“Mirror Mirror”

Mirror Mirror is a DuckTales fanfiction written by a fan going by “soulful-sin” (fanfiction writers usually have just the silliest name; this isn't a special case). More precisely, its appeal lies in that it is a crossover of sorts between the classic Duck universe and DuckTales 2017. 

(An unrelatd, but also very entertaining, fanmade take 

on the ‘Webby meets Webby’ premise.)

The basic plot is that the 1987 version of Webby Vanderquack is dared by the triplets to touch a creepy old mirror Scrooge has in his archives. Naturally, the mirror turns out to be a cursed artifact, which transports her to alternate dimension — a strange world where the boys have different personalities, where it's already the 21st century, and where she is herself a strong, independent adventurer rather than the meek little girl who has to stow away if she wants to go on any adventures at all with Scrooge and the boys. The mirror then gets shattered, trapping Webby in the DT17 universe, and Scrooge has to make a deal with Magica De Spell to repair it. 

The story certainly has a lot going for it. 

For one thing, all the characters, from both series, are written perfectly in-character (it's impossible not to hear Louie-17 as Bobby Moynihan or Scrooge-87 as Alan Young), and the crossover unfolds very nicely. The story manages to make you care about classic-Webby even with the other, universally-considered-more-interesting Webby running around at the same time. Both worlds are, in general, rendered very faithfully — with the irritating, borderline-inexplicable exception that Duckburg is persistently misspelled as “Duckberg”. 

Soulful-sin also tentatively takes a stab at a possible return of Lena De Spell, which may not be the most imaginative, but allows for emotional stuff between her and Webby. (For good or ill, the story has a lot of ‘emotional stuff’. No romance per se, though the author stated their love of the Webby/Lena pairing elsewhere, but just general angst.)

There are, I think, two blunders in this story's conceit, beyond the fact that the writing, while solid, is not quite of professional quality. The first is a surprising absence of the humor so essential to both DuckTales series' appeal. The second is that, forced to acknowledge DT17's Della plotline, Soulful-sin felt compelled to clarify Della's fate in the prime timeline as well, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with… anything. Not only is Family Ties ignored (which is odd, considering its very clear parallels with the DT17 story), but the Mirror Mirror version implies that Scrooge was indeed adventuring with Della around the time of the triplets' birth, a blatant DT17 contamination that in no way fits the classic timeline. 

Still, the DuckTales fanfiction community isn't exactly of Harry Potter level in scale, and we should take what we can get. Mirror Mirror is definitely on the upper end of Duck fanfiction as it exists for now, and if you've ever wondered what the two worlds crashing into each other might look like, and don't mind a healthy helping of sappy angst, it's a pleasant enough read.

Ye Olde Post-Scriptum

Three other weird decisions by Soulful-sin that I fail to understand: 17-Magica swears a lot (though it's never taken down word for word; we're just told 'she cursed', 'she said a string of very bad words Mrs Beakley certainly wouldn't approve of', etc.). Classic-Scrooge is orders of magnitude less wealthy than 17-Scrooge……er, why? And finally, there are repeated reference to this post-Shadow War story taking place in 2017, as opposed to the canonical 2018. No idea why. Since there was a Christmas episode halfway through the season, one would presume it was obvious that the year's changed, but apparently not to Soulfun-sin. 

“Storkules in Duckburg”

Well, whadayaknow? Our next review still has to do with Hercules! Kind of.

This latest episode of DuckTales 2017 isn't the best, but definitely ends up on the better side of the series' decidedly hit-and-miss episodes. Also, I'm not qualified enough to be sure (having never seen the film myself), but I think Ghostbusters enthusiasts may particularly enjoy it. The structure seems very similar.

This episode is primarily about Bobby Moynihan's Louie Duck, which I like. My ranking of the DT17 kids is probably {{Webby > Louie > Huey > Dewey}} — in a show where Scrooge's adventurousness is upped both to ape Don Rosa and to avoid accusations of excessive pro-capitalism, Louie is the one who is most often allowed to be amusingly greedy and miserly. Not that he's just Young-Scrooge, of course — he's much more of a spender and bon viveur than his great-uncle. But the point is, I like Louie. And this episode provided a good character arc for him, as he learns the realities of what being a businessman means, concretely. 

But, of course, Chris Diamantopoulos's Storkules (introduced last season in The Spear of Selene) is the other focus of the episode. He's amusing, although beyond Diamantopoulos's skillful scenery-chewing, and the repetitive gags you can squeeze out of his hero-worship of Donald, I'm not entirely sure what he brings to show that Launchpad didn't. Don't get me wrong, this repeat appearance was fun (I do believe I liked him better here than I did in Spear), but I'm undecided on the ending's implication that Storkules is going to become a semi-regular in Duckburg like Gyro or Fenton. 

