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To get us back on the duck track I will post one of the following depending on poplular request.

 

My copy of WDC&S #13 or scans of the missing pages from DD#26 (Trick or Treat)!

I vote for the missing pages; I thought they were fascinating when I first started learning about American Disney comics and would have posted scans long ago if I had them. Besides, you see cigar-smoking ducklings all the time.

The restored Fantasia sounds wonderful. Reading your post, I was thinking back at when I saw a digital preview of "Finding Nemo" in Pixar's screening room and thought the first 10 minutes were by far the most beautiful sequence I'd ever seen. Then I went to a regular cinema and was so disappointed when everything looked completely washed out. I can't wait to see the new version! Fantasia was a huge influence for me in my decision to go into 3d graphics. I first saw it around 1990 when it was released on VHS back home for the first time. The first research paper I got published was based on an idea I got while watching the dancing mushroom sequence. That work later opened the door to some of the best universities in the US so Fantasia has a special place in my heart.

I have to take some of the blame for posting non-Duck scans in this thread, but it was selegue who started it with a woodpecker. Here is a better scan of one of my favorite Duck covers. I've started adding my CGC graded Mickey Mouse Magazines to the CGC registry ("What the Church run might have looked like?").

Nice pages, but too late for my taste. I've avoided the mid-60's because the bulk of surviving artwork is from pages that Barks was handed back when he retired. The "North of the Yukon" story from Uncle Scrooge 59 was among those stories. I am way too patient for that to be any fun - the 1940s and '50s are more my cup of tea.

I ordered the Large Feature 5 (Tarzan) from Heritage the other day. It looked really nice from the scans (CGC 7.5) and I look forward to seeing it.

Thanks for the nice comments, everyone. This was indeed the first book in the first CGC submission ever (hope to hear the story about that someday - I imagine beer was involved?).

I dug up the manuscript to the "Ghost Town Railway" Uncle Scrooge story, but unfortunately I only have the printed version in a language no one else understands. If someone has an English language copy and could post scans of a few pages, I will scan in the corresponding pages from the -script.

Below is a book I'd love to upgrade (think I bought it around 2004), but you hardly ever see it above VG. It is currently tied for first place in the CGC census.

From latest batch of CGC submissions.

The latest addition to my WDC&S run. Back in October 2002, this book was listed right after a CGC 6.5 copy that I won. Now I have both of them.

I think it is interesting how the San Francisco, Windy City, and Denver copies appear to have been absorbed in long term collections decades ago. Geppi surely wouldn't have sold the Leonard Brown (Crescent City) copy unless he had been forced to do so. Now this 8.5 will probably also be off the market for the rest of my life.

Btw., note the CGC serial number.

The second scan is from Heritage's October 2002 catalog. It is always extra nice to get a book that got away the first time...

Congratulations with the beautiful Adventure, 40Y. The dream cover combined with the note from the Sandman would have been the perfect inspiration for Neil Gaiman's later series.

Now that I have confirmed there will be no follow up invoice, this is what was gifted:

 

What a nice thing to do. One of the fringe benefits of collecting Disney is that you tend to get to know some unusually kind people.

I was just going through this story the other day as I was comparing the original manuscript to the published art. I'll try to scan some pages at some point.

I have never seen a copy that was cut according to the instructions. They must be extremely rare if they exist.

I looked up those books at Amazon the moment I saw AJD's first post, but I've been waiting for the one with the Four Color 4 cover to be published (in a couple of weeks). Thanks a lot for the tip, AJD.

 

That's a beautiful copy with a great Kelly cover, 40YC. I saw in another thread with pictures from San Diego that the Comic Heaven booth had some raw early issues of WDCS. If anyone happened to notice their condition I'd be very interested in your thoughts. I was a little surprised that John Verzyl had Disney books so I figured there might be something unusual about them. I've been working on a high grade run of the first 30 issues for many years.

