Saturday, December 4, 2010

Comics Review: WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES #713 (November 2010, Boom! Kids)

Oh, no! Not the Goofy Family Album... story! And from the hitherto adventure-minded Casty, no less. It's a little early in the game to say for sure, but "Mickey Mouse and the Menace from the Future," the first part of which appears here, bids fair to be the most overtly humorous Casty story to date. I mean, how seriously can you take a scenario in which what appears to be an Astro-Boy-booted secret agent (from the future?... maybe) is hypnotizing Goofy's relatives, all of whom are in town to help their cousin make an eggplant-flavored soda to enter in the Mouseton "Invent the World's Wildest Soda Pop" contest? All the Goof men have different versions of the famed Goofy laugh, even the Cockney fellow from England named Dogueberry. From the manner in which Agent Uma's bosses advise her about her mission -- they describe Goofy, head of "The Bubblebrains" (sounds like a foe of Underdog to me), as a "destroyer of worlds" (an' maybe houses an' movie sets, hyuck!) -- it would seem as if "Purple Rain Punch" might be a super-fuel or super-explosive of some sort. In that case, Pete's presence in the plot (as a fellow contestant and would-be prize-stealer) suggests that he might move in on the substance at some point. This story seems so weird, however, that any speculation seems as foolhardy as entrusting Goofy with the "nuclear football." Scripter David Gerstein certainly gets into the free spirit of the thing, throwing in references to Buffalo Springfield, Mary Poppins, the United Negro College Fund... he may even have added some ingredients to the eggplant soda, for all I know. I can't wait to see how this one shakes out.

The main feature is backed up by the five-page early-90s Brazilian story "A Goofy Look at Romance," drawn in a pleasantly sketchy style by Aluir Amancio, whose credits include storyboard work on a number of the classic Warner Bros. animated series of the 1990s. It's more elaborate than #709's "A Goofy Look at UFOs" but in much the same GOOFY ADVENTURES-inspired spirit -- perhaps even more so, since it includes a "mini-costume role" for The Goof as Casanova (the mind reels... that is, until you note that the only women attracted to him are of the Goof-lookalike persuasion). Nice job by Saida Temafonte on the dialogue, too.

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