Kingdom Hearts, it ain't.
An Italian-based Disney Modular Franchise based around the characters of the Mickey Mouse Comic Universe and Disney Ducks Comic Universe. Besides the comic that started it, it also spawned trading card and mobile phone games.
The story begins with Mickey Mouse, The Apprentice to the local village mage Nereus, setting out on a quest to reclaim his village's Rain Diamagic, one of many magical crystals scattered across the world, from the clutches of Peg Leg Pete, leader of Team Black Phantom (consisting of himself and the Beagle Boys). Making things worse, Pete's master, the Phantom Blot has kidnapped Nereus and is searching the world for ways to increase his dark power.
When finally catching up with Pete, Mickey finds that Team Black Phantom has entered the Great Wizard Tournament, a spectacular series of magical duels and contests for wizards where the goal is not merely to see who the best wizard team is, but also to collect and gather all the Diamagics to recreate the Great Crown, a powerful magical artefact whose owner will become the Supreme Sorcerer of Dolmen and gain great powers. Though Mickey at first is only after his own Diamagic and isn't interested in the Crown, he nevertheless finds himself having to gather a team of wizards of his own and enter the Tournament for the chance to confront Pete and regain the Diamagic.
Luckily, he encounters and befriends Donald Duck (here an Inept Mage whose magic always has a bizarre and/or delayed effect) and Goofy (a herbalist/alchemist who only uses magic when it's absolutely necessary and is constantly trying out new careers), and the three agree to form a team to enter the Tournament. Calling themselves "the Wizards of Mickey," they end up rising up the ranks and collecting the Diamagics, while foiling the plots of Team Black Phantom and preparing to finally confront the Phantom Blot and free Master Nereus.
The original storyline consists of 13 volumes published as serials in the legendary Topolino (Mickey Mouse) magazine between October 2006 and March 2019. The series then left Topolino and was relaunched as part of the Topolino Fuoriserienote series of collector-focused hardcover graphic novels. With two more storylines (spread across 5 books) having been published as of 2023.
In 2009, when Boom! Studios acquired the rights to the Disney comics, they brought Wizards of Mickey to the United States to much praise and acclaim, though only translated the first arc. Years later, in 2020, JY would begin releasing their own translation of the full series in America.
This series includes examples of:
- Aborted Arc: The New World ends with the three heroes splitting apart and Mickey forming a new team with Minnie and Fethry Duck. Next arc, the original trio is back again with no explanation.
- Adaptational Intelligence: Goofy is portrayed as a lot more sensible and intelligent than in the normal continuity; more a Ditzy Genius than the Genius Ditz of most Mouse comics.
- Adaptational Villainy: The only time ever in any Disney media you can think of where Yen Sid was portrayed as a power-hungry Evil Sorcerer. Might be Yen Sid In Name Only, though, as we never see his face until he's nothing but a skeleton.
- Amplifier Artifact: The Great Crown grants immense magical power by amplifying the wearer's own magical energies. Unfortunately this also makes repeated castings more draining.
- Anachronism Stew: It's a medieval setup... yet the communicating stone is called the Amulet Cellphone (an "amulettophone" in the original version), even if regular cellphones do not exist. And there are multiple references to things such as magical credit cards. In the fourth arc, Fethry Duck builds a disco palace. In the third arc, Fafnir starts dressing and behaving like Fonzie, of all things. And various robots are seen throughout the series.
- The Apprentice: Mickey starts the story as the eager but unskilled apprentice of a village mage.
- Ascended Extra: Fethry starts out as a
One-Scene Wonder, but gets upgraded to recurring character, even taking Donald's place on the team on a couple of occasions. - Batman Gambit: Before his defeat, the Phantom Blot left a bunch of minor but still potent plans. All were unlikely to conquer the world on their own, but would cause enough fear and unrest that the wizard council would feel compelled to take him out of his prison to find a better solution, giving him the chance to enact his real plan.
- Bat People: The bat-orcs are large humanoid bats that live in caves deep underground and sleep hanging upside-down.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Donald with Daisy. Goofy tries to help him, but well... it's Donald.
