Hi , I have always been a fan of duck comics , and I am happy to have finally found a place where they are discussed . I stopped keeping up for a while , so what's the current state of disney comics at IDW?
Sadly, much diminished. If you haven't already bought the IDW Disney comics through 2018, I'd pick up as many of them I could at cover price, if I were you. The stories were well chosen and the people doing the English dialogue (where translation was necessary) did a great job. Funny, true to the way the characters have spoken in English-language comics, even careful to match the flavor of the era or the genre of a particular story.
The big change happened just recently, and now the (sole) translator is someone who hasn't dialogued comics before (as far as we can tell) and doesn't appear to be familiar with the American comics tradition. It seems she has been directed to translate the scripts rather literally, and the result is flat and not very funny and occasionally nonsensical. Not to mention that the characters don't sound like themselves. I am one of the lifelong Disney comics fans (along with, e.g., GeoX who writes the duckcomicsrevue blog) who have stopped buying the IDW Disney comics. A big deal, because I've bought every Disney Duck comic printed in the USA since the second issue of the first iteration of Gladstone Publishing comics in the 1980's.
BUT...if you haven't been buying the comics recently, you should still be able to order a bunch of the IDW issues (or trade paperback collections) from 2015 through last year, or find them on the shelves in comic shops. A few of the trades of the good stuff are yet to come out. And if you can spring for glorious hardcovers, the ongoing Fantagraphics Disney Masters series is terrific, done by the same editor and dialoguers who were working on the IDW Disney comics until recently. Check them out!
I am one of the lifelong Disney comics fans (along with, e.g., GeoX who writes the duckcomicsrevue blog) who have stopped buying the IDW Disney comics. A big deal, because I've bought every Disney Duck comic printed in the USA since the second issue of the first iteration of Gladstone Publishing comics in the 1980's.
Did you also keep buying the initial run of the BOOM! books (the Ultraheroes/Double-Duck/Wizards of Mickey run)? That period until when the "classics came back" (BOOM! 2.0 I think they called it) was the only time after Gladstone-I that I stopped buying the "Core Four". I had no interest in stories starring classic characters that had them all playing superheroes, spies or mythological beings. I'm still holding on during the current IDW run (at least the characters are themselves), but for Pete's sake, Grandma has bright yellow hair and HD&L say "Uncle Donald"!
I am one of the lifelong Disney comics fans (along with, e.g., GeoX who writes the duckcomicsrevue blog) who have stopped buying the IDW Disney comics. A big deal, because I've bought every Disney Duck comic printed in the USA since the second issue of the first iteration of Gladstone Publishing comics in the 1980's.
Did you also keep buying the initial run of the BOOM! books (the Ultraheroes/Double-Duck/Wizards of Mickey run)? That period until when the "classics came back" (BOOM! 2.0 I think they called it) was the only time after Gladstone I that I stopped buying the "Core Four". I had no interest in stories starring classic characters that had them all playing superheroes, spies or mythological beings. I'm still holding on during the current IDW run (at least the characters are themselves), but for Pete's sake, Grandma has bright yellow hair and HD&L say "Uncle Donald"!
I believe I bought the BOOM Donald-as-someone-else comics, but immediately passed them on to a young friend. And Mickey comics I've hardly ever bought, until the recent IDW run--I bought all of those. Yay, Casty!
One of my claims to fame is that over the years I managed to hook three children on the Disney Duck comics and turn them into serious fans. So I sometimes bought comics I wasn't interested in myself, for the current kid-recipient's sake. But I'm not going to try to do that with the 2019 IDW comics--I don't think their quality is good enough for the kid I pass the comics on to, either.
And yes, Baar Baar Jinx, I find the Italian coloring in the current IDW Disney comics alienating, too, though if the English dialogue were better I would put up with it. But I find Grandma Duck's bright yellow hair and the Duplo-plastic-toy-looking money bin (red, yellow and blue) very off-putting. That is not the *real* Grandma Duck nor the *real* money bin, to my mind.
If you can afford them, spring for the "Timeless Tales" hardcovers collecting the IDW run (especially the Mickey Mouse volumes), plus the "Mickey and Donald and the Search for the Zodiac Stone" and the "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories Vault" books...you'll get some nice extras that way, and they'll last longer than magazine-format comics (in theory, anyways).
If you can afford them, spring for the "Timeless Tales" hardcovers collecting the IDW run (especially the Mickey Mouse volumes), plus the "Mickey and Donald and the Search for the Zodiac Stone" and the "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories Vault" books...you'll get some nice extras that way, and they'll last longer than magazine-format comics (in theory, anyways).
I agree that's the best way to get the collected IDW run now. The trades, though cheaper, are all smaller than standard comic book size, which irks me no end (although it may not be as much an issue for most people). Most of the hardcovers seem to still be in stock at Amazon.
If you can afford them, spring for the "Timeless Tales" hardcovers collecting the IDW run (especially the Mickey Mouse volumes), plus the "Mickey and Donald and the Search for the Zodiac Stone" and the "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories Vault" books...you'll get some nice extras that way, and they'll last longer than magazine-format comics (in theory, anyways).
