"The Starstruck Duck"
Surely the most important thing to come out of Boom's recent Don Rosa paperback is the first US printing of "The Starstruck Duck," which is effectively the last Rosa story to be so. Okay, not technically, if you want to get obsessive about it: there's "Gyro's Beagle Trap," a one-page promotional thing for some German magazine you've never heard of that doesn't really make sense unless you're familiar with said magazine's logo; there's the "unofficial speedskating story," which has never been published ANYWHERE official and so really shouldn't count; there's the exclusive final page of "The Quest for Kalevala" that didn't appear in the US printing; and, if you want to really get into the thick of it, the un-serialized versions of the handful of stories that have only appeared in the US as serials have a few panels that we haven't seen. And there's various non-story art that we haven't gotten, either. Phew. But I think few would argue that "The Starstruck Duck"--a full ten-page story, albeit one that exists only in sketch form--was the most significant lack, and now that's been remedied. I know that Don isn't really happy with Boom reprinting his work like this, but I hope he will forgive me for having bought the book anyway. My completist tendencies left me with no choice, and as a result, I got to read a really neat little story that I would otherwise have missed out on. Yes, being sketches, the art is minimalistic; nobody looking at it without any context would have any clue that it was Rosa. But I found that it was very easy to imagine the finished story. It definitely has that Rosa feel. This was a small but acute thrill to me.
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Labels: Don Rosa