Disney's DuckTales By Marv Wolfman

[Jonathan H. Gray]

>From: Santiago García <saturno3x1 at yahoo.es>
>To: dcml at nafsk.se
>Subject: Disney's DuckTales By Marv Wolfman
>Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 19:56:41 +0200 (CEST)
>
>Hello, everyone:
>
>I just noticed this news from Amazon: A DuckTales
>adventure by Marv Wolfman, for Gemstone. Would anyone
>tell me how is it like?
>
>http://www.amazon.com/Disneys-DuckTales-Marv-Wolfman-Scrooges/dp/1888472839
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>Santiago.
>
>

"Scrooge's Quest" was the first of the 3 major Duck Tales serials. The 
second one being "The Gold Odyssey" and the last being "A Dime in Time". The 
final one was condensed into two parts (probably due to the implosion) but 
the latter two reflected Disney's attempts to try and interject on-going 
continuity into the Disney series while maintaining standalone stories. 
UNLIKE Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers (which I think mastered this to SOME 
extent), the two major Duck Tales stories were each 7 parts long and had a 
definitive beginning and ending.

Think of them like...remember how the TV show had "Treasure of the Golden 
Suns", "Super Ducktales", and "Time Is Money" as large multipart storylines? 
Think of "Scrooge's Quest" and "The Gold Odyssey" as comic book style 
stories of that.

As a little kid I read "The Gold Odyssey" first - in its entirety - and fell 
in love with it. Perhaps this is nostalgia talking but I felt it to be the 
far more coherent one of the two. It's stories segued well into each other 
and even if they went off onto thier own tangents there was a sense of 
fluidity in the saga as a whole. Of the two stories, my personal opinion is 
that TGO is the better one. On the opposite end of the spectrum, "Scrooge's 
Quest" felt isjointed and "patched together" in spots - namely because two 
of the subchapters - "Shipwrecked" and "Down But Not Out in Duckburg" felt 
very tacked on and out of place. Kinda like they were inserted into the 
story as filler. Furthermore Magica seems out of character in spots (even 
for Ducktales) and Scrooge's incessant obsession over Webby after her 
kidnapping (which serves as the first major climax/focus of the story) feels 
very out of place.

A lot of that had to do with the writers of the two stories. Marv Wolfman is 
lesser known in Disney circles but is a HEAVY HITTER for Marvel/DC due to 
his work on the 80's version of Teen Titans, currently on Nightwing. That's 
probably why Scrooge's Quest was chosen over The Gold Odyssey but I can't be 
sure. he practically redefined all of those characters and its his template 
was used to define the characters in the cartoon. I can guess that a lot of 
casual Disney comics readers were like "WHAT? MARV WOLFMAN WROTE A 
SCROOGE/DUCKTALES SERIAL?!?! OMGWTFBBQPRINTITNOW!?!!?!?!?!" and Gemstone 
responded.

I'm actually glad they did. It's not a bad story at all. To its credit - 
more so than TGO - it even has references to several of Barks' classic 
stories largely in one of the "filler pieces" I mentioned above. Don't go in 
expecting "Life and Times" but for what it is, I'd say that for an inaugural 
piece from someone not normally associated with Disney its pretty decent. 
Characterization is off in spots, and its disjointed, but decent. TGO was 
written by Bob Langhans who was something of a Disney veteran I believe. And 
I think that by the time SQ finished, Disney had figured out a little bit 
better as to what worked and what didn't and why it fared a lot better when 
it came to reviews from readers. I'm hoping that should this succeed, 
Gemstone would opt to reprint it in trade format. I like seeing something 
different like this coming down the pike from them along with the classic 
stuff once in a while and fully support it.

It's not my favorite story to come down the pike from that period, and there 
are far better ones I'd love to see in trades, but its a decent one to start 
with and especially one of the harder stories of that era to find complete 
in back issue sets.

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