50YrsCollctngCmcs

This one is fantastic and someone else seemed to think so as they noted, "Keep!"

Yes, another great cover and once again those early books have a free flowing spirtit and looseness to them that the later books seem to lack. Great cover, thanks for posting!

Totally awesome imagery. I recently picked up an original Classic Comics earlier this year which I posted here. Classic Comics 11 I used to read these as a kid and had forgotten how much fun they were. I really wanted to start picking up some of the originals and when I saw that Red Melvin (our good Dentist!) had one for sale I picked it up on the cheap. I want to pick up some others like Frankenstein and possibly Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Last of the Mohicans looks like a good one too and I do need to read it as I could never get through that book my Sophmore year of high school. I remember things taking a turn for the weird that year as I started to read Lovecraft instead! I like the Frankenstein cover. bb and Oliver Twist There we go! I love the line drawing covers on these early books. What I really love was their free form logos on the very early numbers before they got more consistent with the Classic Comics logo at the top of the books. Also, look at the last "S" in COMICS in the logo, looks like the artist was is a rush to finsh as it looks a little off compared to the rest of the letterforms! Probably a rush job.

Totally awesome imagery. I recently picked up an original Classic Comics earlier this year which I posted here. Classic Comics 11 I used to read these as a kid and had forgotten how much fun they were. I really wanted to start picking up some of the originals and when I saw that Red Melvin (our good Dentist!) had one for sale I picked it up on the cheap. I want to pick up some others like Frankenstein and possibly Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Last of the Mohicans looks like a good one too and I do need to read it as I could never get through that book my Sophmore year of high school. I remember things taking a turn for the weird that year as I started to read Lovecraft instead!

Very fun stuff. That page reminds me of early Dr Suess. Any chance that he had a hand in it. He was born in 1904, so the timing isn't impossible, although Bails' Who's Who doesn't have any comic-book credits for him. Thanks for posting these. Jack I would bet some serious money this is Dr. Seuss before he was the good Dr.! A quick perusal of Wikipedia shows that this work would have occurred during a period when Mr. Geissel was freelancing and taking on a wide variety of assignments. And to think that we saw it on Mickey Mouse Magazine!

TB, I am late to this party but thanks for sharing! Great stuff. I got turned onto this thread by the gang over in Show us your Ducks! Please continue, this is a great journey through a marvelous magazine that I have always wondered about.

Now that was an amazing thread! I had an inkling of what those books contained but to see every issue of Volume 1 for the most part in beautiful condition was simply amazing. I was most impressed by the variety of material on offer in the magazine and I can only hope we get to see some more of this collection so we can see how the magazine morphs into the modern WDC & S comic book. I will certainly be keeping my eyes open for a copy for my collection after looking at those books. Does anyone know if this was an effort by the Disney Studios or work that was jobbed out to Kay Kamen who put the original Comics and Stories together? Kay Kamen is a Disney Legend by the way and was involved in much of the early merchandising efforts for the company. I am going to give that MMM thread a bump for fun!

WOW! Just took a quick glance for now but I can see I am in for a treat. That is certainly going to satisfy my curiosity. I will post more when I have a chance to spend time looking over the whole thread. Thanks for posting the link!!

Anyone here have any of the precursor issues to WDC & S, Mickey Mouse Magazine? I have thought about picking one of these up for sometime but never have. Back in the early 90's when SDCC was actually quiet on Friday morning (yes Friday, I can't imagine what Thursday was like) my friend Mike (Busted Flush) and I stopped by one dealer who had got a lot of file copies of the run from the Disney archives. Man, were they sweet and the prices matched the sweetness. Anyway, I don't remember the dealer but he was nice enough to show us the whole run. Great covers? What are the interiors like? Comics or puzzles and such??

If that is an original and it sure looks like it, you got a smokin' deal. If the page quality is good and corners square that is easily a $100 plus book and maybe then some. More importantly, it is an original of one of Barks' best stories ever. Early environmentalism to boot!! Congratulations, just proves the deals are always there for those who look!

Sure is, they really blew that one.

