The Disney Adventures Archive, Part 4: On Stranger Tides

[J. B. Warner]

After looking at my shelf full of Disney Adventures magazines and frequently consulting them for Forever 16 ideas, it dawned on me that I still have a whole heck of a lot to say about the stuff within these pages. So I decided, what the hell, let's open the archive back up! My goal is to do one of these every week. It's gonna be a little awkward to resume this series, since the new forum layout cuts off wide images, but I figure you can just right-click and select "View" to see each page by itself.

To kick things off again, I chose a milestone issue - November 1991, the first anniversary issue!

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How old is this issue? Michael Jordan still had hair. Now that's old.

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The early '90s seemed to be something of a trading card boom - you could slap pretty much anything on a 2x4 inch card and call it "collectible" and kids would snap it up by the millions. There's pretty much no end to the trading card ads in this issue, as you'll see.

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What was my biggest adventure? Well, this one time, I saw a blimp.

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Michael Jordan was a pretty busy guy in 1991, to put it mildly - too busy even for a Disney Adventures interview. So I guess it's more accurate to say you're going "one on one" with his PR guys.

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Yes, before "Dancing With the Stars", before "Celebrity Boxing", before "Rachel and Guy's Celebrity Cook-Off", people were still deriving entertainment from watching famous people do things they have no idea how to do.
"Homer at the Bat" underwent a couple of rewrites between press time and when it aired the following February - instead of hooking up with Mrs. Krabappel, Jose Canseco ended up running in and out of a burning building, which I think was a lot funnier. "The dryer goes on the right."

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Actually, I think the bigger question here is "Why even watch these shows in the first place?"

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I gotta say, DA had some real cojones to do a "TaleSpin" story where Baloo and Kit get kidnapped by Nazis. And don't even try to tell me these guys aren't Nazis, I can totally tell.

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Journey to the Center of the Earth! Don't worry, neither Brendan Fraser nor Dwayne Johnson are anywhere to be seen.

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Years later, Emily Mobley's probably looking at the 127 Hours guy and thinking "Man, I could have had a movie deal! I should have chewed my leg off!"

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Man, when Sonic the Hedgehog fan art looks better than the official comics, you know you've got some problems.

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"...Then Coyote battled Roadrunner."
There's this big article in the middle about Native Americans and their history, including this sample of a Native American folk tale. I think what really sells it is the illustration of Red Feather shaking his fist in indignation. "Ooh, why if you'd come down here, I'd show you a thing or two, I tell ya!"

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Crazy Horse: the George S. Patton of the Sioux tribe. "I'm gonna personally scalp that dreamcatcher-hangin' son of a *****!"

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Then there's this comic about how the Native Americans learned to tame horses, apparently by stealing them from a couple of explorers. Well, the explorers stole the continent from them, so I guess it all balances out to about neutral.

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Is "volcano chasing" really a viable career option? As far as I know, volcanoes tend to remain fairly stationary.

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Ewwwww.

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The really big news here is the first of what would be approximately elevendy-eight-bazillion Darkwing Duck comics over the next five years. This one, though, feels less like Darkwing and more like Daffy - just try and tell me you don't get a "Duck Amuck" vibe from this.

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If your best friend is a cartoon mouse, it's time to seriously re-evaluate your life decisions.

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And the trading cards just keep on coming! "Trade you 223 Wesley Crushers for your Captain Picard."

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Weird collections? I don't know, would you call being 26 years old and owning every issue of Disney Adventures weird?

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Yes, kids, this is really what computers looked like in 1991. And "Pachookagahbinggeengazort" is pretty much what my old computer sounded like. Right before it exploded.

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Watching the greatest athletes in the world perform feats of amazing physical strength and endurance while you sit on the couch stuffing your face with M&M's? There's an irony there, to be sure.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

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"...Then Coyote battled Roadrunner."
There's this big article in the middle about Native Americans and their history, including this sample of a Native American folk tale. I think what really sells it is the illustration of Red Feather shaking his fist in indignation. "Ooh, why if you'd come down here, I'd show you a thing or two, I tell ya!"

Anybody else here read Gunnerkrigg Court? Because that made me think of this.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

I tried looking through the Gunnerkrigg Court archives once but I couldn't understand what was going on. Is it supposed to be funny, or not?

No comment on how non-canonical that Sonic comic is?

