I first discovered these Italian stories inspired Ernest Hemingway stories while working on my book “Hemingway in Comics.” They were printed in the Italy’s own “Topolino” magazine. Fantagraphics co-founder Gary Groth and my co-editor David Gerstein helped bring this project over to this side of the world, and into English, for the first time. A labor of love and so much fun.

The official description:

Ernest Hemingway: Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner, war hero, famed novelist, journalist, adventurer — and inspiration to Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, and Goofy!
The year: 1999. The place: Italy. Fan-favorite Venetian Disney cartoonist Giorgio Cavazzano dared a creative team to take its cues from Ernest Hemingway for a striking, cinematic, and occasionally silly new series of Duckburg tales!

In this original Disney collection, Hemingway’s “The Battler” and “The Killers” inspire new Mickey and Peg Leg Pete parodies while our title adventure features Mickey meeting “Ernest” in person! From Donald’s bid for knighthood as “The Duck Who Would Be King” to Peg Leg Pete’s invasion of a diner in “Bad Boys” and Uncle Scrooge’s shark-wrangling in “The Older Man and the Sea,” these epics range from direct pastiches to shorts loosely based on “Papa” Hemingway’s work — each paired with its authors’ “liner notes,” telling the fascinating tale of how and why they were inspired.