AJD's comic notebook 7 7

[Get Marwood & I]

6 hours ago, AJD said:

Just got a nice book o' goodness in from Heritage. I pool my wins to amortise the postage cost, so there are 10 new books to show here. Here's the first of them, a WDC&S #10. I have 93/100 of the early issues. I don't have #1-5 but only need 14 and 18 to have 6-100.

Impressive run Andy. Are #1-5 too pricey, non-existent or a combination of both?

6 hours ago, AJD said:

I don't get the cover gag, but I really like these big thick early issues. 68 pages in this one, with a mix of daily strips and a quite long Silly Symphonies story.

I don't get it either 

6 hours ago, AJD said:

Here's Mickey Mouse being a rat to his mate Goofy:

 

Palooka!? So Mickey was a mean spirited bully. Who knew.

[Harry Lime]

I think the desired effect would be for the Donald to place the fireworks in the touch hole (?) and then lighting to fire the cannon, if indeed that's what he desires to do. I've never been too clued up on the thought processes of waterfowl. Anyhoo, a gag would be a stretch. 

[Robot Man]

9 hours ago, AJD said:

Just got a nice book o' goodness in from Heritage. I pool my wins to amortise the postage cost, so there are 10 new books to show here. Here's the first of them, a WDC&S #10. I have 93/100 of the early issues. I don't have #1-5 but only need 14 and 18to have 6-100.

I don't get the cover gag, but I really like these big thick early issues. 68 pages in this one, with a mix of daily strips and a quite long Silly Symphonies story. Here's Mickey Mouse being a rat to his mate Goofy:

And here's a page from Silly Symphonies, with a decidedly more carnivorous Big Bad Wolf than in later years! The rhyming dialogue here was a bit of thing in Disney stories of the time. It worked OK here, but I think it was better in some of the Bucky Bug stories in later years

Real nice run! The early issues before say #20 rarely turn up any more. Like Looney Tunes, tough and great covers. Good luck with the first 5!

[AJD]

On 8/28/2019 at 12:30 AM, Get Marwood & I said:

Impressive run Andy. Are #1-5 too pricey, non-existent or a combination of both?

Thanks Steve. The early ones are too pricey, though not so very hard to find. Maybe five years ago when A$ = US$ but not now.

On 8/28/2019 at 3:38 AM, Robot Man said:

Real nice run! The early issues before say #20 rarely turn up any more. Like Looney Tunes, tough and great covers. Good luck with the first 5!

Thanks Bob. They are great, but I think I'm going to content myself with 6-100 and then start picking up nice copies of higher numbers.

Here's the last one I needed in the 19-100 range. A quite pretty copy with strong colours and lovely off-white to white pages.

Here are some of those pages.

The 5th Barks 10-pager, with the early long-necked Donald:

Another WW2 shortages-themed MM gag:

And another of my favourite features of the time - WW2 unit insignias with a Disney theme. These ones are all from US units, but Disney characters also appeared on British, French and even Axis vehicles and aircraft - I don't think Dell ever published the latter! I must try to dig a few of those up and post them here.

[Duffman_Comics]

5 minutes ago, AJD said:

 

Huey Dewey and Louie " Yippee Ki Yaa"

Why those foul mouthed fowl . . .

5 minutes ago, AJD said:

 

And another of my favourite features of the time - WW2 unit insignias with a Disney theme. These ones are all from US units, but Disney characters also appeared on British, French and even Axis vehicles and aircraft - I don't think Dell ever published the latter! I must try to dig a few of those up and post them here.

I am not sure how delighted I would be as a member of the 374th Two-Engine Flying Training Squadron with having Goofy as my insignia.

 

Have you done anything with the Dell cover proofs yet?

[AJD]

1 hour ago, Duffman_Comics said:

Have you done anything with the Dell cover proofs yet?

They are safe with fullback and mylar preservation. I thought about framing one or more, but decided against it on the grounds that they are really one of a kind objects and having them out in the light wasn't the best approach. I ended up framing some Russ Cochrane reprint duck covers instead.

