Duck the Halls: A Mickey Mouse Christmas Special

After a little break (about half a year now) from the animated Mickey Mouse series, we got a Christmas special earlier this month. Originally intended to be a short episode in the main series [Huffington Post interview] this episode was instead developed as an extended 21 minute special. I haven’t heard any official confirmations about a new season of shorts, but they are working on another Halloween special for an October 2017 release.

In this special episode we learn that Disney ducks also migrates south to warmer climate during the winter. When Mickey, Goofy and Minnie starts to prepare for Christmas, Donald decides to stay with them to experience the holidays – leaving Daisy to travel south by herself. One interesting thing to note is that Huey, Dewey and Louie are not together with Donald when they are about to travel – instead they are already present down south with Uncle Scrooge when Daisy arrive.
 

Scrooge, Huey, Dewey, Louie, Daisy and Ludwig taking a bath

Also present down south is Gus Goose. I think this is the first time we’ve seen him in the new Mickey Mouse series. His character design looks closer to the "classic" look seen in old animation and in the comics than the rest of the gang.

Gus Goose

There are a lot of other interesting things to note in this special too. We get a flashback scene with Mickey as a kid and Pluto as a pup.
 

Mickey as a kid and Pluto as a pup

We also see the house Mickey lived in as a kid, with a silhouette of Mickey’s parents.

We don’t get to see their faces, but we see them again as a silhouette together with the rest of the family.
 

Mickey's family

And we also get the names of some (to now) unknown family members.

Mickey's family (click to enlarge)

If you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick's movie The Shining you might recognize the twins.
 

The Twins

There are also several references to old Disney cartoons. The horses in Duck the Halls are modeled after the horses in Once Upon a Wintertime (1948/1954)

The toy soldiers are modeled after the ones in Babes in Toyland (1961).
 

Santa Claus looks like he’s modeled after the Santa in Santa’s Workshop (1932).
 

And there's a cameo appearance of Bambi and Thumper on the ice, a reference to the ice skating sequence in the Bambi movie (1942).
 

We also see Mickey and Donald on the ice, a scene that is not directly referring to, but might be inspired by the 1935 short On Ice
 

And is this a Darkwing Duck reference??
 

Anyone spotted any interesting references I missed?

Mickey's debut in the Derby Daily Telegraph

From the Derby Daily Telegraph, March 17, 1930

The first daily strip serial with Mickey Mouse started March 17, 1930 in the British Derby Daily Telegraph. Only two months after the first American print, it might be one of the first British newspapers to have the Mickey strips.

Before the first comic strip, the newspaper was advertising the adventures of Mickey and his wife Minnie for more than a week.

From the Derby Daily Telegraph, March 8, 1930

In the same newspaper as the first strip, they also got a little bonus comic on the last page. Probably made by a local illustrator they got the adventures of Mickey Taxed, "with apologies to the creator of Mickey Mouse". I'm not sure if the caricature comic is referring to a recent event or just generally to the Great Depression and economic situation at the time. But the person on the last panel is probably a caricature of a politician (didn't manage to find out who).
 

From the Derby Daily Telegraph, March 17, 1930

Duck Avenger #2 from IDW

Duck Avenger #2 - all cover variants

This month we got the 3rd issue of Duck Avenger, or #2 as the cover say (the first issue was #0).

After getting to know the time travelling villain Red Raider in last issue, the Evronians are now back again!
 

From IDW's Duck Avenger #0 and #2

And if you read issue #0 you might remember the short intro taking place on another planet, ending with the silhouette of an unknown person. We get the continuation of this backstory in #2, and get to know who this person is.
 

Yeowch!

The story in issue #2 is mostly just introducing Xadhoom. After a bit of a bumpy start, the Duck Avenger and Xadhoom soon find out they have a common interest.
 

Xadhoom and Duck Avenger

Having read ahead in this series, I know this is not the last we have seen of her – and the story about her people is far from over. There are some really great storylines with Xadhoom to look forward to, so this month's story is just the start.

Mickey's Craziest Adventures

When I first heard about the French publisher Glénat's project to publish Disney albums with local artists, I didn't think I'd ever see an English translation! So out of curiously I almost got the French albums this spring. But when IDW announced at Emerald City Comic Con that they were doing the series too, I figured I'd wait for an edition I could actually read. Well, now the wait is over and I finally got hold of a copy.

 

I knew the book was going to be in hardcover an a bit larger than usual comics – but when I got it in my hands it was a lot larger than I expected! The comics are also printed on thick paper and the production quality is really great!

Here is a size comparison to the last issue of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories:

Mickey's Craziest Adventures is not just a comic adventure story; there is a "story" behind the story too. The intro tells how comic writer Lewis Trondheim and artist Nicolas Keramidas found an incomplete set of the forgotten comic series Walt Disney's Comics and Stories: Mickey's Quest at a garage sale.
 

The cover of two "discovered" comics from the 60's

Wanting to share the rare serial Mickey's Caziest Adventures "Lewis worked hard to adapt the humor of these masterpieces as best he could" while Keramidas made a new cover. And the actually story is supposedly facsimile copies from the discovered comics (of course it's not – the entire story is written by Lewis and drawn by Keramidas). I thought this was a fun and creative way of making a story, but the part about Lewis adapting the story sounds a bit silly for this edition. As it's a translation from French with American dialogue – that wouldn't have been necessary if the French dialogue adaptation (by Lewis) was from discovered comics in English…

As the "discovered" run of comics was incomplete, we do get time gaps in the story, and part of the story is missing. The story starts with Chapter 2, 4, 7, 8, 10 etc. while the in-between parts are "lost".  But the story works fine without those parts. Each page is also its own gag page even if all are parts of the same adventure story.
 

To get an old feel of the story, elements from old real comics are used. If you look at the Mickey's Quest covers, the Mickey part is taken from an old Mickey logo found on Gold Key comics. The "Comics and Stories" text is also from Gold Key comics, while "Tan Elg" looks like one one of the Dell logo variants. And the header on each comic page reminds me of the ones we used to see in the British Mickey Mouse Weekly.

 

Similar logo title in Mickey's Craziest Adventures and Mickey Mouse Weekly

To get an old feel the coloring is also done with lots of dots, probably to imitate the four color printing technique used in the 60's. But here I think they went a bit overboard. A real four color offset printing would look like upper part of the image below, not completely covered with dots everywhere.

But it's not a big deal; I like the overall look and feel of the coloring. And it probably works a lot better on thick matte paper like used in this book than the glossy paper used in the monthly IDW comics, so I'm glad they decided to go with that.

I enjoyed this book a lot, so it's definitively something I'd recommend checking out. Yes, the characters are drawn off model and the art is different than anything we are used to in classic Disney comics. But that is to be expected in this series. I'm already looking forward to Mysterious Melody, the next book in the series – and I hope IDW will continue with more. So far 4 albums are published in France.