#i have always been so intrigued by those giant gummy bears

[doyousee-january]

DuckTales 2017: oh, the nostalgia

Early 1991. A nine year old girl gets home from school and catches the last 5 minutes of Gummi Bears before sitting on the couch and watching DuckTales, Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers, and TaleSpin. After dinner (and hopefully after homework is done), the girl sits on her bed and reads the latest issue of “Disney Adventures,” featuring Weird Al and Launchpad McQuack on the cover.

This girl was me. As a child of the 80s and early 90s, I grew up with the Disney Afternoon, with each year taking off one show and adding another. I remember introducing my best friend to TaleSpin. I remember thinking how awesome Gargoyles was.

That’s why when I heard that they were rebooting DuckTales, with an art style that makes you think of old comic books, I was really intrigued. I mean, look at these images (no spoilers from for the new episode. All these images can be found in the promo stuff.)

Totally makes you think of old comics, right?

Anyway, the new Ducktales premiered today on Disney XD (and is running for 24 hours, so everyone has a chance to watch it.) It can also be watched on the Disney XD app (for free!), even if you don’t have cable, which is how I’m on my third (fourth?) watch through. For research! 

So, since this post is about the nostalgia that this new series brings us children of the 90s, under the cut will be a few things that appear in the pilot that are definite callbacks to that older time.

There’s the mention of Cape Suzette, Spoonerville, and St. Canard. As one who watched the Disney Afternoon, all three of those places rang a bell to me. Cape Suzette was the location of TaleSpin, Spoonerville was the location of Goof Troop, and St. Canard was the location of Darkwing Duck. Does that mean these other towns (along with the characters who live there) are in the same universe? Does this open up the potential for those characters to show up in Duckburg? I’ve always wanted Webby and Gosalyn to meet.

(Side note, all of these places have been connected before. In the “Disney Adventures” magazine, there was a five part comic that spanned across the different cartoons of the Disney Afternoon. The crossover included TaleSpin, Chip N Dale’s Rescue Rangers, Goof Troop, DuckTales and Darkwing Duck. Now I kind of want to reread this story. I’ll have to see if we still have those issues of “Disney Adventures.”)

We briefly get to see (as seen in the third image above) Webby’s doll Quacky-Patch. The Webby of the original series was never without her doll. The Webby of this series... has Quacky-Patch pinned to the wall with an arrow. Maybe that’s part of their way of saying, “hey, this Webby isn’t the cutesy girl with her girl stereotypes like the one of old.”

Then, in the “wing of secrets,” we see items pertaining to old adventures in the original series.There’s the giant gold coin from “The Treasure of the Golden Suns” serial that was the series premiere for the original series. There’s the lamp from  DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp, the theatrical movie that was based off the show. Finally, there’s the head of Armstrong, the robot that can do anything that goes rogue in the episode of the original series “Armstrong.”

I didn’t notice that many other callbacks, other than Scrooge saying that he made it by being “tougher than the toughies and smarter than the smarties” which was in both the old comics and the old show.

But hopefully we’ll have more little Easter Eggs in the upcoming episodes. And even if we don’t, I’m looking forward to what this show has for fans, both old and new.

[ghozt1ng-blog]

Mysteries of the Q Files

Chapter 1: Unwanted Fieldtrip

Getting a private tour of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's headquarters in Washington D.C. would be a treat for a anyone, unless you happened to be Trick and the person giving you the tour was your own mother. Trick’s forehead stuck to the passenger window as he stared drearily at the trees and buildings zipping by. His mother spoke up in a clipped tone.

“Don’t do that Patrick! You’ll get smudges all over the window. Do you want to give the car a thorough cleaning tonight?”

Trick grunted and pulled back from the window, using the sleeve of his shirt to try and wipe away the foggy grease stain. He did not want to look at his mother right now. She was, after all, the one who was dragging him to work with her. It was her fault that he was in the car! She shouldn’t be allowed to complain!

Well… That wasn’t entirely true. He had just gotten himself suspended for the second time this year. It was seventh since he had been in high school, and he was just a junior. He was going for the record! Trick grinned a little at his reflection in the window. This last stunt had been beautifully complex and they couldn’t even 100% pin it on him this time. The look of the principle with a plunger glued to his face had been priceless!

Trick had fed his friend Joel a nasty concoction of chili, military grade cheese, and some sugar free gummy bears before he went to his teacher’s assistant job at the front office. There he had unloaded the ultimate payload in the office bathroom. After Joel was hauled out by the nurse, the principal had tried in vain to unclog the toilet. Trick had just happened on by and seeing the right state of the situation and the poor state of the plunger had volunteered to grab another. The second one he borrowed from the janitor he coated with Gorilla Glue and then “tripped” as he had handed it to the principal. How was he supposed to know it would seal to his face that quickly? Or that it was just about as nasty as the one Joel’s payload had sullied so spectacularly?

