Somebody’s First Comic Book: Uncle Scrooge #27

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TITLE: Uncle Scrooge and the Money Champ

CREDITS:
Writer: Carl Barks
Art: Carl Barks
Letters: Garé Barks
Publisher: Dell Comics

PRIOR KNOWLEDGE: Uncle Scrooge. Donald’s uncle. Richest duck in the world. We’ve all seen the cartoons, right?

IMPRESSIONS: In “Uncle Scrooge and the Money Champ,” Scrooge encounters another particularly wealthy duck, Flintheart Glomgold. Thanks to some handy expository dialogue from his nephews, we learn that Scrooge and Glomgold have gotten into it before, with a contest to see which of them had acquired more wealth, and Scrooge literally won by having more string. Well, both ducks have made more money since then, and Glomgold challenges him to a rematch, to be accomplished by converting everything they own into silver dollars and measuring the piles. (Why they don’t just have their personal belongings appraised by an impartial third party is beyond me.) As they begin to build the huge mountain of silver dollars, Scrooge and the boys are worried that Glomgold is going to cheat, which let’s face it, he almost certainly will. Great story – funny, with familiar characters, and even the tiny bit of prior knowledge necessary to understand this comic is given to us by the nephews. But that’s just the lead story, there are a few others…

TITLE: Gyro Gearloose and the Firefly Tracker

IMPRESSIONS: Gyro Gearloose, Scrooge’s wacky inventor friend (if my knowledge of the Ducktales cartoon holds true) decides to invent a machine that will track fireflies to as his entry in the Inventors’ Congress exposition. The invention works, but it’s a bust with the judges, until he finds an alternative use. It’s a short story, but a solid one that gives you everything you need.

TITLE: Uncle Scrooge and His Handy Andy

IMPRESSIONS: The next story brings us back to Scrooge, where the world’s richest duck is entering a yacht race. His fancy craft, the “Handy Andy,” is full of gadgets and gizmos to help him win. It’s a fun story, watching Scrooge whip out the right device for any given situation. He kind of comes across as a show-off at the end, though.

TITLE: Uncle Scrooge Crawls For Cash

IMPRESSIONS: The book ends with a half-page gag strip about Scrooge, laid up with a broken leg, showing just how greedy he can be.

Overall, this is really the perfect comic for a new reader. Every story is self-contained, except for the quick mention of the previous Glomgold story, but the script gives us more than enough information to know exactly what the history of that character is and why he’s significant to Scrooge and the nephews. If you’ve ever seen an Uncle Scrooge cartoon before, this comic book won’t present the slightest problem for the beginning reader.

GRADE: A

Invincible Iron Man #30

September 26, 2010

Title: Stark Resilient Part 6: Tony, We Don’t Want to Destroy You

Writer: Matt Fraction
Pencils: Salvador Larroca
Inks: Salvador Larroca
Colorist: Frank D’Armata
Letterer: Joe Caramagna
Cover: Salvador Larroca
Editor: Stephen Wacker
Publisher: Marvel Comics

Tony’s “date” with Sasha Hammer takes a turn for the dangerous when she decides to test the limits of his new abilities. Pepper Potts, meanwhile, has fully recovered from the implantation of the new Stark technology in her chest – so when Stark gets it trouble, it’s Rescue to the… well… Rescue.

There’s a lot of cool stuff in here, including a nice, organic way to show off some of Tony’s new abilities. Too often, a moment like that is played poorly, with a boring infodump or a really convoluted situation that somehow turns out to be perfectly suited to the hero’s burgeoning powers. Here, we’ve got a case where Sasha is actively testing him, trying to figure out his limits and how big a threat he may pose to Detroit Steel. The confrontation works, and Pepper’s charging to the scene similarly comes off as natural and not meddlesome.

Larroca’s artwork is pretty good, and made better by the always-strong color work of Frank D’Armata. On any book that he graces, he helps the pages come alive and turn into really vivid, almost living images. He manages to make the pages look quasi-realistic without making them suffer from the still photo syndrome that strikes a lot of artists that strive for realism.

Good issue of one of Marvel’s better A-list series. Iron Man has begun to earn his place as one of Marvel’s flagship heroes.

Rating: 8/10

Outsiders (2003 Series) #9

February 17, 2004

Quick Rating: Very Good
Title: Lightning From Above and Below (Devil’s Work Part Two)

Black Lightning shows up to rip his daughter from the team just as the battle with the new Sabbac gets nasty.

Writer: Judd Winick
Pencils: Tom Raney
Inker: Scott Hanna
Colors: Gina Going
Letters: Comicraft
Editor: Eddie Barganza
Cover Art: Tom Raney & Sean Parsons
Publisher: DC Comics

Last issue Ishmael Gregor murdered the two-bit Captain Marvel villain named Sabbac, stealing his power and amplifying it in the process. This issue, the Outsiders try to regroup to take him down, only to get a monkeywrench thrown into the mix when Black Lightning arrives. He’s been watching the team, particularly his daughter, Thunder, and frankly, he’s not impressed.

While the “old hero looks down on the new team” bit has been done plenty of times in plenty of comic books, Winick handles the whole thing rather well. While I’m still not crazy about how he’s treating Black Lightning, either in this title or in Green Arrow, I have to admit that at least he’s being consistent within his own version of the character. It’s also good to see the team beginning to bond a bit, even if it’s just to defend one of their members from being ripped away. Even the new “temporary” member, Huntress shows some guts in this issue. We also get a last-page guest star that I suppose I should have seen coming, but still put a big ol’ smile on my face, because it’s someone who doesn’t get nearly enough use in the DC Universe these days.

Tom Raney’s artwork is good, but at points it’s almost too good. There’s a scene where Sabbac tries on suits after slaughtering a few innocent people that is way, way more graphic than anything I expected to see in this title, and while this isn’t really an all-ages book to begin with, any parents that happen to flip through this issue will be incredibly disturbed by that scene. It almost makes me think this book should have had a “mature readers” sticker on it just for the sheer gruesomeness of one panel.

Winick has done a good job revitalizing these characters, the only complaint I can have about this issue is that he doesn’t spend enough time on some of the “lesser” characters that I really enjoy – namely Indigo and Metamorpho II (who still doesn’t have his own name – how long will that take?). It’s a solid read, and fans of the title will not be disappointed.

Rating: 8/10