From Friendly Ghosts To Gamma Rays, No.129!
Hey readers and welcome back to another week of all-ages coolness with From Friendly Ghosts To Gamma Rays! I tell you, since Christmas I just can’t get a break and my health has been wack-a-doo! However, I couldn’t just take a week off after just getting back from holiday break last week, because there are a lot of great titles out there and I just need to tell you about some of these. Hopefully you, reader, are keeping warm, and more importantly reading some great comics! Without further ado, let’s just get down to it this week!
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The Best of The Three Stooges Comic Books Volume 2
Publisher: Papercutz
Stories and Art By: Norman Maurer, Jeffrey Maurer, Joe Messerli, and Pete Alvarado
Out this week, Papercutz has put together another great selection of classic The Three Stooges comics with this second volume of the series!
This second time around we get a cool selection of titles, wrapped up in a nice hard cover on glossy pages. We get issues #6 and 7, finishing off the St. John run of their comics, issues 4 and 5 of their Dell run (including a story squeezed out of volume one’s issue #3 of the Dell run), and the gems of the collection, issues # 1 and 2 of Gold Key’s The Little Stooges.
Issues #6 and 7 of the St. John run are visually great pieces, with Norman Maurer on writing and art, and just really knocking them out of the park while working in the same comic house side-by-side with Joe Kubert at the time. His gags are funny, but something about the colors, mixed in with the little details here and there make them great to look at. The issues from the Dell run are a lot simpler with art, as per most of Dell’s all-age titles at the time, but the gags are sooooo funny, filled with plenty of slap stick, bringing tears to your eyes. As mentioned, the real gems here are Gold Key’s The Little Stooges, in which after a number of years, Norman Maurer returned to draw the Stooges, along with help from his son Jeffrey. The Little Stooges follows the sons of Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe, whom they moronically named Moe, Larry, and Curly Joe. The Little Stooges get into all sorts of teenage trouble, and in a cool nostalgic way, Maurer brings back Benedict Bogus from the St. John series 18 years prior, and introduces his teenage son to get in on the act.
Papercutz has done a great job selecting and putting together the material. Although the art is not re-mastered as some reprint collections these days, it doesn’t matter or hurt the title. If anything, it may be a sin to see some of this great old material re-colored by computers, which we know in some reprint collections turns out to be a disaster. Instead we just get a good old colored-by-hand feeling, and the look of a loved comic, and we have all had one of those. If anything, it’s a great chance to see Maurer’s art, which I think gets pretty overlooked these days. Papercutz also includes interview clips with both Norman Maurer and Joe Kubert on the title.
The Best of The Three Stooges Comic Books Volume 2 is out in print from Papercutz with a charm that will make it a self-worthy edition to your collection.
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All Of Scrooge McDuck’s Millions #10
Publisher: Disney Comics
Written By: Fausto Vitaliano
Art By: Marco Mazzarella
So here it is, issue #10 of All of Scrooge McDuck’s Millions, presenting how he hit that tenth million dollar mark, in a story of great Disney-fashioned fun, as we hit the final issue of the series for now!
Issue #10 starts out like the rest, with McDuck telling Donald and the nephews at Grandma’s about how he got each million as he goes through a photo album. This time around we are presented with a tale in which McDuck dreams the good dream, and when he wakes up it turns out his dream has given him a clue about what stocks to trade and buy! Life is going good, however, one day it all comes crashing down as his dreams turn into nightmares and the tips go sour, making him lose almost everything! Of course, the reason why and his figuring it out is half the fun of this issue, so I won’t give the rest away.
Vitaliano has done a great job writing this entire series, and honestly I’m sad to see it end being it’s the most fun we have had with Scrooge McDuck out of his Euro-Disney titles like this. Mazzarella does a great job with the art, bright, poppy, and yet looking very Disney at the same time! Bonus high fives go out to also giving us an origin of McDuck’s giant bank vault that he keeps all his money in, as well as the cameos from some Duckville favorites at the end of the issue.
All of Scrooge McDuck’s Millions #10 is available now from Disney Comics!
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That’s it for this week folks, see you next!
Drew McCabe
drew@comicattack.net
