Walt Disney's Comics and Stories Archives / Four Color Adventures
First up are two books published by Boom! in 2011. As both books are numbered "vol.1" I guess more books were planned, but unfortunately these two were the only ones we got. As the titles suggest they reprint old comics from the Walt Disney Comics and Stories and Four Color/One-shots series from Dell – starting from the very beginning.
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| Example from inside |
One thing I found a bit odd was the one book was printed on matte paper while the other one with glossy paper. Maybe they were experimenting to see what turned out best? I think I prefer the one with matte paper, but both were fine in my opinion. Pages with comics and text stories are printed in full paper size, while covers and ads with a border.
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| Covers and ads included, but not in full page size |
Contrast adjustment and editing is done to make everything outside the actual panels look completely white, and minor restoration is probably done too (but not too much). The WDC&S #1 that was used as a source for this book was actually auctioned off soon after. And if my memory is correct it was far from mint condition. But the result turned out great I think.
A huge thumbs up for both books are the bonus articles with background information about the series.
Golden Age Comics / The Classics Collection
These two hardcover books from Disney Editions have the same content and are using the same source material. They are also collecting comics from Dell's Four Color series, but not in a complete manner as the two books from Boom!. Games, ads, copyright text and such are edited out, and the Dumbo comic book inside is only partly reprinted. Also, it's just a few selected comic books from the series and not printed chronologically.
One of the books have the comic pages printed a lot larger than the original comics making you really notice the details in the original four-color printing technique.
Norwegian weekly reprints
In 1998 the Norwegian publisher of Disney comics started reprinting the weekly Donald Duck comic chronologically from the beginning, and in hardcover format. As I'm writing this the series is still being published with all weeklies from 1948 to 1978 being published in (so far) 165 books!
You can buy the hardcover books in a regular book store, but they are mostly sold through a subscription service. When getting to the 70's it's a lot cheaper to get the original comics in good condition than to buy the hardcover books, but it seems enough people are still buying it to keep the series going.
Some of the early books doesn't have the best scanning in my opinion, but it gets better. All books also have a text in the beginning with different topics talking about Disney comics (some of these are more interesting than the actual comics being collected!). Another great thing about this collection is that a lot of libraries in Norway are buying the series making the early Norwegian Disney comics widely available.
The Carl Barks' Big Book of Barney Bear
The Barney Bear book from YOE Books/IDW is not collecting Disney comics, but Barks' stories with Barney Bear & Benny Burro. We don't get any complete comic books in this book, but all stories are scanned from old comics.
Most of it looks great, but there are some muddy pages in-between too. I like the thick matte paper used in this book a lot!
Comics about Cartoonists
Another book from YOE Books/IDW is Comics about Cartoonists where they are also using scans from old comics. Inside we have The Amazing Story of Walt Disney, originally printed in True Comics #72 (1948)
The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics
Slowly turning back to actual Disney comics, we have The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics with a story by Carl Barks inside, scanned from Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #145.
Donald Duck im Mickey Mouse Weekly von William Ward
And I'll end with this book that I've talked about before on here. It's created by fans but in a professional way, collecting the William Ward serials from the British Mickey Mouse Weekly. I really love this book!
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