Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "donald-duck"

Donald Duck: The Diabolical Duck Avenger by Rodolfo Cimino

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book collects Disney Material that's reprinted from foreign disney publications.

The titular story, "The Duck Avenngers" finds a ticked-off Donald trying to steal a prize that lucky cousin Gladstone and gets a beaten down old manner with hints of ties to a vigilante thief and he decides to try launch his own career and a masked avenger. Of course, whether this makes him a true anti-hero or just someone ticked off due to perceived slights as a result of behavior that's his own fault is a question for debate. However, it's a fun story with a lot of clever plot twists even though Donald is unlikable. This is an Italian story and they were aiming for a kid-friendly pastiche of Diabolique and from what I know of the character, they succeeded.

"Birthday Bugaboo" finds the boys wanting to adopted a stray dog and Donald opposed until he learns some startling information. Donald is once again, a jerk, but it's also a fun story.

The other really long tale is "The Perfect Calm" where Donald is thrown into jail along with an Eastern mystic and joins a Zen-like quest for perfect serenity, but the boys have to follow along to make sure he doesn't get killed. Overall, this was probably the most enjoyable story , with a long page count and a few surprises on the way. There's some goofiness in how they treat personal serenity as like a communicable disease.

The shorts are all good. There's a few featuring Donald Duck and one featuring Ludwig Von Drake. My favorite one of the shorts was a 1937 British short featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald. It's such a cool throwback to that era.

Overall, this book isn't Carl Barks but it actually is quite a bit of fun. If you love Disney and Disney comics than this collection of a lot of foreign material translated into English should be worth your time.



View all my reviews