"Walt Disney's Donald Duck Adventures will be the first in a series of 5-1/2" X 7-1/2" 128-page "Take-Along" books that will hit book stores and comic shops in July of this year," announced John Clark, Editor-in-Chief of the new Gemstone Disney comic book line earlier this week. "After the success with young consumers of other pocket book type offerings, such as CrossGen and Tokyo Pop, we trust our books will spur a whole new generation of Disney readers with these offerings."

The Take-Along books will feature long adventures of the Standard Disney characters, such as Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, and Uncle Scrooge. "These are stories that are being produced or have been produced in Europe," Clark said. "They are exciting and worth reading, but are too long to publish through any of our other current venues, even the 64-page prestige books."

The first volume will contain three feature-length stories, leading with Donald Duck in "The Deep," a 48-page adventure that takes Donald, Daisy, and the nephews to an abandoned oil rig in a remote lagoon that may - or may not - be haunted by a monster.

The next story, Mickey Mouse in "Panicking Pachyderm," stars the redoubtable rodent as the recipient of an elephant that goes crazy at the sight of Mickey's face. Mickey travels to the poor beast's home country to find out why, but discovers all the elephants there panic at the sight of him! With Mickey, discover why this is so in this 37-page epic.

The book wraps up with a 39-page Uncle Scrooge adventure, "End of Days," in which the World's Richest Duck is transported to a future world where a digitized computer version of himself has taken over the world and has pushed Scrooge's innate ambition to the extreme. Find out if Scrooge can save the world of tomorrow and vindicate his good name.

After this initial offering, Gemstone plans to release new volumes on a bi-monthly basis through the end of 2003, and then switch to a monthly schedule early next year. Clark concluded: "We see this as a wonderful opportunity to give younger readers the type of action/adventure stories they like and at the same time introduce them to the fine old Disney characters. And at $7.95 retail for a full-color 128-page book, it's probably one of the best values out there!"