- The Cassandra: Clarabelle Cow is this, only she sometimes forgets to let other people know about her visions until they've already happened.
- Chekhov's Gun: Donald's magic actually works perfectly, it's just that most often it doesn't take effect until some time has passed. Remember this — it's going to be important to the plot several times.
- Decomposite Character: Yensid is a character in the story (well, technically multiple characters) but his traditional role as Mickey’s stern but wise mentor is pretty much completely taken by Nereus.
- Dismantled MacGuffin: All the Diamagics need to come together to recreate the Great Crown, a powerful magical artefact whose owner will become the Supreme Sorcerer of Dolmen and gain great powers.
- Ditzy Genius: Goofy, who is portrayed as much more talented and intelligent than in the normal continuity, but still lacks a bit of common sense.
- Enemy Mine: Dreadking, the villain from the second story, teamed up with the heroes in the third.
- Evil Sorcerer: The aforementioned Yen Sid, and his backstabbing apprentice the Phantom Blot (alias the Lord of Lies).
- Face–Heel Turn: More like Brainwashed and Crazy, granted, but this happens to Mickey, of all people, in The Dark Age. The incredible burden of becoming the Supreme Sorcerer slowly turns him reclusive and paranoid, which the Phantom Blot takes advantage of to turn him against his friends and into a tyrannical king.
Word of God is that they made him evil for the hell of it, although the process is reversed by the end of the series. - Gadgeteer Genius: Goofy builds a damn Humongous Mecha dragon for his team to help the dragons retrieve a stolen egg. He also builds several modern inventions during the comic's run, such a photographic camera.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: The Diamagics count as a Type A and a Type B. They're crucial, but nobody aside from Nereus and the Phantom Blot realizes this until fairly late into the first Story Arc.
- Gratuitous English: The Italian version makes liberal use of English words in everything pertaining to the Diamagics and to magic in general — for instance, any given spell will consist of two made up fantasy words with an English word related to what it does in the middle. The resulting pseudo-English gibberish is intended to sound exotic to Italian-speaking audiences while providing a Bilingual Bonus to readers who know enough English to get the joke.
- The Hecate Sisters: Magica De Spell and her group, Team Jinx.
- Heel–Face Turn: One aspect of Yensid, embodying his capacity for compassion and kindness, actually abandoned his old mission of world conquest and became a kind mentor for other wizards. This is implied to have happened after he split from his brothers, since he initially suggested that they might be able to combine their powers to continue their conquest.
- How We Got Here:
- Done in the weirdest way possible (by courtesy of a Lemony Narrator) in an episode. The story begins with our heroes falling down in a pit, which is a different situation than the one the chapter before ended with. Then...Narrator: Whoops! Smart enough readers should have noticed that this has nothing to do with how the last episode finished! Let's go back in time and maybe you'll finally get what's going on.
- And when the flashback is over:Narrator: Readers with short-term memory loss should read again that bit at the beginning in order to get what happened between this panel and the next one. Everyone else can keep reading.
- Done in the weirdest way possible (by courtesy of a Lemony Narrator) in an episode. The story begins with our heroes falling down in a pit, which is a different situation than the one the chapter before ended with. Then...
- Inept Mage: Donald, whose magic tends to be slow acting and troublesome for him as a result of a psychological trauma; very often, his spells work exactly as he wants them to... but with several hours' delay.
- Jack of All Trades: Goofy's schtick. He flipflops so much between jobs that he has an incredible skillset. This often works to his detriment, however, as he flipflops so much that he ultimately ends up leaving before truly amounting to anything in any of them. As Donald points out, he could've made it big as an architect by designing Mickey's arena, but by then he had switched to a new obsession.
- Literal Split Personality: The evil wizard Yen Sid was split in seven ghostlike figures. Six are evil and form the "Guild of Diaphans", working together to rule the world and fuse back into a single being. The seventh is his long-forgotten good side, who lives as a hermit in Another Dimension and has to be retrieved by the heroes towards the end.
- Magitek: The Iron Sorcerer has a whole robotic army. And then there's Goofy's dragon mech.
