Disney's New 5 Part Prequel To Its Best 1990s Film Is Finally Out, And It's A Masterpiece

The latest Disney spinoff series adds a new backstory to one of the studio's most famous animated movie antagonists. Many of Disney's most famous villains became cultural icons despite their limited backstory. In the original movies, the audience barely learns how Maleficent rose to become the most feared sorceress in the kingdom, how Jafar ascended to become Agrabah's royal vizier, or why Captain Hook developed his legendary rivalry with Peter Pan. Later comics, novels, television series, and live-action reinterpretations have gradually filled many of those gaps with the revelation of formative relationships or personal tragedies that the animated classics deliberately left ambiguous.

By contrast, several animated heroes have accumulated decades of additional development across a variety of Disney sequels, television series, books, and other media that extend their original films. Ariel continued her story in The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea and an animated television series set before the first movie. Belle received Belle's Magical World and The Enchanted Christmas, and Cinderella's journey continued in Cinderella II: Dreams Come True and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. Aladdin arguably experienced the largest expansion of any Disney protagonist in The Return of Jafar, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, and a long-running animated series.

Although many direct-to-video sequels have since received uncertain canonical status or faded from mainstream discussion, they still explored several Disney characters' past and future.

Gaston's Five-Part Beauty And The Beast Spinoff Prequel Ends Right Before The Movie Starts

Disney Villains: Gaston; Written By Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak; Art By Milena Ciccarello

Across five short chapters, Disney Villains: Gaston explores the villain's previous adventure to the events of Beauty and the Beast. The comic follows Gaston as he adapts to his transformation into a squirrel by an alchemist, crafts a plan to steal the pendant to reverse it, escapes the royal guards, and ends up becoming the King's biggest enemy. The story introduces brand-new characters and provides a hilarious explanation for why they don't appear in Beauty and the Beast, and it establishes Gaston as a more cunning adventurer than the rather witless brute that Belle meets.

While movie prequels like Maleficent and Cruella transform famous Disney villains into anti-heroes or full-fledged heroes, Disney Villains: Gaston doubles down on Gaston's negative qualities while also adding more nuance to his arrogance. Gaston mistreats Le Fou and brings together a team of thieves only to double-cross them, and even when he succeeds with the odds stacked against him, he finds a way to get into deeper trouble immediately afterward. Disney Villains: Gaston isn't required reading to understand Beauty and the Beast, nor does it contradict the movie, but it presents a fresh perspective on one of its most important characters.

Disney Villains: Gaston Joins Five Other Spinoff Comics

Disney's Most Famous Antagonists Get The Solo Treatment

Dynamite Entertainment’s other Disney Villains spinoff installments also enrich the lore of the Lion King's Scar, Hercules' Hades, The Little Mermaid's Ursula, Sleeping Beauty's Maleficent, and 101 Dalmatians' Cruella De Vil. Scar builds out the pre-regicide Pride Lands with the introduction of other predators that the evil lion outsmarts; Ursula fights back against Triton when her sisters are attacked; Maleficent sees the titular witch seeking a new source of power; and Cruella tries to clear her name while attempting to steal the royal family's crown jewels.

These spinoffs offer an impressive degree of world-building for each of their characters and their respective original movies, and they update each villain's motivations, helping them evolve from simple antagonists to the stars of their own stories. Like Gaston, Scar evolves from a bitter sulk into a methodical political strategist driven by severe insecurity, while Hades becomes an overworked, corporate-style manager motivated by petty divine social exclusion, and Ursula is shown as a fallen goddess seeking vengeance for Triton's brutal unification of the oceans.

Which Disney character should get their own spinoff next?

Disney Villains: Gaston is now available from Dynamite Entertainment