First I'd like to welcome you back to this too-long-neglected humble Blog! Said period of neglect is my doing entirely... No excuses, but plenty of apologies for the long period of inactivity. Same apologies to those I've owed personal communications for far too long a while!
That said, let's jump headfirst into a hot topic for late 2024...
The Issue At Hand is: DuckTales #1 (Dynamite Entertainment, Cover Date: November, 2024)!
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Dynamite Entertainment first came to my attention with its DJANGO/ZORRO seven-issue series of 2014 which, oddly, Esther pointed out to me knowing my fondness for the "Spaghetti Western" movies featuring the mythical western hero/anti-hero Django! The series was very well done - and was actually written by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino!
And, while I left it at that, I resolved to go back and sample other Dynamite titles and series based on other characters and properties I liked, but that would take until 2024 to happen.
Dynamite DID license Disney properties from the Disney Afternoon and feature films, but I had little to no interest in those. However, in early 2024 they licensed and published 1960s Hanna-Barbera adventure classic SPACE GHOST...
...And soon followed by H-B's original adventure classic, JONNY QUEST...
...Both as ongoing series - and both have been GREAT!
Now, they've added an ongoing DuckTales series to what I fear may eventually become an oversaturated Disney comics market (...thanks, Marvel!), but I'm glad they did!
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I'm glad they did because, unlike the already-repetitive approach Marvel has taken with the greatest of Disney characters - where each of them are awkwardly cast as (...wait for it) Marvel Superheroes!
...Which still suffered from too much "Marvel Specificity" and an overabundance of Marvel-style physical fighting...
But we now have a new comic featuring Uncle Scrooge McDuck that's closer to "The Real Thing" than anything other than the Fantagraphics hardcover Disney collections!
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Though I'll offer a few tidbits below:
The story, as well as the issue/series as a whole, uses the familiar 1987 DuckTales character models and continuity, rather than the more jarring and unconventional 2017 versions.
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Within the overall story, are three flashback stories told by Scrooge that break with the "modern visual format" of the main story. These flashbacks are two pages each, are drawn in a retro-style that resembles that of master Italian duck artist Marco Rota and are rendered in the four-tiers-per-page, rectangular panel format used by the Dell and Gold Key comics from the Golden Age thru the Bronze Age. ...Note the contrast in style!
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Completing the retro-look of the flashbacks (a clever way to indicate that these are "old stories" that Scrooge is telling) is the use of Carl Barks' "Dell Interior Logo 1", which has the name "Uncle Scrooge" in large straight letters reading on a diagonal from southwest-to-northeast with a series of nine coins falling about the logo. https://www.comics.org/feature_logo/625/
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Coulda, shoulda been!
Nevertheless, Dynamite Entertainment's DuckTales has now joined its Space Ghost and Jonny Quest titles on my comic shop reserve list, and I look forward to enjoying a good, long run.
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...And, hey... If you don't care for this particular cover, Dynamite offers a total of 31 (!) variant covers to choose from!
We close with some wonderfully funny DuckTales #1 (2024) variant covers by our great friend Debbie Anne Perry! ...Can we now claim 33 variant covers?
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GOTTA LOVE THESE!
2 comments:
Love those drawings of Debbie's, especially the first!
On cover art: I chose Cover D by Quah, focusing on the dime in Scrooge's hands while you see (most of) Scrooge in shadow in the background. I do appreciate the fact that there's a #1 issue of a comics series with a cover featuring Old Number One!
I do like the visual treatment of the flashback scenes. The story is only prologue, introducing Scrooge, so I will hold my evaluation of the writing until we see the whole four-issue story. My theory, as I wrote elsewhere, is that these comics are predominantly marketed to parents of comics-reading-age kids, parents who themselves watched the original DuckTales in childhood and remember it very fondly. But that means that the child-reader might indeed not be familiar with the main character yet, and might need the introduction to Scrooge that is provided in this issue. Though I agree that this might have been done more organically during an adventure, if people were thinking of the floppy comic as an end in itself and not just a piece of the future trade paperback!
Elaine:
While I don’t care much for that cover, I *do* like your reason for preferring it!
I think it shows too little of the “important parts” of Scrooge for my taste. Now, if the image could have been “pulled down” a bit – showing his face and still prominently featuring the dime – I’d feel differently. You all can see the cover HERE and decide for yourself.
For me, “nothing beats the classics” (even going so far as to title a story as such HERE) and that classic 1987 DT look was so welcome after the distorted 2017 models that it was my clear choice!
On that note, I wonder if “the kids” (if kids even read comics anymore) raised on DT 2017 might be confused by the classic models.
Finally, I love Deb’s drawings too! Have for a long time! So glad she chooses to share them with me and, by extension, with us!
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