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PKNA

PK – Paperinik New Adventures (PKNA) is an Italian comic, published by Disney Italy from 14 March 1996 to 20 December 2000, about the new adventures of Paperinik (known as Duck Avenger in the United States), the superhero created in 1969 by Guido Martina, Elisa Penna and Giovan Battista Carpi, which served as Donald Duck's secret identity.

The first issue of the series was called "Evroniani", and featured Paperinik's new alien enemies, the Evronians. Introduced in the same issue were Paperinik's two new allies, the A.I. Uno (One), who resides in the skyscraper Ducklair Tower, and Lyla Lay (Lyla Lee), a journalist and robot utilized by a time police organization based in the 23rd century.

The series was extremely well received at the beginning of its run, and saluted as an unexpectedly innovative project for Disney. In 2016, IDW Publishing announced plans to start publishing an official English translation of the series written by Jonathan Gray under the title "Duck Avenger".

The PKNA writers developed more adult themes than the classical Disney stories published in the Italian magazine Topolino. Throughout the series' run, they used themes such as: the relationship between man and robot; the struggle between what is right and what is logical; the essence of true love; the difference between mankind and other alien races; the essence of being a superhero; the relationship between knowledge and power; the importance of History and past historical events.

Among the writers of the Pk Team, were many talented and generally young authors: Francesco Artibani, Davide Catenacci, Gianfranco Cordara, Bruno Enna, Tito Faraci, Augusto Macchetto, Alessandro Sisti, Simone Stenti, Ezio Sisto. The PK project was seen as a testbed for a generation of new authors, who were given ample freedom to innovate, leaving behind many of the typical storytelling conventions of the company and creating a blend of the "classical" Disney comics and the American superhero comic books, which were a primary and acknowledged source of inspiration. Despite this, both the company and the public were deeply used to Disney characters being used for kid-friendly stories, so a slow transition towards edgier storytelling and graphic depictions was required.

Especially in the first issues, there is a contrast between the harsh themes hinted at or explicitly introduced by the narrative and the depicted events. It is made clear since the beginning that the Evron empire has depopulated a number of worlds, killing or enslaving billions of intelligent aliens, and a main character clearly announces to have sworn to destroy the entire Evronian race in revenge: but the fights with the Evronians mostly feature the usual Disney slapstick violence, with no graphic depictions of any hero killing or realistically wounding an enemy (while entire starships could be destroyed in the background). Despite this, the Italian readers didn't decry the restraint but were content with scenes they deemed already audacious for a conservative comics company like Disney.

The character of Paperinik was firmly based in the established Topolino continuity as the superheroic secret identity that Donald Duck had already assumed long before the start of the series: but connections with the "classic" Paperinik stories was cut short since the first number, giving Donald completely new allies, weaponry and occupations. The appearances of the other Duckburg characters were reduced to a minimum, and many of them (like Gyro Gearloose and Huey, Dewey & Louie) were written off the story even if they were featured prominently in the previous Paperinik adventures. This reinforced the notion that PK was meant to be a "real superhero", existing in its own world, related to but fundamentally different from the mostly parodic and humorous Paperinik.

PKNA is also famous for its short side stories that follow the main story in most issues. All of those short stories are more artistic than the regular main story.

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