Darkwing did make me think of Daffy (or at least Plucky) when I first saw that comic. "Un momento while I adjust my accoutrements!" is perfect Daffy dialogue.

 

[J.E.Smith]

No comment on how non-canonical that Sonic comic is?
.

Well back when Sonic 1 first came out that was actually Sega of America's short-lived back story for Sonic. Course, it was quickly forgotten, espically after Archie and SatAM came around. However, that backstory did live on in the UK Sonic comic series, which stuck with it for its entire run. I also remember that Sega of America still had that backstory posted on their website well into the late 90s up until Sonic Adventure came out.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

Well back when Sonic 1 first came out that was actually Sega of America's short-lived back story for Sonic. Course, it was quickly forgotten, espically after Archie and SatAM came around. However, that backstory did live on in the UK Sonic comic series, which stuck with it for its entire run. I also remember that Sega of America still had that backstory posted on their website well into the late 90s up until Sonic Adventure came out.

But it really doesn't work. The explanation the comic gives for collecting the rings in the game is that they were the components that made up the machine that turned Kintobor into Robotnik. So why are you collecting rings in any other game? Do you have to rebuild the machine 20 times in a row? And if he was trying to rebuild the machine, why wouldn't Sonic try to change Robotnik back in the game instead of take emeralds from him? It doesn't work. It matches nothing in the game or any game afterward. It's like they never played it.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

I tried looking through the Gunnerkrigg Court archives once but I couldn't understand what was going on. Is it supposed to be funny, or not?

I think of it as Harry Potter meets Hayao Miyazaki. Has its serious and funny moments.

Is "aawwhhiiirrrraakkiizz" a better noise for a machine to make than "pachookagahbinggeengazort"?

...Michael Jordan had HAIR?

 

[J.E.Smith]

But it really doesn't work. The explanation the comic gives for collecting the rings in the game is that they were the components that made up the machine that turned Kintobor into Robotnik. So why are you collecting rings in any other game? Do you have to rebuild the machine 20 times in a row? And if he was trying to rebuild the machine, why wouldn't Sonic try to change Robotnik back in the game instead of take emeralds from him? It doesn't work. It matches nothing in the game or any game afterward. It's like they never played it.

It also didn't help that Sega of America had little to no access to the Japanese backstory so they had to make up their own.

To be fair though Peter, when the UK Sonic comic used the backstory, they had it that the rings were already scattered around like they were in the games, and Kintobor gathered some to help power the machine. Once it exploded, only the Chaos Emeralds were scattered, and there was no talk of collecting rings to rebuild the machine there. They even did a solution to why there were only six Emeralds in the backstory, because when Sonic 3 came out they explained that it was on the Floating Island with Knuckles the whole time.

 

[eyelion]

Could you please upgrade or Photobucket Plus, or perhaps reupload the images for Part One and Two someplace else? The bandwidth ran out on those, apparently, because I'm seeing placeholder images that say "Upgrade to Plus for additional bandwidth".
I only JUST found these threads, and darn it, the images went away before I could delve into it. Help?

 

[TenPoundHammer]

J.B., I have July 1998 on up. Any chance I can return as alternate archivist?

 

[Peter Paltridge]

J.B., I have July 1998 on up. Any chance I can return as alternate archivist?

He's had computer troubles lately, so he might not be able to respond. But for that reason alone, I'm sure he'd be fine with it.

 

[TenPoundHammer]

October 1998. First one out of the box that wasn't already done. Yay.

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More silly "Who would win, X or Y?" Coming up next, Jake Long vs. Juniper Lee! (My money's on the Te Xuan Ze.)

Also, Peter, you were close. Sabrina gets turned into a pig, not a frog.

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Left: I thought for sure that it was already "Nesquik" by 1998, but apparently not.

Right: Iguanas are "hot", huh? Niagara Falls must have a lot of FoxTrot fans.

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October 1998, I was on my second month of the four most hellish years of my life, AKA high school. I can totally sympathize with Peter's school plights.

As for October 24, I have no idea why I think bats are so cool. (I think Batty from Fern Gully is to blame.) Personally, my favorite species is the bat-otter. (Okay, enough Juniper Lee references.)

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Left: Boring interview with Hilary Duff. Thumbs-up for the Eagles reference underneath, though.

