Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Changes to the IDW lineup of Disney comics

IDW's Mickey Mouse #21, Donald Duck #21, Duck Avenger #5 (regular cover variants)
IDW's Mickey Mouse #21, Donald Duck #21, Duck Avenger #5 (regular cover variants)


Sadly the comics on the picture above will be the last issues of the titles Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Duck Avenger we’ll see from IDW. At least for now, but hopefully they will continue again sometime in the future.

For Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse it’s not a definitive end as they will be replaced by a new series Donald and Mickey scheduled for an August release. Donald and Mickey will be a quarterly series in a "prestige format", which means more pages than the regular issues.
 

From Previews #345 (June 2017 catalog)

Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories will also be changed to a quarterly series in the new prestige format. We’ll see the first issue in this format next week with a new story in the Tamers of Nonhuman Threats series that wouldn’t been able to fit in a single issue of the old format. So the changes are not all bad news.

But the worst part of the changes is that Duck Avenger has an uncertain future. I was really hoping for a full run of the PKNA series! For now the series seems to have been canceled, but we got this message on the last page in issue #5.

 

From the last page of IDW's Duck Avenger #5

I’m not 100% sure where they want us to write in; the only e-mail address in the comic is for licensing purpose. But they do have links to facebook, twitter etc. inside.

The Crosstalk page in the June issues has some more information about the changes.
 

From the June crosstalk page

As you can read we’ll also get a new series Walt Disney Showcase. The text say September, but the series was not listed in the "July for September" Previews catalog. I’m curious about and looking forward to this series, so hopefully we’ll get some more information about it in next moths catalog.

Not mentioned in the text above is DuckTales that’s also a new series from IDW starting up this month. So even with some bad news there are still a lot of Disney comics from IDW to look forward to!

***

For fun I did a quick look at the previous runs of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse and made these tables:

Mickey Mouse 

Issue #PublisherNumb. of issuesYears
1-84Dell84194x-1962*
85-218Gold Key/Whitman1341962-1984
219-256Gladstone381986-1990
257-295Gemstone392003-2006
296-309BOOM!142009-2011
310-330IDW212015-2017

* first 27 as part of Four Color/One Shots, not sure which one is considered #1
 

Donald Duck       
Issue #PublisherNumb. of issuesYears
1-84Dell84194x-1962*
85-245Gold Key/Whitman1611962-1984
246-279Gladstone (1st run)341986-1990
280-307Gladstone (2nd run)281993-1998
308-346Gemstone392003-2006
347-367BOOM!212009-2011
368-388IDW212015-2017

* first 25 as part of Four Color/One Shots, not sure which one is considered #1
 

Interesting to note is that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck didn’t continue during the Walt Disney Publications’ run of Disney comics between what fans call Gladstone I and Gladstone II. But both Uncle Scrooge and Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories continued during the W.D. Publication time (and will continue now too).


Tuesday, July 11, 2017

Funko Universe cover variants

Disney comics with Funko Univers cover variants

In May we got some strange cover variants for some of the Disney comics from IDW. The Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories and Donald Duck titles all had a 4th "Funko Universe" cover variant this month. The characters are drawn in the same style as the collectable POP! figures from Funko.





The Uncle Scrooge title didn’t get a special Funko cover, maybe because no Funko figures with Scrooge existed. But that is about to change. A new DuckTales series of POP! figures was just announced, scheduled for a September release. And one of the figures is Scrooge McDuck.