50YrsCollctngCmcs

This is just cool, another Dell mystery! Leave it to the Poughkeepsie boys to keep you guessing after all these years. Not on our copy or any of the other copies of that time frame. On most of our copies the address square is on the back cover. But our copy doesn't even have that. (thumbs u Andrew

Never noticed the subscription square on these forties books before. Was this on the standard books or a special print run?

I hope you are going to crack open and read these. They are both really interesting books. Sherrif of Bullet Valley is just a great story, pure and simple. Classic Barks. Ancient Persia is also very interesting. It was drawn during that period when Barks was getting tired of the funny animal vernacular and was drawing his antogonists with a more human flair. This reached its height in Dangerous Disguise which reads like an Ian Fleming novel. That is when Western noticed and told him to get back to drawing cartoonish fare. Luckily his story telling did not diminish as great books like Christmas for Shacktown, Poor Old Man, The Golden Helmet and Back to the Klondike were still to come. It was also the time that a number of the Duck Four Color books were drawn by others and I am sure this is all related. A Duck crisis for the good duck artist!! Glad he came back, shifting his long story focus to the sagas in Scrooge for some fresh inspiration.

Anybody know the first book that had a full page or double page spread?

Very cool, I missed your Brer Rabbit post the first time around; thanks for linking to it again.

Love the Dell Giants, try to collect that whole Disneyland series, they are a lot of fun. I bet they sold like hotcakes back when they came out. Summertime, time on your hands, not going to Disneyland, next best thing.......... read about it in your Disney Dell Giant!

You know after looking at the prices on these keys you are right, restored is the way to go to get into these books.

I posted this in the Adventure thread but thought I would post here as well. Another pickup from Ed. This is a beaut with absolutely stunning pages. The text page is so white that you need sunglasses to read it! OK, OK, I exagerrate a bit but it is pretty white.

I picked this up at Long Beach yesterday from Ed Robertson. The page quality on this book is fantastic and you could eat off the whites on the cover.The lineup inside is great: Sandman Starman Shining Knight Manhunter This is my third Adventure now and I am thinking of starting a run. These are more fun than the Action Comics in a lot of ways.

OK, not exactly a Four Color but pretty close. Yesterday, I was driving by a senior center and noticed they were having a fall festival / sale. I had a few extra minutes and ran to see what they might have for sale. No comics but they did have 20 Disneyland 45 RPM records that I picked up at a reasonable price. They have nice covers, and in the middle of the stack was this little beauty. Easily my favorite of the bunch.

OK, that is beyond cool! I love that you got that back, the one that got away and came back home!! I actually kept all of my comics (well most of them) so no reunification stories for me.

Picked a couple of nice books from Pickycollector. Good communication as we braved the customs wait from Canada! Worth the wait. Accurate grading, always a plus in my book.

Scrooge, Thanks for the link and quote,really interesting. It would have been great to read this sequence in the paper each day when it appeared. Then again, there would have been a lot of other great comic strip reading to go with it. Yes, I am afraid we have little chance of seeing Mickey appear like this anytime soon from any official source. Perhaps when the copyright finally expires there will be some interesting editions around 2030(?) or so assuming a copyright extension is not granted again. Hope I am around to see them and still collecting. Then I can call myself 60yrscllctngcomcs!

I should have looked at INDUCKS right away, Anyway who has not explored that site should take a look. I knew it had to be Gottfredson from the look of the strip. We won't be seeing these reprinted anytime soon! Thanks to BustedFlush for the research.

Almost posted this here but with the age of the book I put it over in Bang Zoom's Golden Age collection thread: Mickey Post Some of you duck fans are probably Disney fans as well and if you like Mickey go check out the other post for some very un-Mickey like strips. Anyway, the cover is below and is indicative of the inside of this officially sanctioned Disney book.

The next two suicide pages....

Here is a little surprise that showed up at work on Friday. Does anyone know if these are reprints from early Gottfredson or if they are original to Belgium where this book was published. Take a close look, some really un-MIckey like behavior here, from the Mickey gun-totin cover to the pages documenting Mickey's numerous attempts at suicide! That cover looks like it could be from Air Pirates Funnies instead of an officially sanctioned Disney publication. I've included the inside cover and copyright info as well.

I am sure most of you know this but those little codes Dells used as shown in the lower right hand corner of the story above tells you the issue number and date of the book this story appeared in. October '45 here. I remember reading this in the early 70's and using it when reading current Disney comics, most of which were reprints. As I recall sometimes the old date would be in the artwork (telling you the source of the reprint) sometimes the new date and sometimes both! The digest books also had these codes and you could squint to determine the source of the story.

Some fairly recent Don Glut stories from the LA area. I don't know Don but my wife actually ended up attending a number of gatherings at his house in Hollywood about five years back. After that we ran into him at a couple of events at the Beverly Hills Hotel hosted by the New Zealand film organization in LA. Since I was actually an old Captain America and Invaders fan I menitoned reading his work on those books to him at that party but he didn't want to talk about that. Either Don gets around or we do!! He seems to always be actively soliciting investors for producing his movies. Not my cup of tea but I have to hand it to the guy for keeping at it.

Perfect! We look for the same sort of book! Great stuff, great to read these!

A few years back we used this cover as the inspiration for a BBQ poster here at work:

Nice book and a great gift! Consider it a good stroke of fortune that prices on these have remained steady (with inflation = decreasing) and you can pick them up on the relative cheap. I have picked up a few nice Looney Tunes over the last couple of years for very low prices, beautiful books, great production values and covers although the stories don't always seem so great. I have also been picking up some Sad Sack Harvey file copies on the cheap in the last year, also an interesting title that is under appreciated. George Baker did all the covers on those books until he passed away. I have also picked up some early Dell DickTracy books for very little money as well as Red Ryder, also beautiful unappreciated books. Consider yourself lucky to recognize the intrinsic value of these gems!

Back in the Golden Age time period the art museums sold color reproductions of their famous paintings. These were smallish (4" x 6") but there couldn't have been a better way to have a file of swipable illustrations. I have some of these my Grandmother bought from the Met in New York. I will take a look through them and post any that look like they could have been source material. Life magazine was also a ready source of material. And that came out every week chock full of beautiful phototgraphy. I bet a lot of poses got swiped right out of there.

You can bet the Golden Age artists were looking at the classical painters and illustrators for inspiration and swipes! After all they were all hoping to get out of comics and into the more respectable position of illustrator!

This appeared today in the Disney Newsreel, a weekly publication for Disney employees. I thought it was fun they used the first Donald Duck comic to illustrate Sir Donald's birthday.