Show Us Your Ducks! 15 15

[AJD]

Good denizens of the duck thread...

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.

[tb]

Scanned a few more slabbed books today. Actually got two copies of the second in the same grade. They look pretty together.

 

[AJD]

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.

[Point Five]

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.

+1 ... Fantastic.

 

 

[Transplant]

Fantastic books. Thanks for sharing.

 

While I know this wasn't Dell, I'm reminded of a conversation that I had on the boards about how amazing the colors are on so many 40s-50s Dells are. This cover reminded me of that as the blue and the way it fades toward the horizon is really cool. Add in the eye popping reds and you can see how a kid would be drawn to it on a newsstand.

[tb]

[...]

While I know this wasn't Dell, I'm reminded of a conversation that I had on the boards about how amazing the colors are on so many 40s-50s Dells are. This cover reminded me of that as the blue and the way it fades toward the horizon is really cool. Add in the eye popping reds and you can see how a kid would be drawn to it on a newsstand.

 

Thanks to adamstrange, inaflash, and silver, I recently got to see a lot of super high grade Silver Age DCs. Seeing how gorgeous the DCs from the 1950s can be left me feeling that the Dell Disney covers generally fell behind after the 1940s. The DCs are certainly more sophisticated. To me, the '30s Mickey Mouse Magazines remain the most consistently beautiful Disney covers for any run ever produced.

 

As I was scanning the books yesterday (I happened to have them home since another board member was visiting), I was wondering if they might still look as fresh and attractive in 25 years when they turn a sharp corner. It almost seems freakish that you could have a 100 year old book looking newsstand fresh like this. I hope I'll be around to find out. Unless something unexpected happens, I'll probably keep all these books until they are well over 100 years old.

[vaillant]

While going through some of my early Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, I came across a Bucky Bug story in #25 that is unlike any Disney comic I've ever seen. It's so unusual that I ended up reading it a couple of times. The scans below represent 11 of the 28 pages and give an idea of the storyline.

 

"War with the Flies", which appeared along with Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse Sundays, was written and inked by Earl Duvall starting in 1932 and ending with his departure from Disney in April 1933.

 

Isn’t also "War with the flies" a Silly Symphony adaptation?

Surely the InDucks database has indexed the story and its whereabouts.

 

Here’s the italian edition (insides are in two-color), from antological publication "Nel Regno di Topolino" (the very first italian Disney publication in "comic-book" format). Issue is from December, 1936.

I guess the story is heavily cut here as well, since it starts with the cannon fight on page 4.

 

50 cent first edition (a "well-loved" copy… ):

 

60 cent second edition:

 

Both covers should be by renowned italian cartoonist Antonio Rubino.

[vaillant]

While I was at it, a cover from the "senior", magazine-sized publication, which printed the longer, mostly Mickey Mouse stories, "Gli Albi d’Oro" (pre-war, "golden age" series), issue No. 39, from April 1939.

 

As americans would say… "bondage cover"!

 

Edited May 19, 2012 by vaillant

[Duffman_Comics]

Wow

 

These are terrific vaillant, and I dare say never seen here before.

 

Do you know anything of the publisher, circulation, distribution and all that "nitty gritty" stuff? Any idea why the story(s) were censored? (I'm guessing "political" reasons).

 

And I freely confess I had never heard of Antonio Rubino but he is more than competent.

 

Anyway, thanks for sharing. (thumbs u

[AJD]

Wow

 

These are terrific vaillant, and I dare say never seen here before.

 

Do you know anything of the publisher, circulation, distribution and all that "nitty gritty" stuff? Any idea why the story(s) were censored? (I'm guessing "political" reasons).

 

And I freely confess I had never heard of Antonio Rubino but he is more than competent.

 

Anyway, thanks for sharing. (thumbs u

 

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.

[tb]

[...]

Isn’t also "War with the flies" a Silly Symphony adaptation?

Surely the InDucks database has indexed the story and its whereabouts.

I don't think there's a closely related Silly Symphony(?). There is one early SS with flies fighting a spider, but I don't recall that one having much to do with this story. My InDucks searches did not turn up much additional information.

 

Here’s the italian edition (insides are in two-color), from antological publication "Nel Regno di Topolino" (the very first italian Disney publication in "comic-book" format). Issue is from December, 1936.

I guess the story is heavily cut here as well, since it starts with the cannon fight on page 4.

This indeed very interesting. Is it in the Sunday newspaper format with text balloons as shown in my scans or does it have black and white illustrations with text underneath? Parts of the story were reprinted in a paint book (#660) from 1934 and that had the latter format. I browsed through a beautiful file copy (from the Don Vernon collection) a couple of years ago but unfortunately don't have one myself.

