Might solve a mystery or rewrite history

DuckTales Woo-oo!

Our bagpipes have been blessed by Dynamite Comics. The greatest treasure of all is new DuckTales content, and we are getting that in the from of a comic series from Dynamite based on the classic 1987 version of DuckTales. DuckTales fans…it is our time to Woo-oo!

Today, we will take a look at DuckTales #2 published by Dynamite Comics.

Release Date: December 18th, 2024

Writer: Brandon Montclare

Artist: Tommaso Ronda

Colorist: Agnese Eterno

Letterer: Fabio Amelia

Editor: Nate Cosby

Covers by: Ivan Bigarella, Francesco Tomaselli, Carlo Lauro, Alan Quah, and Tommaso Ronda

All of the covers from this series are quacktastic. You will not have trouble picking one or several covers for each issue. The main Cover A by Ivan Bigarella is always frame worthy quality art. Every time that I think that I have seen my favorite, I get previews of the next issue covers that blow me away. Check out this Magica cover!

Official Synopsis:

Over the years, Scrooge McDuck has invested in every kind of industry that turns a profit, from tea farming to sturgeon fishing to uranium mining. So it only stands to reason that he’s also the owner of Duckburg’s premiere movie house, the Scrooge-A-Rama Dome, which he built to be to most palatial of motion picture palaces – inspired by both the grandeur of the Colosseum in Rome and the chance to charge top-dollar admission fees!

But something is amiss with the Dome’s receipts, and the explanations from the projectionist and the ticket clerk, Messrs. Franks and Beans, aren’t adding up. When Scrooge and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie pay the theater a visit to find out more, everybody is in for a surprise when the true tale behind its fiduciary discrepancies is revealed!

My Recap

*STOP READING HERE IF YOU WANT TO AVOID ALL SPOILERS*

The current story arc in this DuckTales series is titled “Four Corners of Your World.” Part Two is named “The Phantom of the SCROOGE-A-RAMA DOME!” Scrooge takes the boys on a walking tour of Duckburg. Everything in town has something to do with Scrooge. Flintheart Glomgold fans will be excited to see Scrooge walk by a Glomgold Holdings bank. The walking tour eventually takes them to the SCROOGE-A-RAMA DOME movie theater which is showing a monster movie marathon featuring Count Drakeula vs. Quackenstein film. The characters that work at the theater which is owned by Scrooge are named Frank and Beans.

This immediately brought me back in time to my own movie theater working days, and the popular movie at the time was There’s Something About Mary. Gargoyles’ Goliath voice actor, Keith David, has a hilarious scene about frank and beans. The point of my own personal Pirate Steven flashback is to tell you that if you ever have a chance to work at a movie theater in your days, you should totally do so because free movies rock. We will now return back to our DuckTales #2 issue summary.

Scrooge buys movie tickets and refreshments for him and the boys. The movie ends up being so scary that it frightens the loose change from Scrooge’s refreshment purchase right out of his pockets.

Scrooge reminiscences about the last time that he was scared that bad in a theater. This memory story is brought to us in brilliant Carl Barks comic style form by Tommaso Rando. The memory is titled Dime After Dime. Scrooge attends a Shakespearean play in the Colosseum. One of the actors on the stage is revealed to be Magica De Spell in disguise. Magica is after Scrooge’s Number One dime, but he doesn’t have it on him. Magica will settle for any dime that Scrooge happens to have on him even if it is a number two dime. In her spell, Magica chases Scrooge through several different famous plays and movie settings including Caesar, King Kong, Wizard of Oz, Three Musketeers, Ben Hur, and others. Of course I would have loved this whole issue to be focused on Magica, but I thought that this flashback story with the Colosseum as the setting was a clever story to debut Magica De Spell into this comic series. Scrooge wakes up from his flashback trance in realization that he is actually missing ten cents from his change. Scrooge and the boys solve the mystery that Frank and Beans were collecting all of the money that fell out of patron’s pockets of the moviegoers who were scared during the movie marathon films. They find their suspects in the SCROOGE-A-RAMA DOME attic which is full of valuable movie memorabilia props. This museum quality collection has everything…even a familiar pirate duck movie prop.

Huey, Dewey, and Louie are in awe and impressed with the movie collection. Some of the money found after cleaning up the theaters may have went towards the procurement of this collection. Other items may have been saved from marketing movies at the SCROOGE-A-RAMA DOME. It is a great set of pages of movie artifact tributes put together by Tommaso Ronda. Frank and Beans was inspired by Scrooge with the collection and claim they did it because him and for him. They are afraid that Scrooge will turn them in, but he says that he never throws anything away. I am glad that he went this route because the rule on lost movie change was always finders keepers. On the last page of the issue, we get a preview that Ma Beagle and the Beagle Boys will make an appearance in the next issue.

This “duck tale” was another fun story around Duckburg which writer Brandon Montclare mentioned would be the setting of all of the issues in this first story arc of this DuckTale comic. The SCROOGE-A-RAMA DOME is a great classic DuckTales callback to the episode “Ducky Horror Picture Show” which happens to be one of my favorite episodes. In that episode, real monsters come to Duckburg for a convention of Monsters Unanimous that takes place in Scrooge’s convention center. Count Drakeula and Quackenstein mentioned in this issue are also in that episode. The monster party ends up trashing the McDuck Convention Center, and they move on to damage McDuck Manor next. The monsters are all very friendly, and they take offense to the way that monsters are shown in movies that take place at the SCROOGE-A-RAMA DOME. They don’t like the fact that the movies make people scared of them, and the monsters also do not receive any royalties from their names and likenesses. As soon as the monsters realize that the movie patrons really love them and liked to be scared, they put on a live Ducky Horror Picture Show for Duckburg. You can watch this classic episode of DuckTales (1987) on Disney+.

DuckTales fans, it is time to Woo-oo again!

The next Dynamite adventure of DuckTales will crash land safely into your local comic book shop tentatively in January. Be sure to check out the other current Dynamite Comics Disney releases: Lilo & Stitch and Gargoyles Winter Special.

Coming soon: Zootopia (January), Darkwing Duck (February), Gargoyles Demona (May), and The Nightmare Before Christmas

We had the pleasure of interviewing the illustrator, Tommaso Ronda on this ducktacular new series. You can read that interview here: Tommaso Ronda Interview.

Let us know what you thought of DuckTales #2 in the comments below. What cover(s) did you get?

Don’t forget to follow @DuckTalks and @DynamiteComics for all of the Disney comic news.