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If you're a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, you're currently caught up in a wave of centennials, as one after another of their operas have their hundredth anniversaries. This wave will continue until about the turn of the century, then the bicentennials will start during the 2070s.
And if you're a funnybook fan, you've just been through a wave of 500th issues, as one after another of the monthlies that date back to before World War II cross that line. First Action Comics, the only one that actually has been out every month since then. Then Detective Comics, which later had a second 500th issue, the 500th appearance of Batman in it. Belatedly, and somewhat ignominiously, Adventure Comics, cancelled with #490, was continued as a reprint digest, and the big deal about #500 was that they reprinted more popular (if less interesting) material. (It was cancelled again with #503.)
It may have surprised you to learn that Adventure wasn't the last of them. Tho not a paragraph in the popular fan press proclaimed the event, the fact that one more monthly going back 40+ years had crossed that line was announced in a banner across the cover of the latest issue of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.
The first issue of WDC&S was dated October, 1940. It was a successor to the then-folding Mickey Mouse Magazine, even to the point of continuing a Mickey serial, "M. Meets Robinson Crusoe", from it. However, reflecting a shifting of the stars in the Disney Firmament, the cover of the new publication featured Donald Duck, standing alone. Since then, Disney characters by the dozen have appeared on the WDC&S cover, but Donald has been on very nearly all of them.
The very early issues consisted mostly of reprints of newspaper comic strips, so except for the long, continuing Mickey stories Floyd Gottfredson was doing in 1930s papers, the bulk of it is short gags. But there would usually be one or two more substantial stories, in addition to two or three text-and-picture stories, one or two puzzle pages, a Table of Contents, maybe a contest...with 64 pages, plus covers, no outside ads, coming out every month, you can fit a lot in.
Wartime issues frequently had the added attraction of featuring military insignia designed by the Disney Studios on the inside covers. That wasn't the only evidence that a war was going on. Donald would often have problems with ration books, and an air-raid helmet is a frequently-used prop. You can learn as much about day-to-day life during World War II from wartime WDC&S as you can from Warner Brothers cartoons.
Starting in #31 (4/43), where the first of over 250 ten-page Donald stories by Carl Barks appeared, and continuing for the next year or so, the emphasis gradually changed from strip reprints to original stories. The strips didn't completely go away until well into the 1960s, but starting in 1943 the bulk of the book consisted of material created especially for it.
This was the start of a golden age that lasted - oh, the rest of the 1940s and into the '50s, I guess. This is the period of which it has been said (by me if nobody else) that Walt Disney's Comics and Stories is the best anthology comic book of all time.
One of the things that makes this comic stand out is the fact that many of the stories are written in different modes of dialogue. Donald and Mickey, of course, are in what you'd call a "normal" mode - but many of the others show a delightful deviation from the norm...and each other.
Bucky Bug, for example, is written in meter and rhyme. Some of it is pretty strained, but most is at least passable and some is quite clever. It's a lot of fun to read out loud to a kid, because it almost always at least scans correctly. Bucky first appears in scattered 1941-43 issues (reprints from the Silly Symphonies comic strip), then continuously in original stories from 1944 to 1950.
Incidentally, Bucky is one of the few married funny animals. His wife's name is June, and her father is Mayor of Junkville. Considering the number of funny animals that have "nephews" and "nieces", it's curious that Bucky and June, with the perfect cover, never had any kids of their own. (Of course, Bucky is a two-fisted adventurer, and kids would only slow him down.)
Little Minnehaha's written in a somewhat different manner. All the captions and the speech are like "The Song of Hiawatha". When this rhythm gets into your head you tend to write things in it. But if you are like the guy who wrote the Minnehaha stories, you will slip and throw in something that fails to scan every so often. Then it can be quite a chore to stumble through non- scanning meter. Luckily, the series faltered, faltered shortly after starting. Altogether, it appeared in less than half a dozen issues.
In case you're wondering why I didn't do Bucky Bug "in dialect" like Little Minnehaha, it's because it's a lot more work doing a paragraph in rhyme and rhythm. That "Hiawatha" rhythm is absurdly easy to write - for anyone but the guy doing that series, anyway. I justify my laziness by noting that there's no way I could do a "dialect" description of the next unusual one. Walt Kelly's Gremlins, a World War II series about mischievous little sprites that like to wreck aircraft, is a pantomime. Under the title "Gremlins", "Gremlin Gus and the Widgets" or some variation, this delightful and unusual strip appears in #s 34-41 (7/43-2/44).
A strip started in #52 (1/45) that was nearly in a class with Donald and Mickey themselves for tenacity, appearing in the very latest issue, #500, tho it stopped showing up every single issue sometime in the 1960s. Its name is Li'l Bad Wolf, and I'm going to describe it even tho probably less than 1% of the people reading this are outside the age bracket in which they could have read it as kids.
It starts out cute enough. The Big Bad Wolf from The Three Little Pigs has a kid, whom he's trying to raise right, which for The Big Bad Wolf means the kid has to turn out nasty. But the kid is nice. He wants to live down to his father's expectations, but just can't seem to do it.
