Even more comics celebrating Mickey's 90th Anniversary

Back in 2018 I wrote a few posts about comics celebrating Mickey's 90th Anniversary. I ended the last one saying IDW was late to the party as they had two planned comics not published yet. Well, they both got published during 2019, and here is my late post talking about them.

The first one titled Mickey Mouse: The 90th Anniversary Collection is a nice collection of classic stories by various creators, with a few "new to the USA" as well. You can check out the complete contents on inducks.

WDC&S #698 to the left, The 90th Anniversary Collection to the right

The first story in the book is Boxing Champion, and has the same layout and coloring as seen in Gemstone's last issue of Walt Disney Comics and Stories (#698). But there we only got half of the story with the conclusion planned for next issue.
 

Note inside WDC&S #698 at the end of "Boxing Champion" part one.

But that issue never got on sale! And when we got a #699 a year later it was from a new publisher with a completely new plan for the series. I guess IDW's anniversary book was a good opportunity to get the entire story published in this version, and I'm glad we finally got to see all of it.

A couple of other stories are also the same as versions previously printed by Gemstone, including The Return of the Phantom Blot. And here I was really disappointed to see that this great blog has no influence on the publishers, hehe.

Cororing in "The 90th Anniversary Collection" (same as in Mickey Mouse #284)

I already pointed out the weird coloring in Mickey Mouse #284 on this blog! But that didn't get anyone to fix it for the new print... 😋

But for this print they restored the old ad for New Adventures of The Pantom Blot (check my old post talking about this)

Overall I liked this collection from IDW a lot, even if I had read most stories before. But it did end with a Casty story I hadn't seen before – and that is always appreciated!

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The next anniversary book is The Quest for the Missing Memories, with a new serial created for the event. The story has eight 20-page chapters, all drawn by different artists. But I'm glad they decide to publish all together in one book rather than doing a mini-series of single issues to be collected in a trade later.

As the title suggest, the story revolves around Mickey loosing and trying to regain his memory.
 

I enjoyed reading the story; it's a fun little adventure worth checking out. And it's interesting to compare the different art styles for these modern Italian artists. But there are a couple of things to note – first the way Doctor Einmug talked in the story. And he does not sound like his usual self here! In the original newspaper comics from the 30's and all other American prints with the character he has always had his German accent.

Panles from the Jan 22, 1937 and Jan 27, 1937 newspaer strips ("Island in the Sky")

Panels from "Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension"

This way of talking is completely gone in this comic, which I think is sad.

His usual way of talking is gone in "The Quest for the Missing Memories"

We also get to see Eega Beeva later in the story. He does have his usual way of talking, but here the editorial team hasn't done their research. Originally and in English Pflip is a Thnuckle-Booh, not a Gangarone. That's the Italian translation of the species.

From the Jan 19, 1948 newspaper strpip ("Mickey Makes a Killing")

Same panel translated to Italian

They are called gangarones in "The Quest for the Missing Memories"

And the illness that makes people tell the truth is a reference to the newspaper story "Pflip's Strange Power", and should be called zizosis. Or pzizosis as Eega would have said.

 

Panels from the Dec 29, 1948 and Dec 30, 1948 newspaper strips ("Pflip's Strange Power")

 

The illness is called gangaronic flu in "The Quest for the Missing Memories"

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Doing some searching on Amazon and such, there are lots of different kind of publications to celebrate Mickey's anniversary. Most does not look very interesting, but I saw one book titled Mickey Mouse Museum: The Story of an Icon back in 2018. It got me curious, but I decided against getting it for full price back then as I didn't find any previews showing anything interesting in it. But not long ago I found a really cheap used copy and bought it to check out.

 

It's quite large in size and what I'd define a coffee table book. It has a lot of large prints of posters and various stuff inside, accompanied with a short text.
 

It's a nice book to flip through, but didn't have much I hadn't seen elsewhere. But we did get a couple of pages about comics inside this one too.

Donald Quest, now as a game

Donald Quest from IDW

Back in 2016/2017 a mini-series titled Donald Quest was published by IDW in the USA. The series had the story Hammer of Magic! printed in five parts over five issues, and was later collected in a trade paperback.

After that we haven't seen any more American comics from the world of Feudarnia, but in Europe three more serials have been published. According to the inducks database, the English titles are:

The Rock of Fire
The Song of the Siren
The Legacy of Iron

Pages from "The Rock of Fire"

Pages from "The Song of the Siren"

They pick up after Hammer of Magic! and we get to see more places in the universe of Feudarnia with new villains and new heroes.

 

New characters in "The Rock of Fire"

One of the things I wondered about when reading the first serial was the character and beast presentations put inside the story. For the Meteorbests we got information about power, weakness and an energy number.

 

From the comic book story

For other characters some basic facts.

 

From the comic book story

And some of the Beastbusters were presented as in-story trading cards.

 

I thought this sounded like some kind of role-playing guide, and wondered if they had a larger plan for the series. And now in February 2020 a board/card game based on the series was released in Italy.
 

