An Exquisite Duck!, subtitled An (Utterly Unofficial) Adventure of Donald Duck and his Uncle Scrooge!, is an ongoing exquisite corpse webcomic created by a variety of authors (see infobox) under the guidance of the staff of authorized French fanzine Picsou-Soir. It features Scrooge McDuck, Donald Duck, Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck, Gyro Gearloose, the Little Helper, Roscoe the Robot, portraits of Flintheart Glomgold and Pothole McDuck, and new characters Zlana van Hydroolik, Noel von Spann, Steve and Benny. Thor, Soapy Slick, Super Goof, Cupida Hartnell and the Beagle Boys are mentioned. Donald Duck dresses up as the Duck Avenger, although not, technically, in the proper context. A mechanical duplicate of Cornelius Coot is seen.
Plot
When Professor Van Hydroolik kidnaps Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck to use them as templates in her insane experiments to clone square ducks, it's up to Scrooge McDuck and Donald Duck to rescue them exploiting Van Hydroolik's bizarre admiration for Gyro Gearloose! But who are the self-proclaimed expert geneticists's mysterious employers?
References
- Van Hydroolik uses the Quack-o-Matic to bring her cloned, quadrangular anthropomorphic ducks to life at an accelerated rate of growth.
- She uses a literal Spy Bug to observe Scrooge's next moves.
- Baron Von Spann is the owner of a Rwandan Babirusa-Dragon, “Steve”.
- Gyro Gearloose is trying to invent an Antique Radio that can play broadcasts from the past.
- “Two weeks ago,” he created a new security system for his own lab.
- The Little Helper has been reading The Life of Thor.
- Gyro Gearloose built one of Cornelius Coot's statues for Scrooge McDuck, and included a “failsafe,” making it capable of animating into a large clockwork android that could be used to protect Duckburg (or more specifically the Money Bin) from a large threat.
Continuity
- Scrooge McDuck explains that he originally hired Professor Van Hydroolik to create Square Eggs following his failure to get some from Plain Awful, detailed in Don Rosa's Return to Plain Awful (1989).
- Van Hydroolik's use of a Spy Bug echoes F.O.W.L.'s use of a similar device a few weeks earlier in Challenge of the Senior Junior Woodchucks (2020).
- Panel 2 of Strip #6 contains a number of continuity references to Carl Barks stories:
- Gyro Gearloose's antique radio keeps playing The Screamin' Cowboy, a show mentioned in Land Beneath the Ground! (1954).
- The Little Helper is reading about Thor, as he previously did in Getting Thor (1958).
- Roscoe the Robot from Roscoe the Robot (1957) and the titular translating machine The Cat Box (1956) are visible inside Gyro's Lab.
- The Helper looks excitedly at a bucket of Butterless Buttered Popcorn, the very thing Gyro was trying to invent in his first appearance in his first appearance in Gladstone's Terrible Secret (1952).
- The first panel of Strip #9 features “Universal Solvent Crisps” as an easter egg, referencing The Universal Solvent (1995).
- Strip #18 has Gyro Gearloose express familiarity with “old Cupida Hartnell”, an inventor of clockwork droids. “Professor Hartnell”, technology expert of the the First Horde, was previously featured in a minor role in Cupid Fact File No. 624 – The Salamandyrs and the Automata (2019).
Behind the scenes
This story is serialized in several places, including a dedicated gallery at Picsou-Soir's Facebook page, a dedicated Tumblr account, and a thread on The Feathery Society. The first strip was unveiled (in its original French version) in early March 2020.
(text by Alban Leloup, reused art by Carl Barks)
(by Gaucelm)
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(by Stefan Binter)
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(by Mikkel Haggen)
(by J. L. Mast)
(by Léo and Fred Grivaux)
(by Fred Grivaux)
(by Romain Gondy)
(by Eric van Elslande)
(by Anna “Flateel” Poszep)
(by Moon)
(by Robin Börjesson)
(by DuckUltimate)
(by Aristide Twain)
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(by Yoann Tourrette)