It is amusing to see the gag of the Ancient Greek characters relating info through ornate jars carry on from Spear, however. I wonder if the whole thing is a direct allusion to the manner of the narration of Disney's Hercules, or if it's more-or-less-coincidental. 

And he third big thing in the episode (and I know it's all beginning to sound like a lot, but if there's one thing to say for Storkules in Duckburg, it's that it's well-written; all of this comes together very nicely) are, of course, the Harpies. Their designs seem to be a mix between Romano Scarpa's Harpies, Carl Barks's Larkies, and the DuckTales Classic redesign of the latter. 

Far from the verbose oddball-gourmets of Barks, and despite their wearing jewelry, they are here reimagined as nonsentient monsters who single-mindedly try to steal what their victims love most. It's not a bad concept for a DuckTales monster, and I'll give props to the writers for making them agents of the Gods' wrath like they were in the original myths, as opposed to independent agents… but I have two problems with this. 

The first is that, come on, you can't introduce most-prized-possession-seeking monsters into Duckburg (nay, in McDuck Manor!!) and not have them go after the Lucky Dime. The second is that, well, the chatty comic Larkies are iconic and for good reason, and this feels like another Gyro Gearloose situation — the new version's neat, but has diddly-squat to do with the equally-neat original and spoils an opportunity to see them in animation. 

Still, I did like them on their own terms, as I said; and if it had to happen to one particular Barks monster, best it be them than, say, Smorgasbord, since we did see relatively accurate Barksian Harpies in the 1987 series. 

In terms of easter-eggs and mythology-gags (on which DuckTales 2017 has always heavily rely to garner the goodwill/forgiveness of comic-fans), the sharp-eyed may notice, among the portraits in Donald's houseboat, a variation on Barks's famous Tiny-Boat Composition that we have seen iterated over and over and over with a variety of characters and backgrounds, though I'll be darned if I have any idea what it's called;

…one of Storkules's crates bears the words “Donald Fan Art” (marking what is probably the first in-universe use of the word 'fan art' in Ducklore, though I could be wrong); Cape Suzette is mentioned (though I don't know if that still counts as an easter-egg at this point); and, most importantly, the entire climax has the Harpies lift Donald's Houseboat into the air, in a repeat of what they did with the Argo in Barks's Golden Fleecing. I'm a big fan of this, being a big fan of flying boats in general. (You can blame my younger self's repeated viewings of Peter Pan and Return to Neverland.)

Another thing I'd like to note, though it's highly subjective, is that DuckTales 2017's world (call it the 2017 Continuum, Earth-17, whatever) is finally beginning to feel organic. The episode features the returns of Funso's Fun-Zone, Dewey Dew-Night, the aforementioned Cape Suzette, driving that can only be attributed to an unseen Launchpad, cameos by Miss Quackfaster, Glomgold and Officer Cabrera… and where in The Shadow War such things felt like "special winks to the audience" (hey, remember this? and this? and that thing?), here it all mostly all felt natural. Perhaps it's just time, or perhaps the screenwriters are getting better at screenwritin'; probably a little bit of both. Their treatment of Donald is certainly improving, at least, pointing towards the skill-honing hypothesis. 

Beyond that, this episode has all of DuckTales 2017's usual strengths: lively character animation, as seen in the particularly-memorable screenshot above; great voice acting all-around; witty banter. The score continues to be reliable, even if I didn't pick out any particular heights, unlike in the previous episode, The Ballad of Duke Baloney, which had one of the best soundtracks in the series yet (rivaled only, I think, by that of The Shadow War). 

Unless you find the DuckTales 2017 nephews obnoxious (in which case you'd better wait for the Scrooge-centric Christmas episode we've been promised… looks like it'll be a hoot!), I'm definitely recommending this episode. 

Mandatory Post-Scriptum:

…Does Webby look cute in her "1950's family man" outfit, or what? 

“The Most Dangerous Game Night”

(Note how skillfully I deny this title its aggravating faux-clever punctuation. I may like it overall, but DuckTales 2017 has many flaws, and the usually-terrible titles are one of them. There's been very few decent ones so far.)

So being a Duck fan, I have dutifully followed Disney's attempt at doing to the Disney Comics Unvierse what all the big boys with their superhero comics are doing to theirs — e.g., make a reboot that brings in the fans of the original but liberally changes characters and tone to draw in a fresh audience. 

