The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: Deluxe Edition

Back in 2016 a new Norwegian collection of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck was published, collecting all original chapters and the companion stores in one single volume. I remember thinking that I don't really need another Life and Times collection, but it would be nice to have everything in one single bound book. After getting the book I decided this would be the last one… Then in 2019 Fantagrapics published a nice box set collecting two volumes with the twelve original chapters in one book and the companion stories in the other one. Again, I was thinking it would be nice to have a definitive edition in English, but this would be the last one… Well, here I am only two years later holding yet another edition in my hands!

The Complete Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: Deluxe Edition is collecting the original chapters, in-between stories and a few other bonus stories in one single volume. It also includes the articles and bonus material from the Don Rosa Library that was not included in the 2019 edition from Fantagraphics, updated and with more bonus material. And it's printed in a lot larger format than previous collections.

I was a bit hesitant to pre-order this one without knowing more details about the content, as I already have multiple collections of the same stories. The book was originally listed at $125 on online book stores listing it early. I already thought this was too much, but when the book was officially announced it turned out the price would be $250! Some places still listed the old price and I figured I had to be quick about this if I wanted to get it "cheap". So I ordered it from Amazon UK that still had it at the lower price. Ironically if the price suddenly wasn't doubled, I probably wouldn't have gotten the book at all!

I have stopped using Amazon for books if there are other alternatives, as most arrive damaged in the mail. They really are the worst at packaging, and I was nervous about the condition this expensive book would arrive in. And Amazon did live up to my expectation this time too, because the package looked like this when I received it!
 

The box from Amazon arrived like this! It might look like it, but I haven't started opening it yet...

Opening it up you can see they have added some extra paper on top that have little to no use at all!
 

But luckily the book came with it its own original cardboard packaging and had survived the transport without any damage.

The book is also protected by a nice slipcase.

 

The only thing that wasn't perfect about my copy was that one of the fold-out pages was folded in a wrong angle sticking out, and that page had been damaged. But this is something that happened during production.
 

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I'm not going to say too much about the content of the book here as there are forum posts, plenty of pictures online and you can find several videos showing and talking about the book on YouTube. I especially recommend Don's signing session on LiveSigning, where editor David Gerstein also talks about the book and what's new in it. But the most important new thing among the bonus material might be the newly discovered panel for Barks' Back to the Klondike, reprinted in an American publication for the first time.

Here is a little size comparison I did with some of the previous English editions.
 

From the left: Uncle Scrooge #285 (1994), Gemstone's sofcover collection (2005), Fantagraphics' 2019 edition, Fantagraphics' 2021 deluxe edition, IDW's Artit's Edition (2015)

 As you can see the Artist's Edition is actually a lot larger than the deluxe edtion. But you can't really compare to that one as it's a different kind of product with reproductions of the original drawings. Also, it's not complete as the announced second volume never happened (I really hope we will see it one day!)

Here's another quick comparison to the Norwegian "all-in-one" book:

The comic pages in the deluxe edition are mostly identical to the previous 2019 edition from Fantagaphics. But the colors look a lot nicer on the glossier paper used in the new book. Compared to even earlier editions you can find a lot of tiny changes and corrections, like the color of the Statue of Liberty.
 

Uncle Scrooge #288 (left), Fantagraphics' 2019 edition (middle), 2021 deluxe edition (right)

 

But I tried to look for changes to the comic pages between Fantagraphics' 2019 and 2021 editions as there should be some minor ones. The first change I found was that the various "to be continued" texts from the original printings are now back again.

Uncle Scrooge #285 (top), 2019 edition (middle) 2021deluxe edition (bottom)

I also found this sign change in The King of the Klondike, making the sign look like how we saw it in Barks' Back to the Klondike.
 

2021 deluxe edition (top), 2019 edition (middle), Uncle Scrooge #292 (bottom)

In the same story a minor coloring mistake is fixed, and now the spilled beans are colored.
 

Fantagraphics' 2019 edition (left), 2021 deluxe edition (right)

And I found several places where the background coloring was removed in cases where the art didn't have panel borders. Here's a couple of examples.

