Well, it has been a fun week - I use that term loosely. My primary computer's screen turned an ugly shade of fuchsia and pistachio leaving me to write this (delayed) review on a backup laptop. But, like Mickey Mouse in the Foreign Legion, I soldier on!
Fantagraphics' second Mickey Mouse issue was recently released and its main story, Ripples in Time (Part I), features the Rhyming Man (yay!) as the main villain and time travel (eh) as the setting*. Joe Torcivia returns as the translator and dialogue man. Francesco Vacca wrote the story and Marco Mazzarello provided the artwork. The tale was originally published in Italy (shocker, with those names, I would have guessed Iceland!) in 2022 - so it is a fairly new tale.
Vacca is a recently chronicler of Disney comics and this joint is his first American printing as well as his first time handling the Mouse. Are we seeing a new burgeoning new master of verse or witnessing some narrative doggerel? Let's find out! In Rhyme!
"The story starts not in Mouseton but where the Pharaohs play,
On the banks of the Nile down Egypt's way
First, we see a Pharaoh with a sense of humor
Causing all his advisors to rumor
How his joy in rigging buckets of honey
Is humorously right on the money!"
"When, suddenly who should appear in the air
But Minnie Mouse wearing a wig of blonde hair!*
Actually, no dear readers, this is Uma,
Who travels through time like a puma,
In search of history research,
Watching events from a perch,
She receives an assignment from the head of T.O.O.T
And heads out in route"
"The scene then shifts to our rhyming villain,
Who sits in a library chilling,
Over a specific book
Of which he takes a nasty look
And carve out its pages in a literary killing."
"We see our hero Mickey Mouse
Capture Peg-Leg Pete, that awful louse
With a flying tackle so apt
He treated Pete like an opposing quarterback,
As he continues to enjoy his life
Mickey has a sense of growing strife
He fears he is being spied upon,
And the strange vibrations keep going on"
"The Rhyming Man continue to narrate
And his rhymes, while simple, are first rate!
Uma appears to Mickey and Goofy to explain the situation
Of course, the entire scenario causes quite the sensation!
She warns about the impending trigger event
Which our heroes must circumvent,
Least, the world to come
Should end up undone!"
"They navigate through Mouseton's ancient tunnels
Its twisting ways serve like a funnel
To where captured scientists are tied up with rope
Mickey, Goofy, and Uma are their last hope!
Mickey rushes at the Rhyming Man
Who continue his verse on command
He heads into the time machine
And quickly flees the scene."
"The scientists discover he has headed to the future
To rip apart the timestream like a torn suture
What will heroes do?
Find out in March with part two!"
End verse
Not too much action happened in this installment but the pieces have been laid out nicely. Uma is a spunky character and slots nicely with Mickey and Goofy without overshadowing them, as Eurasia Toft (who I greatly like) occasionally does. The Rhyming Man always livens up the party with his witty verse and Torcivia does a great handling the rhymes. The villain's opening rhyme call backs to his first-ever couplet in "Atombrella and the Rhyming Man." The art is manageable. Mazzarello's portrayal of sweat weirds me out.
And Joe, I saw the Murry Street inclusion!
The bimonthly calendar does sting when dealing with two part stories. I'm not a patient reader!
*I am generally not the biggest fan of time travel stories, which inevitably collapse upon themselves with contrived situations or inconsistent internal logic. This one seems fairly consistent - so far.
*Uma really looks like Minnie Mouse with Princess Aurora hair. It is all in the face.
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