"The Wonderful Whizzix"

 Yeah yeah, I know: back-to-back Moores Mickey stories were not what anyone was hoping for, probably. I understand the vox unpopuli! And we weren't going to GET them, except that I just read this, his most famous (not for the first time, I think, but I remembered nothing about it), and realized, dammit, I have to write about this one. Or at least want to. I promise we'll have some ducks next week. But for now, we have this. As Debbie Anne noted in comments last time, this story is allegedly the inspiration for the Herbie the Love Bug series. I have never seen a Herbie media product in my life, but the first two movies WERE written or co-written by none other than Bill Walsh, so there DOES seem to be some Disney-comics DNA there. Interesting.

It opens in this almost Lynchian way, with Goofy going to pick up this mysterious car from this mysterious place.

And to cut a long story short, they arrive, only the place is decrepit and out-of-business. The mystery thickens.

If it's not obvious, I'm kind of trying to get through the opening part quickly, so I can get to what I WANT to talk about. But how 'bout that farmer? The way he's acting, you'd think he'd be coming back later, as a bad guy or as A GHOST HIMSELF! WHOOOOOO! That's not happening, though. We won't see hide nor hair of him again.

The abandoned factory DOES look cool, though. "See how the parts come into it on tracks from the side." I can parse that sentence, but the more I repeat it in my head the more nonsensical it becomes. And what's with Mickey's dismissive "nothing, Goofy?" Why is he so boring? This depiction doesn't match Murry/Fallberg in terms of insipidity, but it's not great. This isn't what you'd call a character-based story, though, so I suppose it's okay.

Well, it ain't nothing. I'm not sure if I've ever seen such a dense collective of sound effects before in a Disney comic, or any comic. It's fun. But if you're thinking "it probably won't make much sense, but there's sure to be at least SOME explanation for how Goofy ended up buying this weird car from nowhere, and now apparently he's not even required to pay for it," please be assured that there is not. Or maybe you WEREN'T thinking that, as it doesn't necessarily jive with Moores' MO. But regardless...la.

Seriously, shouldn't Goofy at least have been prepared to, like, sign some paperwork or something? Why doesn't anyone seem to find it even vaguely suspicious that he's apparently not required to pay for it? I dunno; on the one hand, I can just accept this silliness easily enough, but that doesn't mean I don't still think it's a storytelling deficiency. Anyway, this happens.

I like how quickly Mickey goes from skepticism to "okay, maybe your car IS sentient and capable of experiencing complex emotions like remorse."  What are we doing here?

...

So there's a trope that we're all familiar with where a character thinks "oh no, I'm going to get in trouble" only to have it revealed that what they did was actually GOOD for reasons they couldn't have predicted. You know it, I know it--I'd even say THEY know it. It's all over Disney comics. And it is what it is but BOY OH BOY do I not care for it here! Sure, go ahead, next time you're on the road, if you think another driver is a criminal, go ahead and sideswipe them! You'll be a hero! Most likely.

And...then we do it again.

Because once wasn't enough, apparently. Okay, we have established that this car is some sort of vigilante.  Now look, putting aside the question of how in god's name the car knows someone's a criminal, I'm going to say something that you may find both controversial and brave.

I think we SHOULDN'T have intelligent cars that compulsively attack other drivers that they've determined are criminals. I don't even CARE if you cancel me for saying that; it's just my opinion. If you want to be real about it, Disney comics have are pretty laissez-faire in terms of their depictions of due process for criminals, but this one especially, I just can't be having with. It's just gross and creepy and it sigificantly sours me on the whole story. And even if you DO think attack cars are theoretically okay, a counterfeiter? You're risking causing horrific death and destruction to catch a non-violent criminal? That just looks like, but isn't, none-too-subtle satire a la Robocop. In a way it's not fair, because my perspective is obviously skewed by our hard turn into authoritarianism, and also the raise of AI. I probably would've had a different perspective if I'd read this ten years ago. But even so, I DO think it's fundamentally Not Great. End of paragraph.

