Step right up and
Come on in
Here’s where the fun begins
There’s so much to do
Getting ready just for you
Everybody’s busy
Bringing you a Disney Afternoon (hey!)
Can’t you feel the buzz?
Well, you’re gonna feel the buzz because
Everybody’s busy
Just a little dizzy
Bringing you a Disney Afternoon!
Fantagraphics is bringing us another Disney Afternoon in Vol. 5 of their Disney Afternoon Adventures book series. This series hooks up nostalgia to our veins in the form of the collection of comics from the Disney Adventures magazine as well as early 90s Disney comics starring characters from our favorite Disney Afternoon shows.
Darkwing Duck: Marinated Mystery: Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 5
Product Description:
Darkwing and Gizmoduck face a sinister chef and some rival superheroes in a wild Disney Afternooncomics collection also including Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers, DuckTales, and more!
From Disney Adventures and its Gen-X sister magazines come tales of epic thrills and chills! Darkwing, Gosalyn, and the gang are back in more classic tales from Disney Adventures magazine and around the world! In “Marinated Mystery,” St. Canard gets hexed by hypnotic haute cuisine… and Launchpad unleashes a recipe for disaster! Then Chip, Dale, and Gadget Hackwrench face Scottish scares in “The Ghastly Goat of Quiver Moor”… and Darkwing meets wild heroic wannabes in “Super-Union Blues”! Plus DuckTales, Goof Troop, Gummi Bears, and more!
Included Stories
There are 10 stories included in the 204 pages of Darkwing Duck: Marinated Mystery: Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 5:
- Marinated Mystery (Darkwing Duck)
- Somewhere Ogre the Rainbow (Adventures of the Gummi Bears)
- The Ghastly Goat of Quiver Moor (Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers)
- The Dough That Devoured Duckburg (DuckTales)
- The 25-Cent Solution (Goof Troop)
- Super Union Blues (Darkwing Duck)
- Go For Croak (Adventures of the Gummi Bears)
- Oongonnamucka Mayhem (TaleSpin)
- Disguise the Limit (Bonkers)
- Inversionary Tactics (Darkwing Duck)
Marinated Mystery is a Darkwing Duck story that was published in French Collection Disney Club #8. Darkwing Duck is called Mystermask in France, and you should definitely look up the Mystermask theme song on YouTube. The story starts off with DW in a battle with Quackerjack. Quackerjack has a universal remote control that controls people. This leads to a humorous battle where Quackerjack changes Darkwing into many different tv show characters and animals. This battle exhausts Darkwing, and he decides that he needs a well deserved week long vacation. When he returns from the vacation, he finds that almost all of the town has been turned into mind controlled zombies from consuming food from a new chef in town. The chef is a familiar foe in disguise. I will let you read the story to find out who is behind the food. Let’s get delicious!
Somewhere Ogre the Rainbow is an Adventures of the Gummi Bears tale from Yugoslavia. Duke Igthorn becomes nice after a bird dropped a brick on his head. He wants to do each Gummi Bear a personal favor until the bird drops another brick on his head.
The Ghastly Goat of Quiver Moor is a Rescue Rangers story that was originally published in issues #18 and #19 of the 19 issue Disney Comics Chip ‘N Dale Rescue Rangers comic series, Money has been embezzled from an orphanage, and it is up to the Rescue Rangers to find the money and solve a mystery of a ghost goat that haunts a nearby castle.
The Dough That Devoured Duckburg is a duck tale from Disney Adventures magazine. Scrooge, Gyro, and the boys watch a scary movie about a blob that terrorizes a city. During a movie break, Gyro shows the boys his new regeneration ray invention which makes multiples of most matter. It accidentally shoots a glob of dough which multiples into a blob like the one from their movie.
The 25-Cent Solution is a Goof Troop romp from Disney Adventures magazine. Max and PJ have a quarter in change from a candy purchase. The quarter is from 1927 so it may have some value to it. They have the hard decision of selling it or keeping it. Goofy and Pete are no help with the decision.
Super Union Blues is a two part dangerous Darkwing Duck story from two Disney Afmdventures magazines. Gizmoduck and a new super hero, Mr. Wonderful, go to St. Canard to award a prize to DW and invite him to join the Super Power Union. Darkwing declines the invitation as he does not play well with others. The Super Power Union takes offense and try to run Darkwing out of town. Gizmoduck overhears that Mr. Wonderful works for Steelbeak and F.O.W.L. It will be up to Darkwing and Launchpad McQuack to join forces with Gizmoduck to save St, Canard from the super imposters.
The Gummi Bears have their own frog prince rendition in Go For Croak from a Brazilian magazine. Grammi Gummi discovers a talking frog while she is out picking gunmiberries for a cake. The frog desperately wants a kiss from Grammi. She runs for help, but no one believes her. Gruffi Gummi goes to investigate the situation, and the frog offers him a job as a knight if he can get Grammi to kiss him.
Baloo and Kit are after the gem of Oongonnamucka in a TaleSpin story from Disney Adventures magazine titled Oongonnamucka Mayhem. Our heroes are unaware that Don Karnage, Colonel Thpigot, and Dunder are on their tale after the same gem. The hopeful intercepters of the gem are not successful as they continue to get into each other’s way making it easy for Baloo and Kit to retrieve the gem and use it to pay their tab at Louie’s Place.
