"Light-Fingered Genie"

 So I'm not gonna lie to you: I was a little preoccupied this week, realized on Tuesday evening that I didn't have anything planned for the ol' blog, and so randomly reached into my digital collection.  And...dammit I don't know how to say this, but I came away with a Kay Wright story from 1972.  Ouch.  Look, I'm sorry that this happened, but I'll do my best to make it at least a little bit interesting.

Still: I've emphasized the bad in this sort of story quite a lot.  And look, is this a great story?  No.  Good?  No.  Fair?  Hmm...let's not exaggerate.  But I genuinely do think it has a certainy something, and that maybe with a little extra fiddling (okay, a lot), it could've become something great.  I think our writer is Bob Gregory, and even though seventies Gregory is no one's idea of a great writer, it's possible that he still had a modest amount of residual mojo [UPDATE: on further examination, maybe not. It doesn't matter.).  And it is a little bit of a weird thing for me to be trying to find the good in a not-so-good story, while also acknowledging it's not-so-goodness.  But here we go.

The title is a little weird--why doesn't it start with a "the?"  This way it sounds like a Homeric epithet: Grey-eyed Athena, wine-dark sea, light-fingered genie.  Okay.

I feel legitimately bad that I never have anything to say about Wright's art other than "this fucking sucks and I hate it."  Imagine someone's entire boiling down to that.  Well, maybe not his entire career--before he became an artist (of sorts), he was an animator, and he did work on big-name Disney productions like Pinnochio and Fantasia.  Of course, I have no idea what he did or didn't actually contribute to these or any other movies, but we can imagine that he was good at it and just had an unfortunate late career change.  Still.  Woof.

Well, I'll try not to harp TOO much on the art, though it IS kind of hard to avoid.  J.P Thimblerig!  That's fun.  I guess.  "Thimblerig"--I did not realize this--is a term for a shell game, so this guy DOES seem to have what it takes to be a proper plutocrat, apparently, though we never see him.  His name is evoked a few times, is all.  Kinda surprised he's not named "Gotrocks," though.

Also, this scuba diving thing: say what you want about this story, but I do like that Donald has a hobby here (even if it's just to speed the plot along).

One empty jug!  How disgusting!  Apparently his hobby actually consist in peevishly rummaging through the sea for potentially valuable things, which is less fun.  Then, he receives but discards a warning from Pedro Pascal there.

"If I threw it back, he can go get it."  Now, this isn't grammatically standard, but if it were a common usage, I would be prepared to accept it nonetheless.  But it's not!  It's just as blatantly a mistake as anything I've seen!  Editors!  Where are you?!

Genies can get you palaces and emeralds and rubies and anything you want.  It is known.

That "you were expecting maybe George Washington?" is one reason I think this is Gregory.  Not that that's a unique elocution, but I think I've seen him use it before.  Of course, I could be wrong.  "He almost got creamed!"  Killed, presumably?  But that is one odd euphemism.

(and dang, I said I wouldn't talk about the art, but those nephews just vacantly smiling there--yikes)

So as I said, I could not call this story "good," but the closest thing we have to interesting here is this atypical genie, who just mooches around and cheerfully commits crimes.  In some far-flung alternate universe, he could've become a regular character, I feel.  The way he's depicted isn't always great, but I do feel that there's at least a germ here.  A germ doomed to die almost immediately, but nonetheless.

His portrayal is a bit inconsistent, though.  Soon enough, we'll see him gleefully stealing shit by teleporting it in, but he can't grab some clothes from a department store?  Pshaw!  The point that he'd have to wear his lousy clothes to get new ones is incorrect: he doesn't need to go anywhere; he can just bring them to him.  Be more logical, story!

Maybe what I like about the genie is that he doesn't seem to care about any of this.  He's not malevolent; he just wants to chill and break some laws.  As, perhaps, we all do.

For instance, he gets them a car that, it transpires, previously belonged to Pilkington Playboy, and good lord, I'm all for nominative determinism, but I think Dickens would cock a quizzical eye at that one.

God to be as cheerful as Abdul about everything.  Or anything.  

And now, a little tableau I like to call "The Existential Boredom of the Working Man."  I dunno; he may not play much role, but he possibly deserves to be known as the emotional lynchpin of the story.

I do enjoy the fact that, regardless of whatever else happens, they DO get to have a good dinner, that has possibly narcotized HDL.  Thirty dollars translates into 239 today, which definitely seems excessive, especially when you consider that the restaurant is called "Marty's Seafood House."

And look at ol' Abdul!  He's just so damn cheerful.  It's on him!  Sure, he may initially have been a bit demanding of the ducks, making them get him clothes and hogging the shower, but that's just because he's a rich, agreeable stoner.  Or so I'm picturing him.

Dammit.  It was bound to happen.

The idea of this genie just stealing increasingly wild stuff accompanied by a chill, laissez-faire attitude it funny.  The execution?  It could be better.  But I'm having fun in my head thinking up other stuff he could and should take.  Is "steal" even the right word?  I'm not sure you can prove intentionality, if that means anything.

