AJD

My biggest error, which I'm still prone to, is not returning books that should be returned. I seem to rationalise keeping them when I shouldn't. I've returned a few over the years, and that always worked out OK.

Does this count?

That's probably mostly right. But I think there would be a small attrition rate due to fire, flood, varmints and collector's families/executors being clueless and tossing them.

Just picked this one up on eBay. Hope I don't jinx myself by posting an image before I get it! I didn't find this cover in the gallery of US editions, so maybe an Australian original?

Folklore has it that CGC needed to make a concession to slightly restored GA books to get the big fish in the comic world to come on board when it started up. I think any later book with a spot of glue or colour would be PLODDED, but that wouldn't do for people holding big GA books.

Oh that's just silly.

5.0 with a dry clean, probably 4.5 now

Very nice Corey. Is there a plan for a plane inside the comic? Or a story in which Bugs builds a plane?

The first book I remember buying was an Australian Uncle Scrooge from 1971, which reprinted the Paul Bunyan machine story. I had 100s of comics by 1975, then lost interest. I sold off my collection in about 1980. Then in 1987 I saw this one in the local newsagency. The rest is history... My tastes have changed a few times, but I still really love the ducks.

Australia moved from shillings and pence to dollars and cents in February 1966. Anything with a d or /- price must predate that.

Anyhoo, back to the funny books... This is the 90th addition to my WDC&S 1-100 folly. With this one I have all of the 20s now. I'm lacking 1-5, 10, 11, 14, 18 and 35. I'm not actively seeking 1-5 (don't think that's likely to happen) but am definitely in the market for the others. The 'Duane Mrohs' stamp sent me on a little Google hunt. You can see the results in the ducks thread in the GA forum. Here's the UTC for this one. Thankfully Duane didn't cut this out. I wanted to try it though, so I printed a copy of the scan and made it up (This is a primitive from of phenakistoscope. You can see an animated version of a similar disc on Wikipedia.) It works OK, but I wouldn't write home about it. Maybe it was a bigger deal in 1942.) Here's back cover. The cover figure from WDC&S 20 repurposed into a war bonds/subscription ad.

Yes, that's true. And there are reproduction sets kicking around that are hard to tell from the originals. I bought these for $2 at a flea market - and it turns out I overpaid! (But they are nice.)

That's great. I'll grab one if I ever see a copy. (Can't recall having seen any, and apparently there were five issues.)

No love so far for Kaanga's close personal friend Ann?

Tiger Girl's Australian cousin

I do not. But the books themselves are bright and cheerful, and I love high grade copies of them! Nice one.

Oh, and no Rulah yet in this thread. Better fix that.

Where to begin?

As I said earlier in this thread, 1950s Australia had a strong colonial thread running through it. Britain was 'the home country', royal visits were extraordinary events and popular culture was very British - though American influences began in WW2 and were gradually gaining strength. Of course, Australia still remains tied to the British crown, and we still celebrate Australia Day on the day of the landing of the first British fleet (though not without a little controversy).

Nice. I really like the colour saturation on those Horwitz published books. Looking at the entry on Ausreprints, they give a date of 1955, which also can't be right. They also give March 1955 and May 1955 for #s 2 and 4 respectively, which also has to be suspect in light of your observation. I don't suppose the Lee/Baker story in Frontier Western could have been a reprint?

I'm very pleased to be able to show this one off. I got this from Heritage. It is a VERY solid 5.0 and I'm glad I held my nerve in the auction. With this I now have 90/100 of the WDC&S 'first 100'. Realistically, 1-5 aren't likely to happen, but I'd really like to find copies of the others - #10, 11, 14, 18 and 35. LMK if you see one around, though it will probably be buried under a pile of FC 178s! BTW, the stamp on the cover identifies this book as previously belonging to Duane Mrohs. I have a few others from Duane's old collection: #s 27, 29 and 30, though he upgraded his rubber stamp on those ones: I figured that "Duane Mrohs" might not be that common a name, so I asked Mr Google. As near as I can tell (and if it's the right one) Mr Mrohs was a musical technician (photo of him in that article) who worked on some jazz records in the 1960s, and was attached to the music school at Ann Arbor in the 1960s and 70s. All of the references place him in Michigan, including a 1987 death notice. With that info, I found this record, which includes a birth date of 1930 - about right to have been buying a duck book in 1942 or 1943.

One of my favourites too. If you're only going to have one, that's not a bad choice. I like the stamp too!

Not seeing a MiG-15 on those covers Hep. Look at the cockpit placement (much further back than on the -15) and the 'stepped' fuselage, with the exhaust mid-fuselage, not at the rear, on all but the Fight.