Walt Disney’s Mickey and Donald: “For Whom the Doorbell Tolls” and Other Tales Inspired by Hemingway

Product Description

Ernest Hemingway: Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner, war hero, famed novelist, journalist, adventurer ― and inspiration to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, and Goofy! The year: 1999. The place: Italy. Fan-favorite Venetian Disney cartoonist Giorgio Cavazzano dared a creative team to take its cues from Ernest Hemingway for a striking, cinematic, and occasionally silly new series of Duckburg tales!

In this original Disney collection, Hemingway’s “The Battler” and “The Killers” inspire new Mickey and Peg Leg Pete parodies while our title adventure, with Mickey meeting “Ernest” in person! From Donald’s bid for knighthood as “The Duck Who Would Be King” to Peg Leg Pete’s invasion of a diner in “Bad Boys” and Uncle Scrooge’s shark-wrangling in “The Older Man and the Sea,” these epics range from direct pastiches to shorts loosely based on “Papa” Hemingway’s work ― each paired with its authors’ “liner notes,” telling the fascinating tale of how and why they were inspired.

Included Stories

There are 10 stories that were all orignally published in Italy included in the 180 pages of Walt Disney’s Mickey and Donald: “For Whom the Doorbell Tolls” and Other Tales Inspired by Hemingway:

• Cowboy Blues
• The Duck Who Would Be King
• The End of a Perfect Day
• Bad Boys
• Sahara
• Boiling Point
• Mickey and the Two Chefs
• All Wet
• The Older Man and the Sea
• For Whom the Doorbell Tolls

Review

This is another great collection of Italian comics that we would not have previously been aware of if it were not for this Fantagraphics edition. All stories were originally published in Italian In Topolino. Italian Disney Master, Giorgio Cavazzano, gives a preface introduction of a class project that he gave to his art class at the Accademia Disney. The assignment was to read the stories from Ernest Hemingway’s The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories to create eight inspired and free interpretations using classic Disney characters. Some of the characters used in these stories include Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Pete, and even Ernest Hemingway himself. The other two stories in this book are The Older Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls. My favorite Ernest Hemingway story is The Old Man and the Sea. It was fun to see a loose version of that tale starring Scrooge McDuck. An Afterword by Robert K. Elder who authored the book, Hemingway in Comics, appears at the end of the book. Other bonus materials included between stories are historical pictures of Ernest Hemingway throughout his life.

A big thank you to Fantagraphics for allowing us to go through this Italian Disney Comics journey.

Order: Walt Disney’s Mickey and Donald: “For Whom the Doorbell Tolls” and Other Tales Inspired by Hemingway

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