Disney Masters from Fantagraphics - Box 1 & 2

I've been waiting to check out the new Disney Masters series from Fantagraphics for a while now. We first heard about this series when vol.1, 2 and 3 got listed on Amazon late September/early October last year, but the first book didn't get on sale until May this year. By then box sets was announced too, and I like to get the box sets if available for series I collect – so I had to wait another half year for the boxes to be released. The box sets collecting the first four books got on sale in October, arrived in my mailbox a month later (that's what you get of pre-ordering something online..), and now I've finally found some time to sit down with them!
 

Collectors Box sets

The boxes arrived shrink-wrapped with a Mickey Mouse 90th Anniversary sticker, but the actual boxes and books does not have that logo. (The 1st printing of volume 5 have)
 

There are no volume numbers on the spine or cover, but the books are identified by volume numbers inside under "Titles in this series". This way you can sort the books as you want on the book shelf, and you can skip books you don't want without having a visible hole in the numbering. That is if you don't get the box sets.

We had a similar "Hall of Fame" series in Norway earlier, and this series did almost the same – but had numbering if a creator had several books. The Fantagraphics way with a book title in addition to the creator name is better I think.
 

Norwegian Hall of Fame series

I like the book design with a more minimalistic look than we are used to with comic books. And the covers look a lot better than the early pre-release covers we saw.

Disney Masters volume 1 and 2

Disney Masters volume 3 and 4

Early pre-release covers

What I don't like is that we have two different box sets to choose from! I decided to go with the Collector's box sets with the books in chronological order. But there's also a Gift box set where one box has Donald Duck books and the other one Mickey Mouse books. As a collector I now feel I have an incomplete collection, but I don't want to get both sets just for that reason. Also, I'm a bit skeptical to the idea that the entire series will be collected in two different box sets – and personally I think it's the collectors set that is most likely to last. But as I'm writing this we have books up to volume 9 announced, while I haven't seen any information about any more box sets.

 

Gift box sets

Another thing that's not really that important but can be a little bit annoying is the book size. If you go to Fantagraphics webpage for the Disney Masters series, the earlier Snow White book is listed among the Disney Masters ones. And I also thought it would be naturally to put the books next to each other on the shelf. But the Snow White book is bit larger in size (and doesn't fit on the shelf I wanted to use)

Here are some thoughts and notes about the first four books in the series.

Mickey Mouse: The Delta Dimension

This book might be the one I was most excited about from the ones announced so far, with two stories by Romano Scarpa that I've never read before! After IDW's recent printing of The Chirikawa Necklace I got curious about other early stories with Atomo and Trudy. And The Bleep-Bleep 15 and The Fabulous City of Shan-Grilla both were on my wish list of stories to track down. In addition we get Mickey Mouse in the Delta Dimension with Atomo Bleep-Bleep's first appearance.
 

The Fabulous City of Shan-Grilla, one of the stories inside

Donald Duck: Uncle Scrooge's Money Rocket

Another book with a story I hadn't read before and with all stories in English for the first time. I'm generally not a huge fan of "ducks in space" stories, but the ones in this book is entertaining simply for the pure madness. I was thinking "where does he get the ideas from??" more than once reading the book. But we also have some great scenery and artwork throughout.

Great scenery in "Uncle Scrooge's Money Rockey"

Example of some of the crazy things going on

More madness

As all books in the Disney Masters series, the book ends with an article about the featured creator. Luciano Bottaro is a creator I'm not very familiar with even if I've read quite a few stories by him – so this text was much appreciated.

I wouldn't mind another Bottaro book in this series, and if we get one the Zantaf sequel to Tycoonraker! (published by IDW not long ago) is on my wish list.


Mickey Mouse: The Case of the Vanishing Bandit

This is the first of several planned Paul Murry books in the series. Unlike the other books that have a selection of stories, the Murry books are collecting all the Mickey Mouse serials chronologically. In this book we get the first 7 serials drawn by Murry and originally printed in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Also, unlike the other books in the series the stories in this book all have new coloring done to match the original coloring. The same way as the coloring in Fantagraphics' Carl Barks collection is done. Two of the stores in this book recently got a new coloring when they were reprinted by IDW – but even those two got a new coloring for this book!

IDW's coloring (left), Fantagraphics' coloring (middle), original coloring (right)

Fantagraphics' coloring (left) and the original coloring (right)

The Mysterious Crystal Ball, one of the stories in the book, was cencored when printed by IDW a few years ago (well, not in IDW's hardcover print). But thankfully it doesn't look like there's any censoring done to the Fantagraphics print.
 

Disney Masters (top), IDW's hardcover (middle) and IDW's cencored print (bottom)

Donald Duck: The Great Survival Test

This book collects all stories created by Daan Jippes in collaboration with Freddy Milton. And they make a great team creating a lot of fun 10-pagers. It's easy to see where they get their inspiration and for an untrained eye you could easily mistake the stories for a Carl Barks story.

One thing I really like with the Disney comics published by IDW the last years is that even if they use various European coloring for the stories, the colors are always adjusted so clothes, vehicles, the money bin etc. are consistent. Vol. 4 of the Disney Masters series seems to be made more on a budget compared. The coloring of the different stories is taken from different sources (Disney Italia, Sanoma, from previous American reprints), but it doesn't look like any adjustments are made. So Donald have a red car in one story and red and blue (Italian coloring) in another. I don't mind that the book has different coloring styles for the different stories, and a complete new coloring would probably have been too expensive for the book to be published. But it would have been nice if things like Donald's car had the same color in all stories in the book. Not a huge deal though.
 

Italian coloring, from "Haste Makes Waste"

***

Overall, I'm impressed with what I've seen so far in the Disney Masters series and I hope it will continue for a while.