Archive for April, 2007

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 »

A panel of judges have arrived at the 2007 nominees for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, considered the “Oscars” of the comic book industry. Among the nominees of this year is Don Rosa’s “The Black Knight Glorps Again”, from Gemstone’s Uncle Scrooge #354 (buy for $6.96), nominated for Best Short Story. It is the third story by Rosa to feature his original character, The Black Knight, whom first appeared in 1997. More »

Italian weekly Topolino (“Mickey Mouse”) has started the second series of comic stories in the Wizards of Mickey saga that stars Mickey Mouse, Goofy and Donald Duck in a new world of wizards and castles. The first chapter, written by Stefano Ambrosio and drawn by Marco Palazzi, appeared in issue #2680 of Topolino this week. The new series, titled “The Dark Ages”, is accompanied by a large advertising campaign in Italy; check out this great promotional website. The first series of Wizards of Mickey started in October 2006; you can download all ten chapters of the first series on this official website.

German publisher Ehapa has relaunched the official website of Germany’s weekly Micky Maus magazine, at www.micky-maus.de. The website features a fresh new look with an animated header that shows Duckburg and contains mini games. The site has many activities, including a drawing course, an interactive map of Duckburg, games, puzzles, and much more. In March, the website of monthly Lustiges Taschenbuch was also renewed. More »

Did you know that, with approximately 50% of the market, Disney is the largest publisher of children’s magazines and comics (excluding manga) in the world? Disney comics and magazines are published in 85 languages in 75 countries, from Czech Republic to China and from Israel to Indonesia. 27 countries have a weekly Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck magazine that together sold a total number of 114.9 million copies in 2005 ¹. Disney comics may be dying in the United States — in the rest of the world they are still very much alive! More »

The Karikaturmuseum in Krems, Austria has an exhibition titled “Donald Duck … and the duck became human, The Drawings and Poetic Works of Carl Barks”. The exposition is from 25 March to 4 November 2007 and has more than 400 original works of art, including 290 from the collection of Gottfried Helnwein.