When I was a kid I loved nothing more than going with my father to the local petrol station to fill up on a Saturday morning. He'd always buy me a Disney comic or two and I'd rush home to read them over and over and over. I still have them in an archive box – Mickey Mouse; Pluto; Goofy; Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, and Huey, Dewey and Louie; Uncle Scrooge; the Beagle Brothers – wonderful stuff. I know Mickey Mouse is the quintessential Disney cartoon character but I always preferred Donald – he was temperamental and volatile, prone to temper tantrums and was hilarious. Mickey was thoughtful and always on his best behaviour, whereas Donald lived pretty much completely in the moment.
A lavish 8,000-page German Donald Duck collector’s edition has just come out, and despite the nearly $1,900 price tag, the publisher, Egmont Horizont, says the edition of 3,333 copies is almost completely sold out.
The German publishers have given Donald a cultured sensibility which is not the Donald I remember and love, but hey, if it works it works and if Disney doesn't have a problem with it then neither do I.
