Who’s got the sweetest disposition?
One guess. Guess who?
Who never, never starts an argument?
Who never shows a bit of temperament?
Who’s never wrong but always right?
Who’d never dream of starting a fight?
Who gets stuck with all the bad luck?
No one… but Donald Duck!

This year is a big year for Donald Duck fans as everyone’s favorite duck turned 90 on June 9th, 2024. Most of the fanfare has been on the merch side. Fantagraphics published a flight of books to help fans celebrate including the biggest gift of all, Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The 90th Anniversary Collection. This book features 368 pages of Donald Duck comic treasures throughout his 90 years created by various writers and artists. There are many classic stories that are favorites of mine in addition to stories that I read for the first time. In this review, I will detail all of the stories that you will find in this book. Let Donald Duck’s 90th Quacktacular begin!

Official Description:

Dive into the amazing adventures of Disney’s feisty fowl with an action-packed, super-stuffed comics anthology collecting 90 years of stories by Donald’s most beloved writers and artists!

In honor of Donald Duck’s 90th anniversary, join us in tracing his comics career from 1934 to the present! Carl Barks’ “Lost in the Andes” and Don Rosa’s “Return to Plain Awful” take the Ducks to the legendary land of square eggs―while Romano Scarpa’s “Legend of Donald Hood” pits Donald against Scrooge in a feature-length Sherwood Forest spoof! Marco Rota’s “Life and Times of Donald Duck” traces our hero from birth―as a wild duck in a nest?!―while William Van Horn’s “The Black Moon” finds outer-space peril threatening Duckburg! From Daisy to Gladstone to Gyro and the Beagle Boys, the gang’s all here… for an unprecedented look at everybody’s favorite duck!

Included Stories

There are over 19 stories included in the 368 pages of Walt Disney’s Donald Duck: The 90th Anniversary Collection:

• Early Newspaper Comics
• Donald Duck, Special Correspondent
• Sleepy Time Donald
• Lost in the Andes!
• The Legend of Donald Hood
• OG’s Iron Bed
• The Egg and Why
• Kingdom Under the Sea
• A Clean Case of Competence
• The Life and Times of Donald Duck
• Return to Plain Awful
• Hero 300
• The Black Moon
• Dog Tired
• Crimebustin’ Donald
• Brother, Can You Spare a Pot of Gold?
• The Rise and Fall of Donald Duck
• A Love Lost to Oblivion!
• A Snowman’s Chance

The book starts off with an introduction by David Gerstein titled Wak! Ninety Years! The four page introduction details Donald’s history in comics and shouts out the creative people who brought those stories to life. This is a great comic journey brought to readers by the definitive Disney comics historian.

The Early Newspaper Comics stories feature twelve four to five panel newspaper comic strips from 1938 by artist Al Taliaferro. These stories are short but effective as they all bring classic laughs. Included in this batch of comic strips is the first week of Donald Duck comic strips as well as some strips from later months.

Also from 1938, we get Donald Duck, Special Correspondent from Paperino by Italian artist and writer, Federico Pedrocchi. This one includes Donald’s friend, Peter Pig, from Donald’s debut Silly Symphony animated short, The Wise Little Hen. Donald and Peter are hired by a newspaper to take the first picture of a general for Sylvania. They need to get the picture first before other competing news organizations, but no one knows what the general looks like. It was fitting to see Peter Pig included in this collection of stories to celebrate Donald’s 90th Anniversary.

Sleepy Time Donald is a spinoff of the 1947 animated classic of the same name. Donald sleep walks into many dangerous situations, and Daisy has to save him and steer him back to his bed.

Lost in the Andes! is as classic Carl Barks Donald Duck adventure stories as you can get. Donald and his nephews travel to the Andes in search of square eggs. They find…Plain Awful where everything is square.

Donald Duck stars in a retelling of the classic literature story, Robin Hood, as put on by the cast of Duckburg in The Legend of Donald Hood. Uncle Scrooge is type-cast as Governor John-Scrooge. Gladstone Gander is the Sheriff. I wouldn’t mind reading some more classic literature Duck retelling after this one.

Donald, his nephews, and Gyro are on a time travel quest to get a picture of King OG in his bed in OG’s Iron Bed. The photo would be proof that the bed Scrooge paid one million dollars for at an auction is authentic. Our time traveling ducks find themselves in a race against evil inventor, Emil Eagle. This story was published in 1966 in an American Donald Duck series.

