Theagenes: For whatever reason, when the 1976 release of this treasury came out, I didn't buy it--I can't remember if I skipped it because I already had the 1968 version, or I simply never saw it. These days, in attempting to rectify my oversight, I've had the opportunity to look at LOTS of copies of this comic online, and every one of them claims to be the 1968 printing. Whether this is true or not, I've been unable to determine. The cover seems to be identical in every way to the 1968 printing. The cover price was the same in 1968 and 1976 (unlike the earlier Whitman JUNGLE BOOK 1967 treasury, which had a 59-cent price and a different cover than the 1978 $1.00 reprint.) The indicia in the original only has the 1968 copyright for Merian C. Cooper, and I assume this is true for the copies you have pictured here. However, the standard Western Publishing splash page information hand-lettered at the bottom of the art (which was not present in the original printing) should say, from the information listed in all the price guides, "11229 King Kong #1 - 7612" (reissued to take advantage of the 1976 KING KONG movie remake starring Jessica Lange, which came out at Christmas of '76) though, if this is true, nobody selling their copies has noticed.
Your listing here, corroborated by the actual PDQ for the store display (and your anecdotal reinforcement of owning it in 1976) are the very first instance I've been able to find that seems to prove it was actually issued--though my magazine, THE COMIC READER, did feature a mention that it had been at the time and included a photo of the cover (from the copy purchased from my TCR partner Jerry Sinkovec). So, if it's not too much trouble, I'm requesting that you open one of your copies and tell me whether there is anything in the comic that indicates that this is indeed a 1976 printing--which, seemingly, could only be the hand lettering at the bottom of the splash page. The more subtle, and perhaps imperceptable, indication would be a difference in the paper and printing between the '68 and '76 issues, since the original would have been printed in Poughkeepsie on Western Publishing's own presses, while the 1976 would have been printed in Sparta at World Color Press. The only alternate explanations I can come up with would be that the copies in your display were stored in 1968 and redistributed in 1976 (which would have required Western to believe there'd be a reason to warehouse them that long), or perhaps more likely, that Western simply reprinted them in toto in 1976. Where that partial ISBN number for the issue came from then, I can't explain, since it's not anywhere on the cover. I hope you can help clear this up once and for all!
Thanks in advance.