 

 

I spent some time at John's booth and I actually picked up an Adventure #74 from him that I will post in the Adventure thread when it arrives. He did have a few WDC&S books and I believe I looked at a couple. They were either so far out of my price range that I did not look closely or they were lower grade. Point me to the picture to jog my memory.

Here's the picture:

Comic Heaven

 

 

 

I looked up those books at Amazon the moment I saw AJD's first post, but I've been waiting for the one with the Four Color 4 cover to be published (in a couple of weeks). Thanks a lot for the tip, AJD.

That's a beautiful copy with a great Kelly cover, 40YC. I saw in another thread with pictures from San Diego that the Comic Heaven booth had some raw early issues of WDCS. If anyone happened to notice their condition I'd be very interested in your thoughts. I was a little surprised that John Verzyl had Disney books so I figured there might be something unusual about them. I've been working on a high grade run of the first 30 issues for many years.

Just picked up this very nice 7.5 W file copy on the Heritage weekly.

 

Beak abuse.

 

That's a beautiful copy, congratulations. There's just something iconic about that image. It is really clever how the large, open eye is framed by the two parallel diagonal lines formed by the arm and the gun as well as the horizontal lines at the beak and where the gradient background turns into solid red. Your eye is immediately drawn to the bee and the stare-down by the flow of the composition. All of this surely didn't come together by accident.

Really glad to see you got this. Congratulations!

That actually looks very nice indeed. Even with the coloring inside I know how difficult it is to find an unrestored copy in this shape. These books must have had very low distribution indeed. A friend of mine owns a gorgeous file copy that he bought privately many years ago, but that's the only one better than FN I've seen.

Thanks fellas! You should see the book in hand, looks much better than a 5.0 Swapto is one of the best guys around, he even sold me this at the price he paid!

Congratulations, this book belongs in your collection. It's awesome that you finally got a beautiful copy!

Those are great shots! Aside from the adorable little Spider-Man and all the cool, early rarities, I've got to admit that the Large Feature 20 really stood out to me. I've been looking for a nice unrestored copy as long as I've collected US comics, but you just never see it approaching FN ("never" as in less than once every 10 years). There was CGC 5.0 that sold for half a dozen times guide a couple of years ago and I was kicking myself afterwards for not going for it. I only have it's sibling #16. Probably wise to place it slightly out of reach of spider-eyes and -arms.

I too love YK's pins. A few days ago, I was looking at them and thought I'd post the MMM cover again.

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Here's a book that I like a lot. Dopey was probably the first successful demonstration of how an animated character can be compelling enough to carry a feature length movie. A few weeks back, I was going through newspaper articles from the time of the premiere and it struck me how much this breakthrough was emphasized in the reviews.

I am still in awe of the condition every time I hold this book in my hands. Magazine sized books with a perfect spine are particularly hard to come by.

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AJD: I'd never seen those cards together before. I also have some of them from when I was buying the albums. There are a bunch of those illustrations that would have made terrific covers.

Here's a panel from Vacation Parade 1 that was adapted to become the cover for the original Scandinavian one-shot edition of that story. I edited out the title. It was one of my favorite covers when I was a kid. Was this cover also published in Australia?

Btw., I also like the EC books a lot and I never had much interest in superheroes, except for the early, gothic appearances of Dr. Occult, Spectre, Submariner, Batman etc. which I think are very cool. I still think it is fun to hear about superhero comics, but I'd much prefer to collect the cheaper titles that I like better.

Space Mouse #1

That's a hilarious take on the bondage covers - perhaps a spoof on Planet(?)

The insert below was lying loose in the copy of Mickey Mouse Magazine Series 1 V1#3 also shown. This was the first issue not to have a price tag; V1#1 and V1#2 both had 5 cents listed on the cover. I had never heard of such an insert before and thought it was fun since there's so little information about this very rare first series available. It suggests that #3 was indeed some kind of promotional effort before the title became a dairy giveaway.

