Tracker

 

I am home sick with Captain Trips, so I took the opportunity to finally read this oddity I came across recently:

a funny-animal detective story by William Van Horn!

$2.00 for a black and white comic in 1988 sounds a little steep, no?  If you have heard of Blackthone Publishing before, it was probably for their licensed 3-D comics (Star Wars, GI Joe, etc), but they were a real publisher of original properties like this one.  The cover says "book one of four," but only two issues ever came out.  

It's a shame, because this is good stuff.  If you loved the Fantagraphics anthology Critters, then you should vibe with this book.  It's not laugh-out-loud funny, more of a pastiche of hard-boiled film noir private eye Raymond Chandler tropes, only with anthropomorphized cats and pigs and wolves.

I don't know if this character appeared somewhere else before or not, but this story opens with Tracker's glory days far behind him. He is swept up in a murder mystery complete with a femme fatale, but his attitude is a resigned "been there, done that" throughout.

Good action cartooning in places:

Adolf Kitler, yikes

Anyway, this was pretty good.  Not quite what I expected from Van Horn, author of some of the wackiest Duckburg comics ever printed, but if I ever see issue 2 I will be sure to grab it and post on it here.

The B.O.B. Squad

Up Ya Nose Widda Rubbah Hose

 

Steamboat Willy rubber hose style video game Mouse: PI For Hire

The Phantom Blot's Double Review

 Good news, everyone!

Mickey Mouse is back in comic shops (along with Donald Duck and Uncle $crooge)!

If you were a fan of the IDW series, like I was, you will want to pick these up, because it's basically the same comic book.  Edited by David Gerstein, a mix of old and new stories never before printed in the US, and an emphasis on the classic Gottfredson villains.  

We've got a Casty Phantom Blot story to kick things off, which is basically the best possible way to reintroduce America to Disney comics.  Then a Rhyming Man two-parter by Francesco Vacca guest-starring the time-travelling Uma, who I am going to assume is Mickey's future daughter because I've seen The Flash and read Jughead's Time Police.

Yes, yes, but what about the art?  It's in the super cartoony modern Topolino style for the main stories, by Marco Mazzarello and Roberto Vian, along with a zany Super Goof comedy short by Stefano Intini

and a fun 1970s Barks throwback by Giovan Battista Carpi,

Fantagraphics, my all-time favorite publisher, has unsurprisingly done a bang-up job on my favorite comic.  Highly recommended, nine ears up.

 

MAGA Protests Disney By Buying Tickets To Disneyland

Earth AD

 

DinoLand USA is RIP

Meta Blog

 

I updated the layout to this rickety old blog for the first time in many, many years.  I liked the old minimalist look, but this layout looks better on a phone IMO and makes it easier to tell links apart from regular old text. If you don't like it I don't care,

STOP THE PRESSES

 

NEW DEFUNCTLAND JUST DROPPED

Mickey is NOT a mouse, you fool, you absolute imbecile

The kids of today should defend themselves against the seventies

 

Escape to Witch Mountain and other 70s weirdness.

 

Roger Rabbit rights revert to author Gary K.Wolf