They had never figured out that Joel’s food and explosive diarrhea was part of the plan. The added assault on a student might have earned him an expulsion. But what did he really care anyway? High school was a boring game of popularity and trying to beat everyone out with the best grades. Everyone always said it was so complicated and that no one could ever understand. Nonsense. It was merely a game with simple rules, but hundreds of ways to implement said rules. Once Trick had learned that, it was a matter of observation and the right kind of devil-may-care grin to navigate the whole mess.

The absurdity of the whole situation, school, the plunger, and the suspension caused Trick to chuckle a little. It was not lost on his mother however. She gave him a sharp look and said, “I know that you find all of this very funny Patrick, but seriously! There are consequences for your actions! If you have any sense whatsoever, you will see that when we get to the office.”

Trick didn’t say a thing, but just reclined his seat and looked up dully at the gray roof of the car. His mother hoped against all hope that seeing brilliant men and women like himself incarcerated for their mischief would help him to straighten up. Fat chance of that happening. His games and pranks were all that gave him excitement and meaning in his otherwise mundane life. If high school was the apex to life, it was a boring and pointless one. The game had lost its savor half way through his sophomore year and had not gotten any better.

“Please put your seat back. We’re almost there, and I don’t want you getting flagged for looking suspicious.”

Trick threw his mother an angry look and she responded with a withering one of her own. He sighed and put up his chair.

“Honestly, mom, I don’t know why you are doing this.”

“You know very well,” she snapped. “Your father can’t watch you and maybe coming with me might just get some sense into that thick skull of yours! Think about your future for once and that getting suspended does not help!”

Trick knew she was right on that account, but he didn’t want to agree with her at the moment. She gave his mom a sideways glance of contempt. Agent Susan Brown, Trick’s mother, was a well built, towering woman with her blonde hair trimmed into a neat pixie cut. Very utilitarian for her work. She was a top marksman and savvy field agent. One thing Trick knew he got from his mother was her sense of awareness and quick thinking. He probably also got his athleticism from her. She would have been out in the field right now busting up some cartel guys, serial killers, or domestic terrorists had it not been for some vicious Bureau politics a year back that stuck with her the Q Files.

Now Agent Brown languished in a joke of a department that worked on unexplainable cases and basically dabbled in conspiracy theories. She almost never left headquarters these days, but Trick was certain she was still as skillful an agent as she ever was. He could admire her perseverance. Personally, he would have made the lives of those who tried to screw him over a living hell.

They approached the J. Edgar Hoover building and attempted to find some parking. The giant, off white building did not look like the kind of place that housed some of the nation’s top minds and agents, but that was probably a good thing. Trick had learned that most people thought that the FBI was stationed at Langley, which by contrast seemed to invite attacks and intrigue so that they could keep cranking out more Bourne movies.  

Trick’s mother quickly located a parking spot and he followed his mother into the large building. Once they got past security, Agent Brown led her son through a veritable maze of cubicles and pillars to corridor somewhat to the back of the building. This took them to another maze of cubicles and eventually set of offices stuffed in a corner, almost like an afterthought. On a fading plaque, placed as though someone wanted people to miss it, read the title Office of the Q Files. Little comics and stickers that all made fun of conspiracies and dumb government officials adorned the rest of the doors and the thresholds.

As they entered a door at the very corner, Trick entered a squashed office, overflowing with papers and haphazard filing cabinets. There at two of three desks sat Agents Miles and Conturbatio, the latter usually referred to as the Sphinx. Stacey Miles was an attractive, young agent with her brown hair in elaborate braid and stylish glasses on her face. Howard “Sphinx” Conturbatio was a taller, middle aged man with a proud nose and piercing green eyes. The rest of his face though gave off the impression that he was perpetually bored.

“Susan, good to see you this morning,” Agent Miles beamed.

“Another exhilarating day of rifling through papers and files,” Sphinx said. “I left a pile on your desk to sort through. We have to determine whether or not the new pesticides used in Wisconsin are causing people to act more erratically than usual. Oh, hello there Patrick.”

“Susan, is that your son? He’s a handsome boy,” Miles gushed.

Trick felt himself go a little hot around the collar, despite himself. He had seen the Sphinx before,the man had joined his family for dinner once. The guy was like Fox Mulder come to life, obsessed with the paranormal and determined to prove it. Trick’s father thought him insane. Stacey Miles wasn’t much better; she was an avid conspiracy theorist and a bit of an airhead. Trick’s mother was essentially there to keep these two grounded in reality as best she could. A task she rarely complained about.

The Sphinx reached for some extra files and said, “Patrick, how about you help us out? If we get done quickly, maybe we’ll find some good place to eat out for lunch. What do you say?”

Trick backed away a step and said, “That’s sounds fantastic. Uh… I need to get a drink and go to the bathroom first. Can you point the way?”

His mom shot him a look that said if he was not back in five minutes he was a dead man, as Stacey pointed and said, “By the hallway where you came in is the bathroom and a coffee table is not too far from there, too.”

“Thanks,” Trick said hurriedly as he almost dashed away. Crap! I did not want to come here! And now on top of makeup work they are going to have me sifting through boring paperwork as well? Nice going mom...

He was so caught up in his disgruntled thoughts that he was not paying attention to where he was going and collided head on with two somethings.