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Show Us Your Ducks!
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8,405 posts in this topic

23 hours ago, tth2 said:

I just picked up my first Duck book in eons.  So ironic that I'm getting it now, because it was one of the big holes in my collection when I previously assembled my high grade run, and one of the reasons I broke it up was my frustration at not being to find a 9.4 or better copy of this issue.

  • Golden Age (1938-1955):Cartoon Character, Four Color #199 Donald Duck (Dell, 1948) CGC NM 9.4 Off-whitepages....

I was so enamored by this cover when I was a kid I recreated it for inclusion in a 'zine we published back in the day.

tn_FandomPlayhouseDuck.jpg.0367988b640ed31c920258315b8aac7e.jpg

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On 5/17/2019 at 6:44 PM, tth2 said:

I just picked up my first Duck book in eons.  So ironic that I'm getting it now, because it was one of the big holes in my collection when I previously assembled my high grade run, and one of the reasons I broke it up was my frustration at not being to find a 9.4 or better copy of this issue.

  • Golden Age (1938-1955):Cartoon Character, Four Color #199 Donald Duck (Dell, 1948) CGC NM 9.4 Off-whitepages....

Iconic cover and you purchased a beautiful copy!

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18 hours ago, AJD said:

Now you mention it, Don Rosa does have an uncanny resemblance. No wonder he has such a knack for capturing 1955 in his duck stories...

Did anyone ever read the Pertwillaby Papers that the RBCC published in the mid to late seventies? It was pre-duck Don Rosa doing Barks' like tales with humans. Not sure if it ever got reprinted but I used to really enjoy reading it back then.

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5 hours ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

Did anyone ever read the Pertwillaby Papers that the RBCC published in the mid to late seventies? It was pre-duck Don Rosa doing Barks' like tales with humans. Not sure if it ever got reprinted but I used to really enjoy reading it back then.

I've got the first issue of Don Rosa's Comics & Stories in a box somewhere, never did find the second issue.  They reprint some of the stories.

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11 hours ago, AJD said:

I just picked up a nice little collection of 'old currency' Australian Disney comics. Here are two that are going into my boxes. The first reprints the Paul Bunyan machine story and the second reprints the wonderful Tralla-La story.

 

G274.jpg.fc107c5a1b8d14fbdcbc66a31fecd650.jpg

Were most comics reprinted in B&W in Australia? Just wondering about the bragging rights to "ACTUAL Full Colour COMIC PAGES!"  Very cool books!  :) 

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22 hours ago, Badger said:

Were most comics reprinted in B&W in Australia? Just wondering about the bragging rights to "ACTUAL Full Colour COMIC PAGES!"  Very cool books!  :)

Great - a question that allows for a Marwoodesque dive into the minutiae of a subject dear to my heart. :banana:  (Cue Steve: 'hey, I resemble that remark!')

Yes, most Australian-printed comics had B&W interiors, many of them right into the 1980s. The Disneys were an early adopter of colour and generally had better - much better - paper quality as well. The local WDC&S series started in 1946 and issues 1 and 2 had entirely B&W interiors. From issue 3 until 72 they had the box on the cover like on my #31 below - 'WITH COLOR PAGES' (Note the US spelling, which was part of a failed attempt in some quarters to move our spelling from the British variant).

No31.jpg.c2f6c53e4f2894dd7606053fe1893bee.jpg

What that meant in practice was that two consecutive inner wraps were four colour printed on one side, so you got this:

1755442925_No31interior.thumb.JPG.ce5da3dc06cab96bc9892b29eb6b5ee8.JPG

The colour must have worked because from #73 (Oct 1952) WDC&S was entirely in colour when very few other books were. Here's my (factory miscut) #79

No79.jpg.135bb78ad0134f70efcf5e0a6af53848.jpg

They also started to cost more before other comics did, moving to 1/- before most publishers moved from 8d or 9d, though they also moved to 32 pages instead of the standard 24 or 28 with the price rise, so the customer attraction to colour + extra pages evidently worked for them.

