Uncle Scrooge #340

March 25, 2005

Quick Rating: Good
Title: The Heedless Horseman and other stories

Uncle Scrooge decides to become King of Duckburg – by winning the year’s biggest derby!

Writers: Carl Barks; Pat & Carol McGreal; Gorm Transgaard, Paul Halas & Jack Sutter
Art: Carl Barks, Nunez & Vicar, Jose Colomer Fonts
Colors: Susan Daigle-Leach, Edgemont, Marie Javins, Scott Rockwell & Pam Rambo
Letters: Susie Lee, Willie Schubert & Travis Seitler
Editor: Arnold T. Blumberg
Cover Art: Daniel Branca
Publisher: Gemstone Comics

This month’s installment of Uncle Scrooge stands out by its averageness. There aren’t any really spectacular stories, but there aren’t any poor ones either. It’s a pretty good issue all around.

The issue starts with a lesser-known Carl Barks tale from 1966, “The Heedless Horseman.” In the hopes of raising his profile among the people of his hometown, Scrooge decides to enter the Great Crystal Orb Derby, the winner of which is named King of Duckburg’s social scene for a full year. Scrooge decides he’ll win the contest by purchasing the fastest horse in town, but a series of mysterious booms and the horse’s erratic reaction to water may prove to be his undoing.

It’s not one of Barks’s classics, but it’s an entertaining story in its own right. Scrooge seems a tad out of character, caring so much about his social standing, until it’s made clear that he wants that status so that he can parlay it into better business deals. Overall, it’s a cute little story.

In “Beagle Brain” by Pat and Carol McGreal, the infamous Beagle Boys stumble upon an invention by Gyro Gearloose that turns one of them into a genius. The greater intellect seems to be the perfect tool to aid their criminal careers, but such a thing can go too far. A fun story with a cute punchline.

In Gorm Transgaard’s “Golden Illusion,” perhaps the strongest story in the collection, a blow scrambles Donald Duck’s brain and makes him believe he’s the legendary “Robin Duck.” Hallucinating, he rounds up the Beagle Boys to help him steal a fortune from the evil “King of Blottingham” and give it to the poor – utterly unaware that the castle he’s preparing to storm is Scrooge’s money bin! This story is just plain fun, and works better than most.

In “The Hardware Hardener,” Scrooge gets fed up with his pilot, Launchpad McQuack, constantly destroying his planes. He refuses to give Launchpad another job until he gets his own aircraft. When he brings the only plane he can afford to Gyro to help fix it up, he finds that a new solution to keep the plane solid may prove more trouble than he thought.

Finally, in “Jumbled Ducks,” the level of the money bin has reached such a point that Scrooge has no more room to put his money. He goes to Gyro for help, and the inventor supplies him with a compressor that will condense his money to one-third the space. The machine causes trouble, however, when Huey, Dewey and Louie accidentally get fused into one duck. This is also one of the better stories in the collection, although it and the other really good story, “Golden Illusion,” both ignore a big part of the way Barks characterizes Scrooge – that the money in his bin is the money he earned personally by the sweat of his brow, the part of his fortune that he never spends.

This is a decent issue, and fun for the Scrooge fan, but it’s not a spectacular issue. It’s just a fun one..

Rating: 7/10

Legion of Super-Villains #1

March 27, 2011

Title: When Evil Calls

Writer: Paul Levitz
Art: Francis Portela
Colorist: Javier Mena
Letterer: Sal Cipriano
Cover: Francis Portela
Editor: Brian Cunningham
Publisher: DC Comics

This issue serves as a nice little supplement to the ongoing Legion of Super-Heroes title, kicking things off with a bang. Takron-Galtos, the prison planet, goes insane when Saturn Queen manipulates her way into a breakout. In the midst of the riot, she grabs her old ally Lightning Lord, several other potential members for a new Legion of Super-Villains, and heads out into space. There we find out her real mission, and it’s a doozy.

This issue feels very much like a prologue. It’s setting up a lot of things for the main title, not the least of which is an army of villains planning to, y’know, blow up a few planets. And knowing what their endgame is, we definitely see how all of this can tie into everything Paul Levitz has done since the Legion relaunched last year. The pieces fit together very neatly. Levitz is also developing the characters in the LSV much more than they’ve been in the past. Saturn Queen has always been kind of a stereotypical villainess, Lightning Lord just “Lightning Lad’s evil brother.” They aren’t getting any major depth here, they’re not turning into Magneto or anything, but we do get to see her revel a little bit in her nastiness, we see him bristle at having to take orders from her… friction is remarkably effective at establishing who any given set of characters really is.

Francis Portela steps up with the artwork and gives us a really strong one-shot. The future timeline of the Legion is always a challenge for artists, and he gives us a tableau that feels futuristic, but still has a little variety – the stark, bleak landscape of Takron-Galtos vs. the clean, geometric lines of Colu being a perfect example.

Great one-shot that fits perfectly into the storyline.

Rating: 8/10

PS 238 #19

December 16, 2006

Quick Rating: Great

Tyler leads his team into battle!

Writer: Aaron Williams
Art: Aaron Williams
Cover Art: Aaron Williams
Publisher: Dork Storm/Henchman Publishing

Tyler and his team of kid superheroes has managed to track down Charles Brigman, the bully who’s been teleporting kids away from school and dropping them in a nearby lake. Now the young heroes of PS 238 take a stand against the bully that’s terrorizing their school.

If the setup sounds like a simplistic “kiddie” comic, think again. Granted, this a book that kids could read and enjoy quite easily, but Aaron Williams doesn’t flinch from the ramifications of Charles’ powers. Sure, right now he’s just teleporting kids relatively safely over an open lake, but suppose he teleported them somewhere else? Into traffic? A mile in the air? In the middle of the desert? His powers could be extremely dangerous, and he knows it. But the story really belongs to Tyler (a.k.a. “Moon Shadow”) and his crew. Williams accomplishes a brilliant balancing act in this issue, painting them as genuine children, but at the same time, showing the germs of heroism that many of them possess. Others may have the power, but not the drive, and those possibilities are addressed as well. In the end, he turns out a book that’s very, very funny, but at the same time, one of the best examinations of the super hero currently being published.

As Williams closes off Charles’ story, he begins laying groundwork for later storylines. Zodon, the would-be supervillain neutered by an automatic censoring device (one of the funniest running gags in the book) is plotting something. Zodon is one of the most interesting characters in the book – although he has at times flirted with standing on the side of the heroes, in his heart he’s still got that megalomaniacal urge that propels a would-be Dr. Doom. The resultant character is someone you want to see redeem himself, but at the same time, want to see really let loose to be bad.

All things considered, this is an absolutely magnificent comic book series, and this issue is one of the best yet.

Rating: 9/10