This would have been a neat little strip just like that; and today it would be as fondly recalled as Tillie Tiger, Jose Carioca, Bongo Bear or any number of other WDC&S strips of the time that most people have never heard of, if not for the development you all knew was coming, which happened in #54. The Practical Pig, Big Bad's arch-enemy, was introduced into the series, followed a few issues later by his two brothers. The Three Little Pigs quickly became Li'l Bad's playmates, and were soon every-issue regulars.
What a situation! I mean, maybe not every kid can identify with his father trying to eat his friends, but I think most can conjure up a vivid enough view of the inherent horror. This strip is one of my favorites, with solid, dependable stories and art, by several different creators, spanning years and years.
One of my favorite Li'l Bad Wolf stories appears in #131 (8/51). Big Bad doesn't work, which embarrasses Li'l Bad at school, so the teacher hires him to tidy up the rooms and tend the furnace. The page where he's being shown around the school, licking his lips and leering at all the kids, is a classic. In one panel, he pulls out a tape and measures a young rabbit against his oven. "Yes Ma'am!" he says in another. "I jest loves lamb chops...er...chaps!"
Of course, my very favorite strip is the one that started the trend toward original material, the Carl Barks Donald Duck. Dozens and dozens of issues, year after year, decade after decade they march by, and if there's a clinker in the lot I can't think offhand which one it might be.
With the exception of Uncle Scrooge, who first appeared in the 1947 Donald Duck Christmas special, just about all of Barks's most memorable creations were introduced in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Overstreet's Comic Book Price Guide lists the following: #88 (1/48), first Gladstone Gander. #125 (2/51), first Junior Woodchucks. #140 (5/52), first Gyro Gearloose. #134 (11/51), first Beagle Boys.
That's right! The Beagle Boys first appeared in WDC&S four months before their starring role in the classic "Only a Poor Old Man". They weren't quite superstars in that earlier appearance -- as a matter of fact, they appeared only in one panel of that story, the last, and they looked like -- well, like early versions of what they soon became, naturally enough.
Gyro only made a walk-on in his first story -- or a bounce-on, rather. He made his entrance on a pogo stick, just one of many improbable things conjured up by Gladstone's luck. In his fifth panel, he declared that he was going home to invent butterless buttered popcorn, and was gone. To judge from the goo they serve at movie theaters these days, I gather he was successful.
The Woodchucks -- well, their titles aren't as grandiose in #125 (a five-star general is, like, a big deal) and the initials not as baroque, but in essence they're the same Junior Woodchucks we all know. Except -- they don't use their famous Guide Book in their first appearance.
And Gladstone Gander was just a slick, well-dressed, smirking relative that Donald and the Nephews didn't particularly like. The outrageous luck that became a characteristic of him as tangible as his beak didn't turn up until later.
Incidentally, Gladstone is the only one of the four abovementioned who has never, even for a single issue, had a book of his own. Which isn't all that surprising, since he's rude, obnoxious, given to gloating (and has a lot to gloat about, which only makes it worse) and generally not the sort of guy you want to see come out on top. Great as a supporting character -- but as a protagonist, even the Beagles have more appeal.
Like Marvel superheroes, the Disney characters all seem to be neighbors, or belong to the same club, or something. Dumbo meeting The Seven Dwarfs was so commonplace it just about qualifies as a regular strip; and the Br'er Rabbit characters turned up frequently in the Li'l Bad Wolf strip.
(There was even a strip based largely on crossovers, long after the "classic" period, called "Walt Disney Theater", which briefly ousted Donald from the lead spot starting in 1965. Mickey and Goofy would play parts in parodies of classic stories, like "The Two Musketeers Plus One" (#299, 8/65). Usually, one or more other Disney characters would also appear. These included (but were not limited to) Clarabelle Cow & Horace Horsecollar, 299; Pluto, 300 (playing The Hound of Basketville); Captain Hook, 301; and Dwarfs, 309. Oh, and some vaguely nephewoid aliens were in "Mick and the Beanstalk" -- no relation to any portion of the animated feature Fun and Fancy Free -- in #311.)
One crossover story that stands out appeared in #43, 4/44. Donald Duck is sent into the woods as a talent scout for the Disney organization (which seems pretty whacky even to him), and winds up at the Seven Dwarfs' house. After a rather mild misadventure, they're all making merry around a table, at which Donald declares that it's a waste of time for a talent scout to try to sign them up, since they're almost as famous as he is, and, "Say, I hear Snow White is coming back soon!"(1.)
Other, more conventional ads for movies appeared here and there. Just as examples: On #54 (3/45), the usual subscription ad on the back cover is replaced by one for The Three Caballeros. On #77 (2/47) that spot is occupied by Song of the South, on #85 (10/47) by Fun and Fancy Free, on #92 (5/48) by Melody Time, on #101 (2/49) by So Dear to My Heart, #s 109 and 110 (10-11/49) by Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and #112 (2/50) by Cinderella. It was on #143 (8/52) that they first sold that spot to an outside advertiser.
