If you were fond of Disney’s Ducktales reboot and want to know more about how the show was produced, written, and composed, The Art of Ducktales is the book for you!
The Art of Ducktales: Deluxe Edition
Ken Plume (Editor); Various (Art/Writing/Cover)
Dark Horse Comics
November 8, 2022
Disney’s Ducktales reboot was a hurricane that lived an all-too-brief life on the Disney Channel (and eventually Disney XD). While it only ran for three seasons, the show did a great job of individualizing serious Huey (Danny Pudi), adventurous Dewey (Ben Schwartz), and chill Louie (Bobby Moynihan) for modern audiences. The spirit of the reboot was the same as the original series—lots of derring-do, world travel, the importance of love, family and friendship—but with an added myth-arc.
In this version of the show, the triplets live with wealthy Uncle Scrooge (David Tennant) and their uncle, Donald (Tony Anselmo), who is not packed off to the navy but is struggling to find a job, in Scrooge’s mansion after awakening the old duck’s love of adventure. The boys make friends with Webby VanderQuack (Kate Micucci), who has mysteriously little experience outside of life in the mansion and find themselves tangled up in the search for their mother, Della (Paget Brewster). Throughout the series, we find out what happened to Della, what’s really up with Webby, and become as entangled in Uncle Scrooge’s battle with his lifelong rival, Flintheart Glomgold (Brian George) as Scrooge himself does.
The Art of Ducktales chronicles every single step in the show’s existence, from its conception to its cancellation, including casting its voice actors. The volume is exhaustive, loaded with concept art and background panels, script excerpts and interviews with all of the show’s central artists, producers and writers.
The process of making the show—which, if you know anything about the saga of what Alex Hirsch went through to produce Gravity Falls and how hard they had to fight with Disney—was not easy. Neither was battling against the network to get certain segments on the air.
There are several new factoids revealed as the book explores each episode in the show’s run. For example, the famous scene where Flintheart dances to “All I Do Is Win” at Scrooge’s “funeral” wasn’t the only time they had to battle for music rights with Disney, and there are additional details about the struggle to bring “Darkwing Duck” to the pilot stage, for instance. The book also delves into the bittersweet moment when the show’s producers are informed that the show will not be picked up for a fourth season and the episode count they have is sufficient for the network. The heartbreak and patience put into crafting those final episodes are felt on an epic scale by anyone reading along at home.
The deluxe version of the book even has Scrooge’s lucky coin, which fans can flip at their convenience whenever they wish. There might not be any more Ducktales left to make, but this book gives us a great look at the ones we’ve already got.
