AJD

Coles to (New)castle (I know I've used this one not so long ago, but I couldn't resist the set-up line!)

V to Victory

From a b&w Australian Kaanga reprint

Pulp with peculiar green dudes to pulp with peculiar green dudes

To an actual war bond

To carrying a war bonds banner

To an even bigger book

"How does that stay up?" to "No, really, how does that stay up?"

OK, I may be accused of spamming the boards by the time I finish posting this everywhere I can, but I thought the Disney fans in this thread might enjoy seeing the characters celebrating the end of WW2 in Europe. This is a tabloid-sized English paper - just 8 pages in all. Oh, and it's a book I've been looking for for a decade!

As of about an hour ago, no. I've been looking for one of these for about ten years now, having seen it in Denis Gifford's book 'The International Book of Comics'. (Which, incidentally, could be more accurately called 'a random walk through comics I own, by Denis Gifford'.) Anyway, this is the 'victory in Europe' edition of what started life as the British Mickey Mouse Weekly, which ran from 1936-1957, but was fortnightly for part of that period. The cover date is 2 June 1945, about three weeks after VE Day (8 May), presumably because of the time to commission the artwork and publish it. The other May editions would have been May 5 and May 19. There is no VE specific material inside. Photo only I'm afraid, as it doesn't fit on the scanner bed. Interesting to see the Soviet flag dumbo is holding, but none of the flags of the dominion countries Australia, Canada, South Africa, India etc. I guess the Brits figured we colonials were all covered by the Union Jack. Also note the appearance of Jose Carioca and Panchito Pistolas - two characters little known these days but big at the time because of the Donald Duck short film The three caballeros. The effect of wartime paper shortages can be seen by the fact that the magazine (it contains comics, text stories and puzzles) is only eight pages and has shrunk compared to the previous 12 page larger format. Here it is beside a May 4th 1940 copy I own. And it's worth reflecting that in May 1940 Britain was about to start fighting for its life. The short and disastrous Battle of France was about to begin and by September the Brits were up against the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. It's probably no coincidence that it lost the 'weekly' part of the title in September 1940. It became a weekly again some time after the war (the GCD is really spotty on this title). Have I mentioned ? Edit: there's no scan of this issue in the GCD, and when I went to add it I realised that the issues numbers there are really screwed up and there are issues out of sequence. I'm guessing it's because someone(s) assumed that the numbering was weekly for the whole run. This is a job for a @Get Marwood & I Are Not Dead level obsessive pence specialist!