 

After reflecting more on the story, I really do see it is an overlooked (at least by me) early gem. It may well be the strangest and most ambitious piece of Disney storytelling I have ever come across. Mickey Mouse was doing wild stuff back in the early 1930s, but that was always just for gags. This Bucky Bug story goes far deeper, using the funny animal genre to deal with difficult issues like war and recession in a unique (at least for 1932) and rather clever way.

 

----

 

Unrelated, thanks to bangzoom for pointing out that WDC&S 24 does not have additional pages. It's funny that the story only appears in WDC&S 23 and 25.

[vaillant]

Wow

These are terrific vaillant, and I dare say never seen here before.

Do you know anything of the publisher, circulation, distribution and all that "nitty gritty" stuff?.

Hi Duffman, thank you.

Arnoldo Mondadori (which changed occasionally his publishing name from "Edizioni Walt-Disney Mondadori" to "A.P.I." – acronym for "Italian Anonymous Periodicals") has been the italian publisher for all Disney material uninterruptedly from August 11, 1935 up to 1988, when Disney took on directly the publishing founding "Walt Disney Company Italia".

All Disney publications have always had huge print runs, so these are mostly rare because of the poor paper and the war events, which afflicted Italy and Europe a lot more than the USA.

Mondadori, mostly thanks to leading figures like Federico Pedrocchi and later on Mario Gentilini, established the world-renowned italian "school", whose stories have been published worldwide, but unfortunately they started to appear in english merely around 1988, with this 1955 story:

http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=I+TL++116-AP

an early Guido Martina/Romano Scarpa key classic (which re-intoduced the Blot as an even more disturbing figure).

 

Original splash page, side-by-side with the english edition (published in three parts on Gladstone’s "Mickey and Donald" #6-8, which I strongly recommend to Disney fans):

 

Any idea why the story(s) were censored? (I'm guessing "political" reasons)

No, no. Disney material was almost untouched by the restrictions imposed by the MinCulPop (the organism which looked over the press during fascism). They were cut simply because they did not fit the format or the scheduled number of pages.

 

This indeed very interesting. Is it in the Sunday newspaper format with text balloons as shown in my scans or does it have black and white illustrations with text underneath?

No, it’s with ballons. In these comic-book sized editions only some Mickey Mouse stories kept the "educational" format, probably mediated from french editions. It was most an educators issue, nothing to do with fascism policy. Edited May 20, 2012 by vaillant

[vaillant]

While I don't really want to set a precedent, I agree with Duffman. Those 1930s Italian books are great. Thanks vaillant.

I did not mean to stray from the original post intent, but as I’ve seen there was more than Donald Duck here, I guessed the italian school, for the woldwide importance by which it’s regarded, ranked side-by-side with the US classics.

Scarpa and G.B. Carpi, two of the leading authors, picked up the magnificent long-story tradition of the Goddfredson syndicated classics and of Barks' ducks family development in comic books, and brought it to additional heights.

Suffice to say Scarpa created various new characters, one of which has found the spotlight in US publications (Brigitta, a troublesome occasional wannabe-fiancée of Uncle Scrooge, after Glittering Goldie).

 

So, to get back on the Duck track, an historically important issue, which features "Donald Duck and the mystery of Mars", the very first – still rather crude and very much mimicking Al Taliaferro – original italian story:

 

The original edition has been published starting December 30, 1937, on the pages of "Paperino Giornale", but this is the first comic book edition. A "key" issue, so to speak.

Edited May 20, 2012 by vaillant

[Duffman_Comics]

Any idea why the story(s) were censored? (I'm guessing "political" reasons)

No, no. Disney material was almost untouched by the restrictions imposed by the MinCulPop (the organism which looked over the press during fascism). They were cut simply because they did not fit the format or the scheduled number of pages.

 

Damn. Here I was hoping that Il Duce had some sort of censorious finger in the pie, so to speak.

 

Shortened versions of the original stories (when reprinted in Australia) also suffered from this, e.g. our version of Four Colour 386 had several panels cut to fit the story into the pages available.

 

I have to add, that your written English is very, very good and embarrasses me no end when I compare and contrast my own poor "other language" skills.

[50YrsCollctngCmcs]

While I don't really want to set a precedent, I agree with Duffman. Those 1930s Italian books are great. Thanks vaillant.

I did not mean to stray from the original post intent, but as I’ve seen there was more than Donald Duck here, I guessed the italian school, for the woldwide importance by which it’s regarded, ranked side-by-side with the US classics.