All of the human cops including Detective Piquel are framed for a bank robbery as they were on their way to a costume party in Disguise the Limit. This originally published in French Bonkers story is from Le Journal de Mickey.
Megavolt is struck by lighting when he was touching a neon sign in Disney Adventures magazine story Inversionary Tactics. The lightning strike reversed his polarity which made him and anyone that he touches talk backwards.
Review
This is the second Darkwing Duck headlined volume of the five volumes released so far in Fantagraphics’ Disney Afternoon Adventures series. The book cover also features some dangerous Darkwing Duck art by legend James Silvani. I am surprised that we got another DW featured volume before DuckTales. The Disney Afternoon Adventures collection series is one of my favorites published by Fantagraphics. I want to collect and consume all Disney Afternoon show comic content that is out there. I love that in addition to the stories from my childhood from the Disney Adventures magazine, we also get new stories from other countries translated to English for the first time. As Mystermask says: “Ça va craindre un max!”
Get Dangerous to your favorite book retailer or online to collect another must have volume of Disney Afternoon goodness.
I really can’t get enough of these classic Disney Afternoon stories, and I hope that Fantagraphics continues to publish them in many future volumes of this Disney Afternoon Adventures series until we have them all.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND
Thank you to Fantagraphics for allowing us to go through this nostalgic Disney Afternooniverse journey.
Order: Darkwing Duck: Marinated Mystery: Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 5
The next volume of Disney Afternoon Adventures will be released next year. It is available to Preorder now.
Preorder: DuckTales: Treasure of the Lost Lamp: Disney Afternoon Adventures Vol. 6
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DuckTalks 
I actually believe I still have the two issues of “Disney Adventures” that have both parts of “Super Union Blues”. They are somewhere in this house.
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I got this as a Christmas gift and have been wanting to give my two cents for quite a while now, though I haven’t read the TaleSpin or Bonkers stories yet. But here’s what I can say about the stories here that I HAVE read (it helps that I have the original issues some of these stories first appeared in).
* To keep the spoiler hidden, I won’t say the identity of the mastermind in “Marinated Mystery”, but I will say that I think this is the first time that character’s full name has ever been used after Aaron Sparrow revealed it in the Joe Books comic’s “Villain Files”.
* Interesting thing to note about “The Ghastly Goat of Quiver Moor” is that it takes place immediately after Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers #17’s “For the Love of Cheese” (which we saw in the second Disney Afternoon Adventures volume). Given that the Rescue Rangers comic books tended to be more serialized than the actual show, I sometimes wonder if Scott Saavedra was actually trying a “world tour” arc for the comic that got cut short by the Disney Comics Implosion; however, the solicitation text they gave for the never-published Rescue Rangers #20 suggests the Rangers would already be back home right after this 2-parter. Also, I always found it odd that Rescue Rangers #19’s cover depicted the one-eyed mouse Ransom taking Gadget hostage when he does no such thing nor is even an actual bad guy in the story itself.
* “The 25-Cent Solution” is probably one of my favorite stories from Disney Adventures, though I don’t really know why. Maybe it’s because the issue in which it originally ran was the December 1995 issue with Toy Story on the cover, and it makes me feel like celebrating Christmas.
* For a long time, I had the Disney Adventures issue with Part 2 of “Super Union Blues”, but not the preceding issue with Part 1 (I eventually got that one over a decade later, though not before someone put up scans of Part 1 online). Did anyone else ever think that the “Sadistic mimes from Dimension X” line was directly referencing Krang’s homeworld from TMNT? If so, maybe it WASN’T a coincidence that the Turtles were on that issue’s cover. Also, I might as well make this joke… Marvel’s Civil War event was totally ripping off this story. (Maybe THAT’S why Disney bought them out sixteen years after this story originally ran.)
* Correction: “Oongonnamucka Mayhem”, like the previous volume’s “Not Our Kind of Folks”, was never actually published in ANY Disney Adventures issue; this book is the first time this story’s been published ANYWHERE. And according to INDUCKS, there’s at least two more TaleSpin stories that have never seen print before, “Beans to Bullion”, and “I’ve Got a Gold Mine, You’ve Got a Gold Yours”; maybe we’ll be seeing those in future volumes. (Hint hint if you’re reading this, David Gerstein. 😉 )
* Near the end of Disney Adventures’ run, they inexplicably reprinted the first half of “Inversionary Tactics” (which for some reason they retitled “Power Play”) in the magazine’s third-to-last issue in August 2007, presumably to promote Darkwing’s second DVD set. I actually bought that issue when it was new entirely because of the Darkwing story, not knowing then that it was a rerun… and then I was extremely disappointed when the next issue came out and, despite the promise made by the preceding issue, it did NOT include the second half of the story. (Thankfully, I would eventually get the January 1994 issue in which the full story originally ran.)
By the way, I’m rather glad that Fantagraphics has now done two volumes of this series with Darkwing Duck providing the cover story, since it suggests that this series won’t be just six volumes with each show only getting the spotlight once. We’re finally getting a volume with a DuckTales cover story this coming summer, and I won’t be surprised if we get another DuckTales-centric volume after that, possibly for Patrick Galliano’s “The City Under the Ice” (which WAS planned to appear in IDW’s unpublished second DuckTales Classics TPB), or even a volume spotlighting Goof Troop’s Disney Club story, “The Visitor from Extra-Time” (again, hint hint).
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