I mean, it would be okay if they weren't so blandly positive about it. It puts me in mind of this concert I went a little while back. It was an eighties hair metal tribute act, and it was a lot of fun, and then suddenly WHAM, it came to a screeching halt as just out of absolutely NOWHERE they went into this jingoistic routine about how great cops and military people are, and no doubt this was in part because of the pot, but I had this terrifying moment where I just thought, jesus, these people all around me, just siting there, are they ENJOYING this? Am I in the midst of a crowd of fascists that would tear me apart with zero compunctions could they but see into my heart? I quickly made my leave. It's a shame: there is a one hundred percent chance they played "You Give Love a Bad Name" after their litle display. And THAT is how I feel about this un-self-conscious authoritarianism in my Disney comics.

So I said above that I had never seen The Love Bug, and that was true when I wrote it, but then I thought, hey, maybe I SHOULD see it as long as I'm writing about its maybe-antecedent. So I did. IS the movie based on the comic? Yeah, probably, especially considering Walsh's involvment. You can easily imagine him following his erstwhile collaborator's work. There are substantial conceptual differences, though, one being that Herbie does not attempt to murder people he's determined are criminals. Probably a good idea, that. Even in a cartoony mode, I think that would come off to EVERYONE as super fucked-up in a live-action setting.

(Did I like the movie? Not really. It had a bit of dated charm in places, but it also had things that have NOT aged well; and subjectively, I couldn't help it; for a lot of the runtime I had "this is SO stupid" running through my brain on loop (which point you might counter by wordlessly gesturing at my blog, but hey). It's fine if you find it charming! Live your best life! But I'd give it a meh rating at best. Though be it noted that it DOES feature a scene where the car tries to commit suicide by falling off a bridge. True fact.)

I dunno; I think maybe I'd prefer to subscribe to the Daily Blurt, which at least isn't glorifying vigilanteism. As far as we know.

Look out for this guy. So in The Love Bug there's no indication of why we have a sentient car exactly, except for this sublimely nonsensical thing where a character claims that, you know, all those thousands of cars off an assembly line; it only stands to reason that one or two of them would be special. Does it? Well, here we get a little more detail, in a way that makes me wish I liked the story as a whole better because it's quite something. More on that momentarily.

So I get that the dude is attacking him with sleeping gas, but it looks for all the world like he's dying of carbon monoxide poisoning, which probably isn't an image you want to put in people's heads. Just saying.

It turns out the explanation is that this dude for-all-intents-and-purposes murdered Old Man Whiz, and his spirit possessed this car. Why here and why now? I do not know, but this is absolutely nuts in a decidedly non-Disney-comics-esque way. Which I absolutely love in concept for its unhingedness; shame about the rest of the story.

"Goofy's Mechanical Wizard" featured a cop named Casey who was not actually Casey, and how we have this one, who is Irish. Yes, I understand why all Disney cops are Irish, the boys in the NYPD choir still singing "Galway Bay," but that's a New York demographic thing. Not sure it really applies on the West Coast.

Anyway, after various hijinx, we end up here, with the vintage cartoon thing of a guy smashing through a wall and creating a human-shaped hole. That's not too common in Disney comics, so please enjoy it.

...are you just matter-of-factly telling me that he's going to get time off for bribing the victim's family. Huh. Also, not really clear why you even WANT to redeem this minor villain whom we barely see.

Thought I'd stick the whole last page here, because I think it works well. The car is no longer possessed. Or possibly it's just dead. This might be too ludicrous to be poignant, really, but hey, at least Goofy got a free car out of the deal for no specified reason! That's not bad. I suppose.

Well, that's that.  Regardless of whatever issues I have with this particular story, I suppose I can agree that Moores generally does well with mice.  He certainly draws them in a more on-model way than he does his ducks, regardless of which I may prefer for nostalgic and other reasons.

Next week: something else!