Oh, and the inside front cover of #35 (8/43) is given over to Victory Through Air Power, Disney's famous foray into wartime propaganda and now the rarest of his animated features.
Through all of this, the Mickey Mouse serials rolled on, a chapter in almost every issue. A notable one is "M. Outwits The Phantom Blot", which ran in #s 101-106 (2-7/49).
The Blot is one of Mickey's most famous villains. Tho there's only one "original" Blot story by Floyd Gottfredson himself, who wrote and drew it in 1930s comic strips, it was considered a classic and was frequently reprinted or redone. The first reprint of it - first appearance of the story between two covers, in fact - is in Mickey Mouse Four Color #16 (1941). Then it was redrawn using a more modern Mickey design in that WDC&S serial (the 1930s Mickey design looked pretty archaic even then). Most recently, the Four Color story was reprinted (in a generally inferior fashion) in Mickey Mouse Club Parade #1 in 1955.(2.)
The Blot returned long after the "classic" Mickey period. "The Return of The Phantom Blot" (by Paul Murry, the premier Mickey artist of the 1950s and 60s) ran in #s 284-287 (5-8/64). The final page of the last episode has an ad at the bottom for something fairly unusual, tho not unheard-of in funnybook history - the villain got his own book. The Phantom Blot #1 came out in July of 1964 and, once it was through with its seven-issue run, The Blot was far from being the oneshot villain he'd been for the previous three decades. Since then, he's turned up once or twice as a no-account recurring villain. His best appearance remains his first, and I trust it always will.(3.)
In these serials, Mickey put a great deal of energy into opposing the nefarious schemes of the Pete Brothers, whom he met only one at a time. In the beginning, his arch enemy was Pegleg Pete, who was horribly disfigured, with an ugly wooden prosthetic at the end of his stump. Later on, Pegleg retired and his brother Black took over the operation. During the 1970s, Black faded into the background and was replaced by the third brother, Sneaky. Presumably, if our society should develop a sensitivity to jokes that might by stretching the imagination be thought offensive to winos, there will turn out to be a fourth Pete brother.(4.)
Just about the time of the 10th anniversary, Grandma Duck was added to the lineup...at the expense of Bucky Bug, who never appeared in a new story again.(5.) Grandma's strip was distinguished by the fact that Gus and Jacque, the two little mice from Cinderella (then current), were among the vermin infesting her farm. It was fairly amusing, but I liked Bucky Bug a lot better.
Grandma continued, at least sporadically, for quite some time, tho she lost space to Pluto and Little Hiawatha as the 1950s wore on. Later occupants of the middle pages included (but were by no means limited to) Ludwig von Drake, Mad Madame Mim, Scamp, Merlin Jones, Br'er Rabbit, Daisy Duck, The Beagle Boys -- even Zorro had a brief run in the 1960s -- and in recent years by Winnie the Pooh, Chip 'n' Dale and a host of reprints, including, in #491 (undated, 1981), Bucky Bug.
By #392 (5/73) Gold Key/Whitman comics were being distributed more by three-to-a-pack bags than by individual issues. When comics are sold that way, most readers buy the middle one blind. As a result, it requires a measure of dedication to keep a continuous collection going, something the Powers That Be at Whitman consider (probably correctly) beyond the scope of the average reader of today. It would obviously be unfair to run continued stories under such circumstances, so that was the end of the Mickey Mouse serials for more than 100 issues - it wasn't until #500 itself that another one started...and that was a reprint (of the one that ran in #s 234-236 (3-5/60)).
I think that's a pretty fair note to end this little overview on, so I will. If you're interested in enshrining in your collection one of the least eagerly anticipated milestones in comics history, you might pick up a copy of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #500. Now on sale, wherever fine funnybooks are sold.(6.)
1. Elsewhere, at just about the time this was written, I opined that because the Donald/Dwarfs crossover was just an ephemeral promotional piece, that was one story that was unlikely to be reprinted. And whaddya know! Gladstone reprinted it in 1987.
2. At the time, the 1955 reprint was "most recent". The Blot story has since been published in a very nice album format.
3. At the time, I didn't know The Blot was a regular villain in Italy.
4. There is! Word came down in 1990 that Mickey's main antagonist would be "Big Bad Pete" (cf. Big Bad Wolf -- apparently, Big Bad is a common given name.) Nowadays, I'm not sure anybody even knows which brother is active at a given time -- whichever one is on-stage is simply called Pete.
5. In America, at any rate. Back then, I didn't know new ones were still being published in the Netherlands...and hadn't yet written any new ones myself, either.(7.)
6. These days, at collector prices only, I'm afraid.
7. This relates to my own contribution to the title, in what is possibly its last year of existence -- writing rhyming English-language dialog for those Dutch Bucky Bug stories (a job I lobbied hard for, by the way). My Bucky Bug "American Scripts" appear in #s 623, 624, 625, 627, 629, and 630.
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