Best Looking BD of 2026 (so far)
It has to be this January release, “Mickey Mouse and the Pirate King“:
Story by Joris Chamblain and art by Pipeline favorite, Dav. Even better, he’s drawing both Mickey AND Uncle Scrooge in this book.
I’m running out of places to beg Fantagraphics to translate and publish this one here in North America. However, their “Mickey Mouse and the Amazing Lost Ocean” book sold out immediately and never went back to press. I hope they learned a valuable lesson from that. This book might not quite be up on that level of artistry, but it ranks up there to me.
If Fantagraphics doesn’t deliver it, I’ll have to pick it up somewhere in French and muddle my way through.
Click on the link at the top to see more sample art from the book. I think you’re going to love it, too.
And then follow Dav on Instagram!
The book I’m hoping for a translation of is Milo Manara’s take on the Odyssey. I picked up a copy when I was in Italy recently, and it is just beautiful: there’s the kind of thing you expect from Manara, but also a lot of Disney-influenced work and beautiful watercolors. It’s more an art book than a BD: from what I can gather (I don’t read Italian!), it’s a project he storyboarded, then abandoned, but it’s a great take on a classic, and shows a different side of a legendary artist (even if he isn’t generally my favorite).