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What a beautiful copy of a book I'd never seen before.

It's a classic, classic niche book. It's interesting for sure. Wouldn't have seemed out of place on a psychedelic underground from the late '60s. Thanks again for all these interesting scans, Mr. 01.

That might just be the strangest cover I've ever seen. Not sure I'm comfortable with this book...

This is the only WDCS 1 file copy I've ever seen. I like books with file copy markings a lot and am planning to have this restored in the near future. I've had very good experience with Susan Cicconi for this type of work in the past. If some of you think the book would fit better with another restorer I'd greatly appreciate the input. The back cover is intact and does not need any work. The impact on the value is not a priority, nor is the cost of the restoration. The only thing that matters is the quality of the end result.

I'm officially insanely jealous. I've been looking for a HG copy of this for years. It's one of the 4 or 5 early LT related books I desperately want. Congrats. (thumbs u Great copy! I was just reading in a book that Win Smith, who worked on the first Mickey Mouse dailies, supposedly did the first Bugs Bunny comic book story. Does anyone know if this is the story that appeared in Looney Tunes 1? --- RedFury: congratulations on securing your grail! Do you know which printing this is?

Here's an example of an over-sized issue that I like a lot. Clean, flat books from this period in near perfect condition are among the most beautiful Disney publications I've seen. The larger size only makes them more spectacular although that's hard to show in scans. The format is 8 1/4"x11 1/4", about 1" more than a regular comic book in each dimension. Note the announcement of "extra comics". The cover adaptation of The Practical Pig is a bit of an oddity in that the cartoon was not released before February 1939. Likewise, Tom Porter's corresponding Good Housekeeping page was published almost a year before the cartoon appeared in theaters. A second Mickey Mouse Magazine cover based on this short would appear in May 1939 (V4#8).

Those early oddball Four Colors are cool. A while back, I got to look through bound volumes of both Series 1 and Series 2. The variety of the material was amazing; if I'd had more time I could have spent days reading through them.

I doubt I'll ever be a big fan of superhero comics myself, but I still find it interesting when other collectors talk about them. From following the boards, I've come to admire the beauty of Mr. Bedrock's Marvel Mystery run and have become fascinated with the early, dark Submariner and Spectre stories. If my posts have made anyone appreciate the Mickey Mouse Magazines a tiny bit more than you did before, I'll be very happy. Personally, I actually like the oversize format a lot for the highest graded books as it makes the covers even more beautiful in my eyes. --- Glad you liked it. This book was sold directly by Disney to the Collector's Bookstore sometime in the 1960s or early 1970s. The only way I can explain the freakish condition is that it must have been put aside right after it was printed without ever being opened.

Here is a picture of John with the "Land Beneath the Ground" original when he dropped it off at my home in 2001. He had kept it since Barks gave it to him when he was 16 years old. Super nice and very smart guy.

I know it very well from the European edition, but I had never associated it with the Mickey Mouse Magazines before. It's a great parallel as the Snow White magazine also had very beautiful artwork, puzzles, and stories that I liked a lot as a child. Thanks. The joy I get from my collection goes far beyond buying and selling stuff, although the hunt undenitably is a lot of fun. The truly interesting part begins when I sit down to read a book, not just browsing through it but genuinely taking the time to absorb and reflect on what it is trying to tell me about the time when it was made. I am looking to branch into collecting other publishers from the 1935-40 period in order to explore the corresponding evolution in their comics. It is wonderful to see all the covers that people are posting, but my experience with the Disney books gives me the impression that those (literally) only are scratching the surface of all the history that is to be discovered. In particular, I would like to explore what happened in each of the years 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1938 in order to understand how that might have influenced the Disney books. A lot of great books and articles have been written about the history of comics, but, when I actually sit down and explore the originals myself, I often end up disagreeing strongly with the established "facts" and opinions I've read over and over. Overstreet's vastly simplistic view on what is and is not a "comic book" is one such example. I believe that in order to keep history alive, you not only need to repeat what other people have written, but question and criticize it and continue to look for new angles. In this respect, I think our hobby has fallen way short for many years. The work by jbcomicbox, YellowKid, and pcalhoun are notable exceptions. It's a shame that cost and rarity makes it so difficult to get access to the these books, because unlocking their history and making it available over the internet in an interesting manner is in my opinion one of the best things that we can do to keep interest in Golden Age Comics alive and attract new blood to the hobby.

