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.

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.

"Mickey and Donald: Christmas Parade", trade paperback from IDW

If you prefer to get trade paperbacks rather than the single-issue comic books, it can be a challenge trying to follow the IDW ones. They do not have any volume numbering and some have a "Donald and Mickey" logo or a "Mickey and Donald" logo even if the comics they collect does not.

Here are some notes about the recent Christmas Parade TPB in case more of you are confused about that one. When I write TPB in this post I mean "trade paperback", and WDCS is "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories".

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All the way back in August 2016 we got a book called Donald and Mickey: The Walt Disney's Comics and Stories Holiday Collection listed in the Previews catalog (order code AUG160522, ISBN 978-1-63140-729-1). This trade was originally listed for an October release the same year but went through several delays where the last update said June 28, 2017.

We saw two different pre-release covers for this book, with both the "Donald and Mickey" logo and the "Mickey and Donald" logo.
 

Pre-release covers for the planned but canceled "Holiday Collection" trade paperback

As we can read from the final update from the distributor, this TPB was supposed to collect the first Christmas Parade from IDW, the first Halloween Scream and backup stories from WDCS #727-732.

 

Final update of the Previews listing for the planned but cancelled "Holiday Collection"

Well, this never happened and the book got cancelled in 2017.

In the June 2018 Previews catalog, we saw another TBP being listed, this time as Mickey and Donald: Christmas Parade (order code JUN180710, ISBN 978-1-68405-324-7) – but using the same pre-release cover as the previous cancelled one. The first listed cover was identical to the previous one but without the "Holiday Collection" text, and later this was changed to the Christmas Parade logo.

 

Pre-release covers for the "Mickey and Donald: Christmas Parade" trade paperback

If you are still waiting or looking for a TPB with the cover art shown above (originally from the WDSC #726 RI variant) – then you can just stop. Because when the trade recently got on sale it ended up using another cover and looks like this:

 

The "Mickey and Donald: Christmas Parade" trade paperback, final cover as published

And this one does not have the content originally planned for the canceled "Holiday Collection", but collects IDW's Christmas Parade #1 and #2.

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As a side note, here is a summary of which IDW comics are not collected in TPB's. This does not include newer issues that might be expected to be collected in the future (ex. Christmas Parade #3 and #4, the new Afternoon Giant and such)

* The Search for the Zodiac Stone serial in WDCS #721 to 732 did not get collected in trades, but all parts are collected in a nice hardcover instead.

* The backup stories in WDCS #727 to 732 are not collected in any TPB's, but they are all collected in the Walt Disney's Comics and Stories Vault hardcover. I don't expect any of these to be in any future trades.

* Halloween Scream #1 and #2 and Giant Halloween Hex #1 and #2 are not collected in any TPB (or hardcover). But I wouldn't be surprised if we saw one next autumn.

* Donald and Mickey #3 and #4 are not collected in any TPB or hardcovers, and as we haven't seen any yet – I don't think they will be. So they might be nice to pick up even if you usually get the TPB's.

IDW's Giant Halloween Hex #2

This year IDW's Giant Halloween Hex is back, two years after the first issue and completing the trilogy of stories with Magica's family. But I hope it's not the last issue of this series we'll see, I like these kinds of seasonal specials.
 

"Magica De Spell" added to the logo

New this year is that we have Magica's name as part of the cover title, and I think that is great! I can't think of many comics having Magica as the logo title, and I wish we had an issue dedicated to her in IDW's Showcase series while it lasted (the Gold Key series had one).

 

Showcase #30 from the Gold Key series

Another difference from #1 published in 2016 is that we now only have one cover variant while the first one had three. But this change is fine too, I've never been a huge fan of cover variants unless there is something special like a convention exclusive or something like that.
 

All cover variants

The main story in Giant Halloween Hex #2 is Gifts of the Gods!, and as I said it completes IDW's run of the (kind of) trilogy with Magica's family. The first story is The Great Rock of Power-Plus! in Giant Halloween Hex #1, Gifts of the Gods! is actually the second one created, while the third story is The Secret Santa Spell in published by IDW in last year's Christmas Parade. There are a lot of other stories with different versions of Granny De Spell and with Minima. And there exist another story with Rosolio too, but I look at the three mentioned above as a trilogy.

In Gifts of the Gods! we have the family tagging along with Magica's latest scheme to get the Number One Dime. And this time she tries to get it with the help of the "gifts of the gods".
 

But as usual things might not go exactly like planned, especially with the cursed family around…