- One-Winged Angel: The dark cloaked Blot we all know doesn't come in until later, and this time it's an inky monstrosity similar to what Epic Mickey is doing.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The original magic users, dragons still show up in the everyday goings of the world like any other group, although they generally consider themselves more sophisticated than "the scaleless", and some participate in the tournament, although it's implied they're participating out of politeness more than anything else. They're also the ancestral enemies of the Frost Giants.
- Notable dragons include Donald's "puppy dragon" Fafnir, who due to his youth is more like an animal in intelligence and functions as Team Pet; the brothers Zefren, Zoron and Zaius, who compete against the protagonists in the original race for the Great Crown as Team Magma Fire and return as supporting characters in later arcs; Roknar, one of the Phantom Blot's minions; and Venerable Ormen the Dragon King.
- There were also the Ancient Dragons, who unlike the modern ones walked on two legs and wore clothes and armor. The reason dragons don't do this anymore is that the Ancient Dragons were such odious tyrants that the modern ones refuse to be anything like them in any regard, and as such shun affectations like clothes and bipedalism.
- Our Orcs Are Different: They're part weasel, for one thing, and make up the bulk of the Phantom Blot's army. Later arcs also introduce mole-orcs and bat-orcs.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: It's easy to forget, but Scrooge is depicted as a sovereign ruler in this series, though we don't see much of his kingdom. Unless the Duck family tree is notably different in this universe, that would make either Donald or his twin sister Della (who hasn't appeared or been mentioned) Heir Presumptive.
- Science Wizard: Goofy was born to be a wizard — literally, as everyone in his family is fated for a certain job, which in his case is wizardry — and is fairly adept at magic when he needs to be, but he tends to favor science and technology up to building a flying Humongous Mecha.
- Screw Destiny: Goofy is fated to become a very important wizard, but he refuses to let fate decide his life for him, so he uses his magic as little as possible and spends most of his waking time studying and trying several different jobs, hoping to find one that he likes out of his own free will.
- Shout-Out:
- One of Goofy's weekly obsessions is sports, during this phase he dresses and behaves like Sport Goofy.
- The Meka-Bot used by Mickey is a clear expy of Grendizer fused with Great Mazinger. It even uses the same weapons and all.
- The king of the Ancient Dragons is named Dredking, a reference to Braiking according to the author.
- In the tenth arc, two of the three good Morgrims are blatantly based on Spike the dragon's imaginary buff version and Mega Swampert. The latter's first appearance is blatantly traced from the Ken Sugimori artwork, to boot.
- The Glove of Gameras is clearly designed to resemble the Infinity Gauntlet, though it only has three gems and is much weaker,
- Somewhere, an Entomologist Is Crying: The fourth arc reveals that the Diamagics are actually eggs of giant magic bugs. These bugs are called Doomspiders. And to make the error in the name more blatant, most Doomspiders are winged bugs. note
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Trudy van Tubb is introduced this way in The New World, having dressed up as a man in order to join Pete's pirate crew.
- Temporary Substitute: When Donald and Goofy have to return to their homelands at the end of The New World, Minnie and Fethry fill in their places on Mickey's team.
- Terrible Trio: Team Black Phantom (technically a quartet, thanks to the aforementioned Invisibility Cloak) and Team Jinx.
- Tournament Arc: The first series focuses on a worldwide tournament where teams of three wizards each try to gather all of the Diamagics in order to forge the Great Crown and become the Supreme Sorcerer.
- The Unseen: King Scrooge McDuck during the first three storylines; he is constantly referred to, as Donald's greedy uncle to whom he owes a lot of money, but never actually appears. In The New World, however, he makes some brief appearances, and in The Forgotten Legends, which focuses around Donald's life before he met Mickey and Goofy, Scrooge plays a major role.
- Unusual Chapter Numbers: The relaunched Topolino Fuoriserie series runs in parallel to that of Paperinik New Adventures with an added "V" to the numbering of the former in order to differentiate them (ie, The first Paperink book was numbered #1, while the first Wizards of Mickey book was #1V). But as Paperinik proved more popular with more issues dedicated to it, the numbering for Wizards of Mickey suddenly jumps from 4V to 7V for its 5th book.