This is a scan I have posted in the past, but I am using it again to talk about the one sentence in the Overstreet guide that I have grown to dislike the most as I have learned more about the Disney books. The cover image is based on the Mickey Mouse short Donald and Pluto from 1936, a cartoon that predates many of those that are depicted on the Mickey Mouse Magazine covers. It is an example of one of the many themes and ideas in the gradual process that eventually evolved into what is referred to as a "comic book" in the United States. In Overstreet, the listing for Mickey Mouse Magazine Vol. 5 #12 states: "The transition issue (68 pgs.) becoming a comic book". The Guide then goes on to list prices that are roughly 10 times higher than for the prior issue (which in my experience actually is rarer, at least in high grade). This formulation and pricing reflects a complete disconnect with my own perception of the history of the transition. It feels like someone wanted a black and white separation of what is a "comic book" and what is not, the former being vastly more interesting. To me, the whole point of the appeal is that there was no such binary switch from one month to the next. Along with all the other contemporary publications, such as Large Feature Comic 16 and 20 and Four Color 4, the Disney publications in the late 1930s and early 1940s evolved in a gradual manner based on experiments that sometimes failed and sometimes succeeded. Talking about what is and is not a comic book is completely missing the point as far as I am concerned. My own interest in these books is, aside from their intrinsic beauty, largely because of the continuous nature of their evolution and how it related to Disney animation as well as a remarkable period in US history. That one sentence in Overstreet bothers me because it misses all this beautiful historical context as it brutally shoves the publications into two compartments one of which is given vast priority over the other. If I had any influence over the Guide, this would be among the first things I would change. Picture 2: I don't know where the inspiration for this cover came from. It was the last in the series not to feature any Ducks. The larger format and the dark blue background make this issue hard to find in the near mint range. Picture 3: House ad for Pinocchio on the back cover. The back covers up to the first half of volume 4 had ads for various Mickey Mouse merchandise, but starting in December '38 they began promoting Disney shorts and features. This idea was dropped again from Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 1. The idea of promoting shorts in a magazine, especially esoteric Silly Symphonies like (V4#4) seems like a somewhat indirect way of generating revenue in my eyes. Experiments like this hint at how Disney was exploring completely new territory in the synergies between movies, merchandising, and printed media back in the late 1930s. It is fun to consider the contrast to how they market their movies today.

Christmas Parade 1 is so hard to find in high grade; your copies are beautiful. It is a lot of fun to see the great variety in your collection. I've never seen anyone collect quite like this but it's very cool.

I don't think I've posted a full picture of this Carl Barks original before(?). It's from Uncle Scrooge 42, 1962, and is highly unusual in that it is from a published page. It has lived a hard life but I like that as it reflects how unimportant this artwork was considered. Note how the borders between the panels are slightly less faded than the actual panels. When this page appeared in a Philip Weiss auction in the late 1990s, it had whiteout neatly pasted between all the panels. The previous owner had that professionally removed. I don't have a picture and the one in the auction catalog is supposedly so poor that it would not reveal any detail. A long time friend of Barks who saw the art pointed out that this was around the time where Dell was conducting an ill-advised experiment with the page layout that included removing the black panel borders. I looked up the dates and Barks did indeed submit the artwork right before this change, which only lasted a few months. Since there is virtually no other surviving published art from this period, it seems most likely that the artwork was put aside with the white-out applied while the publishers were waiting for a decision on whether to print it in the old or the new page format. In any case, it is a freak case of survival against the odds. I actually flew to Austria to pick up the art during a trip to Europe. It is not featured in Matti Eronen's otherwise fairly complete index to surviving Carl Barks art. Despite the condition, I really like the rare, characteristic renderings of Scrooge, not least the panel with the money bin.

The scan below, which is a more detailed picture of a comic I've posted in the past, shows an even earlier version of Donald Duck. The scene appears loosely inspired by a 1932 short in black and white, Touchdown Mickey. It seems more likely, however, that the art is meant to represent Mickey's Poly Team which was released in January 1936. Perhaps the football tackle was more eye catching than a polo game(?). In this cartoon, Donald and Mickey appear together. The short is like a time capsule of Hollywood in the mid-1930: Laurel and Hardy, Greta Garbo, W.C. Fields and many other actors have cameo appearances along with obscure Disney characters like C0ck Robin and the Wise Little Hen. It was also around this time that the Mickey Mouse Magazine variation with the little Mickey above the first "M" in the title started appearing. Most issues starting with Volume 2 can be found with and without this marking. I have no idea what it means.

Clock Cleaners was released in 1937. At one point, it was voted #27 on a ranking of the 50 Greatest Cartoons ever made by members of the animation field. The second image shows an image from the corresponding Good Housekeeping page by Tom Wood. I think it is fun how the early Donald on the Mickey Mouse Magazine cover matches the depiction in the cartoon. The first daily Donald Duck newspaper strip had just appeared a few months earlier so the character was almost entirely defined by his appearances in the cartoons at this point. Later on, Barks and Taliaferro would adapt the Ducks to the new comic book medium, but I love the covers from the early ages in Duck archaeology. Some of the covers from 1936-37 show even earlier stages in the evolution and it is fun to be able to track these transitions. This particular issue has been a challenge to find in nice condition as it was not part of other large collections I've bought, so I was happy when this file copy became available.