Aren't you glad you asked? :insane:

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On ‎5‎/‎3‎/‎2019 at 12:32 AM, DisneyDevotee said:

It has been quite some time since I've been on here and I've added a lot of great readers to my Duck collection since my last post! For starters, I finally got a copy of Uncle Scrooge #1/Four Color 386. This copy is pretty rough, cover completely detached, centerfold detached, and I believe the top staple is completely absent. But it is complete, the whole story is there, and it's still not that bad of a looker, considering. One day I'll have nicer. Second I grabbed Donald Duck #35. There isn't really anything significant about this book, I just really love the cover. I mean, it's a duck in rain boots. What's not to like? Third up we have Uncle Scrooge #2/Four Color #456. This one has a really rough spine, but again, great for reading! To complete the Four Color Scrooge set there is Uncle Scrooge #3/Four Color #495. For anyone wanting what I believe has been determined as Uncle Scrooge's first cover appearance, look no further than Walt Disney's Vacation Parade #2. This really is a beautiful wraparound cover and I'm really happy I was able to add it to my collection. Not really Golden Age, but I did add Uncle Scrooge #219, first Don Rosa story, to the collection. And last, but not least, I added a copy of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck to the collection, and it came with this card signed by Don Rosa, which I thought was pretty awesome. I got all of these for less than $20 a piece, other than FC386 and the Life and Times book. I've added a whole lot more than this to the collection, which I will share slowly over the next week or so. 

"Snip"

"Snip"

"Snip"

"Snip"

"Snip"

"Snip"

 

 

Scan_20190502.png

Don signed my copy at the local comic show many years ago (1990s).

241626639_unclescrooge219.jpg.67c8b22a2bde2bb8b728b480a082c924.jpg

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2 hours ago, AJD said:

Great - a question that allows for a Marwoodesque dive into the minutiae of a subject dear to my heart. :banana:  (Cue Steve: 'hey, I resemble that remark!')

Yes, most Australian-printed comics had B&W interiors, many of them right into the 1980s. The Disneys were an early adopter of colour and generally had better - much better - paper quality as well. The local WDC&S series started in 1946 and issues 1 and 2 had entirely B&W interiors. From issue 3 until 72 they had the box on the cover like on my #31 below - 'WITH COLOR PAGES' (Note the US spelling, which was part of a failed attempt in some quarters to move our spelling from the British variant).

No31.jpg.c2f6c53e4f2894dd7606053fe1893bee.jpg

What that meant in practice was that two consecutive inner wraps were four colour printed on one side, so you got this:

1755442925_No31interior.thumb.JPG.ce5da3dc06cab96bc9892b29eb6b5ee8.JPG

The colour must have worked because from #73 (Oct 1952) WDC&S was entirely in colour when very few other books were. Here's my (factory miscut) #79

No79.jpg.135bb78ad0134f70efcf5e0a6af53848.jpg

They also started to cost more before other comics did, moving to 1/- before most publishers moved from 8d or 9d, though they also moved to 32 pages instead of the standard 24 or 28 with the price rise, so the customer attraction to colour + extra pages evidently worked for them.

Aren't you glad you asked? :insane:

Yes! Yes I am! :whee:

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4 hours ago, AJD said:

Great - a question that allows for a Marwoodesque dive into the minutiae of a subject dear to my heart. :banana:  (Cue Steve: 'hey, I resemble that remark!')

Yes, most Australian-printed comics had B&W interiors, many of them right into the 1980s. The Disneys were an early adopter of colour and generally had better - much better - paper quality as well. The local WDC&S series started in 1946 and issues 1 and 2 had entirely B&W interiors. From issue 3 until 72 they had the box on the cover like on my #31 below - 'WITH COLOR PAGES' (Note the US spelling, which was part of a failed attempt in some quarters to move our spelling from the British variant).

No31.jpg.c2f6c53e4f2894dd7606053fe1893bee.jpg

What that meant in practice was that two consecutive inner wraps were four colour printed on one side, so you got this:

1755442925_No31interior.thumb.JPG.ce5da3dc06cab96bc9892b29eb6b5ee8.JPG

The colour must have worked because from #73 (Oct 1952) WDC&S was entirely in colour when very few other books were. Here's my (factory miscut) #79

No79.jpg.135bb78ad0134f70efcf5e0a6af53848.jpg

They also started to cost more before other comics did, moving to 1/- before most publishers moved from 8d or 9d, though they also moved to 32 pages instead of the standard 24 or 28 with the price rise, so the customer attraction to colour + extra pages evidently worked for them.