For those who came in late... 400 years ago a man washed up on a Bengali shore... oh, hang on, that's the wrong recap. Duffbloke is talking about these printer's proofs of the Dell July 1944 war bonds covers, which I am fortunate enough to own. They're somewhere back in the pre-history of this thread, but here they are again. These are some of my favourite collection items:

 

[AJD]

I've been on something of a Prince Valiant kick lately. These copies were sitting on eBay for well over a year, just rolling around again and again, so I sent the seller an offer. I think both parties are happy now.

It's nice to get consecutive issues too, as the stories are serialised. And I get to post some Hal Foster work. I love the negative space and silhouette work on this page.

And I know the influence of Foster on Carl Barks' The Golden Helmet has been noted before, but it jumped off the page at me here.

Call me old-fashioned, but a comic world in which books with Foster, Hogarth and Raymond are up with Superman and Batman for value makes eminent sense to me!

 

[Duffman_Comics]

"The saga of a fighting man and his terrible singing sword".

What, off key? Flat? Tempo just not right?

These do not come up too often, I think mainly because people, by that I mean non-collectors, hang on to them, Why? Just look at Foster's linework and composition. Just gorgeous.

I also think the lack of word balloons in the Prince Valiant strips gave them a pseudo intellectual cache, a kind of "see, I'm not a comic. I am better than that" that elevated the comic's status however little.

Subject matter didn't turn off concerned parents either.

Lovely books Andrew. Any "interesting" advertising within?

[AJD]

6 minutes ago, Duffman_Comics said:

Lovely books Andrew. Any "interesting" advertising within?

Thanks Peter. No ads at all, just comics from go to whoa in these.

[Robot Man]

On 8/29/2019 at 4:44 AM, AJD said:

They are safe with fullback and mylar preservation. I thought about framing one or more, but decided against it on the grounds that they are really one of a kind objects and having them out in the light wasn't the best approach. I ended up framing some Russ Cochrane reprint duck covers instead.

For those who came in late... 400 years ago a man washed up on a Bengali shore... oh, hang on, that's the wrong recap. Duffbloke is talking about these printer's proofs of the Dell July 1944 war bonds covers, which I am fortunate enough to own. They're somewhere back in the pre-history of this thread, but here they are again. These are some of my favourite collection items:

 

Wow, those are something unique and special!

[AJD]

I have all of the Barks Four Colors other than #s 9 and 29 but I also pick up the issues with Barks covers over other stories when I get a chance. This one was going cheap enough to not be able to resist it. It came out of a PLOD 8.0 slab with a "very small amount of colour touch on cover". The CT is not at all obvious in hand and I reckon I'd have missed it had I bought the book raw. I think I see it in the scan on the spine near Donald's cap and butt, but I still struggle to see it in hand, even under a magnifier lamp. In any case it doesn't matter - it's a very nice looking book and I'm happy at the price.

The GCD credits Frank McSavage with the cover story, who I know nothing about. It's not terrible, but the Scrooge in this tale is well off Bark's model sheet (both in looks and character) and Donald is a pretty one dimensional manipulator. HD&L are at least sympathetic characters towards the end of the story. Here are some sample pages.

[sagii]

37 minutes ago, AJD said:

I have all of the Barks Four Colors other than #s 9 and 29 but I also pick up the issues with Barks covers over other stories when I get a chance. This one was going cheap enough to not be able to resist it. It came out of a PLOD 8.0 slab with a "very small amount of colour touch on cover". The CT is not at all obvious in hand and I reckon I'd have missed it had I bought the book raw. I think I see it in the scan on the spine near Donald's cap and butt, but I still struggle to see it in hand, even under a magnifier lamp. In any case it doesn't matter - it's a very nice looking book and I'm happy at the price.

The GCD credits Frank McSavage with the cover story, who I know nothing about. It's not terrible, but the Scrooge in this tale is well off Bark's model sheet (both in looks and character) and Donald is a pretty one dimensional manipulator. HD&L are at least sympathetic characters towards the end of the story. Here are some sample pages.

