Ducktails #9 // Review
The Junior Woodchucks are heading into the intimidating Black Forest Trail, Theres every suggestion that it might just be a very dangerous place to be. Uncle Scrooge and Launchpad ARE heading the expedition, but there’s a bit of a problems as the awkward Doofus is joining the party. He’s. packed 17 lunches and a banjo, which just might suggest that he’s going to be a bit o f a problem in Ducktails #9. Writer Brandon Montclare and artist Tommaso Ronda continue to march boldly forward with a decades’ old Disney property. Color comes to the page courtesy of Angela Minchini.
Doofus isn’t the only member of the expedition who is going to need some kind of babysitting. Webbigail is also coming along. She’s not exactly prepared for a journey into the BlackForest, but Scrooge is insistent that she be taken care of and as such Doofus seems to be the perfect duck to do the job. It looks like everyone might need a bit of help when it becomes apparent that the entre party seems to have become quite lost. Things get particularly tense when the group finds that the ath leads. to a rope bridge that seems to be in a state of disrepair.
Monclare cleverly uses the amount of space allotted for a single issue. It would be way too easy to try to overcrowd an issue like this with a lot of different adventure. The pacing is almost perfect. The plot itself isn't really all that interesting. And the story ends pretty predictively given the situations. Plot twists, more or less land, exactly where one would expect them to be. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just not terribly interesting. And though the story is very well articulated, there isn’t a whole lot in it that feels genuinely clever.
Carl Barks’ original Disney duck adventure comics were so meticulously clever in the way they were put together that is really difficult for anyone else to live up to that in any subsequent comic book format. Ronda is given a few rather interesting challenges to tackle in the course of the issue. However, the atmosphere doesn't feel quite as sharp or distinctively rendered as.Barks had managed back in the ‘40s and ‘50s. That being said, Ronda does manage to execute some really interesting visuals, including a giant spider with a duck beak. Ronda even manages to make it look kind of sinister, which isn't quite an accomplishment given how goofy it looks.
It's nice to see the property continue decades after it started on TV. And it was really nice to see that TV series pick up where Barks’ comics had been largely absent since his retirement from comics in 1966. It's fascinating that this dog and duck and of the animated DC universe has survived for as long as it has. It’s been great fun to see it continue to thrive as Dynamite continues to carry the torch of a comic book world that first emerged all the way back in the 1940s.
