I’m also hoping the fact that Donald is part of the first released image means he’s going to have a larger role in the new series. It does look like they are on a “mission” and he is part of it.
But did Webby start wearing glasses? Did she ever do that in the old series?
About the Darkwing Duck confusion – there was a false rumor going around about a rebooted Darkwing Duck animated series. But there’s been no official information about that. The new Darkwing Duck comics from Joe Books are coming late next month, not in 2017. And they are not rebooting anything. Aaron Sparrow said on another forum that the new license included the DuckTales characters too, so a comic crossover could happen in the future if Disney approved the story (the last one apparenly wasn't).
I’ve never seen any hardcover books collecting Wolf stories either, at least not in English. But it would be interesting to have one with some background information about the characters.
The very first Li'l Bad Wolf story was earlier thought to have been written by Chase Craig. But according to Michael Barrier’s book "Funnybooks" that were published last year, the story was written by Dorothy Strebe. [notes on pg.373 in the book]. I’d like to see some more research done into this matter about who really created Li'l Bad Wolf and how he came to be. An article about this would have been perfect in a book collecting Wolf stories!
If you want to read early stories with the Big Bad Wolf, I think the second volume in IDW’s Silly Symponies collection (not yet announced) will collect all Sunday pages with the Big Bad Wolf. But there’s no Li'l Bad Wolf in these stories, instead we have the three little wolves that are as bad as their father.
About the Donald/Scrooge covers. Andrea Freccero posted a sketch for the bear rafting cover on his blog. The sketch actually has a Donald Duck logo, while he too say it's a Uncle Scrooge cover in the title of the blogpost.
Personally I’m looking most forward to the Ellsworth and Ellroy story, as that’s the only main story coming in May I haven’t already read. Might the name Ellroy be a homage to Lilo and Leroy btw.?
But Kinney & Hubbard on the cover of Donald Duck #13 looks promising. I’ve been hoping for more S-coded Fethry stories by that team.
The original plan was to release the comic strips digitally, but that plan was never realized as far as I know. We got to see a few teaser strips back in 2014, and I guess they are now going to end up in the printed comic instead.
Also Inside the Magic recently got an exclusive look at another strip.
but from what it looks like, it's going to be four short stories per issue.
I don't think that is the case, even if the covers have four different parts. I think it's going to be a mix of individual strips and short stories that is made up by individual strip gags. A week or two ago Amy said on her twitter that she had just finished a 9 strip story arc, but that was just going to be four and a half pages in the comic. So it sounds like there's going to be two strips printed on each page.
That same cover also has Carl Barks credited twice but I imagine that would be fixed before going to print.
And the price on the cover is wrong, from the listing it sounds like it’s going to be $6.99. I don’t have any problem with the name "Disney Magic Kingdom Comics" but the logo used on the pre-release cover does not look good. Taking parts of 3 other logos and putting them together like that looks like a mess, so I hope that will be changed in the final cover too.
Last year we used to get a 3rd “1/25 retailer incentive” variant cover. I was glad when they stopped doing that this year, because they are impossible to collect without spending a ridiculous amount of money. An occasional exclusive variant like the convention variants or the upcoming “art appreciation” variant is just fun, but for me the retailer incentive variants takes away all the fun of collecting! They are just a cynical trick to get comic shops to order more copies... Sadly it looks like they are back in May, but as 1/10 copies instead of 1/25. They are not listed on the order forms, but it’s easy to spot the missing codes: