Trivia / Disney Adventures

• Bonus Material: The Bone story "May The Force Be With You," which was printed the August 1994 issue, was made exclusively for the magazine, and wasn't included in any Bone comic books or paperbacks. It was eventually reprinted in The Art of Bone.
• Channel Hop:
  • Dr. Watchstop was originally in Epic Illustrated and Fusion back in The '80s.
  • Nervous Rex had its own direct market comic book in the '80s; William Van Horn later created a handful more stories specifically for DA.
  • As detailed under What Could Have Been below, Roger Langridge's Muppets comic appeared in the last issue; he ended up jumping ship to The Muppet Show Comic Book after the magazine's cancellation.
• Colbert Bump: DA's reprints of "Out From Boneville" introduced the indie comic Bone to a more mainstream audience who might not have known about it otherwise.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer:
  • One issue claims that King Julien, Maurice, and Mort are villains. They're not. Julien can be a Jerkass, but he's not evil.
  • The February 2005 issue has an article about then-upcoming movies, and the blurb about Madagascar mentions a "Johnson the lemur." No such character exists in the film.
  • The March 1998 issue claims that Bart Simpson's favorite carnival ride is the Tooth Chipper. In "Bart Carny", Bart doesn't have a good time on that ride.
  • The July 1992 article about villains claims that Shredder lives in the sewers; he doesn't, but the Turtles do. It also claims that Lex Luthor hates Superman because of an accident from when they were kids; while this was the origin for comic book Lex, DA uses an image of Gene Hackman's Lex from Superman: The Movie, who didn't have that in his backstory.
  • The cover of the May 2004 issue◊ seems to think Cosmo is his godchild Timmy Turner.
• Creator Backlash: In her 2007 retrospective about the magazine, Heidi MacDonald talked about the good times she had working with Disney on the comic adaptations of their properties, but mentioned that "there are some things of which we do not speak, like Goof Troop and (GAH!) The Mighty Ducks."
• Creator-Driven Successor: After canceling The Adventures of D & A in 1998, DA would try the "secret organization fighting aliens and monsters" thing again a little over a year later with the Super Music Action Ready Team comics.
• Creator's Oddball: The comic "Drastic Park" from the January 1994 issue parodies Jurassic Park and its marketing, and includes a jab at Last Action Hero at the end. It's far different than any other comic the magazine ran at the time, and reads more like a movie parody from MAD.
• Executive Meddling: The magazine went from a fairly independent publication (albeit backed by Disney) that featured full articles, educational material, and professional comics artists (at one point it even ran reprints of Bone), but in later years it got watered down immensely.
  • According to Marv Wolfman, the reason the magazine's founding staff in Burbank were replaced with the New York staff in 1995 was because Disney was seeking to consolidate its publishing operations in New York.^note Incidentally, according to a statement of ownership printed in the December 2000 issue, DA's owner Buena Vista Magazines, Inc. (Disney's publishing subsidiary founded at the same time as DA) was still based in Burbank, even though the magazine's publishing operations were all located in New York. Today the subsidiary is known as Disney Publishing Worldwide and is still based in California.
  • According to Heidi MacDonald, Suzanne Harper disliked the name "Comics Zone," which explains why the name (and Heidi's column) disappeared less than a year after Suzanne took over as editor-in-chief from Phyllis Ehrlich.^note Funnily enough, the section would eventually get the name back after Heidi left, except called Comic Zone with no S, which would later be used as the name of the spin-off DA comics magazine printed under Heidi's successor Steve Behling.
  • According to writer Doug Gray, the second Fluffy story "Cat in a Hot Tin Suit" had several sight gags edited and a sequence reordered.^note Heidi MacDonald later admitted that she always loved that story, had no memory of why she edited it so heavily, and apologized for the edits. He also mentioned that DA's editors removed Fluffy's lisp in the second story, which he concedes was a good change.
• Fleeting Demographic Rule: There were articles on historical topics (such as mummies and space) that the magazine would reuse after a few years, with new illustrations/images of course. Several comics were reused as well; a Toy Story comic from 1995 was later reprinted to help promote Toy Story 2.
  • The T-rex on the cover of the July 1993 issue was later reused for the April 1996 cover.
  • Averted with the reprints of Bone. The magazine reprinted the first issue of "Out From Boneville" as a three-parter, followed by a DA-exclusive one-off, in 1994 at the tail-end of the Burbank years. Bone then didn't return to DA until three years later, and picked up where the last "Out From Boneville" issue had left off.
• Follow the Leader: Jet Pack Pets is most likely inspired by The Powerpuff Girls and shows of its ilk that aired around the same time.
• Hostility on the Set: Downplayed — Heidi MacDonald mentioned in a retrospective that the magazine's main editorial staff had a "sometimes uneasy" relationship with the comics side of the house.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: eBay is your best bet to obtain these comics and articles. Aside from some comics being reprinted in Disney's Colossal Comics Collection, most of the original comics have never been reprinted. In addition, none of the magazine's articles have ever been reprinted.
  • Averted with "Return to Blaggard Castle", which was included as a bonus story in volume 2 of The Floyd Gottfredson Library, fittingly enough the volume that contains the original Blaggard Castle story.
  • Also averted with the DA-exclusive Bone comic "May the Force Be With You", which was later reprinted in black and white in Jeff Smith's The Art of Bone.
  • The DA Casebusters stories and novel series haven't been reprinted since their original run.
• Milestone Celebration: The magazine had one for its 50th issue, its 100th issue, and its tenth anniversary.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content:
  • In 1993, DA held a contest for kids to submit their ideas for comic book superheroes; the winner, Metamorphon, got a comic in the March 1994 issue that was written by Marv Wolfman and penciled by Curt Swan.
  • A 1995 contest for reader-submitted villains included the top four winners in a Roger Rabbit Effect comic where they interact with the DA staff and try to take over the magazine.
• Referenced by...: The magazine was referenced by the DuckTales (2017) episode "The Duck Knight Returns", which briefly shows Drake's stack of Darkwing Adventures comics that have the same "Adventures" logo as the magazine.
• Stillborn Franchise:
  • Given its name, the title characters of The Adventures of D & A were very clearly meant to become the magazine's mascots; and per the Rogues Gallery teased in the comic's third story, the writers had several stories planned. However, the characters themselves had no presence anywhere else in the magazine, and the comic was quietly canceled after its third story.
  • Luna Park looks like it was intended to be a recurring feature, given its introductory page in the April 1999 issue, but its second and last appearance was in Heidi MacDonald's penultimate issue as comics editor. The comics section later attempted to recapture Luna Park's "spooky" vibe with Little Gloomy and Society of Horrors.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Near the end of the magazine's run, Roger Langridge was to write and illustrate one-to-two-page comics of The Muppets for the magazine. Only one strip saw the light of day by being included in the last issue because of the cancellation of Disney Adventures. Roger Langridge would subsequently write and draw for The Muppet Show Comic Book, which featured material intended to be Disney Adventures strips in the comic's preview issue.
  • According to Kean Soo, there were talks to include Jellaby short stories in the magazine, with the first to be included in the January 2008 issue (to coincide with the release of the Jellaby graphic novel). Ultimately this didn't happen because of the magazine's cancellation.
  • Granted, the magazine was canceled due to declining ad sales after a few years of Seasonal Rot, but it's worth noting that it ended the year before the Marvel Cinematic Universe started, two years before Disney acquired Marvel Comics, and five years before Disney acquired Lucasfilm and Star Wars. So imagine DA with MCU and Star Wars tie-in comics; they just barely missed out on it.