Note the publisher, Kamen-Blair, Inc. This was a Kansas City marketing company founded by Kay Kamen and Streeter Blair. Kamen joined Disney in 1932 and the publisher of the Disney books would quickly switch to K.K. Publications.

Just to add a bit of historical context, the Mickey Mouse short that was playing in theaters in February 1933, when this book would have come out, was The Mad Doctor.

As I've mentioned in the past, my interest in these red/black Series 1 issues is entirely in their history and rarity. Unlike Series 3, which features all the beautiful covers, they have no aesthetic value whatsoever to me.

Now, after just receiving the #24 in the mail today, I finally feel I have gotten to a point where I am super happy with my run. It is the strongest it has ever been and (almost) complete.

Congratulations. It's just wonderful to see this post on so many levels, not least the classy way you have gone about the project and all the positive interactions you've had with other collectors. I just love it when people set such an "impossible" goal and manage to stick to it. It's stuff like this that once in a while makes me really happy this board exists.

Next up in my little series of improved scans is this The Brave Little Tailor cover from 1938.

To me, a book like this truly is a piece of art. It should not be read, but preserved in this condition to help communicate the appeal of these books to present and future collectors. I submitted another copy that graded CGC 9.4, but this one is my favorite for aesthetic reasons.

That's a really fun ad. I had no idea that Disney had some kind of licensing deal for foreign distribution of the MMMs, especially this early. Do you have any idea how the book ended up in your neck of the woods? I am very interested in the experiments Kay Kamen did back then when the medium still was virtually unexplored. It seems almost incomprehensible that this issue somehow was circulated abroad... Despite being printed on the high quality paper t is one of the rarest issues. The circulation in North America surely can't have been more than 50,000 since you see the issues from 1937-38, most of which still had a print run of less than 100,000, far more often.

I'll look up the inside back cover when I get a chance. Unfortunately, I no longer keep my collection at home. I actually just got a second file copy of #4 CGC graded (I've shown my own copy before) but I just mailed that to another collector.

Edit:

Here's my own copy again. Not much action upgrading this in the past 8 years; I'll check back in around 2020 if there's any news by then. It takes a fair amount of patience collecting high grade books from the 1930s.

On Ice was released in December 1935 as the 5th Mickey Mouse short in color. It is one of my all time favorite cartoons, especially the opening sequence with all the early depictions of Disney characters and Mickey and Minnie dancing to the Skater's Waltz: this is just classic, classic Disney at it's best. The "Mickey Mouse in Living Color" DVD featured this awesome pencil test with the bonus material. The cover is an unusually direct adaption of Tom Wood's Good Housekeeping page. It was the first cover to promote the latest Disney cartoon that was playing in theaters.

Here's a movie that On Ice almost certainly would have been the opening act to when it premiered in New York City on December 13, 1935.

My copies of V1#5 and #6 both have arrival dates from the middle of the month prior to the month published on the cover, so #4, the January 1936 issue, would have appeared on the newsstands around December 15. Here is another

It is very rare that I buy a duplicate copy of an issue when I already have a copy in exceptional condition. I never liked hoarding rare comics that other collectors might be looking for. This "undercopy" is an exception. Initially, I passed on it when it was offered last year although I gave it top marks during my inspection prior to the auction, but when it came up again a few months ago I couldn't resist. My nicest copy is still not certified; I've been hesitant to submit some of my most beautiful books but am still considering it.

The back cover message is unique in that it is neither an ad for merchandise nor for an animated short or feature.

The review of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" below is copied from the New York Times archives. A particularly interesting note to me was the criticism of the human figures. Pixar struggled with the same kind of problems for their human characters when they did the first Toy Story movie, before physically accurate models of the scattering of light in hair and skin had been developed. Today, 15 years later, Pixar's approach seems just as outdated as the animation of Snow White and Prince Charming would have appeared in 1950 when Cinderella was released. I keep getting amazed by how similar the evolution of 3d animation has progressed compared to what transpired at Disney in the 1930s.