"One Thin Dime"

I may, in the past, have made disparaging comments regarding Pat and Carol McGreal based on reading one single story. Now, in my defense, the story in question, "A Gal for Gladstone," pretty badly botches what ought to have been a sure-fire premise (Gladstone and Magica, sittin' in a tree). And the art ain't so hot neither. Still. Fact is. I've read a fair bit of additional material by the two of them since then, and I'm not gonna deny it: they have writing chops. They write things that are worth reading. So, mea maxima culpa.
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"Donald Duck, Special Correspondent"

Hey, folks, I apologize if you were expecting an Easter-themed entry today, but I'm way too excited about this story to write about anything else right now. As you know, probably, this is Federico Pedrocchi's follow-up to "The Secret of Mars" (direct follow-up--it began the week after "Mars" ended). And look, I may still sort of prefer "Secret of Mars," but that's largely for sentimental reasons--"Special Correspondent" is a fucking fascinating story, and quite obviously much more textually rich than its predecessor. My regret at Pedrocchi's untimely death increases by the moment. I'm still hoping against hope that Boom may not really be down for the count, but if they are, at least we finally got to see this story published--it was originally meant to be printed in Gemstone's third Disney Treasures volume, until Gemstone went belly-up; then in Boom's second DD hardcover, until all hardcovers were canceled; so it's been a long haul, but finally it's here. Huzzah!
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Ultraheroes: Attack of the Hilariously Stupid Footnotes

Well, as you probably know by now, it looks very much as though Boom has lost its license for classic Disney titles--either that, or it's canceling them for some other reason. The evidence: their list of July comics includes the Disney Afternoon lines but not the classics, you can no longer purchase classic subscriptions from their website, and nobody from Boom is willing to comment on the situation in any way. I could believe that those first two were just misunderstandings, but the third one is really damning--Boom flacks had previously never been shy about defending their work on the Disney Comics Forum, so their silence here speaks volumes.
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"Return of the Micro-Ducks"

When Erik asked me to write about "Micro-Ducks from Outer Space," I was glad both because I got to write about a fun story and because it primed me to do a follow-up post on this sequel from 1977, imaginatively entitled "Return of the Micro-Ducks" (inducks lists it as the full "Return of the Micro-Ducks from Outer Space," but since it was written by a Canadian in English, I think we can assume that the shorter version is the original title). I think people haven't heard of it because it appeared in an issue of the Walt Disney Giant line, one of those strange, marginal Gladstone II publications--also including Penny Pincher and perennial worst-title-ever contestant The Adventurous Uncle Scrooge McDuck--that seems to have no good reason to exist.
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"Sky Island"

Okay! No more dicking around! I said I would write about this MM serial for David, and goshdarnit, I'ma GONNA. It you had told me a year ago that I was going to be writing about a Mickey Mouse story on Duck Comics Revue, I would have assumed that it was some sorta April Fools thing, but no indeed--this is dead serious, or as much so as this blog gets. Hey, it's cool--I don't have the antipathy toward the character that I used to, and I've read a fair handful of Gottfredson stories, so I'm good to go--though who can say what this will look like?
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Don Rosa draws Brigitta MacBridge?

What izzis, some sorta late April Fool's prank? NO! Courtesy of Simone from the Disney Comics Forum, THIS:
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"Micro-Ducks from Outer Space"

Erik of the always-interesting Disney Weirdness requested "Micro-Ducks from Outer Space" for his donation. It's a bit on the weird side, though certainly not Barks' weirdest story. It's one of his last half-dozen or so adventures, from 1966. I recently saw the Ducktales episode based on the story; the writers there apparently decided that the idea of, uh, Micro-Ducks from Outer Space was just too unutterably boring to devote much attention to, leaving the question of why they felt the need to do an adaptation in the first place. The original is certainly substantially better. I like it a lot, even if the ending is somewhat (intentionally) maddening.
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Consumer Advisory

Man, I was all set to praise Boom's Feathers of Fury TPB, which collects the martial-arts-themed stories from DD 359-362. Not so much for the stories themselves--which could charitably be characterized as "motley"--but for the fact that the company was kind enough to include a cover gallery in the back, which they hadn't been of late. Okay okay, it's not that impressive, given that there were (thankfully) no cover variants, meaning that we're just talking about four images, but hey--baby steps.
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Adlai Stevenson

Look, this blog's had a good run, but more and more, I'm starting to feel that there's nothing more to say about duck comics, really. I feel like I've reached an artistic dead-end. There's no passion left. The more I think about it, the more I realize that if I want to keep going here, I'm going to need to make substantial changes. So: from now on, Duck Comics Revue is going to be Adlai Stevenson Comics Revue, focusing exclusively on comics about Illinois governor, two-time Presidential candidate, and UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson. I think the potential here should be fairly obvious. If you have a Japan request outstanding, don't worry--I'll find a comparable Adlai Stevenson comic to write about. Trust me--you'll love it. Naturally, such a radical change can't help but be a little scary; however, on the whole, I'm very excited about this. It seems like a natural fit, and I think I can even attract a bigger audience this way. And what better way to start than with Dell's seminal 1966 biography? After all, this, essentially, is where AS Comics (as Adlai-ists call them) started.
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