Story looks very intriguing.  Cool post!

[AJD]

AS you might have noticed, I do like my jungle girls! I love loads of later Fiction House Jungle and Jumbo comics, but I've only just gone after a few earlier issues. For a while I thought the earlier covers were a bit less stylish, but I've decided that they are in fact more "golden agey" - which is a good thing. Here's my first Zolnerowich cover:

For the under the covers discussion this issue be warned - aviation geekiness ahead... but we'll kick off with a Sheena splash.

OK, this is from the "Tom and Harry" story.  Our heroes are flying some kind of bomber that inexplicably has British roundel markings on the wings and fuselage and American red and white bars on the tail.But wait, it gets worse... the Japanese fighters that appear on the page below are clearly meant to be 'Zeroes'. (And don't you love "Excuse please! Machine gun bullets not agree with humble soldier's digestion!")

A Zero:

Which then transmogrifies between the second and fourth panel of the next page into a quite well rendered German Junkers 87 Stuka! (And more sparkling dialogue "No, no! I cannot die before I kill them! Ohh!")

Ju 87:

I assume that the artist was working from reference photos - but quite why he made the change is anyone's guess? Maybe he didn't have a zero photo with the aircraft pointing to the right!

Now, aren't you glad that someone cares enough to bring these things to your attention?

[Harry Lime]

I think the most worrying depiction of the aviation action is that Hitler is clearly gunning for the Allies.

 

And wasn't the Stuka terrible at dogfighting? The Americans must have gone to sleep on that one.

And finally, a misprint on Sheena's elephant diagnosis or is Bob trolling her?

[AJD]

21 hours ago, Harry Lime said:

I think the most worrying depiction of the aviation action is that Hitler is clearly gunning for the Allies.

 

And wasn't the Stuka terrible at dogfighting? The Americans must have gone to sleep on that one.

And finally, a misprint on Sheena's elephant diagnosis or is Bob trolling her?

Yes the Stuka was easy prey in any dogfight. I had noticed the moustache on the gunner. I guess it was meant to be a growth on a British stiff upper lip but now you mention it there is a Hitleresque thing happening there!

 

As for the Sheena page,  she observes that there's an injured black person on the elephant and Bob notes that the elephant has also been hurt by a spear lodged in its trunk. Both are shown in the drawing (if you squint a bit) so I'm not sure what you mean?

 

[Harry Lime]

15 minutes ago, AJD said:

 

 

As for the Sheena page,  she observes that there's an injured black person on the elephant and Bob notes that the elephant has also been hurt by a spear lodged in its trunk. Both are shown in the drawing (if you squint a bit) so I'm not sure what you mean?

 

Oh, I understand now. I didn't account for the casual racism. And yes, I completely missed the native chap flopped over the elephant's head. 

[AJD]

I have almost all of the EC New Direction books now - just missing Psychoanalysis #1. Here's a recent pickup of probably my least favourite of those titles - Extra! It's interesting to see that the letters column has an unusual number of unfavourable comments in later issues.

That said, they aren't entirely without merit. In making the best of some fairly pedestrian story lines the artists had a crack at introducing some interest. And #3 has an early attempt at the 'picto-fiction' (generously illustrated text stories) format tried out in full book length later. A nice Johnny Craig one here:

 

[Get Marwood & I]

9 hours ago, AJD said:

 

For a comic, there's some lovely imagery in that opening paragraph. The writer definitely had a go there didn't he. 

[Harry Lime]

At least they were honest in the publishing of the unfavourable comments.

Was Extra a try at publishing a comic in a pseudo newspaper format?

[AJD]

49 minutes ago, Harry Lime said:

At least they were honest in the publishing of the unfavourable comments.

Was Extra a try at publishing a comic in a pseudo newspaper format?

It was a comic based around reporters, and tried to bring in adventure and spy angles. Not too many of the stories are memorable.