Online ad for the game

The game got bundled in two parts with Topolino #3351 and #3352, and you have to get both to get the game complete. I got curious about the whole thing and wanted to check out this for myself.

Topolino #3351 with the first part of the game bundled

Topolino #3352 with the second part of the game bundled

The entire game package consists of a game board, 110 cards, 2 pages of game rules and a box to keep everything in. What would have been nice to have in addition is a deck box to keep the cards in.

 

All parts of the game

The cards are divided in:

1 Meteormaster (The Phantom Blot) (purple border): catch it to win the game
13 Meteorbeast cards (purple border): must be deactivated and caught before getting to the Meteormaster
7 Beastbuster cards (yellow border): used to catch Meteorbeasts
18 weapons (red border)
21 traps (blue border)
50 action cards (green border): does abilities and effects

I recognize some of the artwork from the stories, while other cards look like have artwork made for the cards.

The game is turn based where you draw cards, buy cards on a market and play your action and equipment cards etc. I think I understand the basic rules of the game but won't try to explain more here... I probably misunderstood some parts of the instructions (with my limited Italian knowledge and computer translation of the rules), and I haven't tried to play the game with anyone else yet. 

Game setup from the instructions

Reading online reviews, others say the gameplay is broken and doesn't work well. But I can't confirm that on my own. I wish an English version of the game was released too; it would have been fun to try out without the language hassle. It's not every day we get a board or card game with Donald and Mickey!

"The Klondike Journals" and "A Christmas Crossing" (stories from Scrooge's youth)

Norwegian cover for "The Klondike Journals"

At the end of last year, we got a few new stories from Scrooge's youth. And we got to see several new relatives to other Duckburg characters. I've seen some interest and discussions about The Klondike Journals by Kari Korhonen online, and figured I'd show what relatives we got to see in the stories. Note: This is going to have spoilers for the series, but it's been a few moths since the European printings now, and I don't see this being published in the USA anytime soon.

The five parts of "The Klondike Journals"

The fist batch of The Klondike Journals have five different stories/parts, but with some continuity tying them together. The first part is 10 pages and the other parts 7 pages each. According to some online sources more parts are planned for 2020. The stories mostly take place in Scrooge's Yukon days while he is traveling around.
 

Uncle Scrooge traveling around

I enjoyed reading the stories, but think they could have worked better if they were longer. It's not much of a buildup and too much jumping around places, I think. Also, I personally think it was a bit silly having everyone being relatives of someone already known. A few new relatives are ok, but this felt more like forced fan service. And some of the them didn't need to be relatives for the story to work (especially the fathers of O'Hara, Casey and the mayor). The stories also have tons of references to other stories by Barks and Rosa. I normally like having references to older stories, but this case it went a bit overboard. And when you have footnotes every second page telling you to check out some other story it takes you out of the reading. This could have been nice things for fans to discover on their own. Overall, I thought this series was okay, but just that.

Here are some of the new characters we meet in the series.

Brunhilde Typefast (Brunhilde Quackfaster)

Clearly a relative of Miss Quackfaster, but it doesn't say if she's her mother.
 

Gadget Gearloose

Brother of Ratchet Gearloose and Gyro's granduncle.

 

Fathers of Azure Blue and Sharky

 

Canadian Mounties

Scrooge meet up with tree guys that would be the beginning if the Mounties. Also they are the fathers of O'Hara, Casey and Duckburg's pig mayor.

Father of Clerkly
 

Bhaltair McDuck

Scrooge's uncle and brother of Fergus McDuck

 

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Another recent story from Scrooge's past is A Christmas Crossing (Egmont's internal English title), printed in a Norwegian Christmas comic. And so far, it's not printed anywhere else I think. But I hope it will, because this is an amazing adventure that needs to be shared!

 

The story takes us from Whitehorse, Yukon to New York on an action filled journey with Scrooge and Goldie.
 

Lots of action in this story!

The entire story could be seen as an extension to The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as the story follow up on events seen there and mostly takes place between two panels in The Billionaire of Dismal Downs.
 

The story in "A Christmas Crossing" takes place beween these two panels

And in the new story we see the clerks from Rosa's story asking for a stove, and Scrooge sending the letter home.
 

Clerks asking for a stove, and Scrooge sending a letter home

The writing team actually pitched the idea for Don Rosa before continuing to develop the story, and got his "blessing" to do it. According to interviews with the creators he was glad for someone to follow up on his stories.

We have a few interesting side characters in this story too. First, the driver is a caricature of Don Rosa.
 

We also have a background character looking a lot like Carl Barks

 

And we meet Miss Quackfaster as a kid.
 

Miss Quackfaster as a kid

In this story the young Quackfaster say she is going to visit her aunt in Skagway. This suggest that Brunhilde in The Klondike Journals actually is Quackfaster's aunt! But I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or something planned. Both stories were created for Egmont around the same time.

 

Quackfaster tells Goldie she is going to visit her aunt in Skagway

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You can see more great artwork and the drawing Arild Midthun made for Don Rosa on Arild's webpage.

Screenshot from Arild's webpage