AJD

Odd thing about this photo. The comic on the stands between the LH kids feet is WDC&S #91. On the ground in front of him is WDC&S #69. There's almost two full years between those issues - which makes me wonder if there's a mix of newstand and the kids' own comics there?

Just in - my first under 20 (although watch this space for another next week). This one was liberated from a plastic tomb with a '5.0' on the top left. These early ones are wide! This doesn't fit my regular mylars. When did the shrink to normal GA size? I have #20 and it's the 'regular' width, so it was either 17, 18 or 19 that was the last 'fat' ones.

I just got the earliest WDC&S I have yet from Ed. As usual, this was a hassle free transaction with a great result. (thumbs u Andrew

And now, the end is near, and so we face the final curtain... Ladies and gentlemen, Pogo #16 Thank you, thank you all.

Great movie poster! My wife keeps threatening to collect vintage movie posters. As for the bit I bolded... Or is it just me?

While I don't really want to set a precedent, I agree with Duffman. Those 1930s Italian books are great. Thanks vaillant. Australian Disney comics in the 1960s often featured stories by Italian artists and they were translated locally (no problem finding Italian speakers in Australia then or now). I'll scan a few later. As far as I know these stories didn't end up in the American editions. That helps explain why there were more Australian editions of Uncle Scrooge than American ones up to the time they stopped.

The end is nigh. #15

For something different, here's Walt Kelly testifying to the Senate about comic books, juvenile delinquency and crime/horror stories. Here's an excerpt: Senator KEFAUVER. Now, this picture here of the woman with her head cut off seems to be by Johnny Craig. Do you know him? Mr. KELLY. I don't know him, sir. Senator KEFAUVER. Do you think these may be assumed names? Mr. KELLY. I would doubt it. There are so many markets for our work that it takes a man who is interested in that sort of thing to pick up the job, I would say. None of our members need the work. Senator KEFAUVER. None of your members do things of this kind? Mr. KELLY. I haven't examined all their work, and I can't truthfully swear they don't, but I will be surprised and we will take action if they do. Senator KEFAUVER. What would you do if you found they did? Mr. KELLY. They would violate our code. Senator KEFAUVER. What would you do about it? Mr. KELLY. I don't know. Maybe invite them outside.

Day 14, getting towards the end now. This is such a nice run of books.

It's crazy that books that beautiful still exist. But I'm glad they do, and I'm even more glad that you shared them here tb.

Bowled over as I was by the response to the information I posted yesterday, here's #13 for you ingrates. Edit: holy carp! I don't remember those bug chews being there before.

Here's what Nicky Wright's book 'The classic era of American comics' has to say: 'After almost 14 years with Dell, Kelly decided to leave when he found that it had jacked the price of Pogo the Possum from 10 to 15 cents a copy, probably to capitalize on the character's nationwide popularity. The final straw was when Dell issued a 100 page "Giant" comic... to cash in on Pogo's popularity. [1] ... Then Dell tried to prevent a new series of paperback Pogo books, claiming only that company could produce them. Kelly won and Simon and Schuster published the books instead. 'Kelly closed the door on comic books in 1954 and the last issue of Pogo went on sale. He never returned to the comic industry'. My thoughts: [1] The inside cover of the Giant Pogo Parade has a letter from Kelly which, among other things, apologises for the southern dialect in the early stories from Animal Comics reprinted therein. This is consistent with him not being thrilled to see them marketed anew at a time when the strip was in 400 newspapers and had moved on to a more nationally palatable form. [2] The relatively sudden end of the Pogo book is consistent with a falling out. Numbers 14 and 15 have subscription ads on the back cover, the first Pogo books to do so, while the series ended with #16. Oh, and here's the 15c #12:

The back story to this is told in a book on GA comics I bought recently. To avoid my memory getting it wrong, I'll dig it out when I get home and post it with #12.

Almost forgot today (which is your tomorrow) or is it tomorrow already where most of you guys are - which would be my today? OK, I'm confused too. Here's #11

Into double figures today with a nice infinity cover. Pogo #10:

Nice one 40Y. I was in Sydney a couple of weeks ago and happened to be staying in Castlereigh Street - so I had to go find #149, where Australian Disney comics were published from 1946 to 1978. I too have a photo of the door. Anyhoo, here's today's Pogo - we're up to #9.

Here's another Disney one.

Another day, another Pogo. The exceptionally cute cover of #8 today:

7 comes right after 6. This was the first Pogo I ever owned (not this copy though): This one has a nice back cover pinup page too:

Since there didn't seem to be one of these, here's a thread to post tributes that take a GA cover as their starting point. I'll kick off with Simpson's Comics 102: Looking through the GCD gallery, there are more Simpsons Comics with GA antecedents. I'll upload a few later.

Really nice books. I'd see about a refund on that last item though. I hear ya, but the guy's a New Yorker, so I'm too scared of him to try.

Good denizens of the duck thread, I have some new playthings to show off, but I absolutely have to give a shout out to Point Five for making it happen. Jon very kindly agreed to act as the middle man for some eBay purchases from a seller who wouldn't ship internationally. He put up with my PMs for three consecutive weeks of bidding, and collected up the books and shipped them in bombproof packaging to me in Australia. I've been pleased to see him land some nice early ducks lately too. I owe ya one Jon. Anyhoo, here's what I got: and best of all - a war bonds cover as well as a WDC&S in my sights: and a ration joke on the cover of this one: I also got this Four Colour: I was all when these arrived. The #44 was overgraded (I suspected that from the scan in the listing) but the others were all undergraded, some by substantial amounts. But that's all secondary. The best item in the package was a piece of signed OA. I'll let it speak for itself:

I know 40Y posted a beautiful copy of this one first up in this thread, but I thought I'd keep the run unbroken here. Pogo #6

#5 - a file copy for today. This book is structurally a 9.2 or so, but got hit for the stamps. I love it. I have a reader copy and the first story, where Pogo and Albert try to write a funny animal story, is hilarious.