Disney's DuckTales ("oo-woo-oo!") was a staple of Saturday morning TV in the late '80s and early '90s, with the globetrotting adventures of Scrooge McDuck and his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie offering a winning combination of laugh-out-loud comedy and high stakes globetrotting adventures with bags of charm.
Now publisher Dynamite is dialing things back to 1987 with a new ongoing DuckTales comic. Written by Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur creator Brandon Montclare, and drawn by Tommaso Ronda, the new series perfectly recreates the vibe of this beloved animated series for an all ages audience.
Newsarama: Hi Brandon. Can you tell us a little bit about how you first got involved with DuckTales at Dynamite?
Brandon Montclare: Nate Cosby, the editor on all the Disney stuff, knew me from my Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur series at Marvel and asked if I was interested in doing some Disney work. He said "DuckTales" and it was like, there literally isn't another property that I would rather do! I like the DuckTales cartoons but also the connection to Uncle Scrooge and going back to the Carl Barks and Don Rosa stuff. I was just super excited to do it.
How would you describe your take on the series?
It's an ongoing comic set in the continuity of the 1987 cartoon. For the first five issues it's going to mostly focus on Uncle Scrooge and Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and it's going to have flashbacks in it. It's a little bit of everything and I'm really happy with how the first couple of issues have come together. I think it's going to be very special.
What can you tease about the storylines for those first issues?
The series is well known for kind of globetrotting adventures and all these exotic locations, but I always thought Duckburg itself was so cool. Duckburg is where the adventures are – there's so much going on in this town. You could just walk out your door and there's a mystery behind the library, there's a mystery behind the prison, and so on. So that's kind of the main storyline through the first five issues, the world of Duckburg and the mysteries that it holds.
But also, to keep it to its adventure roots, we're doing multiple flashbacks that go back in time to Scrooge's adventures in all those exotic locations. Format wise, it's going to be really cool, the flashbacks are going to be done in the old eight panel grid style and you'll see a lot of the supporting characters there, like Magica De Spell is in number two, and the Beagle Boys are in number three.
How do you strike a balance in trying to appeal to both adult readers and kids who are maybe picking this up as their first comic book?
Before I did Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur I would have had no idea! I approached the new DuckTales the same way I approached Moon Girl, which is to make it what I call "truly all ages." I have a seven year old now, and I have a teenager and I see a lot of the stuff that they read, good and bad, and a lot of it is really kind of just appealing to the parents.
This is very much a story about hero worship and how much Huey, Dewey, and Louie look up to their uncle. And you can play that both ways, right? Because Scrooge is such a curmudgeon, but when you have three nephews who think the world of you they can kind of sneak up on you and soften you some. Hopefully kids are going to be excited, but there's something for everybody.
These characters have been around for a good while now. Was there a sense when you took this on that there were things that maybe needed modernizing? Or were you keen that it felt exactly like the DuckTales everyone remembers?
Yeah, it was the opposite of modernizing it. It's very much traditional DuckTales. I like working inside parameters – I don't have an ego with that type of thing. I think there are enough stories to tell and enough ways to be unique without having to modernize or reinvent the wheel. It's consciously very traditional, for sure.
How much did you look to the previous DuckTales comics?
I think it's hard to be in comics for a long time without being aware of Karl Barks – he's a Mount Rushmore type guy, and I was in the business when Don Rosa's Uncle Scrooge stuff was coming out and winning all those awards. So I was familiar with it, but I wasn't afraid or intimidated. What I didn't know was that Marv Wolfman did a whole bunch, so Nate Cosby sent those my way.
You know, this is my kind of storytelling anyway. The images and the sounds from the cartoons are nestled in my brain, so I can kind of just make it my own now.
There are some characters from those original comics who had a bit more of a presence in the more recent cartoon. Are you going to touch on those at all?
If they weren't in the '87 cartoon, we can't use them. We can't use Donald. I don't think we can use Della, so yeah not so much.
Y'know, I didn't watch the new cartoon until I got this gig, but they did a lot to differentiate between Huey, Dewey, and Louie. If they hadn't done that, maybe I would have thought, "Should I try to do that?" Instead, for whatever reason, I like that the only way you can tell the difference is the colors of their hats and shirts, you know? There's a lot you can do visually and with the storytelling, as simple as finishing each other's sentences, but also giving the artist the opportunity to have them move through the page.
Who's your favorite character to write for?
It's Uncle Scrooge. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are kind of there to tell Scrooge's story. I really like to be able to use Huey, Dewey, and Louie as kind of three different people, but also the same person. I like it because they are the audience, he's literally telling them stories, so they are the reader. But as a character, it's really about Scrooge and what makes him tick.
DuckTales #1 is published by Dynamite on November 6.
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