Like the book itself, this goes far too long. Not even Donald can save it.


Beautiful art from Disney's Italian comic division, but the whole book is brought down by a truly bad English translation. This translation mirrors the recent changes at the Disney comics at IDW, where characters no longer sound like themselves, and everything reads rather robotically. A shame, since the story seems otherwise rather nice.

A duck named Ishmael joins the crew of the Pequack and finds that Captain Quackhab is consumed with an obsessive desire to kill Moby Dick, the white sperm whale who swallowed his most prized possession: the first dime Quackhab ever made...

I'm one of those people who have successfully avoided reading Moby Dick for years, though I know all the beats of the plot since Moby Dick has saturated our pop culture over the years. On the heels of reading some Carl Bark's Uncle Scrooge, I decided to pick this up.

As you can tell by the title, this is basically Moby Dick starring Disney Characters. Donald Duck is Ishmael, Scrooge McDuck is Captain Ahab, and the nephews are Huqueg, Luqueg, and Duqueg. The Beagle Boys are also in attendance as crew members aboard the Pequack.

Two things surprised me about this. Firstly, it wasn't nearly as jokey as I thought. While there were jokes, they didn't overshadow the seriousness of the plot as much as I thought they would. Francesco Artibani managed to give Scrooge/Ahab some gravitas, not an easy feat considering we're talking about anthropomorphic ducks.

Secondly, the artwork is much more detailed and moody than I thought it would be. I was expecting someone doing their best Carl Barks impression. The artwork is more detailed and uses more blacks in the inking than I expected. Also, the use of perspective is on par with most super hero comics. There's a worm's eye view panel of Ahab standing at the mast of the Pequack with most of his crew hanging on it that's shades of Jim Steranko in its composition.

I can't think of anything bad to say about Disney Moby Dick, Starring Donald Duck. It was a nice read on a Saturday afternoon. Four out of five stars.
nickleby_shepherd's profile picture

nickleby_shepherd's review

4.0

A fun Disney interpretation
Art pretty solid.

cinderella791's review

3.0
fast-paced
royallyreading's profile picture

royallyreading's review

4.0
adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated
luftschlosseule's profile picture

luftschlosseule's review

4.0

As he's fleeing from a former angry boss, the duck that calls himself Ishmael joins the crew of a whaler to just get away. What he doesn't know yet: His new captain is on a mission.

This is a seamless merge of the original story and the tales from Duckberg and it was fun to see how it plays out in this version. You don't have to have read either Moby Dick or anything from Duckburg before, to be able to understand whats happening.

My main problem is the depiction of Quequeq. Donald's three nephews, with tattoos of the people of Oceania - as if that were as specific term and not just hundreds of islands lumped together - are stowaways and speak in broken English. Can't tell if this is Pidgin English as I am not a native English speaker and never looked into what exactly that entails.
On the other hand, those three are always up to weird stuff, and them being Donald's nephews in the original version takes away at least some of the racist undertones.

Apart from that, it was a fun romp over the seven seas and I've enjoyed myself a lot.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.
madeyesjojo's profile picture

madeyesjojo's review

4.0
adventurous funny lighthearted relaxing fast-paced