"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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"The Secret of Mars"

Listen to my words, Boom people: you need to go back to prestige format for your Disney comics. I would understand why you would want to stay the course if your books were selling better than Gemstone's did, but that just ain't the case. And from an aesthetic standpoint, there are particular reasons why regular-length books are a bad idea for Disney comics in particular: if you're writing a superhero story, you can tailor it to the book's length requirements. No problem. But Disney comics are a little different: they rely more or less exclusively on a mixture of reprints of old stories (from when comic books had more pages of actual comics) and European imports (which don't run on the same page-number system as US comics do). Therefore, more flexibility is called for, lengthwise. I have said on numerous occasions that I really appreciate your new direction, but let's face facts: until you go back to prestige format--at least for US and WDC, but even better for DD and MM as well--you're simply not gonna be able to hit Gemstonian heights.

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