I agree that's the best way to get the collected IDW run now. The trades, though cheaper, are all smaller than standard comic book size, which irks me no end (although it may not be as much an issue for most people). Most of the hardcovers seem to still be in stock at Amazon.
The problem with the hardcover releases is that they all got cancelled so you won't be getting all of the new content through them. Mickey Mouse Timeless Tales managed to finish the monthly Mickey Mouse series before it ended but Donald Duck Timeless Tales is missing the final three issues of that series and Uncle Scrooge Timeless Tales is a whopping 22 issues behind the newest issue. And we have no idea if Comics and Stories Vault is going to have more releases or not but I doubt it at this point. And even still, you'd be lacking other stuff like Donald and Mickey, Magic Kingdom Comics, the Halloween and Christmas specials, Duck Avenger, Donald Quest, the DuckTales comic if you wanted that and so on.
As far as the state of Disney comics is currently, well at least we have Disney Masters. That's pretty much the only thing worth looking forward to right now. I have a feeling that IDW's entire line of Disney comics will be over by the end of the year. Everything from them is just falling down the drain. Just finish releasing hardcovers of everything prior to last autumn and I'll be on my way, thanks.
You're not missing a lot without the DuckTales comic. It has gotten better since it started, but it still makes me think of the old Jamie Diaz studios stories that ran in Gladstone's DuckTales comics. They really aren't worth a hardcover collection. Donald Quest is another of the "alternate universe" stories like Wizards of Mickey and Ultra Heroes that the Italian publisher likes to push on people. It isn't bad, but I wouldn't exactly call it memorable, either. The two Mickey Mouse hardcover albums ("Mickey's Craziest Adventures" and "Mysterious Melody: How Mickey Met Minnie") are very much worth seeking out, though.
I agree with almost everything Deb, BBJ and squeakyboots have said here. Sure, get the Timeless Tales hardcover collections of the IDW Disney comics 2015-18 if you can afford them. If you can't or if there's stuff you want that's not in those hardcovers, go for the trades or even the regular comics themselves. My comic store has a bunch of the back issues available for cover price. And there's the used option, of course; mycomicshop.com is one reliable seller. Squeakyboots mentioned the holiday issues as something you won't get in Timeless Tales; the recent trade pb collection of the first two IDW Christmas Parades is still available.
Do you know about INDUCKS? Probably you do, if you're not a new fan, but I'm checking because every now and then someone will surprise me by *not* knowing about INDUCKS. A truly amazing fan-produced index of Disney comics worldwide. You can use that to look through the IDW Disney comics issues and see (1) which stories/issues are reprinted in which Timeless Tales or TPBs and (2) which issues have stories you're particularly interested in. For instance: here's the page for IDW's first issue of Uncle Scrooge. INDUCKS uses the traditional numbering of the issues (which IDW continued to note along with their new numbering), and since there were usually two or three covers for each issue, you have to put "a" (or b or c) after the issue number in an INDUCKS publication search, e.g. Uncle Scrooge 405a for IDW's Uncle Scrooge #1. But if you just want to browse through the IDW Disney offerings, once you've found the first of each title you can just page through all the issues from there. Here's IDW's Donald Duck #1. Here's IDW's Mickey Mouse #1. Here's IDW's first WDCS (they kept the traditional numbering for this title).
I agree with Deb that the DuckTales comics have not been anything to write home about. When I'm recommending the IDW Disney comics from 2015-18, I'm thinking of the classic titles: Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney's Comics & Stories (better in my opinion after the first year--2015 through mid-2016--when the lead story was the serialized Zodiac Stone story, which didn't do much for me).
The Zodiac Stone story is certainly not one of the best stories, but I liked seeing the Ducks and Mice together (even if it wasn’t very often). It’s less aggravating in one book than it was doled out one chapter at a time over the course of a year. It is a nice time capsule piece for the Italian Disney comics world of the period when it was first printed.
True that--as people have said, it clearly worked better in Topolino when the chapters came out weekly, rather than monthly! So reading it for the first time in Timeless Tales would be a quite different experience than we had reading it in monthly installments.
Are we really thinking the IDW years are coming to an end?
I agree with that consensus that some of the translations and nuances have felt off for a little while. I assumed that was because I’ve never been a huge fan of a lot of the Italian comics, but now it makes a bit more sense.
For me there’s just been too much jumping around — titles, numbering, etc. Those things also tend to be signs that the waters are a bit rough.
It also doesn’t help when the various hard cover collections typically contain material that showcases just how good the source material can be in the right hands.
One great thing about the Timeless Tales hardcovers is that, being aimed at hardcore collectors (ahem), they often include uncensored versions of older stories that were modified when published in IDW's regular comic book issues. A great example of this is the old Mickey Mouse serial "The Ghost of Man-Eater Mountain" (1951), by Don Christensen and Bill Wright, which really surprised me by being much better than I had expected. This story was censored when published in issue #5 of IDW's Mickey Mouse comic book. Then, parts of that censoring was maintained when it was collected in TPB form, and finally, it was published completely uncensored and unfiltered in the hardcover Mickey Mouse Timeless Tales 1. So here, the hardcover edition wins hands-down. (That said, I first read the story in the TPB and enjoyed it there as well.)