Show Us Your Ducks! 16 16

[Point Five]

One more added thanks to Ed. I was sorry to have missed this copy a few months ago when I thought another boardie had snagged it. I hope the deal didn't fall through for hardship reasons, but I'm very pleased it came back on the market so I could get it. It's my first one in the 30s and the tortoise edges forward one more step...

You're on a roll, Andrew! Great bunch of WDCSs lately.

 

 

[adamstrange]

Little Hiawatha 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.

Wonderful link!

 

I'm old enough to have grown up pre-VHS and it was sooo hard to see the great Disney cartoons as they only showed up on their weekly primetime show, and even then only rarely. The one saving grace was that they were put out on short 8mm films and my father, a camera buff, had a movie projector and a screen.

 

Our library carried a very small selection of these films that included Disney shorts and famous scenes from their movies like they climatic dragon slaying from Sleeping Beauty. Luckily, Hiawatha was one of their short and while it didn't have sound the colors and imagery were marvelous!

 

There was such grace and art in those short films that they didn't make much money and Disney wisely understood he would have to put those talents into making feature films.

[tb]

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.

[tb]

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.

 

[tb]

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.

 

[Bronty]

I love it when you share stuff like this tb. thanks.

[Yellow Kid]

The ducks have been my favorfites for over 60 years, and it is just a joy to see your collection. Thanks so much for sharing.

[tb]

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.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

TB,

 

Are you familiar with the Snow White magazine published by Disney in the early 70's. Just curious as it was an experiment to return to the larger size format similar to MMM and with a variety of features akin to that in MMM. I remember buying the first one off the stands for a big quarter when it came out. Cheaper than the much smaller Walt Disney Comics Digest but those were my favorites as they contained a wealth of classic reprints. My eyes were better back then and I could read all that small print and artwork too!!

 

I echo Rich in thanking your for posting all the great material and appreciate your insight as not only a collector but historian of the genre.

 

 

[Yellow Kid]

As long as tb has brought up the issue of pricing, I have to say that my greatest personal disagreement with the Price Guide has been the incredible premium attached to first issues. They are usually not the rarest issues, as in most runs issue #2 is nearly always rarer. In my opinion, while some premium is reasonable, it seems to me to have been excessive given the relative availability of many first issues. And while not followed exactly, it appears that the prices of the early popular runs show #2 at one third the price of #1, #3 at one sixth the price, and #4 at one ninth the price, with the need for consistency apparently being the key factor in pricing. Yet I believe it would be much more difficult to put together a collection of #2's than #1's. While I often say that you can see how the comic hobby followed the coin hobby, this is one important difference. The first Morgan silver dollar from 1878 carries virtually no premium for being #1, and its price is based almost solely on condition, supply and demand. If comics followed this procedure, Donald Duck and the Mummy's Ring would sell for more than Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, as I feel it is much more difficult to find a high grade copy of Barks' second Donald Duck comic book, the Mummy's Ring.

[Baz]

As long as tb has brought up the issue of pricing, I have to say that my greatest personal disagreement with the Price Guide has been the incredible premium attached to first issues. They are usually not the rarest issues, as in most runs issue #2 is nearly always rarer. In my opinion, while some premium is reasonable, it seems to me to have been excessive given the relative availability of many first issues. And while not followed exactly, it appears that the prices of the early popular runs show #2 at one third the price of #1, #3 at one sixth the price, and #4 at one ninth the price, with the need for consistency apparently being the key factor in pricing. Yet I believe it would be much more difficult to put together a collection of #2's than #1's. While I often say that you can see how the comic hobby followed the coin hobby, this is one important difference. The first Morgan silver dollar from 1878 carries virtually no premium for being #1, and its price is based almost solely on condition, supply and demand. If comics followed this procedure, Donald Duck and the Mummy's Ring would sell for more than Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, as I feel it is much more difficult to find a high grade copy of Barks' second Donald Duck comic book, the Mummy's Ring.