Right: I was always awful at logical thinking, so whenever one of these mysteries came up, I always wanted to come up with a joke answer, but I lacked the wit to do so. And I say that she knew Salem was hunting a snack because there were mouse guts all over the floor, and Salem dropped the mouse's hindquarters right in front of her.

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I have to wonder how a 13 year old wouldn't know how Gidget talks. I was 11 in 1998 (I skipped a couple grades), and I knew not only how Gidget talked, but also who was doing the voice. (ETA: I thought for sure Carlos Alazraqui voiced the GEICO gecko too, but apparently I'm wrong.)

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Speaking of dogs, I clearly need to brush up on my Disney, because Lady and Pongo are the only two on the left that I recognize.

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Left: After a three-page interview, we get a bit of a glimpse into how Mary-Kate and Ashley are different despite being twins. What do you expect, people? They're twins, not clones. Although I have to give them props for being possibly the only two teenage girls in 1998 who didn't like Hanson or the Backstreet Boys.
Right: Even this far back, I was long under the impression that Scooby-Doo was being beaten into the ground.

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A peek into the new live-action TV shows we were getting this fall. I always wanted to get into the Animorphs books as a kid, but never did for some reason. I hear the TV show was abysmal.

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Okay, for all the duds in this list, they did nail Charmed. I guess there really was a market for more than one witch-based show.

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Left: It's funny how some of my memories of Nickelodeon tend to be its most obscure properties. With cartoons, it's The Brothers Flub, which not even Wikipedia acknowledged the existence of until 2008, and with the live-actions, it's Cousin Skeeter.
Right: I was going to make a joke about D. L. Hughley, but that's actually him. Funny how the blurb doesn't mention that.

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Left: Speaking of Wikipedia articles, the one for One World is about two sentences long, which I believe speaks volumes on how forgotten this show is.
Right: Hey, that's cheating! You already gave those guys the cover story!

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And finally, yet another freakin' Hercules show. I'm surprised someone didn't try to combine these two obvious trends into Hercules the Witch. (As for how a man can also be a witch… well, have any of you seen SheZow yet?)

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Jackie Chan gets an interview too. But I think the most interesting part is how many bones he's broken. (My broken bone count, as of this writing? Zero.) This is probably one of the only times you'll see the word "breast" in Disney Adventures.

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After some boring sports stuff, we get this multiple-choice test on sports terms. I think the gag answers would be better if the art didn't give them away as such, although the one for "middle relief" is pretty funny.

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Left: Wow, that orange female cat kinda snuck past the censors, didn't she?
Right: The alien on the right is saying, "I TOLD you not to use Apple's iOS 6 Maps app!"

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I always hated these Eye Bogglers, because I could never identify what they were. Sometimes they were really arcane, too. One in another issue was "windshield cleaning fluid outlet", whatever the flying hell that is.

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I just wanted to scan this because Pinky and the Brain are two of the choices. Narf!

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And this Hercules comic, I scanned entirely so I could say "I'm drinking Rolling Rock on the Roll 'n Rocker!"

Next is a "Doug" comic that's marginally amusing at first. He finds Judy's diary, full of nonsense phrases like "the sneezing man has a mustache of feathers", and starts Freudian slipping the nonsense phrases until he finally fesses up to Judy. She says, "You're one of the muddled masses! They never understand! I Was worried about some deep thinker reading it!" and he replies, "I do so understand, except [everything that he read]". So he writes in his own journal that he will respect others' privacy, and find out what the "muddled masses" are.

I think it would've been funnier if the nonsense phrases were revealed to actually be something insignificant like "I got Final Jeopardy! right tonight", "My toenails are getting long", or "I prefer Billy West to Tom McHugh".

And after that, a boring Timon & Pumbaa comic. These guys were made for comedy; you'd think they'd get something good out of them.

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And finally, just one more reminder that I hated Toaster Strudels. The things made me sick every time I ate them.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

So many forgotten shows. "Shirley Holmes"? I had no idea Hercules had a Fox Kids spinoff. Animorphs is back on the air, though -- it's on Qubo.

1) Buffy is certainly not defenseless without her stake; 2) she can easily make a new one by snapping the leg off a chair or anything else wooden; 3) Sabrina would turn her into a pig anyway. Or maybe they wouldn't fight, who knows.

Lady -- Tramp, Pongo -- Cruella, Nana -- Peter Pan, Dodger -- Tito, Chance -- Shadow (the last ones are from Homeward Bound). Did it without looking.

