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.

 

Casty rules.

Sometimes you ponder the orb

 

And sometimes the orb ponders you.

SomeBODY once told me the world is gonna roll me

 

Guys, how good is Mickey All-Stars?

This book is so fun that it makes me angry.

These aren't even like, the best panels.  These are just  panels that I liked when I opened the book to random pages.

I don't think it is spoiling things too much to say that it's 50 pages of  all cute drawings like this.

Every Mouse artist that you like is in this thing.

They are all one-page gag strips, but some of them could support entire comics.

Slacker Goofy is my new Discord Avatar.

Anyways, get this book.  It's only like 15 bucks, you won't regret it.

Wind of Change

Things got real in 1990's Mickey Mouse Adventures #7 .

Change was in the air:

and the walls that divided us for so long were crumbling:

Besides being a fascinating time capsule of the era, this issue also boasts a museum-ready Phantom Blot story by Stephen De Stefano and Lee Nordling.

De Stefano draws the greatest Blot.

Just gorgeous stuff, well worth the three bucks plus shipping I spent on Ebay.

Rorschach Test

 

Like all Real Americans, I have been working on a collection of Phantom Blot appearances over the years.   I have three different versions of the story that started it all, "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot":

The Fantagraphics Hardcover, Mickey Mouse Club Parade #1, and Disney Comics Album #4.

Floyd Gottfredson's newspaper serial famously had the violence dialed down for its comic book reprints, with several of the Blot's famous death traps redrawn by (ugh) Paul Murry.  Above is an example of a cool, violent death trap as it appeared in newspapers in 1939.

Here is the same sequence toned down and made lame for the Mickey Mouse Club comic.

And here is the newer, stupider death trap recolored by Sue Klinger and Kat Blaine.

Real fans prefer the ghastly pale death mask visage of comic book Mickey to the Crayola flesh tones of the Disney Comics reprint.

I know the Blot is the most overexposed villain since The Joker and has only appeared in like three and a half good comics but he's *my* supervillain, ya know?  You can keep your Doctor Dooms and Blofelds, I'm Team Blot all the way.

The Greatest Comic Book Collector In The World

Ladies and Gentlemen, today I would like to announce my retirement from comic book collecting, as I have just procured one of my personal Holy Grail comics:

Air Pirates Funnies #2!

So what if there's a hole in it, and a crease on the back cover, and I've already read it online a hundred times-  It's MINE!

IMPORTANT NEWS

THE COMPLETE SILVER AGE "NEW ADVENTURES OF THE PHANTOM BLOT" COMING NEXT YEAR FROM FANTAGRAPHICS

Oh Silvia? Yes, Mickey

I'm very into the art in this Phantom Blot story by Silvia Ziche.

I don't believe much of her work has made it to the U.S. yet but I like what I've seen so far.

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.