In some ways I view this as a metafictional 'lost media' sort of art project as opposed to an actual story, and I'm a bit of a sucker for projects like that. This IDW published package behaves as a fake archive/facsimile for a non-existent European Mickey series that supposedly ran in the 60's. It's an incomplete collection, stressing that chapters are feared to be lost forever. I greatly appreciate that they topped off project with some fake vintage covers, and saddened that we didn't get an entire gallery of these fun covers.
The main story follows Mickey and Donald as they attempt to retrieve Uncle Scrooge's lost fortune and a shrinking ray created by Gyro from the Beagle Boys. The initial chunk of the adventure slowly deals with the dup getting shrunk and getting launched into the early stages of their journey.
Throughout this we notice that we consistently skip a few chapters at a time, bumping the story beats bit by bit so that the book can get to each new fantastical situation faster. As each chapter is like a full page Sunday strip comic, this works pretty well as it each segment has it's self-contained gag and it just feels like you missed a couple weeks here and there. This also works to enhance some of the more subtle humor, as by midway through our pair of heroes have stumbled upon a couple lost civilizations and treasures (as a lot of Disney adventures tend to do) and they're pretty nonchalant about it during later chapters.
A lot of the story flow is purposely sacrificed for the 'lost comic' art piece that this book is, with some extreme cases being torn chunks of story. Otherwise most of the present pages are rendered with a variety of stains, splatters, print defects, and other signs of age that give the package a ton of personality. This also works well with the fact that IDW has done a ton of archival reprinting projects, so this acts as a companion piece and it's own unique oddity to go along the various IDW/Fantagraphics Disney libraries.
My only real complaint is that it's a fairly quick read. The book originally clocked in at $14.99 for 48 pages, although it is presented in a nice oversized 9.5x12.3 format. It does look like it's going for a bit more now as I see it clocking in online between the $40-100 range, but I would imagine you can find a decent used copy if you hunt around. Plus, then you're kinda getting meta-metatextual with it since the creators 'found' it at a garage sale.
Lewis Trondheim and Keramidas put in a lot of thought and love into this project and it really shows, offering a fun metatextual project that works if you're a Disney fan or just looking for a quick quirky adventure read.
