"What if...? Donald Duck Became Wolverine"

Another entry so quickly?  Well, this is an emergency, obviously.  Indeed...what if?  I'm aware that that's a long-time Marvel conceit, but that's about it.  I suppose I should stay current with these things.  My public demands it!  I feel like the publication of this book must've been timed to coincide with the release of Deadpool & Wolverine, even though they have very little in common.  I suppose that Wolverine is kind of down-and-out in both of them?  Whatever.  For the record, though, I really enjoyed the crass, violent movie.  It was hella fun and had a lot of heart.  So say I.  So!  How about this here comic?  It certainly feels more like what you'd've expected from "Marvel meets Disney" than that Multiverse book did.  For better or worse or neutraler.

So first we meet--well, see an image of--this guy, Pete-Skull.  Let's be honest: I don't think I've ever read a Marvel comic.  I've read Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and All-Star Superman, and I think that's yer lot, as far as superhero stuff goes [UPDATE: I just remembered also I read the first few TPBs of Squirrel Girl; those were fun].  But I HAVE seen most of the Marvel movies, both MCU and X-Men (which universes appear to be merging, if Deadpool & Wolverine is any indication).  So I recognize this guy as the comic's version of Red Skull, though there doesn't appear to be really any connection between the two beyond the name.  I mean come on, the original character was a dang nazi--that's probably not something you want to touch in a Disney comic.

This is also a little weird: as we all know, the main crime in Duckburg is theft.  Sure, some kidnapping and counterfeiting, but mainly theft!  And even though Pete can be a little more brutal than that, here it indeed just seems to be...theft.  You'd think the "superhero crossover" thing might've encouraged them to go a little further than that, but...no.  I dunno; these Beagles look kind of cool at any rate, though I don't know what overall effect they're going for.

                             

Yup, I have zero idea why the sign--apparently?--said "Grandma Duck's Old Farm" until it was changed to "Grandma Duck's Falling Farm."  Is this some sort of Marvel thing, or just something that was lost in translation?  Either way, it does not bode well.

"Donald-Wolverine."  Oof.  I guess it's possible that Marvel didn't want the characters to be given names that wouldn't immediately make their Marvel IP identities completely obvious, but that shit just takes you back to the days of Ultraheroes.  Shudder.  Right, so let's just ask the question that's on everyone's mind: was this translated from Italian, or was it originally in English?  The writer's name is Luca Barbieri--this guy here.  And...he's an Italian guy whose credits are all Italian comics, so I want to say someone must have translated it.  I am given pause by the fact that no localizer is listed anywhere in the comic, but let's be upfront: the writing is bad and wooden in a way that STRONGLY recalls what Boom! decided was a good idea after firing everyone who knew anything about Disney comics.  Not good either way, but I have to ask: is this AI-translated?  'Cause that sure seems extremely plausible.  

He refers to Grandma as both "Gran" and "Granny."  If this wasn't translated by machine, it sure wasn't by a fan, either, I'll tell you that much.

"Mickey-Hawkeye."  Sigh.  Well, at least he looks kinda cool.  The story is trying to mimic the sort of inter-character melodrama you see in superhero stories, but I've gotta say, it's not doing a great job of it.

Oh, you need him because he has a bad temper.  So to take a wild guess, do ya think maybe he's going to lose his temper and as a result he--what would you call it?--"Hulks out" on the enemy?  Huh.  I get that Wolverine sometimes has a berserker thing with some similarities, but if that's all you want out of the character, why bother?  "Hulks out." I mean, granted, getting mad is Donald's thing, but...if that's going to be all you go with, why is it Donald-Wolverine and not Donald-Hulk?  That's clearly what you WANT it to be.  This is dumb.

Okay, granted, this image is cool, the best thing in the story by some margin.  So, gaze upon it.  And then, back to work.

See?  "Granny."  Also, "put on your wool suits?"  I can't even.

So nothing to do with the story, necessarily, but: does Mickey have an iconic car after the fashion of Donald?  Googling around reveals that this 113 is--I guess--a thing, but man, I have never seen it in my LIFE.  The coloring seems to be identical to Donald's 313, and I have a little model thereof (a gift from Elaine, I believe--thanks!) with the 313 number, so if this IS an established thing in some quarters, you'd think they would've made more effort to make it distinct from the better-known one.  And that's all I'll say about that.

SERIOUSLY, "Donald-Patch and Mister Goofy-Fixit."  I am starting to think that today's editors of Disney comics aren't any better than the old Western ones.  It's just baffling to me that anyone would read over this and think, yup, good enough, send it to the printers.  And yet, here we are.

The other thing of note here is that "gray" business.  As you will see in just a moment, the story does this incredibly nonsensical thing where Donald is triggered by the sight of the color green, so now Goofy is gray, and I truly cannot EVEN.  Also, I'm pretty sure even people who don't know about comics know that Hulk is supposed to be a normal guy until he gets mad.  We do see him hulk out later, but he kind of appears to already be as such, which is weird.

Anyway, THIS is why Donald doesn't like green.  This panel, and NOTHING else.  This is some REALLY half-assed, slapdash stuff, people.

This bit kind of cracks me up, because "you'll end up behind bars!"  Seriously?  We can't even have our villain show murderous intent?  

Right, so I kind of just want to get this over with.  I recognize that it has to be covered, but it's not very interesting.  So enjoy Goofy hulking out.

And, you know, there's this, if it's your thing.

People on Facebook have been posting this.  I suppose it's an okay splash image, but eh.

And the fight that this leads to is extremely abbreviated; this is all you get.  So that's it?  Pete-Skull really just had a half dozen Beagle helpers and that was yer lot?  In that case, it's hard to see how we ever reached this post-apocalyptic-looking state, really.

Note Captain America's shield.  Who would be Disney Captain America, do you think?  Fethry?  His latest kooky kraze is patriotism?  Sounds good to me.

And...that's all.  Look, I'm not trying to be overly negative about this.  I was skeptical about that multiverse story, but it turned out okay, if not super-memorable.  But this...man, I feel bad about saying mean things about this random dude's work.  I have no problem being harsh on a Rosa story; that's punching up.  And I have no problem being harsh to random Western creators; they're all dead.  Let's just say I can't give this one a passing grade, and I am now even more baffled about what the hell Marvel thinks they're doing in the long run.  This whole conception feels really, really misbegotten.

No covers this time; there are only four of them, and they're all more or less the same in a kind of boring way.