Gemstone Complaints and Compliments

[Daniel J. Neyer]

Gemstone has been putting Disney comics out for quite a while now, and
while I'm glad to see the characters back, I have very mixed feelings
about some of their stories. William Van Horn and Don Rosa ("Forget It!"
was hilarious) have been wonderful, and David Gerstein gave us a great
Wolf story in "The Baddest Day." At first I was afraid that the Egmont
stories were being given complete control of the magazines, but now I'm
glad to see the works of Gil Turner and others being reprinted. I was
also bothered by all the re-reprinted Barks tales ("The Madball Pitcher"
had been done in one of Gladstone's last issues--why was it reprinted
again?), but now they've finally come out with a "new" one, "The Tuckered
Tiger." Hope this is the start of a new trend: I'd also like to see "Case
of the Sticky Money", "The Cattle King", "The Doom Diamond", "The Golden
Nugget Boat", and "The Heedless Horseman." Byron Erickson's Mickey Mouse
birthday stories were brilliant, complete with Gottfredson-style
"mini-climaxes" at the end of each page.

Now for the stuff I haven't liked: Geoffrey Blum's stories have not been
as prominent as I feared, but I have not liked what I've seen of his work
so far and dread his eventual reappearance in Gemstone magazines. The
"I-Team" stories aren't so hot either; someone compared these to the
Little Rascals shorts but that is missing a crucial difference: the
Little Rascals actually went out and had old kid-style adventures. These
new stories center around computers, which prevents them from being real
adventures at all. The nephews enter an Internet soccer competition? What
kind of story is that? 

Worst of all are the new Mickey Mouse stories. Except for the
above-mentioned Erickson tales, Gemstone has not printed a worthwhile
Mouse adventure yet. I would almost rather see them stop printing Mickey
stories than carry on with their current stuff. Since the two-fisted,
adventurous Mouse seems to have no place in the current non-violent
comics world, the solution of the writers seems to be to either make
Mickey a Donald-esque bumbler (the Noel Van Horn Blot story, the Lizard
story in WDC&S 643, or "Spider-Mouse") or have him dealing with foes that
prove to be either friendly or non-existent at the end of the story (the
dreadful Secret of the Loch story, the Highland ghost ship story, the
"ghost in the theater" story). In addition, the increasing use of
unexplained "magic" in the Mouse stories is an insult to the readers'
intelligence. For instance: the villain in the painting story last month
explains his incredible magical powers with the toss-off line "my cousin,
a wizard, gave me a magic paint-pot." Excuse me, but since when have
wizards been everyday inhabitants of Mouseton? The supernatural elements
in this story, Secret of the Loch, and other may be called imaginative by
some, but to me it's just an example of laziness on the writers' part.
When they come up with an unbelievable plot twist, they can just say
"It's magic" and not have to explain anything. Joe Torcivia, in the
letter column of WDC&S 643, praises Secret of the Loch for its twist
ending, saying that in the "old days" the Loch monster would have turned
out to be the work of Pete. I only wish it had been Pete's work, since I
definitely prefer the old days. 

So, to sum up: More Rosa, more Van Horn, more little-seen Barks. More
Byron Erickson, more vintage Bucky and Zeke Wolf. No more Geoffrey Blum,
no more I-Team, and give us David Gerstein, Romano Scarpa, Paul Murry,
and the shamefully ignored Floyd Gottfredson in the Mouse department
rather than Pat McGreal, Don Markstein, or Noel Van Horn. 

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