It's fun to see so many unusual books in such a great shape. The early Bambi is amazing.

Super books, I am not sure I'd ever seen Cosmo Cat 2 before. adamstrange is another board member with a fantastic collection of very high grade books across a variety of interesting titles; I was trying to pay you a geeky compliment. I hope you'll stay around and share more of your books. If you do, I suspect you'll understand the parallel I see between your and adamstrange's taste in comics.

was released as a Silly Symphony in 1937, the same year Snow White hit theaters. Part of the goal of the Silly Symphony series was to experiment with new techniques and technology. The opening sequence, where Hiawatha sails along a river in his canoe, is the most striking in this short. A lot of effort was put into the animated reflections and the waterfall. Rob Richards has done some amazing digital reconstruction of the backgrounds. Earlier in my career, I worked for Pixar's R&D team on Finding Nemo. Watching the above scenes made me think of how the work we did in the early 2000s to model water in 3d was almost equivalent to what Disney had done 65 years earlier in 2d. The tools were different in that we were using mathematical models of reflections and transparency, but the phenomenological approach of understanding and simulating the appearance of water with the finest available technology was virtually identical. And I have no doubt there would have been just as much work, possibly more, involved in recreating those same effects with paint. It is almost incomprehensible to me that beautiful imagery like this was even possible back in the 1930s. Btw., I suspect the book below is the nicest existing copy.

I am starting to think EarthShaker01 may be a shill for adamstrange? Their books are equally beautiful. Seriously, those are gorgeous books. If you have some Duck comics then feel free to post them in tth2's "Show Us Your Ducks" thread.

Those are some seriously nice books! Awesome to see another high grade collector sharing their collection.

The New Comics 3 is beautiful! From the scan, it looks like the kind of book that could have the spine conserved in a way that would be reversible. I really wish that CGC would support conservation of partial spine splits more than they are doing today, but that's a long story that doesn't belong here. Suffice to say that I'd much rather have an otherwise beautiful copy like this than an average copy in the same technical grade.

I was wondering why you were selling the other nice copies - great to see all your upgrades!

Congratulations transplant. I like upgrading too. AJD: It's such a contrast between the innocent stories from the 1930s and those from the war years. Makes me curious when the first war-related material appeared... Perhaps I can figure that out when I visit Mr. Kid. Oh, and as for socially accepted hobbies you are not alone: I make sculptures in my spare time. As for the Mickey Mouse Magazines, I regret to say that we're a very long way from getting through them all. I'll take a break soon so people don't get too tired of them, but here's one I really like. It is one of the issues after volume 2 that has been hardest to find in nice shape (though my backup copy graded CGC 8.5). A fun and unique thing about them is that you can look at just about any cover and then go to youtube and watch the corresponding short or feature. Here's . There are many references to obscure, historical shorts in the interiors as well, such as early b/w cartoons and experimental Silly Symphonies like "Water Babies".

That's a great interior page! I somehow need to get more reading copies myself now that I am getting more of my collection slabbed. There's so much great stuff inside that I have not done justice with my front page scans... First picture: I still have a lot of Mickey Mouse Magazines that have not been certified yet. Here's another. Second picture: The sketches below were done by Barks in 1953. The background story is that he was thinking about making his own strip. As far as I remember, there is a reference in Michael Barrier's biography to an episode where MB was going through Barks' files and came across this drawing (along with an inked version I also have). Supposedly, Barks got visibly upset, grabbed the art, and said that he would tear it up if the subject ever was brought up again. Anyway, that's old hat. What I really care about myself are the sketches of the nephews in blue pencil at the top. It is so hard to find any kind of Duck art from Barks' best period so I treasure everything that comes my way.

I think there's a fun parallel between Gottfredson's writing from 1967 and Barks' dedications from 1961 shown below (which I've posted in the past). Barks gave these strips to John and Bill Spicer during their visit: he cut up the rejected halfpage from "The Mysterious Unfinished Invention" (Uncle Scrooge 8, 1955) and signed each resulting tier. Note the humble and self-deprecating message (i.e "to my fan") along the lines that Gottfredson chose. Neither of them were aware of their huge number of readers at the time of these visits. Btw., the two tiers have aged differently because John and Bill kept them separate for 40 years. I would never dream of getting them cleaned since I love this kind of "unintentional" history. Unlike the later oil paintings, this rejected art was originally trash. All the wear and the fact that Barks cut up and handed out the halfpage as a gift are reflections of its humble origin. Although, J. and B.both were in their teens at the time of the visit, they cared enough about the art to keep it relatively safe for so many years. It really was a privilege when they agreed to let me have it. Barks' correspondence with fans later on shows countless requests for Duck originals. In 1961 he had no idea that anyone would be interested in these.