Donald’s cousin Fethry joins the fun in The Egg and Why. There are many great Fethry stories in the two Dick Kinney Disney Masters volumes. I glanced back at those two volumes and found that this Donald and Fethry story is not included in those releases. In this story, Fethry brings a bunch of chickens to Donald’s house to try to talk him into going into being a chicken farmer to resell the eggs. Scrooge finds out about the egg profit margin, and he wants in. All it will take is a flip of a number one dime to see what it will cost Scrooge. A chicken swallows the dime so Scrooge buys all of the chickens from Donald at his cost terms.

Donald Duck wants to fish in peace without tourist always getting in his way. He decides to try out the Bay of Silence with his nephews. While diving for fish near Paradox Rocks, Donald vanishes without a trace into a Kingdom Under the Sea. Donald finds himself in a love triangle with the Queen of this tiny kingdom and one of her loyal subjects.

Donald gets a job cleaning Duckburg’s clock tower, Big Beth, in A Clean Case of Competence. Chaos happens when Duckburg is no longer able to tell the time.

Marco Rota’s The Life and Times of Donald Duck was published in 1984 to celebrate Donald’s 50th birthday.

Donald and the boys Return to Plain Awful with Scrooge in Don Rosa’s sequel story to Carl Barks’ Lost in the Andes. Huey, Dewey, and Louie want to return the two square roosters that they brought home in the previous tale because they are starting to get sick. Scrooge funds the trip, but he wants to come along to negotiate the sale for the square eggs. They are going to have to beat Flintheart Glomgold to Plain Awful if they want to negotiate to purchase the square eggs first.

The question of What If…? Donald Duck comics actually exist in Duckburg is answered in Hero 300. This is a fun story that I had not read before that was published for the 300th episode of Donald Duck in North America. Donald brings his comic book collection to a contest to find the Hero of the Year. Donald removes the covers that might show him in an unflattering way.

The race is on to claim The Black Moon of a newly discovered planet named Ronald beyond Pluto. Gyro invents a thought ship that will take Donald and the boys to the moon to claim its black oil surface

Donald solves a crime as a ducktective with the help of some dogs in Dog Tired.

Donald runs for Mayor of Duckburg on the election platform of being tough on crime in Crimebustin’ Donald. Donald creates a new jail so fancy that criminals won’t to get caught and stay there.

A St. Patrick’s Day find the leprechaun and win a pot of gold contest takes place in Duckburg in Brother, Can You Spare a Pot of Gold? Huey, Dewey, and Louie play the part of the leprechauns. Donald must find a leprechaun before Scrooge and Gladstone.

In The Rise and Fall of Donald Duck, Scrooge gets down hard on Donald for his lack of ambition. Donald gets ambitions of trading places with Scrooge by getting all of his fortune with the help of Gladstone. Gladstone tells Donald which company stock to buy while a lucky for Donald and unlucky for Scrooge computer glitch causes Scrooge to trade his fortune for all of the stock in that company. Donald finds out that being the World’s Richest Duck isn’t what it is all quacked up to be.

We get a Duck Avenger story where Daisy discovers Donald Duck’s secret identity in A Love Lost to Oblivion! Donald attempts to wipe his secret identity from her memory, but he ends up wiping the wrong identity. Daisy no longer remembers Donald Duck, and she is convinced she is dating the Duck Avenger. I loved this story as well as any Duck Avenger content that I can consume.

A young Donald wonders why no one ever gives snowmen presents in A Snowman’s Chance.

My Review

I was a little worried that Disney would overlook Donald Duck’s 90th milestone birthday, but this year has been full of celebration and great merch for our favorite duck. The cover of this book by Marco Mazzarello is amazing and would look great in any Disney Comics collection. The book is 368 pages of entertaining Donald Duck stories. I would not consider this to be a very best of series as Donald has a long list of favorite stories and memorable adventures throughout his comic career. You would need an even larger book to hold them all. Instead, this is a carefully curated book collecting a great variety of Donald Duck tales written and illustrated by a great deal of talent creative people. Some of these classic stories, I have read before like Carl Barks’ Lost in the Andes and Don Rosa’s Return to Plain Awful. Other stories, I read for the first time. I love how the book is not just full of stories that Fantagraphics has previously published. The collection is an amazing milestone keepsake and does a great job of celebrating 90 years of Donald Duck. Happy Annivesary Donald Duck!

A big thank you to Fantagraphics for allowing us to review this book so that we can continue our education and journey through the history of Disney Comics.

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