinda's farm (Topolinda, whose first appearance this is, would go on to become a minor recurring character--though Scarpa himself, oddly enough, never used her again).  But why is Topolinda so secretive about the necklace she's wearing in an old portrait?  How does this relate to Mickey's vertigo?  And what do both vertigo and necklace have to do with the current crime spree, in which an overwhelming number of seemingly random, every-day items are being stolen?  WHAT?!?  Well, I'm going to do my best not to spoil this, but be advised that there ARE, unavoidably, semi-spoilers in what follows, so take heed.

The story is actually probably most notable for marking the debut of Trudy Van Tubb, Pete's gun moll.  You don't get a hugely clearly idea here of what exactly their relationship is like, what makes it run, but for my money, she's Scarpa's most successful recurring character, filling a clear niche, providing a way to deepen Pete's character, and not being problematic in the way that Brigitta is (in spite of what you might infer from the above).  So that's all good.

She's not introduced in quite the same disorienting "oh, yes, she's always been there" way that Brigitta was; when Mickey hears that Pete has a visitor in jail, he wonders who would possibly want to visit Pete, and doesn't seem to know her once he sees her, suggesting that she's a newcomer.  As we'll see below, however, that assumption is problematic.

And yes, it should also be noted that this here is the third appearance of Atomo Bleep-Bleep, the giant, intelligent atom who had previously been in "Delta Dimension" and "Sacred Spring."  Scarpa was apparently really taken with the character for a brief period, using him in six stories in a row.  I like him too, although practically speaking, I'm not sure Scarpa ever adequately answered the question of what niche he fills that wasn't already filled by Eega Beeva.  Enthusiastic alien-ish character that can chip in with convenient super-powers/inventions as necessary?  Check.  Atomo is more child-like, but I'm not sure that's quite enough.  It would be interesting if the two actually met one of these days.

At any rate, at the end of "Delta Dimension," Atomo returned to said dimension to live with his mentor/father figure, Dr. Einmug, from Gottfredson's "Sky Island.  At the beginning of "Sacred Spring," he reappears, supposedly on vacation.  But he does not leave again at the end of that story, and in all the ones that follow, he's just living with Mickey, apparently having greatly extended this vacation.

(And yes, he's is meant to be blue, not green.  Doing it this way isn't a French convention or anything; he's blue in all the other French stories I have.  Presumably, a colorist unfamiliar with his history thought, with justification, that he looked like a "little green man from Mars" type.  Additionally, while his usual French name is "Atominus Bip-Bip," here it's instead "Bi-Bop."  Hmm.

Here, you can see the character being used as a narrative crutch.  Shit, how should I have Mickey be able to access these suppressed memories?  I know!  MAGIC!  Er, I mean, "mnemonic mesons."  That'll hunt.  I've got to say, Scarpa, considering the extent to which this story already relies on reeeealy convenient happenstance, it wouldn't have killed you to come up with a more organic way to make this part work.

And yeah…the flashback involves Baby Pete and Baby Trudy, which is pretty silly, though I'll admit that their junior-grade criminality is kind of cute.  Also, if the two of them were partners in crime (and other places?) from way back, it seems dubious that Mickey wouldn't already be acquainted with Trudy.

Anyway, I'm not going to go any further with this, lest we get needlessly spoil-y.  The crime spree alluded to above ultimately turns out to be very goofy, albeit somewhat creative, in origin--and the connection between the vertigo, the necklace, and said spree, though kind of clever, relies, as noted, on a lot of golly-gee-isn't-that-convenient coincidence.  In spite of everything, though, I do like it more than not; it's not as good as "Delta Dimension" (which, really, is one of Scarpa's all-time best), but it's better than "Sacred Spring" by a long shot.  At any rate, future stories would definitely improve on it.