Sunday, October 31, 2010

Comics Review: MICKEY MOUSE AND FRIENDS #301 (October 2010, Boom! Kids*)

The conclusion of "300 Mickeys" -- the "Clone Saga" that should, by all rights, have been devoured in one gulp in MM&F #300 -- is served up "cold pizza" style in this issue. The "Mickey-Me's" created by Eega Beeva's "Pduplication Ray" do their expected slapstick "thang," including putting the real Mouse and Eega on trial for "[planning] to unmake us!". There's actually something of an edge to this silly business, in that Mickey and Eega realize that eliminating clones would be akin to murder (or, in Stefan Petrucha's slightly more decorous phrase, "taking lives"). Fortunately, Eega has access to all manner of convenient technological problem-solvers, and one of them saves the day, giving the multitude of Mickeys their own "space" while ridding Mouseton of a grave threat. Left unexplored is the question of how an entire planet of cocky, strong-willed Mice will manage to govern itself. Petrucha and Cesar Ferioli make the most of this one-joke idea, but I still shake my head at Boom!'s decision to serialize this tale.

The back side of the book is given over to the opening stanza of yet another serialized scenario, Sergio Badino and Giorgio Cavazzano's 2007 Italian story "Legend of the Robo-Presidents." We come to issue's end just as the vacationing Morty, Ferdie, Mickey, and Minnie have tumbled into the bowels of Mount Rushmore (think I'm kidding? One of Mickey's nephews wonders whether M&F have found "some President's small intestine") and discovered a clutch of mechanical gear. I sure as shootin' hope that we aren't headed for something as silly as that KIM POSSIBLE digest story set in Washington DC which climaxed with several national monuments coming to life and fighting. Given that M&F are depicted as video-game-obsessed, however, I fear that joystick manipulation of a "National Treasure" may be in our immediate future. BTW, you can tell that this story is a foreign import even if you aren't hep to the Italian drawing style; several panels are devoted to an explanation of who's depicted on the monument. Oddly enough, the "rock-star Presidents" are depicted in humanoid form. Considering that DuckTales showed duck-billed Presidents on Mount Rushmore in the episode "Ali Bubba's Cave," this comes as something of a surprise. Though Barks did depict a human "Senator Snoggin" monument in one of his 50s "ten-pagers," so perhaps the DuckTales "Mount Rushmore" ISN'T the Duck-and-Mouse-world equivalent of Mount Rushmore after all, but a duck-centric facsimile... uh, my head hurts.

* For some reason, the cover logo is that of Boom! Studios proper, as opposed to Boom! Kids. I don't know what to make of this; it may be an oversight, or something more.

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