Aren't you glad you asked? :insane:

6

Interesting post Andrew with some non-obvious parallels to stateside books. While the Dell books in the US were always color; the page quality did not seem to be up to the standards of some other publishers. Early DC books seem to have had better quality paper and seem to have stayed brighter longer. Additionally, many of the covers of the Dell books did not have gloss during a certain period and exhibit significant browning on the inside covers. I've never seen anyone try to figure out which books this occured with and why but that would be interesting as it was not consistent from what I can tell. The Four Color series seems to have been the books without gloss and I don't think other books (like WDCS) did this.

Additionally, Dell and Gold Key both pushed up prices sooner and higher than the other publishers. You will find 15 cent issues in the Pogo series in the fifties and then a period in the sixties where they pushed to 15 cents prior to backing down to 12 cents to match the competition. Later I believe they went to 15 cents from 12 cents before the other publishers. There was clearly a demand for the product if they felt they could get the extra pennies!!

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33 minutes ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

Interesting post Andrew with some non-obvious parallels to stateside books. While the Dell books in the US were always color; the page quality did not seem to be up to the standards of some other publishers. Early DC books seem to have had better quality paper and seem to have stayed brighter longer. Additionally, many of the covers of the Dell books did not have gloss during a certain period and exhibit significant browning on the inside covers. I've never seen anyone try to figure out which books this occured with and why but that would be interesting as it was not consistent from what I can tell. The Four Color series seems to have been the books without gloss and I don't think other books (like WDCS) did this.

Additionally, Dell and Gold Key both pushed up prices sooner and higher than the other publishers. You will find 15 cent issues in the Pogo series in the fifties and then a period in the sixties where they pushed to 15 cents prior to backing down to 12 cents to match the competition. Later I believe they went to 15 cents from 12 cents before the other publishers. There was clearly a demand for the product if they felt they could get the extra pennies!!

The no gloss on the Four Colors through me for a loop when I first got a high grade copy. I'd always had beaters before that and I just assumed beater copy=no gloss. 

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8 hours ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

 Additionally, many of the covers of the Dell books did not have gloss during a certain period and exhibit significant browning on the inside covers. I've never seen anyone try to figure out which books this occured with and why but that would be interesting as it was not consistent from what I can tell. The Four Color series seems to have been the books without gloss and I don't think other books (like WDCS) did this.

I think we should try to answer this! Let me start with some data points from my own collection:

1) WDC&S never had matt covers

2) Animal Comics #9 (Jun/Jul 1944) and #23 (Oct-Nov 1946) were printed with the matt cover stock. I don't have any of the surrounding issues to check, but we know that at least one other Dell title had the dull covers.

3) My #62 (Jan 1945) is low grade but I *think* it is on glossy paper.  Four Colors 108 (May 1946), 147, 148 (May 1947), 159 and 178 (Dec 1947) all had matt stock (so presumably all of the copies in between?) but 189 (June 1948) and 199 are back on semi-gloss stock.

Perhaps @Scrooge could help with this?

8 hours ago, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

 You will find 15 cent issues in the Pogo series in the fifties and then a period in the sixties

That caused a falling out between Walt Kelly and Dell. He thought they were trying to cash in on the popularity of Pogo (could well be right, as other Dells remained 10c) and it led him to dropping all comic work to focus on the strip.

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48 minutes ago, AJD said:

Perhaps @Scrooge could help with this?

Well, I wish I could but it's hard to discern what the original quality of the paper was at this stage nor do I trust my evaluation.

I pulled out the corresponding FC box and it seems that the first ones to switch paper in the FC series were FC 175 - Santa Claus Funnies then FC 180 - Ozark Ike but it was not a seamless transition, books vary in paper stock for a little bit before settling on the new quality.

A better test for the switchover would be Raggedy Ann and Andy where it appears the switch was made with # 23 - dated April 1948, so right around the same period which is comforting. Given that it was a pet project of Lebeck, it would have received the necessary attention to be one of the early adopters and the period match.

I feel it's even possible to see the difference from a scan (or it's my imagination) but compare these two Flash Gordon, the first one if the former and the second one is the improved paper. It shows more reflectivity even in scan and the colors zip more even though it's in lower grade than the former - Also, the way that the paper stock wears is different between the two paper stocks. The new paper stocks splits less but ripples / wrinkles more easily.

2115785465_FC173.jpg.3575cc2d761acb61cbc89e6254f1d2cd.jpg

756159527_FC190.jpg.090c64d2af789402c1aaeeba1a496fb5.jpg

 

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