 

[TenPoundHammer]

^ Apparently Fox didn't hang on to Shirley for very long, but it fared better on YTV in Canada.

Also, I apologize for the stupid things I said about Animaniacs in the last thread.

 

[Kitschensyngk]

Oh, jeez, another code?

Top to bottom, left to right:
ARE WE THERE YET?
DO YOU HAVE A MAP? WE NEED TO GET TO CHICAGO. (had trouble, the picture was all blurry in the middle)
IS THAT YOUR PET?

Are those punchlines?

 

[TenPoundHammer]

Oh, jeez, another code?

Top to bottom, left to right:
ARE WE THERE YET?
DO YOU HAVE A MAP? WE NEED TO GET TO CHICAGO. (had trouble, the picture was all blurry in the middle)
IS THAT YOUR PET?

Are those punchlines?

Why do you think I added my own punchline?

 

[TenPoundHammer]

March 2005. Yay.

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Mostly a decent cover, but why did they plop a tiny pic of Rufus right in the middle?

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Our first ad is for the Winx Club. Believe it or not, this blast of fairy girlishness is still on the air. Who's watching it?!

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This ad was the very reason I chose this issue. Yes, that's a Peter Pan adaptation by the same Dave Barry who used to write for the Miami Herald. As the man himself would say, "I am not making this up."

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Left: I would say that Rayne's looking in the wrong place, since Pokémon isn't a Disney property, but they sure as heck wrote about Pokémon a whole lot.

I wonder if Jasmine could ever figure out the Eye Bogglers?

Also, Josiah, I hope you never cross paths with J.B.

Right: When I first got into Sonic (mainly via the comics, since I'm not a gamer), I must've seen that same stock image of Sonic smirking about eleventy billion times. And that was before I went on DeviantART and saw eleventy billion amateur artists tracing and/or recoloring said image.

Also, Sonic on one page, Pikachu on another. I'd make a Sonichu joke, but those were done to death years ago.

Finally, I love the Big Daddy Roth-esque envelope-on-wheels at the top there.

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Okay, Deoxys making his debut in the movie? That's cool. But freakin' Munchlax… not so much. (Told you these guys write about Pokémon a lot.) Also, am I the only one who finds Munchlax kinda creepy?

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Left: Dear Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends: I'm sorry I didn't watch Cartoon Network at any point during your run. Really, really, really sorry.

Right: The stars of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody get the same "ZOMG TWINS AREN'T SO ALIKE AFTER ALL!" tropes that the Olsen twins were subject to. Note that Cole's favorite show at age 13 was Family Guy. Takes me back to the times when 10-year-old me would stay up late to watch South Park…

Also, Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson get a mini-interview for the Peter book. I love how even in the span of five sentences, Dave is still in full-on Dave Barry mode.

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Left: And because one girly fantasy cartoon from Italy wasn't enough, we get our second in W.I.T.C.H. I actually saw a graphic novel of this show up at Goodwill a couple months ago and almost bought it out of curiosity. "Teamwork is the ultimate power" does not give me high hopes, though…

Right: "A six letter word. The clue is: He's very likely to slip you a mickey." "DISNEY!" "It's the crossword game you've played all your life, but never quite like this!" "SCRABBLE!"

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The puzzle section is the same crap I could've breezed through when I was eight. First off, an "I" spy with a Lilo & Stitch scene. The Finding Nemo word search is actually kind of inspired, at least. It's followed by puzzles pertaining to Pirates of the Caribbean, Freaky Friday, The Incredibles, and W.I.T.C.H.…

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…and probably the toughest puzzle I've ever seen, as you can tell by the toughness rating of "Brain Boggler". But they have to make it ultra-tough because it's a contest.

Chicken Little, That's So Raven, and Lizzie McGuire. The answers for all the puzzles except the Kim Possible one are printed RIGHT-SIDE UP on pages 38 and 39.

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Next is a "cool pet" contest. Other than this dog being not very cool at all, not a bad start…

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…but some of these questions are just a joke. Cockatiels as "best hair"? Mice, flying squirrels, and hermit crabs "pulling a Lassie"? Four obviously made-up song titles as "Best song from a pet's point of view"? Donkey and Puss in Boots as "pets"?

