"The Last Voyage of Ringtail Van Dukke"

Okay! Time to talk about a fellow you may know called Ringtail! Or, you may not. But you probably do! What am I even saying? I don't know. I'm starting here because, let's face it, it's easy. Here's an easily-accessible story that I've read a few times before and is also kind of short. This had actually been on my radar to write about for some time, but obviously, I never did. Was that because I couldn't really come up with enough worthwhile to say about it? Well, we'll do our best here and now.

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"In the Footsteps of Jules Verne"

Ben Verhagen! A Dutch artist who drew a number of stories in the eighties and nineties--and who maybe, possibly, is still active, though certainly not very active. He's never been very prolific, but he's overrepresented in US comics since someone at Gladstone I decided, whoa, getta loada this guy! and started publishing all his stuff they could get their hands on. This month's WDC happens to feature a Verhagen-drawn short, which made me think I should spotlight one of his stories. Not the newly-printed one; it's fine, but it's short and I don't have much to say about it. We could look at "The Last Voyage of Ringtail Van Dukke," often regarded (by me too, probably) as his best story, but, while we may get to that someday, for now, instead, we are going to examine "In the Footsteps of Jules Verne." We have our reasons! It's a long (thirty-nine pages!) story written by Jan Kruse, who seems to have written most things.

Is it obvious what I'm going to complain about here? Seriously, are you thinking "come on, I KNOW what's after the jump, just get it over with?" I am genuinely curious about whether other people notice the same thing I do about Verhagen's art, so let me know in comments if it is.

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