"You molasses-flavored lump of larceny!"  That's a solid line, and makes me think that this might actually be Lockman.  Very difficult to say.

No, I didn't want to talk too much about the art, but BOY.  Just look at those upper panels, and then regret it.  I swear, the lines on Donald's face there.  *shudder*

Okay, COME ON.  Why didn't you just spirit the money out of a bank vault?  I suppose just because "counterfeiting" is such a common Disney comics crime that it's kind of reflexive, and I suppose there is something a LITTLE funny about the arbitrariness of "I've had a little printing press for some time!"  Still, I think the writer does the character a disservice with this kind of deplorable inconsistency.  Yes.  Ahem.

Are we supposed to be annoyed by Abdul in the same way Donald is?  Because I absolutely am not, and I think it sucks that he gets tossed away like this at the end.  He deserved better.  I mean, does anyone "deserve" anything in a story like this?  I don't know, but I was hoping.

Good lord is Pascal's dialogue in the upper right gibberish.  Okay, we get the picture, he likewise found the genie and threw it back, but what's this "a certain bottle?"  Isn't it just the molasses jug?  So why does he seem to he referring to them as two separate things?  Has he recently suffered a severe head injury, or what?

Okay.  Scrooge's attempt at a victory dance is one of the generally weirdest, most pathetic-looking things I've ever seen.  And just say his line out loud: "Donald, did you do that?  How did you do that?" and you will see how unnatural it is.  Let's not even think about the moral aspect of this.  The story certainly didn't.

Well...that's that.  And yet, I can't help feeling a bit bad about writing about such a lackluster story.  Would it, uh, help if I gave you some more of the same?  Okay.  But first:

Yes, an ad for high-end jewelery in Donald Duck 143 (from whence this story).  I feel like you have misread the seventies Disney comics demographic fairly grievously.  One thing someone might suggest is that, oh, they just sold ads to Western Publishing as a whole; they didn't get to dictate where they'd appear.  Which, okay, but...do you really think there's ANY comic book context where this would make sense?

Anyway, another piece from that same issue--a Gyro story.  This, of course, is Lockman-penned, which is a positive sign, because Gyro stories like this play to his strengths.  The art is by Phil DeLara, a fifties and sixties Disney stalwart about whom I've actually written very little (actually, looking him up on inducks, he wasn't as prolific as I thought; he's no Strobl.  He did have a lengthy career, though).  He's not an all-time great, but he brings a level of baseline competence to the proceedings that we were very much lacking with Wright.  Unfortunately--this may be symbolic of our problems--he died in '73, extinguishing this small glimmer of relative quality.

(Oh, and have I mentioned that Lockman was a John Bircher?  I'm not sure whether that little fact has come up before or not;)

Anyway, you can CALL this Koche fellow the gloomiest guy alive, but until he's faced off against me, he's got NOTHIN'!  You'll notice that the rich guy in the previous story also had the initials J.P.; that's because of JP Morgan, of course, but I do have to admit that the repetition strongly suggests that Lockman also wrote the other story.  Yeah...Gregory mostly drew his own stories in this era, much to all of our chagrin.

TINKER!  TINK!

I enjoy Gyro hopping over a car on his pogo jet, though it's only the orange coloring that makes it look apocalytic.  And not to point out the obvious, but it's not a pogo anything!  No pogoing is involved!  Dangit.

It's not very impressive that Lockman couldn't think of a better word than "part" to characterize the things Gyro's bolting together.  Knob, drank, doodad, nozzle--there are all KINDS of colorful words you coulda used.

Gyro, your invention is bad and you should feel bad.  I know Lockman had a tendency to veer away from the "basically magic" principle that Barks brought to his inventions, but this is the lamest yet.

However!  To give credit where due--to DeLara, obviously--I fuckin' LOVE the design of this guy.  I think he looks hilarious, and very different than your typical rich Disney rando.  And now another brief pause:

Quick!  There's no time to lose!  Buy circus figurines for three dollars!  Who wants that?  Eight-year-old me sure does, I'll tell you that much.  Sure, I know exactly what they'd be, all poorly-molded soft plastic with a very doubtful resemblance to that picture.  Nonetheless!  I still would've enjoyed them.  Think I should take a chance and send them my three dollars today; see what response I get?  "Gandalf Products"--interesting, the extent to which Tolkien had pervaded popular culture by this time.

Well...welcome to 2026, buddy.  We're still getting used to it too.

This build-up may not amount to much, but it's still fun.

And, I mean, this is super-fun.  I really dig the silhouette panel.  I mean, obviously it is what it is, with the limitations it has, but in those terms, it is pretty fun.

The idea that Gyro is motivated by "loot" seems like an egregious misreading of the character, but it's Lockman; he's off in his own little world.  And once again, JP Koche is sunk in eternal gloom.  Hey, it happens, especially to the rich, who've had their brains rewired in really pernicious ways.  Sucks to be them!

Anyway, I would cover the third story in this book, but it's too uninteresting even by my degraded standards.  Here's an out-of-context panel, though:

Okay then.