Stories with missed opportunities

[Orora]

Talk about stories that you feel wasted their premises, or could have done more with what they had... or could have been even more awesome if they did something...

Adventures in Fantasyland: Awesome, a duck family story set in France's Euro Disney!! To celebrate the amusement park's opening at that time!

You would expect an aventure that would take advantage of the setting...

Except the story has Donald and HDL travel back in time at a medieval court, and get in a conflict with a jealous knight.

Oh come on! Show us the park!


The Trial: Scrooge McDuck is falsely accused of being "Dan The Blue", a long-wanted criminal, because he looks like him on the wanted poster. Donald and HDL need to find evidence that Scrooge is innocent, by using old recorded evidence that he was not at the same place as Dan's crimes.

They never tell what happened to the real "Dan The Blue", and in the rest of the story, he is never mentioned again.

You would expect to see him turn up again, probably very old, being arrested so he could pay for his crimes.
Or showing up as having reformed and being remorseful.
Or something related to statute of limitations.
Or something about how "Dan The Blue" lost his stolen money in a stupid accident and got caught by karma.
Or at least specify how they never caught him, and that sometimes criminals pull a DW Cooper.

Something !!


Are there some stories that kinda frustrated you like that?

[enemy1]

I felt that way with those new Marvel comics. The comics called kingdom keepers should have been better comics.

[Spectrus]

Too many to mention!

Also, anything written by Paul Halas without a co-writer. Frustrates me to no end.

And then there's inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1310-A which breaks off in the most annoying matter at the most exciting point. What the hell was Guido Martina thinking?!

[Orora]

Jun 27, 2018 8:44:48 GMT Spectrus said:

Too many to mention!

Also, anything written by Paul Halas without a co-writer. Frustrates me to no end.

And then there's inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1310-A which breaks off in the most annoying matter at the most exciting point. What the hell was Guido Martina thinking?!

Oooh, so what happens? Do tell! (you can hide it in spoiler format)

[Hyaroo]

Jun 17, 2018 18:19:16 GMT Orora said:

Talk about stories that you feel wasted their premises, or could have done more with what they had... or could have been even more awesome if they did something...

Adventures in Fantasyland: Awesome, a duck family story set in France's Euro Disney!! To celebrate the amusement park's opening at that time!

You would expect an aventure that would take advantage of the setting...

Except the story has Donald and HDL travel back in time at a medieval court, and get in a conflict with a jealous knight.

Oh come on! Show us the park!

Isn't that pretty much par for the course when it comes to comics that feature one of the Disney parks though? You'd have the opening at the park, with Donald or Mickey or Scrooge or whoever going on one of the rides or viewing one of the attractions, and then it'd segway into another time and location, usually via a "this reminds me of that time when..." flashback. 

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jul 23, 2018 9:11:53 GMT Hyaroo said:

Isn't that pretty much par for the course when it comes to comics that feature one of the Disney parks though? You'd have the opening at the park, with Donald or Mickey or Scrooge or whoever going on one of the rides or viewing one of the attractions, and then it'd segway into another time and location, usually via a "this reminds me of that time when..." flashback. 

It's often the case, but there are at least two stories where it isn't the case and they just adventure through the park (Scarpa's Adventure in Eurodisney and Pujol's The Grand Canyon Conquest!), and a few where they do stay in the park for all that the things in it as presented as "real" (the weird Goofy in Fantasyland story IDW reprinted, the Country Bears story). 

[Hyaroo]

I see I'm not quite up to speed with the Disney Parks themed comics. ^_^

[Orora]

Jul 23, 2018 9:37:06 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jul 23, 2018 9:11:53 GMT Hyaroo said:

Isn't that pretty much par for the course when it comes to comics that feature one of the Disney parks though? You'd have the opening at the park, with Donald or Mickey or Scrooge or whoever going on one of the rides or viewing one of the attractions, and then it'd segway into another time and location, usually via a "this reminds me of that time when..." flashback. 

It's often the case, but there are at least two stories where it isn't the case and they just adventure through the park (Scarpa's Adventure in Eurodisney and Pujol's The Grand Canyon Conquest!), and a few where they do stay in the park for all that the things in it as presented as "real" (the weird Goofy in Fantasyland story IDW reprinted, the Country Bears story). 

And then there is Donald and the Stowaway of Space Mountain, where Donald, Scrooge, HDL and Gyro actually visit the new "Space Mountain" ride at EuroDisney and the plot is actually set here.

One part even has the park's costumed performers helping the heroes because they know all of the world's languages! One even knows how to speak to the animatronic robots at the park (yeah...).

