"Goofy's Mechanical Wizard"

 I dunno, people, I'm having vague thoughts about poetry after Auschwitz here.  Not just with this blog, either.  You know, I watch frivolous youtube videos about, you know, videogames and that, and I can't help sort of thinking "argh! What are you doing?!?"  Well, what am *I* doing?  Also, am I REALLY saying that one can't create art (or whatever my blathering counts as), given the circumstances?  Strauss wrote a number of operas during the third reich, including Capriccio in 1942, and he definitely was not a nazi.  I mean, living a completely joyless existence is kind of what they want for us (to say the least), so I'm gonna say fuck you to them, but man.

Am I going to preface every entry like this from now on?  Hopefully not, but man, I'm not a robot.  It just feels odd to be writing stuff in the here and now without some kind of acknowledgement of...this.

In comments to the last entry, Joe said that Moores' Mickey stories are generally superior to his Donald (also true of Romano Scarpa).  And I thought, have I read any of those?  Probably.  Not really sure.  But I certainly don't know them very well, so here is THIS.

As you may know, Moores did inks for a number of Bill-Walsh-era Gottfredson stories.  So we DEFINITELY know he's at least somewhat familiar with the master, in a way that you sometimes sort of question whether duck writers were with Barks.  So did any of that rub off on him?  Let's find out.

It opens atmospherically, that's for sure.  And I DO like the specificity of Mickey not just going to a boxing match, but a boxing match with these specific dudes (not sure what "canvas-kisser" is all about though--it sounds like you just get knocked down a lot?).  And yet, I find the idea of Mickey as a boxing fan quite weird.  That seems more like it would be in Donald's wheelhouse, if anyone.  More than that, though, I feel like this is another characteristic of a lot of Moores' work: look, I get that boxing was still a big thing when this story was written and would continue toe be for a long time.  And yet, including it as a plot point in 1952 STILL feels anachronistic to me.  It belongs in Popeye stories from the thirties.  In my opinion, which admittedly I can't really defend very well.  And of course, Gottfredson was ALSO active in the thirties, so maybe...dangit, I'm arguing myself out of my point.

(And yeah, now I'm remembering stories with Mickey as Goofy's boxing coach and such; LEAVE ME ALONE!)

The "oh no I'm stalled miles from the arena" thing becomes a little less tense when you learn he's just a few blocks from his friend's house.  Then again, said friend DOES appear to live in a haunted Southern Gothic bungalow, so maybe it's still at least a LITTLE scary.

Goofy as an inventor is definitely an idea that has some lineage.  I'm not really familiar enough with Mickey comics to trace it, but it's something Guido Martina liked doing on occasion, in stories few of which have ever been released in English.  "Memoirs of an Invisible Santa" would be an example of one that has.

And to answer my question above: yeah, this SUPER feels like a Walsh-era Gottfredson story, for a few reasons, the biggest of which is this little robot.  One thing we all know about Walsh is that he LOVED his weird little homunculi.  Honestly, I wouldn't be amazed to learn that this was secretly Walsh-penned.  To be clear, I'm sure it's not, but Moores does nail the feel, here and elsewhere.

Anyway, it turns out he's bad at math (the fact that he's sentient at all should be achievement enough, but Goofy and Mickey are very demanding).  I know calculators in the fifties were analogue and kind of clunky, you couldn't just pick up a TI-81 and be done with it, but I dunno; I feel like they might be a more practical solution here.  But of course, this is Goofy, so "more practical" really isn't a relevant...anything.

To cut a long story short: he may not be able to do math, but he CAN tell the future.  Seems reasonable.  Also, I'm glad that Mr. Riley was able to rise above the nickname his enemies gave him.  Or is the idea that he makes his opponents kiss the canvas?  Maybe, but that seems to me to be far from an intuitive conclusion.

MILLIONS, I tell you!  But look out for THIS sinister guy.

And...look, man.  I'm a lot chiller about these things than I was in the past, and I do think this is more or less an okay story in general, but in this one particular instance, I'm going to have to put my foot down and just say no, fuck off.  I can believe that the official score in a college basketball game might've been off by a point or two, but even given the rather loose comic-book mimesis we have here, I cannot believe that the scorer for a football game would somehow have miss an outcome-changing touchdown.  No way, no how.  Do better, Moores.

Pretty sure he's generally known as Detective Casey, not Inspector?  I dunno; sometimes Casey comes up with something good, but he's more known for ineffectual bumbling, I feel like.  I don't know if...

Okay, this is quite odd.  Moores definitely worked on stories with Casey, but this appears to be a different dude who happened to steal the original's hat.  I really have no idea what to make of that.

