Tezuka and American Comics

Tezuka's Bambi

Kimba versus Simba

Tezuka was a strange dude.

Osamu Tezuka is indisputably one of the greatest cartoonists of all time, and one of my personal favorites (I even made him the guardian spirit of one of my notebooks!). 

But this is pretty wacky:

More Mikimaus Waltdisneus weirdness here.

Record Collector Bat-Signal

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/08/singing-bust-beastles.html

Mickey Death

Mickey Death by Eric Knisley

Bootleg Boats

Somehow I don't think this boardwalk ride was sanctioned by Disney.

Punk's Not Dead

100% sure Roger is a Trump voter.

Dragula

Speaking of Marv Wolfman, here is a Goofy story by the Tomb of Dracula team Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan!

"Tomb of Goofula" originally ran in Goofy Adventures #17, these bad cell phone pics are from Mickey Mouse and the Orbiting Nightmare, Boom! Studios, 2011.

That's supposed to be a "D"??

The comics offer quite a bit of logo variation:

Characters that SHOULD be Public Domain if it wasn't for Disney

I find this type of thing fascinating-  at one point I wanted to make a comic called Public Domain Squad starring the Golden Age Daredevil, Black Terror, Fantomah, Silver Streak, etc but then Project Superpowers beat me to the punch.

These Mystic Eyes

I love everything about this Rick Griffin surfing strip

But I love the little Mickey guys in the next-to-last panel most of all.

Unboxing Day

In his exhaustive history of Disney Comics Dan Cunningham mentioned a box set of the first six issues, available at the Disney Store with a retail price of 75 dollars.  Naturally I hit up Ebay to see if I could score one cheap, and I did-- five bucks plus shipping.

Let's do an unboxing, shall we?

Mine was still in the shrink wrap, with the Certificate of Authenticity proudly displayed on the back.  I tore that sucker open immediately.

I opened right to a Don Rosa Donald Duck cover, a fortuitous sign.

As I flipped over the cellophane package to see the Goofy issue, I noticed something--- these books were warped!

Can you believe these greedy bastards charged SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS for a bunch of comics with a cover price of a dollar fifty each, and didn't even spring for backing boards?

What's inside the bundle, you ask?

The first six issues from the Disney Comics imprint, all cover dated June 1990.

The inaugural Between the Lines column indicates that Uncle Scrooge #243 and Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #548 also shipped this month, but it's 1990 so this box is only concerned with the number ones.

Box sets like these were briefly very popular in the great boom times of the early nineties.  For comparison's sake, look at this DC Comics box from 1991 collecting all the variant covers for the second Robin miniseries.

I got this whole mess, including the HOLOGRAM COLLECTOR CARDS for the princely sum of 5 dollars even at a comic convention in 2006.  

Back to the Disney box, there's good stuff in here!  A lot of fans rag on the Disney Comics experiment but these were high-quality comics.  The colors are bright, the only ads are for other Disney Comics titles, the covers slick.  The material is pretty good too-

I don't care about the first story in Goofy Adventures, but the second feature is part one of Goofy Frankenstein ( I have only ever seen the second half and was somewhat obsessed with this story in the early days of this blog. My Tumblr avatar is still Goofy Frankenstein ten years strong)!

Next up is The Phantom Gondolier.   I've always liked this story; Michael T. Gilbert and Stephen DeStefano are old pros who know how to make entertaining comics whatever the genre. I'm a fan of both of those guys.  There's some Paul Murry bullshit for the backup feature.

Eddie Valiant isn't in this so who cares.

Rescue Rangers never did much for me personally, but it was my sister's favorite part of the Disney Afternoon so I'll give it a read eventually.

The Ducktales story is part one of the Scrooge's Quest serial.  I know I have read at least a couple chapters before--Gemstone put out a trade paperback collection that I need to check out.  Marv Wolfman is in my top five favorite superhero writers based on Tomb of Dracula and The New Teen Titans so it will be interesting to see him scripting funny animals for a change.

Last but definitely not least, a Don Rosa story!  This one has been reprinted a ton of times over the years, but it's still nice to have the original in my collection.

Getting this joke in a shrink-wrapped "Collector's Set" is just *chef kiss*

So that's the Disney Comics Collector's Edition First Issues box set!  Definitely not worth 75 dollars, but at 5 bucks plus shipping I don't think I got ripped off.  If you can scoop this up at a con or online go for it, if only as a historic curiosity.

Maui No Ka Oe

Nice Junior Woodchucks cameo in the Tales from the Tube story "Maui is Best"

Read the whole thing here.

15 intriguing facts about Walt Disney (but you knew most of these already).

The 13 weirdest Disney Channel original movies according to Bustle magazine.

My kids are huge fans of Zombies and Descendants, which I thought were plenty weird, but they don't even make the list.

Bizarre things that really happened at Disney World

*and*

The 6 specific breeds of asshole who are ruining Disney parks.

The duck's name isn't Puddles.

Stupor Doof

I was really excited to win Phantom Blot #2 on Ebay, as all good comics fans know this as the first appearance of Super Goof.

So it is with a heavy heart that I have to report that this is a non-canonical Super Goof, what the Wizard Magazine price guide would call a "Super Goof Prototype" and not the genuine article.

My disappointment was compounded when I opened to this first page and remembered that I'd read this story before in the pages of Gladstone's Mickey Mouse Digest #3.  But what a first page- look at those title logos at the top, the economical info-dump in the first panel (we know it's night because the moon is out, sirens and search lights tell us there's a jail break at the helpfully labeled State Prison, O'Hara's balloon sets up the plot).  They don't make comics like this anymore.

Unfortunately it's downhill from there.  After a deductive leap that would make Sherlock Holmes drop his pipe into a giant bag of cocaine, Mickey deduces that the Blot is headed out West to become a villain like in the cowboy pulps that are all the rage these days.

A case like this requires assistance in the form of a weird-looking Gyro Gearloose.  "BUT GYRO'S A DUCKBURG CHARACTER" you're saying, but that's not even close to the weirdest part of this story so just roll with it.

Gyro invents a criminal detector, which makes you wonder why O'Hara bothers to keep Mickey on the payroll after this episode.

Goofy drinks the fuel to the machine because he's a f**king moron, and as a result he believes he has super powers.

As superhero origin stories go it's not as good as this one, but better than this one.

Convenient stampedes keep knocking Goofy on the ass and making him appear to fly (It looks like a super character of some sort!).

Ever notice that you never see Clark Kent and Superman at the same time?

And that's it!  Super Goof accidentally captures The Blot, Blot escapes and ties up Goofy and the Sheriff, Gyro invents a robot cow for Mickey to drive around in (for real!) and The Blot is captured and hauled back to jail.   

There's no super-goobers, no Gilbert, just some cattle rustlin and lasso twirlin. But technically this is the first appearance of your second-favorite Disney superhero.