The comic actually came in the form of a small booklet inside the regular "Journal de Mickey" magazine.

[Lieju]

Jun 27, 2018 8:44:48 GMT Spectrus said:

Too many to mention!

Also, anything written by Paul Halas without a co-writer. Frustrates me to no end.

And then there's inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1310-A which breaks off in the most annoying matter at the most exciting point. What the hell was Guido Martina thinking?!

Haha that story does feel like he ran out of pages. Maybe it was meant to be a longer story but got cut?

As for the topic, A LOT OF STORIES. But one I recently got hold of:

inducks.org/s.php?c=D+2011-034
Flinty disguises himself and pretends to be Scrooge's business partner. Nothing interesting is done with the concept. I had wished there'd be something like that short bit in Don Rosa's 'island at the edge of time' where Scrooge disguises himself and for a second at least Glomgold really enjoys his company.
Just. I want a plot where these two have to interact without some of their preconceived notions. An amnesia plot would be ideal...

Uh. I guess I keep being annoyed over Don Rosa's The terror of the transvaal bit it's just. Eh. Really now that I'm thinking about it I can think of so many comics with Glomgold that had more potential but that is just ME.

[Spectrus]

Jul 19, 2018 9:49:27 GMT Orora said:

Jun 27, 2018 8:44:48 GMT Spectrus said:

Too many to mention!

Also, anything written by Paul Halas without a co-writer. Frustrates me to no end.

And then there's inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL+1310-A which breaks off in the most annoying matter at the most exciting point. What the hell was Guido Martina thinking?!

Oooh, so what happens? Do tell! (you can hide it in spoiler format)

Basically, Scrooge goes to Australia and gets involved in an exciting adventure. And right when you've started to get caught up in it all...

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}
...suddenly Scrooge wakes up. And it was all a dream. And the people he dreamed of don't exist, and he never met them.

Yaaaargh!!! 

[Orora]

Jul 24, 2018 20:46:14 GMT Spectrus said:

Jul 19, 2018 9:49:27 GMT Orora said:

Oooh, so what happens? Do tell! (you can hide it in spoiler format)

Basically, Scrooge goes to Australia and gets involved in an exciting adventure. And right when you've started to get caught up in it all...

SPOILER: Click to show

{Spoiler}
...suddenly Scrooge wakes up. And it was all a dream. And the people he dreamed of don't exist, and he never met them.

Yaaaargh!!! 

Goddamn, that's one of the worst clichés!! Total cop-out!!

I saw the same thing in a story that had an interesting "what-if" scenario between Mickey and Pete, and then it had a similar ending!!
I realized how cliché and stereotypical it was when I read it again as an adult!

[Hyaroo]

That's been the cop-out ending of a LOT of stories over the years, in and outside of Disney comics.

[Orora]

There is a French online cartoonist, Boulet, who once made a short comic about the worst clichés in mainstream comics. The last one he mentioned was having this sort of ending, AND having the character say something like "I shouldn't have had this heavy dish tonight!"

AND Mickey Mouse is seen saying almost the EXACT same thing in the ending of that comic I mentioned! Which is why it shocked me even more as I read it again!

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Jul 25, 2018 19:03:42 GMT Orora said:

I saw the same thing in a story that had an interesting "what-if" scenario between Mickey and Pete, and then it had a similar ending!!
I realized how cliché and stereotypical it was when I read it again as an adult!

What was the story? (At least, if it's a "what-if" scenario from the start, there's a reason the writer would have used it. It seems way weirder in the Scrooge story mentioned above, if indeed it looks like your average globe-trotting Scrooge adventure up til then.)

[Orora]

Jul 25, 2018 21:46:45 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

Jul 25, 2018 19:03:42 GMT Orora said:

I saw the same thing in a story that had an interesting "what-if" scenario between Mickey and Pete, and then it had a similar ending!!
I realized how cliché and stereotypical it was when I read it again as an adult!

What was the story? (At least, if it's a "what-if" scenario from the start, there's a reason the writer would have used it. It seems way weirder in the Scrooge story mentioned above, if indeed it looks like your average globe-trotting Scrooge adventure up til then.)

La machine à gommer les erreurs ("The mistake-erasing machine").

It is only a "what-if" story because of the plot's concept. It is not presented as a Marvel-style "what-if" in the execution.

It involves Pete using a time machine so that he switches baby Mickey and baby Scuttle, so that Mickey grows up as a criminal and Scuttle as a law-abiding citizen. Later, Pete uses the machine some more so that he grows up to become a good honest person...

And then BAM. That ending.