These are great books! The early All Americans have a nice feel to them. I may still have one with a wicked spine roll that I would be willing to let go to someone as a cheap reader. Just need to look in my boxes and locate it. Ray Storch in Emeryville, CA had a bunch for sale at Wonder Con a few years back, he may still have them if anyone is interested.

It seems like there is a good article in here somewhere. I have read bits and pieces about these books but never the whole story behind DC's funny animal line. As for me I like the early Funny Stuff, particularly the Three Mouseketeers. The fifties version of Mouseketeers is fun too. I want to check out some Fox and Crows but never had the chance.

Those Bambi books are absolutely gorgeous! Thanks, I should go ahead and look at them again, I haven't read them in a long time!

Glad to hear I am not the only one to think so. I've never seen one but then again I've never looked for one. This is the last thing I would want to hear ... knowing my compulsiveness, it's going to eat at me to get one done Here are a couple more of my faves from a recent trade - One of the things I love about the Dell line of the forties and fifties was the tremendous variety. It is also interesting to note the shift from the early forties in comic strip reprints to adaptations of movies and television by the late fifties. Those movie comics were the equivalent of VCR tapes and DVD's today for kids back then!

You are killing me on those, two of only four Duck four colors I need but I am holding out for F-VF copies at the right price. They will come someday. Congratulations! Great books to read.

Man, you are on a roll! That is some great reading there. Love how Scrooge and the boys take the calliope down the river in Totem Poles!

I'm not a western fan but that sure is some nice artwork! Has anyone ever done a table or chart showing the distribution of genre over time for the four color series. Additionally, the number of issues put out seemed to gain speed as the years wore on. Did it slowly ebb in the early sixties prior to the Gold Key switch or was it peaking? When Gold Key took over they didn't have a one shot series anymore, although they issued lots of one shots. It doesn't seem like the quantity was as high though. Curious if anyone has ever seen numbers on this.

I had posted this earlier in the thread but for the sake of completion a very recent (last year) acquistion which alllowed me to almost complete this run of early Disney film books. Still need to get Dumbo and I am working on the Duck books (only need the really pricey ones at this point!)

Finally, in the early nineties I picked up this issue of Pinocchio. I would have sworn I already had this book but can't seem to find another copy in my files so maybe I did not. Anyway, this is fun as I picked it up from Pat Block who drew some of the duck stories over the last two decades and he included the attached drawing. I don't remember what I paid but I bet it was $40-60.

The next group comes from when I started going to conventions and suddenly you could not only see what you were buying but I started to become more condition sensitive. Three Caballeros was a tough book and I still remember the day I bought it at Seuling's Philly convention. The Brer Rabbit was also a convention pickup but I don't remember the details. I probably dropped $20. each on both. One more post after this.

I thought you all might appreciate taking a look at my early Disney film Four Color collection, the first batch in this post are books I picked up in the early seventies; probably when I was in 7th - 8th grade. The Reluctant Dragon was a Flea Market find and probably cost all of a quarter. The Bambi, Bambi's Children and Thumper Meets the Seven Dwarfs were ordered from the Buyer's Guide, probably for $3-4 each. You can see in these early days condition was not so much of an issue and you never really knew what was going to come in the mail. Some might say that still hasn't changed!

Sometimes I imagine my own demise: Link My Mom and Dad would make disparaging comments about my brother and my collections as kids, referring to us both as the Collyer Brothers. That was 20-25 years after the case, so that story had some legs! I actually have a smaller hoard then my brother who has an entire basement back east filled with train timetables, ephemera, signs, models, you name it. Want to feel good about being a comic collector? Go see a train guy!!

Thank you so much for finding and posting that. Now I get it - GK was simply reprinting the books, dropping the cover price and bundling them as some sort of marketing experiment. I looked at the indicia on the book I have and there is no price - or subscription info for that matter. Has anyone read a good history on Gold Key / Dell. The best stuff I have read so far have been on Evanier's blog, "News from Me," and several articles in TwoMorrows, "Back Issue," and "Alter Ego," fanzines. I understand there is a book about Golden Books that covers some of this history. One of the most fascinating characters to read about is Helen Meyers (you will see her name all over the Dell comics in the fifties.) She apparently ran Dell like her own fiefdom and ended up bitterly dissapointed when the owner left the company to family rather than to her.