 

+1

 

Excellent points there. Not only that, but I have a huge pet peeve with some sellers who think that because it's an (1) one-shot, hence it's a #1 or a (2) last issue of the series, that those things put a higher premium on the issue. Condition, scarcity, artist, specific appearances, or content matter all should be what we look at to determine value, not the issue numbering.

 

That said, I hope Mummy's Ring prices stay low until I find a copy I am happy with saw two copies last weekend, both missing CF's....

[tb]

Are you familiar with the Snow White magazine published by Disney in the early 70's. Just curious as it was an experiment to return to the larger size format similar to MMM and with a variety of features akin to that in MMM. I remember buying the first one off the stands for a big quarter when it came out. Cheaper than the much smaller Walt Disney Comics Digest but those were my favorites as they contained a wealth of classic reprints. My eyes were better back then and I could read all that small print and artwork too!!

 

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.

 

I echo Rich in thanking your for posting all the great material and appreciate your insight as not only a collector but historian of the genre.

 

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.

[Point Five]

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.

What beauties these books are... And thanks for the series of thoughtful posts. (thumbs u

 

I know I'd enjoy the heck out of the Mickey Mouse magazines, but unfortunately I'm one of those anal retentive collectors that can't get past the 'oversize format' issue.

 

 

[adamstrange]

Barks art is wonderful, as always, but the story behind the re-union is incredible!!!

 

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.

[adamstrange]

As long as tb has brought up the issue of pricing, I have to say that my greatest personal disagreement with the Price Guide has been the incredible premium attached to first issues. They are usually not the rarest issues, as in most runs issue #2 is nearly always rarer. In my opinion, while some premium is reasonable, it seems to me to have been excessive given the relative availability of many first issues. And while not followed exactly, it appears that the prices of the early popular runs show #2 at one third the price of #1, #3 at one sixth the price, and #4 at one ninth the price, with the need for consistency apparently being the key factor in pricing. Yet I believe it would be much more difficult to put together a collection of #2's than #1's. While I often say that you can see how the comic hobby followed the coin hobby, this is one important difference. The first Morgan silver dollar from 1878 carries virtually no premium for being #1, and its price is based almost solely on condition, supply and demand. If comics followed this procedure, Donald Duck and the Mummy's Ring would sell for more than Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold, as I feel it is much more difficult to find a high grade copy of Barks' second Donald Duck comic book, the Mummy's Ring.

 

There is certainly high demand for #1 issues because of collector interest in owning the first for reasons of historical importance or because they are #1s (earthshaker who recently joined the Boards admits to particularly liking first issues). Additionally, an investor's view is to go after #1s and keys so they provide competition for them relative to #2s.

 

This, for lack of a better term, "natural" demand along with deference paid to the OPG results in prices close enough to the Guide for Overstreet to continue to price as he does. He has no evidence to do otherwise, though that may change over time. The large volume of material moving through auctions provides a way for collectors to communicate changing preferences at a large enough volume to result in an observable change in the relative value of #1s vs. #2 that is more in line with your thinking.

 

The kind of scarcity driven price differential in the coin world is due to collector's trying to complete sets and having to pony up for those that are scarcest. I'm not a coin collector but, as outside observer, there seems to be less of an interest in owning the "first" design than there is in owning the "first issue" of a title.

[kelholt]

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.

 

 

What a beautiful book !!

 

I have been looking for this issue for a couple years now. That is by far the nicest one of this issue I have ever seen. It is classic Disney.

[tb]

Barks art is wonderful, as always, but the story behind the re-union is incredible!!!

 

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.

 

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.

 

[tb]

I know I'd enjoy the heck out of the Mickey Mouse magazines, but unfortunately I'm one of those anal retentive collectors that can't get past the 'oversize format' issue.

 

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.

 

---

 

I have been looking for this issue for a couple years now. That is by far the nicest one of this issue I have ever seen. It is classic Disney.

 

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.

[tb]

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).

 

[tb]

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.