Disney Publishing Worldwide has cancelled Disney Adventures, a monthly digest-sized magazine with comics and articles for tweens.

The series was launched in the United States in 1990. The November issue will be the publication’s final issue. The company said that the decision was made to better focus resources and maximize long-term growth potential through new magazine and book initiatives.

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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The Walt Disney Company today announced that it will buy Club Penguin for a cool $350 million. Club Penguin is by far the most popular social networking and gaming site for tweens aged 8 to 14-years-old. Disney has already redesigned Disney.com earlier this year, adding social networking, games and video. It has also been developing standalone gaming sites based on franchises like “Pirates of the Caribbean”. Bob Iger, President of the Walt Disney Company, said that Disney could “succeed online by growing organically” but that it considered Club Penguin “too good of a strategic fit” to pass up.

The Walt Disney Company’s first non-Hollywood movie made more than $1 million at Chinese box offices in its first week. “The Secret of the Magic Gourd”, a mix of live action and CGI animation, is based on a famous Chinese children’s story by the late Chinese children’s writer Zhang Tianyi. It is about a boy who’s troubled by his magical vegetable, which steals from others to please him. Hong Kong special-effects studio Centro Digital Pictures, which worked on “Kill Bill,” made the movie.

Universe of Comics is a new website that features an easy way to search through the vast collection of comic books, graphic novels and paperbacks available on Amazon.com. The site allows you to drill down by title, publisher, author and price. For instance, upcoming publications by Gemstone Publishing or all Uncle Scrooge comics. There is also a page where you can see a list of all the comic books that are released this week.

This month the United States sees the release of the first book in a new series of Gemstone trade paperbacks pairing Carl Barks’ classic Scrooge adventures with Don Rosa’s modern-day sequels! In Volume 1 of Uncle Scrooge Adventures: The Barks / Rosa Collection (buy online for $8.50) Barks’ classic “Land of the Pygmy Indians” is teamed with its follow-up, “War of the Wendigo”. When Scrooge grows sick of the big city’s rumble, his back-to-nature journey takes him to a pueblo untouched by modern times. There he meets the Peeweegah, Native Americans whose traditions haven’t changed in a thousand years… and whom he must defend from modernity’s encroaching grasp! The 64-page book that is released today features a beautiful original cover by Don Rosa:

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 »

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.