Scarpa and G.B. Carpi, two of the leading authors, picked up the magnificent long-story tradition of the Goddfredson syndicated classics and of Barks' ducks family development in comic books, and brought it to additional heights.

Suffice to say Scarpa created various new characters, one of which has found the spotlight in US publications (Brigitta, a troublesome occasional wannabe-fiancée of Uncle Scrooge, after Glittering Goldie).

 

So, to get back on the Duck track, an historically important issue, which features "Donald Duck and the mystery of Mars", the very first – still rather crude and very much mimicking Al Taliaferro – original italian story:

 

The original edition has been published starting December 30, 1937, on the pages of "Paperino Giornale", but this is the first comic book edition. A "key" issue, so to speak.

 

Are there completist collectors in Italy who have runs of all these books? Sounds like it would be a hard task to take on and accomplish. TB, perhaps your next goal?

[vaillant]

Damn. Here I was hoping that Il Duce had some sort of censorious finger in the pie, so to speak.

Il Duce loved Disney shorts, he used to hum the "Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" tune – anecdote reported by his son Romano in an interview. His older son Vittorio was a movie enthousiast and used to think "this war will finish, so we’ll be able to watch and discuss films and listen to the music we love" (Romano became an appreciated jazz pianist, see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romano_Mussolini)

 

I have to add, that your written English is very, very good and embarrasses me no end when I compare and contrast my own poor "other language" skills.

Thank you, but in fact I constantly fall short of terms. My vocabulary is "patchy" and I have often to figure out how to translate certain words. Plus, english is maybe amongst the easiest languages to learn. I’d be a lot harder to learn italian or french for an englishperson.

 

Are there completist collectors in Italy who have runs of all these books? Sounds like it would be a hard task to take on and accomplish. TB, perhaps your next goal?

Well, some collectors prefer the original "giornali" runs, some others prefer to collect the "album"/comic book titles. It must be said that both contain the original US stories, translated, and then later on the original italian production, but the "albi" (comic books) are desirable to collectors, often in a higher degree.

I started collecting these 1930s issues when I was 16, in the mid-1980s, but then stopped as I often collect various things.

Have a look here: http://vintagecomics.forumcommunity.net/?t=41727414

 

Problem with these runs is the fact the later issues of both titles I have shown are virtually impossible to find outside complete collections, since late issues had probably a lower print run, they were published close to the war, and they were costly compared to giornali (a price of "2 lire" means an "Albo d’Oro" was priced at 4x the price of a "Nel Regno di Topolino", so parents were less likely to buy those to kids).

 

Ah, with these you must forget, once for all, things like 9.2, 9.4, 9.6 etc…

[tb]

Those covers are fun, vaillant. Thanks for posting the links. Do these books have puzzles, text stories etc. like the US do? Did the contents evolve over time to become more focused on comics, like Mickey Mouse Magazine turned into Walt Disney's Comics and Stories?

 

> Ah, with these you must forget, once for all, things like 9.2, 9.4, 9.6 etc…

 

I actually bought the majority of my US Mickey Mouse Magazines raw and it is only in the last year I've had the nicest ones slabbed. When I look back, the people who sold them to me generally didn't assign any grades, their condition was just pretty obvious from pictures. I avoided submitting my books to CGC for years because I thought that they were just as nice raw, but eventually I did it after buying a considerable number of slabbed high grade copies at auction, just in case my own copies would end up grading lower. The US market is so focused on CGC grades today, and one downside of assembling a super high grade complete run is that one purple label or "incomplete"/"brittle pages" 0.5 sticks out like a sore thumb if you have beautiful blue label copies of the other 59 issues. So, I felt like I had to buy every nice copy that came up for sale. To me, the substance of collecting high grade will always be the thrill that I feel when I look at a beautiful book, regardless of the CGC score. I'll never forget those fundamentals, but, now that the books have been certified, I have to admit that the competitive geek in me thinks it adds a little extra spice to try improve the average grade of my run (my goal is 9.1 for the magazines).

[adamstrange]

Thanks so much, vaillant, for sharing the scans and history of these early Disney comics. I have not commented but I read every post, usually twice, as I have not seen this information elsewhere.

[adamstrange]

To me, the '30s Mickey Mouse Magazines remain the most consistently beautiful Disney covers for any run ever produced.

There are many superb "poster" style designs on the MMMs -- some of them are timeless and would look great even if used today on a t-shirt or as part of a marketing campaign. I have always thought well of them but have liked them even more after seeing your set.

[AJD]

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.