This Saturday, May 3rd, is Free Comic Book Day. This annual event is a great opportunity to introduce your friends and family to the world of comics as many comic book stores across North America and the world will hand out comics totally free! There will be over 40 different free comics this year, including the annual contribution by Gemstone Publishing, publisher of Disney comics in the United States. This year’s free Disney comic is all about Duckburg’s most famous inventor: Gyro Gearloose. (more…)

Disney Italy continues to make impressive new and original stories. Last year saw the release of Wizards of Mickey, a new world of wizards, castles and bewitched lands created by Claretta Muci and Stefano Ambrosio starring Mickey, Goofy and Donald. That 10-part series has since been reprinted across Europe. In February 2008, weekly Topolino started another multi-part series in issue 2726: Ultraheroes. (more…)

Here’s a list of online discussion groups about Disney comics. If you have one to add please leave a comment:

• The Disney Comics Forum (English)
• Kandrakar W.i.t.c.h. Forum (English)
• DDF(R) Online Debat (Danish)
• Kvaak (Finnish)
• Andeby Online (Norwegian)
• Disney Comics Fan Forum (German)
• Forums Picsouman (French)
• Il Forum del Papersera (Italian)
• Quadrinhos Disney (Brazilian)
• Disney Polska (Polish)

This month Gemstone Publishing in the United States is releasing the second issue in their Walt Disney Treasures series. Uncle Scrooge: A Little Something Special, a 160-page trade paperback, celebrating Scrooge McDuck’s 60th anniversary in style.

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Stuffosaurus has a collection of t-shirts for fans of Disney comics, including several ones based on famous Carl Barks stories, like “I Went to Plain Awful and all I found was this square egg!” and a Calisota University design for alumni, students and fans of Calisota, home of Duckburg. Some great gifts here for Disney comic fans. Have a look at the other designs. Here are some examples:

One year after Walt Disney Company Italy ran a 10-part series in its weekly Topolino magazine, titled Wizards of Mickey, the series is being published in the Nordic countries by Egmont. Wizards of Mickey, which was created by Claretta Muci and Stefano Ambrosio, is renamed by Egmont in Norway to “Donald Duck - Magiens mestere”, kicking Mickey out of the spotlight. Apparently, Donald Duck is far more popular in the Nordic countries than Mickey is. The first chapter comes out this week and features a redrawn cover putting Donald in front of Mickey:

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No other book in Germany has had such a large print run for so many years. The first issue of Lustiges Taschenbuch came out on October 1st, 1947. This month, 40 years years later, the 260-page monthly pocket book celebrates its anniversary with 4 special issues. The first issue will be reprinted and made available again, and next month’s issue #369 will have a special gold/silver cover and contain 40 extra pages! Each year 13 new issues of Lustiges Taschenbuch are published. If you put all issues on a bookshelf you’ll need a shelf of 5 1/2 meters (18 feet) long to store the more than 360 books that have published so far. That’s nearly 100,000 pages of Disney comic stories!

Visit the LTB official website and see the TV commercial for the 4 special issues on the homepage. Here’s the cover of the first special issue that came out on 19 September.

Anyone familiar with Carl Barks’ classic 1953 The Master Rainmaker will remember how Donald Duck skillfully shaped clouds and sprinkled them with rain seed to provide farmers with just the right amount of rain in the right place. In 1983, Barks commented that the inspiration for his story “grew out of the news events of the period. Rainmaking by seeding clouds was getting a lot of publicity, and who could perfect the technique better than Donald Duck - and overdo it more disastrously?”

Cloud seeding was actually invented by atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut, who in 1946 discovered the potential of silver iodide for the process. The first attempt at cloud seeding was in upstate New York during 1946 when a chemist caused snow to fall after he dumped six pounds of dry ice into a cloud from a plane.

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On 25 May, one of the most famous dogs in the world turns 525 years old. Well, that’s in dog years of course (he is officially an anthropomorphic Dingo). In human years Goofy turns 75. He first appeared in the cartoon “Mickey’s Revue”, released on 25 May 1932. Directed by Wilfred Jackson, the short features Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Horace Horsecollar and Clarabelle Cow performing a song and dance show. In his first appearance Goofy (named “Dippy Dawg”; he later changed his name) is a member of the audience, irritating his fellow spectators by noisily crunching peanuts and laughing loudly.

De Beste Verhalen van Donald Duck (”The Best Stories of Donald Duck”) is a series in the Netherlands that has been reprinting Carl Barks stories since 1975. Last week the 132th album in the series came out, and with it Dutch publisher Sanoma has announced that, with almost all Barks reprinted, the series will soon come to an end. (more…)