“The Woes of a Shopping Supervillain”

So is this the “much better Disney comic than My Second Million” that I mentioned in that review? Eh… maybe. To be honest, when I wrote that promise into the post, I had made a resolve to review some good Disney comic, just to wash the foul taste off my mouth; I didn't have any particular story in mind. This will do. (The title is mine, and more of a placeholder than anything else. I know it's not that good, okay? Still, it, too, will do. …I have to think up a lot of these not-too-awful titles when I create pages for untitled stories on the $crooge McDuck Wiki, so let's all hope I'm not too terrible at it as I feel like I am.)

This is, more than anything else, a reaction to GeoX's year-and-a-half-years-old review of Romano Scarpa's The Blot's Double Mystery, where he contrasted Scarpa's “dignified” treatment of Merril De Marris and Floyd Gottfredson's hooded mastermind with the supposedly slapdash, devil-may-care attitude of American comics in the same period. To this end, he called up this one-pager. 

Now, that one-pager is, yes, freaking awful for a Phantom Blot story. The Blot is supposed to be a sinister criminal mastermind with inscrutable motives. None of that comes across above; the joke would be fine with most any other Disney comic villain (though it would work best, in my opinion, if it was Pete trying to imitate Mickey), but A), the Blot is not some insecure shmuck who'd have to prove ot himself that he can whirl a lasso as well as a random cowboy just because he came across said cowboy in the street; B), the Blot is scarily competent at everything he does, and it goes against everything that makes him memorable for him to be done in by his own clumsiness. 

But I think GeoX cherry-picked his example very egregiously. First, it's kind of sneaky to pick an inside-cover one-pager, since even Carl Barks's Scrooge inside-cover-one-pagers often do things with everyone's favorite feathered plutocrat that don't quite gel with his usual characterization. But even setting that aside… sure, few of the vintage American PB comics were masterpieces, but they were usually much better than this. 

Therefore I call to the stand another more-or-less-randomly-selected PB one-pager (this is from Issue 6 of his solo comic series from the 1960's). 

First things first, it's funny; certainly funnier than the earlier story, because the moment you bring a lasso into a slapstick one-pager, you kinda know what's gonna happen, whereas here—testing pens? Huh? The page really can keep you guessing. So the punchline works more smoothly. 

And it also demonstrates a much better grasp of the Blot and his personal mythos: the conceit of the gag is in fact to wonder precisely how it is that the Blot produces those splotches of ink that form his calling card, since getting a pen to blot in real life on purpose isn't all that easy. Though I imagine it might be somewhat funny, in an absurd way, to someone who only knows that the Phantom Blot's nickname is “the Blot”, it really draws most of its comic effect from knowledge of the Blot's calling card, which isn't restated here. Therefore, hurrah for continuity! 

Furthermore, while the Blot's peculiar manners are essential to the comedy, this doesn't come at the cost of making him bumbling and incompetent, as in the previous one-pager — though it'd be a stretch to call his presence here “threatening”. After all, his demand seems incomprehensible to the salesperson above, but it's not actually stupid or insane from the reader's point of view, since we know precisely why the Blot would need such a thing. So, hurrah again, this time for not making your criminal mastermind an idiot!

Add to this some lovely art from Paul Murry (I.N.D.U.C.K.S. sadly does not know who wrote the thing), and you have proof positive that even in comedic one-pagers, the Americans of yore absolutely could get the Blot right and maintain his dignity. I'll grant you that Darkenblot or The Big Fall, this is not. But that doesn't mean it's not a lot of fun to read. 

Post-Scriptum: 

• Reading this, I come to realize how good a pastiche Joe Torcivia's childhood-fancomic-turned-background-gag, where the Blot, robbing a museum, ended up lingering too long in front of an exhibit of Victorian Ink Blots and getting nabbed by Chief O'Hara as a result, and which he imagined as another inside-cover one-pager for The Phantom Blot, would have been. It was already a pretty neat gag in itself, but further kudos still, Joe!

• Did you notice the saleswoman is a human? Albeit a four-fingered one. You rarely see those in Mouse Disney comic, unless they're a “crossover character” like Madam Mim or Grimhilde. 

• Why yes, the above coloring of the (originally black-and-white) one-pager is by me. Never say I am not devoted to giving the readers of this blog a thorough, lush artistic experience.