Fantagraphics' 2019 edition (top), 2021 deluxe edition (bottom)

 I just did a quick flip-through at random places looking for these kinds of things, and there are probably more. But don't expect any big noticeable changes to the comic pages compared to the 2019 edition.

Original art for "Hiawatha – A True Brave"

The original art for an old Egmont story was just sold at a Norwegian auction. They tried to auction it off without any bids at least twice before re-listing it really cheap. I guess not many people was interested in this, but I ended up getting it mostly out of curiosity.

The story was created in 1983 and first published in Europe in 1984. It's a 4-page story featuring Hiawatha and not really that interesting. It's mostly just a gag story stretched over 4 pages. The British writer George Beal is credited for the writing and the artwork is done by Ramos Poquí from the Spanish Studio Recreo. But the story was commissioned by the Danish Disney licensee Gutenberghus (now Egmont).

Inducks data for the story

The original art came together with a copy of the original dialogue, a small size copy of the artwork and a Certificate of Authenticity from Disney Auctions.
 

The first strange thing to notice about this lot is that the creator credits on both the original art and the dialogue print has been taped over! This was probably done for the original auction at Disney Auctions, and I'm guessing it was sold there sometime between 2001 and 2006. By that time, it was already a common practice to list creator credits inside Disney comics contrary to earlier years. So I don't see any reason why they wanted to hide the creator credits.

I didn't want to try to remove the tape, but holding the paper up to the light clearly show the credits underneath.

Credits under the tape on the original artwork

Credits under the tape on the dialogue print

I did some searching online and it looks like the same was done to other pieces of original art sold at the same time. Ex. The Dream and Big Bad Wolf Parachutes, found on comicartfans.com

I also tried to do some searching on archive.org to find out when this was sold. But with re-directs and the actual auctions being listed on eBay the old pages are not properly archived. I tried to search for various variants of the auction pages (no longer working) including:

http://www.disneyauctions.com
http://disneyauctions.go.com
http://pages.ebay.disney.com/index.html
 

It wasn't much useful information to find, but I did get a look at how the original auction page had looked like over the years.
 

Various versions of the auction page found on archive.org

Here's a scan of the Certificate that was included.
 

Certificate of Authenticity (click to enlarge)

The original artwork is folded in two and reinforced on the back, but the whole page was actually drawn on one big sheet.
 

The original artwork is folded and reinforced with tape

Here's the size compared to a Norwegian and British print of the story:
 

When comparing the original dialogue with the British text, it doesn't look like much localization was done. But there are a few minor differences here and there.
 

Original dialogue (top) and a British print (bottom). Click to enlarge

It's also interesting to compare the original art to the printed art. There's a lot of details that you barely notice when reading the comic book that the artist used a lot of time to draw! It's hard to illustrate properly, but here are a couple of comparisons to the Norwegian print:

The Complete Carl Barks Index Supplemental Readings

 
This book was published last month and is a companion book to the earlier Carl Barks index by the same author. The index was first published on cd-rom and later in printed form, both with a collection of articles about Carl Barks' work included.

"The Complete Carl Barks Index" cd-rom edition

"The Complete Carl Barks Index" printed edition

The new book talks about some of the same things as articles included in the index, but updated with new research and corrections. But there's also a lot of newly written articles or texts that hasn't been widely available before. There's even information about the newly discovered panel from Back to the Klondike that was seen on print for the first time (in Sweden) last month.

As mentioned, the book is intended to be a companion to the index, but you don't need both to enjoy the content. It works perfectly fine as a standalone book too. To get an idea about what topics are discussed, here is the full table of contents:
 

Table of contents (click to enlarge)

The book is self-published and the easiest way to get it is on Amazon where it's offered as a print-on-demand book. It's available in two different editions, one "direct sales edition" where all interior pages are in black/white making the printing cheaper – and one regular edition with illustrations in color inside. There are a lot of interesting illustrations and reproductions inside and I recommend going for the regular edition, even if it is a bit more pricey.

Example of inside colored print

Disney comics published by ABDO

From the ABDO fall 2020 catalog.

