Disney-comics digest #460.

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

      Dear Folks,

      James said that the 1937 Gottfredson Medioka adventure 
appearing in WDC&S currently "so far has been extremely predictable and
very slowly paced.  I also think it suffers from being transformed into
a comic book instead of being printed in strip format."  Well, I have 
to agree that it's slowly paced.  Also that it may have been better 
in strip format.  But the real way to enjoy this story was to buy 
Gladstone's 1990 album that contained the whole damn thing.  All 106 
pages of it.  I happen to find this one to be my favorite Mickey 
story;  it may be a little slow getting started, but you'll see it 
gets better and better.  The real problem is that this should be in 
four issues of Mickey's own comic, not *six* issues of WDC&S.  That 
way its length would be more tolerable.  But since that album (at 
$15) was too expensive for most collectors I know, I think that the 
current printing will at least give more readers a chance to enjoy 
this story.  The dialogue, also, gets uncommonly good later on.
      And you talk of the story being predictable?  Well, okay, the 
moment Mickey is mistaken for someone else, you get what's going on.  
But the excitement, and comic wit, fly fast and furious once Mickey's 
on the throne in Medioka.  Just wait!

      I haven't yet mentioned LO$ 5 (the one everyone's been talking 
about), so my thanks are long overdue to Don Rosa.  This one was 
absolutely spectacular.  By emphasizing Scrooge's relationship with 
his kin and forefathers, you have included a sort of warmth that 
rarely occurs in Barks' stories (and though I don't have a 
translatable version of Part 11, I know that this makes the emotional 
sequences there even more meaningful).
      I loved the sequence with the ghosts, no matter what anyone 
says.  It harks back to the ancient myths, whose writers asked the 
Muses to invoke them with the necessary bravado preparatory to 
penning their epics.
      Only one problem with the story, and it's Egmont at fault:  it 
could stand to be sixteen, not fifteen pages.  I felt that the scene 
of Scrooge's ancestors parading in glee at his future miserliness 
should have been the width of the page, for instance;  then there 
were other scenes that seemed a little too cramped.  But you *know* 
all these things, otherwise you'd not always tell me how you wished 
you *could* make 'em longer!
      One slightly confusing thing:  when a character reaches into a 
panel with one arm (the rest of him not being seen, that is), you've 
often had the arm -- or whatever appendage -- protruding not from the 
edge of the panel, but from behind the edge of the previous panel.  
The obvious example is when one Whiskerville swiped Scrooge's bank 
order.  Since Scrooge was right up against the right-hand border of 
the preceding panel, the arm that reached for the deed almost looked 
like it was somehow supposed to be *his* -- and Sue Daigle-Leach 
thought so too, for the hand on that arm was colored white!  
Hopefully all this will be fixed for the album printing.
      Am I nuts, or is Gladstone's printing just not as good these 
days?  I've been disappointed with the color in EVERY recent issue 
but DDA 29!  The color looks duller than it once did, and very often the 
red and blue ink that's used to reinforce solid blacks is misaligned 
so that panel borders and characters' pupils appear muddy.  
Especially true of some pages in this comic.  In fact, coloring 
problems always look the worst in Rosa stories, because the detail is 
so intricate that the misaligned tones are more obvious.
      If Gladstone has had to lower printing quality (these mistakes 
started becoming common around this last March) to keep the price of 
the comics at $1.50, I wouldn't mind paying $1.75 for them.  When you 
get around 27 pages of comics in each issue, that's sure a better buy 
than (Fill In Name Of Any Other Comic Publisher Here)'s issues.

      Well, it's time to be off for now.  But I'll be back sooner or 
later.  "Like a bad penny, or a ghost!"  "GHOST?  Eeeek!  Merciful 
goodness, what have I *done*?"

      David Gerstein