DT17 is strange and occasionally-irritating, but it's very well-made, often funny, sometimes moving, and it's clear from Francisco Angones's blog that the people involve care. Unlike brave, unfortunate GeoX over at Duck Cartoons Revue, I don't have to force myself to watch new episodes. 

Case in point, the Season 2 opened that dropped in yesterday, The Most Dangerous Game Night.

This was… a weird episode to begin a new season with. For one thing, it's your standard 25-minutes fare, whereas the Season 1 pilot, the abysmally-titled Woo-oo!, was double-length. This is unfortunate, as the DuckTales 2017 writers tend to do much better with double-length episodes than regular ones — Woo-oo! and The Shadow War, to me, were probably among the best (if not the best) of Season 1, simply because the plots didn't feel quite as rushed as they usually do. 

Moreover, it hardly sets up anything at all. It has some character development for Louie, true, but that comes to a natural (and well-enacted) conclusion by the episode's close. Aside from the ill-defined monsters-of-the-week that are the Gyropuddlians, a tribe of microscopic cavemen living in McDuck Manor, the episode features only the established cast. Complete, it must be said, with Donald Duck, which bodes well for this season (as Donald was much too often absentee in the previous one). 

Speaking of the whole cast, refreshingly, the episode remembered to include Duckworth. This show's version of Duckworth, as you may recall, is a ghost, and in this episode they're drawing more on the consequences of the "ghost butler" idea than they are doing anything with Duckworth's general character… but to be fair, his brief, ghost-gags-based appearance was funny. As is his relationship with Mrs Beakley, continued from their brief interaction in his first episode. 

As for Gyro, it is necessary, if you want to get anything out of him at all, to accept that he is not Gyro in this show, but rather his evil twin-brother from another dimension. Seriously, dye his hair pink and you'd pretty much get a slightly-more-subdued Mad Ducktor.

Mad Ducktor being Gyro's very own, delightfully-insane Mr Hyde

from a series of Italian Duck Avenger adventures. Look him up. And let's hope

the (sigh) Fresh And Modern folks, somewhere in the inscrutable

recesses of their heretic skulls, find the inspiration to bring him 

to American shores while doing him justice. 

In this episode, his determination to become the God-King of the Gyropuddlians using his Micro-Phone/shrinkray is a particularly stark contrast to Gyro's attitude, never anything but kindly, towards the Microducks when he crossed their path in the DuckTales Classic episode where they appeared. But as far as this "megalomaniac mad-scientist barely held in check" character goes, the writers and actor wring a lot of humor out of him, here and elsewhere. 

Modulo the villainous tendencies, this episode even dispenses with Gyro's cool, 'snooty' Season 1 and brings back some of the joyful exuberance of his comic self. This iteration of DT17 Gyro may not be the Gyro we usually know, but it's not hard to imagine him starring in Think-Box Bollix or Hobblin' Goblins. 

…Oh, I figure I should probably say something about that opening scene. 

The Indiana Jones ripoff as Scrooge & Co. retrieve the Idol of Cibola is obviously a nod to the fact that the similar sequence in Barks's Seven Cities of Cibola inspired the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. So this adaption of the Cibola tale (albeit brief) that redesigns things to look more like their Indiana Jones counterparts is bringing things amusingly full-circle. 

Thing is, the novelty of this was largely lost on me, as it was, I think, on most other Disney comic fans. That Barks's treasure-hunt stories directly inspired Spielberg & Lucas for Indiana Jones is, I suppose, kind of cool to those who first hear it, but it is "entry-level trivia" for Disney comics afficionados, of about the same level as "Barks kept drawing scripts for Disney comics even after he retired" or "the Phantom Blot's face is meant to look like Walt Disney's……… probably?". 

Still, I suppose it will have looked clever and witty to new viewers brought to Duckdom by DuckTales 2017 and who are only now starting to catch up on their classics and the associated lore. This is a joke for which I just wasn't the intended audience.

As for the "woah — wait-what? — aaaaah!" joke that goes with it, it is, in itself, well-executed, and it furthers Louie's character arc in the episode, but… people, showing amusing self-awareness about the medium like this would work better if every single adventure story you've done so far wasn't already full of that sort of ironic self-awareness. For God's sake, on his very first adventure in Episode 1 of Season 1, Dewey was already acting casual about a "basic death-trap". 

…and that's a wrap on my review of The Most Dangerous Game Night. I'll be back soon with more.