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• Price: $12.99
• Pages: 96
• Rating: All Ages
• On Sale: March 7, 2018
• Writer: Various
  
• Artist: Various
• Publisher: IDW

From the Publisher – Leap into action with Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse for a wacky collection of modern-day comics classics—featuring the return of the diabolical Phantom Blot! When the supervillain Phantom Blot turns himself two-dimensional, daring Mickey can only stop his crime spree by hopping dimensions! Then, unlucky Donald Duck finally wins the lottery… and will do anything to hang on to his prize! All the stories from IDW’s Donald and Mickey #1 and #2 are anthologized in this exciting paperback collection, featuring work by fan-favorite writer-artists William Van Horn and Andrea “Casty” Castellan!

Our We Talk Comics WeView – Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and several of their friends are back in this collection of tales originally produced in Europe and now translated for English reading fans to delight in. The main tale, “The Big Fat Flat Blot Plot” (try saying that 3 times fast) comes to us from Italy, but several other countries such as Finland,  Denmark, The Netherlands and Sweden are represented too.

If you’re more familiar with the American comics versions of these characters you’ll no doubt notice some subtle differences in style. Sometimes I find the domestic comics written for a younger audience tend to worry too much about feeling topical in their references and speech. Occasionally that make parts of the comics feel a bit forced. None of the stories in this collection suffer from that, they simply allow the characters to be themselves and it makes for familiar, light storytelling.

The book’s art has the Disney style you’d expect of course but that doesn’t mean it isn’t very well drawn. The pages come alive with energy and certain things like the Flat World in the opener look amazingly good. In fact rendering characters who are supposed to be flat in a 3-D world on paper that’s… well… flat… sure seems like a difficult task to me. All the art is fun and enjoyable for each story.

Because they’re telling the tales as they need to be told instead of targeting a particular demographic, you get things you wouldn’t expect from a Disney book done on this side of the pond. The Phantom Blot in the headline story really tries to kill Mickey, and brags about Mickey being in a fatal situation, even using almost those exact words. In another story some pirate goons beat Mickey and Goofy up. I just don’t recall seeing Disney characters getting punched or punching others over here but it’s honestly kind of refreshing, and certainly not truly violent in any way. In fact, pretty much every classic Disney animated film has scenes much more intense than these, it’s just that it’s nice to the European style doesn’t feel the need to protect us from a little dust up.

I’m not going to try and fool you into thinking this is some seminal piece of work you’ll be talking about for years, but I am telling you this collection is a good time. Adults will have a laugh at the antics, children will find some excitement, and better yet you and your kid can sit down and enjoy it together, and what’s better than that?

Rating – Very Fine (VF) or 8/10

Review by Mo

Love the review? Hate the review? Disagree with me? I’m happy to talk comics on twitter @Mo_WeTalk

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