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Next, in another display of promoting someone else's work, Chris Wedge gets an interview pertaining to Robots. I have a friend who said that it and Rio were the only two Blue Sky films that she liked. Rio is still popular, and Robots is relegated to the $5 bin at Kmart. Wonder what that means.

After that, 10 kids ask gaming "mysteries" that I don't care about, one of which is "Why doesn't Sonic confess his love to Amy Rose?" Their answer is "because he's too shy", but I'm sure they also would've accepted "because Sonic's not meant to be paired with anyone" or "because we wanted to see how long the shipping wars would rage on". And in a bizarre bit of recursion, question #7 is actually "How can I submit a question to you guys?"

ESPN gets a few pages of "action", including a 3-page cartoon so boring I won't bother scanning it.

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Left: I actually kinda liked these Bubble Tape ads. Which is weird, considering I don't like gum.

Right: I scanned this puzle, because it was illustrated by Ron Barrett, the same guy who drew Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. I remember seeing a lot of Ron Barrett in late-90s Cracked and Games magazine, of all places.

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Another stupid "Who Would Win", and the connection is most tenuous of all: two random characters named Bob. Hey, my name's Bobby, why not throw me in there?

Seriously, was it that hard to find some pair of characters with something more in common than their name? Pinky & the Brain vs. Gary the Rat (speaking of characters voiced by Kelsey Grammer) would be a more logical match-up than this.

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Left: Another set of ads I liked but never knew why: Don Hertzfeldt's ads for Pop-Tarts.

Right: I usually liked the Hair Pair, but this isn't one of their better efforts.

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A Pirates of the Caribbean comic? Be still my heart. Something tells me this is a serious case of Adaptation Decay. Pretty good art for a latter-day DA comic, though.

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Left: Another Gorilla Gorilla comic, just to tick off the masses. This guy's a decent artist, but he really can't write. Nor does he realize that Comic Sans was grossly overused even in 2004.

Right: This Kim Possible comic is four pages long, and it even stars the winner of a contest. But it still hinges entirely on Rufus being a naked mole rat. Seriously, did the people who wrote these comics later go on to create Almost Naked Animals?

Also… Dear Kim Possible: I'm sorry I didn't watch Disney Channel at any point during your run. Really, really, really sorry.

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Society of Horrors is another "Hey, it's that artist!" moment for me, as I saw Rick Geary a few times in Mad in the late 1990s. He once did a horribly confusing history comic that made no sense to me, and still doesn't nearly 15 years later. That said, I do like his art style a lot.

The purple guy loses the top half of his head, but it turns out that it was embedded in the ceiling. Kind of a "meh" joke, but I like the payoff — it cuts to the next day, where the three are watching a movie, and holding onto the top of his head so it doesn't fly off again.

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Some of the later issues had these Matt Feazell comics of the Disney Adventures staff doing wacky stuff after hours. I've met Matt twice at a con in Flint, and he's a swell guy who does some fine work. After it is a "Cool new tricks for your pets!" comic that I won't bother scanning because it sucks.

The last ad is for a Campbell's promo where you could win your own private island. I have to wonder about the specifics, since I'm sure your "own island" was less "Mackinac Island" and more "the tiny island that people always got stranded on in Far Side comics".

 

[Erased Paper]

…and probably the toughest puzzle I've ever seen, as you can tell by the toughness rating of "Brain Boggler". But they have to make it ultra-tough because it's a contest.

The word is "accomplished".

 

[Peter Paltridge]

Our first ad is for the Winx Club. Believe it or not, this blast of fairy girlishness is still on the air. Who's watching it?!

That shouldn't be too hard to figure out as all seven viewers of it post on TZ regularly. W.I.T.C.H. wasn't that bad. Winx was ripping off W.I.T.C.H. but it came to America first, and so it gained longevity while the original never found success out of Italy. W.I.T.C.H. was also continuity-heavy and had well-drawn characters, while Winx looks like a big pile of vomit. Don't ask me why little girls picked the one they did, I don't get them.

Nani is eating spaghetti on the beach. Who does that?

 

[TenPoundHammer]

Nani is eating spaghetti on the beach. Who does that?

Or broccoli or sushi, for that matter.

 

[Peter Paltridge]

GCD :: Cover :: Disney Comic Zone #[2]

Disney Adventures may be gone, but Comics Zone is still around. They're still printing these every once in a while.