The search for the famous Lost Library of Alexandria is on again in the latest issue of Uncle Scrooge. Issue #383 in the series reprints Don Rosa’s masterpiece Guardians of the Lost Library for the first time in the United States since fourteen years. This time the story is accompanied by unused, finished panels Rosa dropped from the story and replaced after its initial European printing. Two articles by Don Rosa tell about the story’s origins and the research that went into the making. The beautiful Rosa cover and a new Christmas back cover poster by Don Rosa make this an issue not to be missed. It is on sale now for $7.99 at Amazon and your local comic store.

Out now is the fifth installment of Gemstone Publishing’s Christmas Parade. This brand-new 80-page trade paperback features some jolly Christmas stories, starting off with Carl Barks’ 1947 story The Thrifty Spendthrift, a hypnotized Scrooge recreates the famous “Twelve Days of Christmas” song in real life. Other tales include a Mickey and Goofy epic with a sci-fi twist by Romano Scarpo entitled Memoirs of an Invisible Santa and in Pat and Shelly’s Cookery Countdown it’s Donald Duck’s turn to create an explosive Christmas Dinner. All this holiday fun is now available for only $9.50 and makes a great Christmas gift.

The first volume of the new Don Rosa Library is now available for pre-order at Amazon. The series of hardcover books will re-print, in chronological order, the complete collection of duck comic book stories by Keno Don Rosa. This first book will come out on January 9th 2009 in summer 2009¹ and contains his early work from 1987 and 1988, including his very first story Son of the Sun and the masterpiece Last Sled to Dawson, in which Uncle Scrooge goes back to the Klondike to find a sled he left there during the gold rush. The stories are restored, recolored, and furnished with numerous editorial features.

¹ – This has been delayed until summer 2009 due to issues with getting some of the stories together for the book.

German Donaldist Jürgen Wollina has released a map of the fictitious town of Duckburg that he has worked on for the last 13 years. Every detail on the map is based on something from a Carl Barks comic book story. Carl Barks wrote and drew thousands of pages of Disney comics from 1942 to 1966 and created Duckburg as well as Scrooge McDuck, the Beagle Boys, Gladstone Gander and many other characters. Donaldists are fans and collectors who research Disney comics and those stories by Barks in particular. More »

Someone at the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard is definitely a Disney comics fan. Check out this hilarious parody in the latest issue of the magazine. In the letter Scrooge McDuck asks the U.S. Department of Treasury for help after his his net worth has declined from five multiplujillion, nine impossibidillion, seven fantasticatrillian dollars and sixteen cents to a buck eighty. The two panels are from Don Rosa stories.

Scoop is reporting the release of a great new series by Gemstone Publishing in the United States. The first book in the Donald Duck Family: The Daan Jippes Collection Vol. 1 is out now! It features the first five Junior Woodchucks stories that were written by Carl Barks and drawn by talented Dutch Disney artist Daan Jippes.

Legendary duck artist Carl Barks created 24 pencil-scripts after he retired in 1969. These stories have been completed by Daan Jippes in a style faithful to that of Barks. Jippes started drawing the stories in 1992 and has just recently finished the last few, which have already been printed in Europe. Americans can now enjoy these beautifully crafted stories, featuring Donald’s nephews Huey, Duey and Louie as the Junior Woodchucks, in this new series. You can order the first volume of the Daan Jippes Collection on Amazon for just $8.99.

Here’s some exciting Disney comics news: Stan Lee, the creator of Spider-Man, X-Men and Iron Man, is teaming up with Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment to produce a revolutionary new concept in comic book format: Time Jumper. According to the press release: “Time Jumper will become the industry’s most ambitious digital comic book series ever designed to release on multiple platforms.”

Disney also announced an extension of the deal with Stan Lee’s POW Entertainment Inc. that covers all forms of media from movies and television, to publishing, games, the internet and mobile-web.

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Comicrazys has a wonderful collection of paintings by Floyd Gottfredson up on their website. Between 1978 and 1983 the legendary cartoonist made a total of 24 paintings commissioned by collector Malcolm Willits.

Each of the 24 paintings is based on a storyline from one of Gottfredson’s popular comic strips. He wrote and drew hundreds of newspaper strips starring Mickey Mouse and the gang from 1930 up to his retirement in 1975. His work had been printed in newspapers, magazines and comic books around the world, but as a Disney employee he was never allowed to sign it. Gottfredson’s identity was finally revealed in the mid-1960s by fan Malcolm Willits. Subsequently, reprints of his Mickey Mouse strips in the 1970s gave him credit.

The Walt Disney Company Italy are experts in making nice websites to promote their comic books. Topolino.it is (in my opinion) by far the nicest official website for Disney comics in the world. It’s a beautiful Flash website with lots of interactive games, stories and information about their titles.

I just came across a fun soccer game with Donald Duck: Paper Gol. Check it out and see if you can beat Donald.

Ehapa Verlag, publisher of Disney comics in Germany, is reprinting the first 50 issues of the popular Donald Duck Sonderheft in five unique collector’s sets with a limited print-run of only 4,444.

The original 50 issues came out between 1965 and 1977 and the first 40 have never been reprinted since. They contain many classic stories by legendary artist Carl Barks and translated to German by much-praised Dr. Erika Fuchs, who was Micky Maus’ first editor-in-chief. The high-quality sets can be ordered for EUR89.95 ($140) each at entlich-da.de and are available to Disney fans in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The first box is out now.