What If...? Mickey and Friends Became Avengers (issue #1)

Kid-friendly comic mashing both Disney characters as Marvel superheroes!

Sometimes, you want to revisit your childhood featuring characters that you grew up watching. That's exactly what we did reading, and now reviewing, this issue: Disney's Mickey Mouse and crew wondering how they'd fare out if they were Marvel superheroes. Comics like these sound perfect for young kids and starting collectors of comics; on the other hand, regardless of your age and the comic book genre you prefer, it's nice reading these to "balance out" your tastes; much like listening to another genre of music after hearing your favorite style(s) for a while.

This issue introduces Donald Duck as Thor, Mickey Mouse as Iron Man, Pluto and Minnie as Ant-Man and Wasp, and Goofy as The Incredible Hulk. Scene opens up at "Ducksgard," featuring the nephew of Scrooge-Odin, Gladstone-Loki, and Scrooge-Odin himself—the cousin of Donald-Thor. Apparently Donald-Thor's cousin was upset because all his prized possessions he won at the lottery have been rearranged, and wants to teach him a lesson in front of everyone. Already, Gladstone-Loki sounds like one of those people who were never told "no," nor have they experienced losing in their lives; and if they have, they never learned from it. Anyway, using Goofy-Hulk to help carry his operations, the cousin is looking to seek revenge against Donald-Thor; and because Donald and Daisy were attending a Bicentennial, it was the perfect moment to create a diversion. In other words, Goofy-Hulk was the proxy among what would trigger Donald to turn into Donald-Thor. The drama and attention then reached Minnie, Pluto and Mickey having them come to the rescue—including Donald and Daisy Duck as well. All this led Donald-Thor to meet up with Gladstone-Loki...and all matters were settled.

Business wasn't finished yet. Our heroes had to restore all that's happened at the Bicentennial during the commotion. What happened and how was that restored? Let's put it this way: If you've ever heard the song "MacArthur Park" by Richard Harris, that's what was going on. While our heroes restored order, albeit incompletely, they showed off some of their superpowers and wanted to share a little of what they're capable of doing. The issue closes with them striking a pose and coming up with a name for their team.

This story was very simple, and no one dies, but the fun of these Disney characters being superheroes are what made this an enjoyable read. The illustrations are wonderful, and felt like an episode from their cartoon series (it may as well be). It's a fun story and nothing that was too extreme; nothing related to anything that bares deeper analysis nor anything political. Oh, and we felt Goofy was the humorous one in this issue, as he often is.

Since ads are a concern for some comic book collectors and readers, there were only four (4) of them—most were presented near the end of this comic. Included in this issues was a letter from Mark Paniccia, the senior editor of Marvel Comics, plus illustrations made prior to approval.

An issue like this did not disappoint, and as mentioned earlier, it's a friendly issue for those taking a break from their usual comics, especially if your favorite(s) happens to feature plenty of drama, violence and more. This friendly series would ease all those extremes reminding you of a joyful story featuring cartoon characters that many of us grew up watching.

Highly recommended! Thank you to the writers, editors and illustrators for making this (all listed below under "Credits")!

Kris Caballero

Founder of KCU Network and KCU Plus, Kris has been writing since he started blogging in late 2005. Officially back to doing computer programming, Kris enjoys reading books on Mathematics, Quantum Computing, Philosophy, plus playing old video/MS-DOS games, digital video archiving, listening to sports, public radio and classical music.

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