Unrelatedly, here we see another Walsh hallmark, the Bond-villain-esque henchman.  Why does he speak with an echo effect?  Is it because he's, like, made of metal and has a cavernous inside, or is it just a really weird speech impediment?  Hard to say, but we don't really need an answer.  We never learned why the Rhyming Man talked like that either, and it would've been lame if we had.  I will say that this particular example of the form isn't fantastic; I think it would work better in a longer, more leisurely comic strip format; here it feels kind of forced.  OH WELL.

Here's a better look at alternate-universe Casey.  I do enjoy the fact that the robot wrote "halp!" like that.  Is "8 Ball Road" address number 8 on Ball Road, or is the road called "8 Ball Road?"  And is the ambiguity intentional?

Here's the villain, who makes very little impact.  But at least, contrary to possible expectations, it's not racially problematic; they're clearly just white guys dressed in Turkish(?) costume to seem more mystical.  In a panel near the end Faux-Casey says "thought you could fool me in those fancy duds, eh?"  Okay okay, it probably DOES represent a little orientalism on Moores' part, but nothing serious.

I dunno, man.  It seems like you could predict the end of the world anyway, if you wanted to?  Granted, you might be wrong about it, but the robot only predicts stuff that's going to happen; it's not like he has the power to cause global extinction.  It's not like he's--okay, never mind, no more politics.  Also, I think the outcome of death is you die.  And taxes: you pay taxes.  I dunno; he's just saying stuff.

To tell the truth, this story never presents any compelling reason why this guy would want the robot.  Sure, he could use him to manipulate stock prices and things, I suppose, but...well, he doesn't.  Instead, he just uses him in this situation where he is absolutely not needed.  Obviously he doesn't want to tell this woman the truth, unless the truth is most advantageous to him; he just wants to tell her whatever's gonna keep her coming back.  Maybe should put a little more thought into this, Dick.

It's also probably bad if your predictor robot hates you and wants you to fail, but whatevz.  If we want to be maximally generous here, we can say, oh, the robot wasn't being a dickhead to this woman just for the fun of it; he just wanted to fuck over the fortune teller, and she's better off without him anyway.  Okay, fine.  But A) Moores could have found a less misogynistic way to do this; and B) come ON, we're obviously meant to agree with the robot's assessment.  You wanna look me in the eye and tell me otherwise?  I doubt it.

We come now to this rather odd narrative cul de sac where the dude shows his minion this safehouse thingie he's got going on.

First floor, telephones, gents' ready-made suits.  Shirts, socks, ties, hats, underwear and shoes.  I don't even know, man.  This seems like the kind of thing that a comic strip serial would linger over, and that would be fine, but here it just kind of feels like making time.  Though it would be fun to have a place like this.  Now more than ever.

I really don't know what it is, but somehow, I find the dang robot getting on my nerves more than maybe it should.  I mean, there's no reason why he SHOULDN'T take this attitude towards his captors, but somehow I intuitively feel like siding with THEM in this one.  That shouldn't happen, should it?

I really don't think this is how anything works.  Also, if you don't care about the robot, you should just destroy it to whatever extent you can and stick it in a closet.  But you SHOULD care about the robot!  Kidnapping it was your whole thing!  And now you're just, well, all that stuff with predicting this and that doesn't matter?  What's your DEAL, anyway?

See?  The only reason they get caught is because they've made the evidence so easy to find.  Is it intentional that the prediction only came true because they were trying to prevent it?  An Appointment in Samarra kind of thing?  I doubt Moores was really thinking about the implications, but it's still kind of fun.

It's VERY out-of-character for any version of Mickey to physically assault an already-subdued villain.  I don't like that at all.  And it wasn't even your dang robot, so there's no use getting all proprietary.  I think Moores might've been able to make this work better if he'd done more early on to make Charlie into an actual character.  You can easily imagine the series of gag strips Walsh would've written about him before moving on to the plot.  In Moores' defense, this isn't a comic strip and his space is limited.  In his offense, on the other hand, he DID include some superfluous stuff here that could've been excised.

And in the end, he loses the ability to tell the future but gains the ability to do arithmetic, so...to take advantage of this, Mickey and Goofy open a store where you're not allowed to spend more than thirty cents?  Do I have that right?  Well, it's amusing as long as you accept that it's also sheer nonsense.

Right, so what do we think of this?  Well, we DO think it captures that Walsh vibe, and it's fun to read just for that.  On the other hand, as I've noted, it feels rushed, like something that would indeed have worked better a serial comic strip, and when you think about it, very little actually happens.  I'd say it's basically fine as long as you don't think about it too hard, but not necessarily one for the ages.