Uncle Scrooge 445 & 446

After a few months hiatus while the "Uncle Scrooge: My First Millions" mini-series was published, the regular Uncle Scrooge title is now back continuing the old numbering.

IDW's Uncle Scrooge #41 (445) and #42 (446)

 
New this time is that the logo is changed again.

Uncle Scrooge logo changed from #41 (445)

But the logo is not completely new, it's the same one as used by Walt Disney Publications in the early 90's when they published the Uncle Scrooge title from #243 to #280.

Same logo used by Walt Disney Publications in 1990

I don't have any opinion about which one is best, both look fine to me. I'm just glad the regular ongoing title is back again.

In Uncle Scrooge #445 we got "The Time Vortex" (or is it "The Vortex of Time" like the table of contents say?); a story with Magica going back in time to Scrooge's Klondike days. We get to see both Soapy Slick and Goldie and there's several other references to Barks and Don Rosa stories.

The famous shoe shining secene in The Invisible Intruder (top left), The Last of the Clan McDuck (top right) and The Time Vortex (bottom)

White Agoney Valley in The Argonaut Of White Agony Creek (top) and The Time Vortex (bottom)

 
The next panel after the shoe shining scene and where Magica say "Yeah, I was there…" is a reference to "Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies".

Magica watching Scrooge in "Of Ducks and Dimes and Destinies" (top) and panel from The Time Vortex (bottom)

But according to writer Carlo Panaro, he hadn't read that story before writing The Time Vortex, so I wonder if this got added in translation. A nice reference either way.

In Uncle Scrooge #456 we have The World of Ideas, a story with Scrooge taking advantage of Gyro's latest invention to make more money. But things might not go exactly like planned. It's a nice little story but not too memorable.

 
Both new issues of Uncle Scrooge only have one long story, and no backup stories at the end. Checking the Previews catalog it looks like they planned to have "Et Tu, Deja Vu?" in #445 and "Fast Food Duck" in #446 – but that didn't happen.

From the Previews catalog

From the Previews catalog

The two new issues also have a few pages less that we used to have (36 pages with 30 comic pages in #445 and 32 pages with 26 comic pages in #446).

"Disney Afternoon Giant" and versions of "Rightful Owners"

First three issues of IDW's Disney Afternoon Giant

When IDW changed the lineup of Disney comics at the end of last year, one of the new series we saw was "Disney Afternoon Giant". I am a bit surprised IDW would do this series, not really because of the title, but more of the content. A lot of people growing up in the 90's loved the Disney Afternoon animated series on TV and I guess this can (could have been) be a nostalgic series for those. Kids these days probably have no idea what "Disney Afternoon" is all about, but people growing up with the TV-series might have kids of their own now, and could see something they once loved and pick it up for their kids.

But the new series is just a reprint of stories from the last time we saw Disney Afternoon comics in the shop. They were originally published by BOOM! In 2010/2011, and I guess most people being a Disney Afternoon fan now, was a fan back then too. So there's nothing new or exciting about the new series - it's simply a reprint of not-so-old material.

The first issues of the new IDW series have the DuckTales serial Rightful Owners and Worldwide Rescue with Chip 'n' Dale Rescue Rangers. The early solicitation text in the Previews catalog mentioned Darkwing Duck too, but we have yet to see any stories with him in the new series.

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The 3rd issue from IDW is on sale right now and have the 3rd part of "Rightful Owners" that got a lot of attention the first time it was published. The series was printed in four parts by BOOM! (under the name "kaboom!" for a little while) in 2011, and later collected in a TPB.
 

Original comics with "Rightful Owners"

TPB collecting "Rightful Owners"

BOOM!'s issue #3 got rushed out and had an unfinished version of the story printed, where one page was not properly colored and another just had a bunch of clip-and-paste art to replace unfinished artwork! Other pages had arguably very bad artwork too. This didn't get by unnoticed by fans and we had blogs and forum discussions telling how bad things were.

In the trade paperback however, the coloring was finished and the clip-and-paste art got replaced by a properly drawn page. See the comparison below.

From BOOM!'s DuckTales #3 (left) and the TPB (right)

From BOOM!'s DuckTales #3 (left) and the TPB (right)

 
And now for the big question, how does the same pages look in the IDW print? Well, you can see for yourself blow.

From BOOM!'s DuckTales #3 (left) and IDW's Disney Afternoon Giant (right)

From BOOM!'s DuckTales #3 (left) and IDW's Disney Afternoon Giant (right)

For some reason IDW actually used the unfinished version of the story as printed in BOOM!'s DuckTales #3! If they plan on doing a trade collecting the story, I hope someone tells the editors about this so they can track down the proper version.

Edit Feb 23, 2019:

From the comments on this post I was made aware of changes to the first part of "Rightful Owners" too, and did some comparisons. You can see more examples on squeakyboots13's twitter.

Black and blue eyes

Blue clothes changed to green

The two examples above are both from the first part of the story, and as you can see the in the first one BOOM!'s TPB and IDW's version have the same coloring, while in the second both BOOM! prints have the same coloring while the IDW one is different. So there's three different color edits for the first part.

In the prints where Webby's eyes are blue, this is not the case for the whole story just in a few panels – so I guess this is an error and not intentional.

In the TPB we also have a panel with the nephew's clothes colored black. But they are not in the rest of the story, so this is also an error. But it's a bit strange that we didn't see the same error in the first print.

In IDW's digital edition the entire page with this panel is missing the dialogue. This tells us that the story is created with the speech balloons as a different layer above the artwork, and not as part of the art. This makes it easier to make adjustments when translating the story.

The dialogue also has minor changes in all parts.

Above we can see the soda names are changed in IDW's version. The native's language is also changed to proper English, probably to not sound offensive.

I also have a Norwegian print of the same story. I'm not going to bother with a detailed comparison with that edition, but the Norwegian print did use the page with finished artwork not used by IDW – and it shouldn't be too hard to get hold of.

Norwegian print with the finihed artwork in part 3.