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…

DuckTales Classics

With the new DuckTales animated series, this is a good time to reprint some of the old DuckTales comic stories from the late 80's / early 90's. We already got the first collections of old stories in Europe last autumn, and not long ago IDW followed up with DuckTales Classics vol.1.
 

3 Norwegian collections published during the last year (left), and the new IDW collection (right)

As the new animated series is a re-boot of DuckTales the IDW comic collection with old stories have “classics” added to the title and is also using the old DuckTales logo – this way trying to differentiate it from the new series.

The first pre-release cover images popping up online actually used the new logo, but I'm glad they changed that. Also it looks like they originally planned to use the cover for The Bedeviled Dime (one of the stories inside) for the collection. But this was changed to a more generic Egmont cover created in the 90's – but according to inducks not known to have been used anywhere before. Not the most important part of the book, but I'm glad for this change too. As a longtime Disney comic fan, I like when the editors dig up old unused material!
 

First pre-release cover (left), second pre-release cover (middle) and the final cover (right)

We also have a small text on the back of the book making it more clear that these are old stories.

But I can imagine some younger readers not familiar with the old DuckTales series getting a bit of a surprise reading this collection, but hopefully that is a good surprise!

The first book in IDW series collects all DuckTales stories drawn by William Van Horn with the comic adaptation of the 1990 Treasure of the Lost Lamp movie as a bonus story at the end, replacing the originally planned reprint of The Curse of Flabbergé.

From the Previews #355 (April 2018) catalog, listing "The Curse of Flabbergé"

I'm sure a lot of fans have waited for a Van Horn collection like this and it's nice to have all of his DuckTales stories collected in one volume. But for me personally the movie adaption turned out to be just as interesting.

I've already read this story before too, but only the European album edit. The story in IDW's Classics collection is the uncut version so that was a nice bonus.

British (left) and Norwegian (right) editions of the movie adaptation

First page of the original editon (left) and the edited edition (right)

Different layot in the edited edition (left) and the original (right)

One of the Norwegian collections pictured at the top of this post (the one with the Mickey 90 logo – on sale next week) have the movie adaptation inside too, but unfortunately just the edited version. 

***

We already have a volume 2 of the IDW series announced for next year, and I hope we'll see more in the future. My wish list for upcoming volumes are some of the smaller stories from the Disney Adventures magazine and DuckTales magazine that have never been reprinted anywhere before.

First preview/test edition of the Disney Adventure magazine, and the first issue of the DuckTales magazine

Some of the studio stories (S-coded stories) never seen on print in English would be nice too (there's a lot of them). And if the editors do a deep dive in some hidden archives, a collection of all the rare DuckTales gag stories printed on American orange juice cartons would be awesome to see on print! I have no idea how many exists, I only got two of the DuckTales ones – but I've seen more on eBay and such.

DuckTales comics on the Donald Duck Orange juice cartons

DuckTales comics on the Donald Duck Orange juice cartons (pictures from eBay)