This year ABDO started publishing Disney comics under their Spotlight imprint, and we got a new American publisher of Disney comics in English. I think they are mostly selling books to libraries and schools/nurseries and such, but they are available for everyone on various online book stores. The Disney comics they have published so far are all "Reinforced Library Bound Hardcovers" and a bit pricy to get for personal collecting. You can buy the books as both collections or as individual books.

The books are sold in collections online

 

The titles published so far are from the Disney Kingdoms series that we got from Marvel Comics a few years ago, and several series of movie adaptations.

The different series available so far (fall 2020)

 

I have talked about library editions of comics on here before, and wanted to check out the ABDO books too. From all the available books I went for the Robin Hood adaptation as I think that's the only story I don't have on print at all. It's been available in English digitally for several years, but to my knowledge this is the first time the story is published on print in English. Several of the other ABDO books have been available from Joe Books or Dark Horse in recent years.
 

The first thing to say about the book is that the binding is really nice! But I guess it should be if it's intended for libraries.
 

And the size is perfect for these kinds of album stories as I like to call them. The recent series of movie adaptations from Joe Books and Dark Horse are printed in too small a format I think, but this one is just right. And the paper and printing inside is in good quality too. I really wish more comics were published this way instead of the "budget prints" we often see these days.

First page inside the Robin Hood book

Some of the other available books

 

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To illustrate the size, let's compare to some of the recent series from Joe Books and Dark Horse. (if you've been following this blog you know I like to compare different editions 😊)

From Joe Books we got a number of different series with movie adaptations. Also, a lot of the announced comics ended up being cancelled and it was a bit of a struggle trying to keep track of everything. But first we got a couple of huge 800 page Treasury books. Later we had series titled The Story of the Movie in Comics, Movie Graphic Novel, At the Movies, One-Shot and we had pocket books called [Movie name] Fun Book and [Movie name] Comics Collection that had movie adaptations in addition to games and other stuff.

Thick paperback books with movie adaptations from Joe Books

Thin paperback books with movie adaptations from Joe Books

Regular sized comic books with movie adaptations from Joe Books

All of the different series compared to the size of the ABDO book:
 

After Joe Books closed down Dark Horse started publishing movie adaptations instead under the same The Story of the Movie in Comics series name as Joe Books used. A lot of the titles are the same too, but this time they are in hardcover.

A summary of published and so far announced books in Dark Horse's The Story of the Movie in Comics series

Most of the stories in the Dark Horse series are published before, but if you are trying to collect all the different movie adaptations like I am, the following are of special interest:

Toy Story that includes Toy Story 4 on print in English for the first time
Onward, on print in English for the first time
Alice in Wonderland, maybe on print in English for the first time ..at least in the USA
Frozen II that have the adaptation for both movies, but Frozen II on print in English for the first time
 

The above books are the ones I got so far, the rest I skipped. Also, even at half the price of the ABDO books, I still think the Dark Horse books are a bit pricy for what you get.
 

For some reason the Alice book is a lot smaller than the other ones from Dark Horse. These kinds of album stories really should be printed larger than this!
 

The Robin Hood book from ABDO is printed a lot larger than the Alice book from Dark Horse

If I didn't already have a collection of movie adaptations and had unlimited money I definitely would have gotten more of the ABDO books. They are far better than any other printed editions in my opinion.

New Disney comics in Sámi language

New comics in Sámi language

In Norway a Disney comic book was just published in three different Sámi languages. We got Vulle Vuojaš in Northern Sámi, Tjalle Tjååtsele in Southern Sámi and Vuolli Vuojatjis Vegajnis in Lule Sámi.

This is the first time we have Disney comics in Southern and Lule Sámi while there was a short living series with Northern Sámi comics in the late 80's.

An issue from the 80's series (left) vs. the new Northern Sámi comic with the same tite.

 

Here's an example from inside with Flintheart Glomgold's name in the different translations.

 

There's only one story inside, that you can also find in the regular weekly series.
 

Norwegian weekly (Donald Duck & Co #37/2020)

Doing some quick searching online, it looks like a few digital Finnish comics exists with two more Sámi languages. In addition to Northern Sámi they also have a few pages with Skolt Sámi and Inari Sámi.

Finnish digital comics published in 2017,2018 and 2019