IDW's Walt Disney Showcase #2

"Mickey Mouse & Goofy in The Secret of Gold City" published in IDW's Walt Disney Showcase #2

In the second issue of IDW's new series we get Mickey Mouse & Goofy in The Secret of Gold City. The story takes place in modern time but with Mickey & Goofy continuing the adventure of their ancestors Mickey the Kid and Six-Shot Goofy.
 

From "The Secret of Gold City" in IDW's Walt Disney Showcase #2

The story is actually a sequel to and with direct references to the Italian story Topolino Kid contro "Jack la vaporiera". To my knowledge the original story is not available in English anywhere, and the second issue of Walt Disney Showcase would have been a lot more interesting if it were – but I do have a Norwegian translation of the story in Donald Pocket #68.
 

"Mikke Kid og Jernhest-Jack" (Norwegian title) in Donald Pocket #68

The flashback panels in The Secret of Gold City are directly copied from scenes in this story.

Original story (top) and flashback scene in "The Secret of Gold City" (bottom)

Original story (left) and flashback scene in "The Secret of Gold City" (right)

Original story (left) and flashback scene in "The Secret of Gold City" (right)

But these two are not the only stories with Mickey the Kid and Six-Shot Goofy created. In fact, there is a whole series with these stories, and the origin story where they meet up is available in English too.
 

"Mickey Kid and Goofy Six-Shots" available digitally on comiXology

It's published digitally in two parts on comiXology titled Mickey Kid and Goofy Six-Shots. (slightly different names than the recent IDW translation)
 

Mickey and Goofy's Wild West ancestors meets for the first time - from the digital comiXology issues

In addition to the Mickey and Goofy meetup, we also see how they met Susanna, a recurring character in the series and seen in the photograph in The Secret of Gold City. We also get the Oh, Susanna song for the first time, which must have been passed down in generations as modern time Goofy also knows it!
 

From the digital comiXology issues

From the digital comiXology issues (top) and "The Seret of Gold City" (bottom)

And we get to see Mickey the Kid's signature attack move used for the first time, re-used by Mickey Mouse in The Secret of Gold City.
 

From the digital comiXology issues (top) and "The Seret of Gold City" (bottom)

To get the most out of the new Showcase issue I recommend getting the two digital comics too, just to read the backstory of Mickey and Goofy's wild west ancestors. And as I already said, the story would be a lot more interesting if read together with Topolino Kid contro "Jack la vaporiera"!

A 70's newspaper article about Italian Disney comic production

A couple of years ago when doing some searching in Google's Newspaper archive I found an interesting article in The Tuscaloosa News. It was printed in this newspaper April 11, 1971, but it looks like the article was originally written for The Los Angeles Times. I found it interesting enough to save a copy so I thought I could share it here too.

 

From The Tuscaloosa News - April 11, 1971 (layout slightly edited for this blog)

If the image is scaled to your screen when clicking on it, try this link to view it in full size for reading.

Reading it now 47 years later it doesn't have too much new or unknown information if you are a Disney comic fan. But being from an American newspaper in early 70's, and about Italian Disney comics, it's still a fun read. Especially interesting is the fact that Romano Scarpa is mentioned in the article. Back then it was not common knowledge who created the stories seen on print.

Zio Paperone e il drakkar volante, the Scarpa story mentioned in the article still hasn't been printed in English.

Another interesting fact is that in the early 70's the Italian Disney comic production didn't require approval from the American office any more, but they still sent over copies of all stories. I wonder what archive they ended up in, and if they still are a useful resource if publishers wants to reprint old Italian stories.

What's green and fuzzy and has eight legs?

I was searching through the inducks database the other day trying to find an April fool story to talk about. There are some good ones I had almost forgotten about, so the result was me reading a bunch of stories instead.

Carl Barks did a few
 

Carl Barks 10-pager from WDC #127

Carl Barks 10-pager from WDC #211

And there's a fun wolf story in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #152 that is ready for a re-print.
 

A Li'l Bad Wolf story from WDC #152

There's a lot of Egmont stories and Dutch stories too, not available in English, and one that is only printed in English in the UK.

   

But I didn't really find any I had much to say about. So I'll try something else instead.

Under a two-page April fool story with Mickey and his nephews, and I thought I could do a little quiz out if it.
 

April "Fool"ishness (click to enlarge)

The first one to tell where this story was printed is officially a real Disney comic nerd 😊 

***

Update May 27, 2018:

Alright, now it's been almost two months so I guess I have to reveal the answer. The two-page April fools story can be found in the Spring 1989 issue of Mickey Mouse Magazine.
 

Mickey Mouse Magazine, Spring 1989

This magazine was not a comic book series, but some of the issues had a page or two with comics. I don't have a whole lot of issues from this series, but I think I remember seeing some Disney Babies comic pages in it too.
 

The Walt Disney Treasure Book

In February 2016 I made a blogpost about two pages of comics where I was trying to identify what publication they came from. And it turned out they were from a British book called The Walt Disney Treasure Book. Now two years later, I finally got hold of a copy of the book!

I already knew that the Barks story had dialogue changes in the British edition, so I did a little search for more examples.

The first story in the book is a re-arranged version of the Sunday pages with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The dialogue in the first part of the story is pretty much unchanged. But when the dwarfs start talking, a lot of the slang is removed.
 

Original dialogue to the left - British dialogue to the right

Original dialogue to the left - British dialogue to the right

We also get an occasional British word inserted.

Original dialogue to the left - British dialogue to the right

The next story is Mickey Mouse and The World Under the Sea.

Original dialogue on the top - British dialogue at the bottom

Then we have Christmas on Bear Mountain.

Original dialogue to the left - British dialogue to the right

Original dialogue to the left - British dialogue to the right

And Bambi, where not much is changed, just some minor adjustments here and there. But here I also checked another early British print of the story.

Original dialogue (left), from World Distributor #33 (middle), and the Trasure Book (right)

And finally, the book ends with Mickey Mouse and Pluto the Hero.

Original dialogue to the left - British dialogue to the right

Today’s exchange rate is about 0.7, but trying to check historical data it looks like the exchange rate was about 0.36 in the early 50’s. So 18 thousand pounds would have been more accurate when the book was printed, while it’s not too far off today. (I’m not sure exactly when the book was published)

Comics on Norwegian milk cartons

After IDW started publishing Disney comics we have seen 3 stories drawn by Norwegian Arlid Midthun, and I hope we'll see more in the future! If you haven't read any yet I recommend checking out "The Substitute Santa of Strathbungo" printed in IDW's Uncle Scrooge #21, with Scrooge as a young boy in Glasgow.

Among the stories we haven't seen in English yet is a series of crime riddles with Donald & company, created in collaboration with novelist Gunnar Staalesen. But they are not the only crime riddle comics the two them have created together.

For the last 8 years they have created comics printed on Norwegian milk cartons. And the comics are only printed on the cartons during the Easter Holidays (and the week before).
 

2011-2014 milk cartons

2015-2018 milk cartons

If I didn't make it clear these are not Disney comics, but an original creation with the detective character "Ulf Ulvheim". But the drawing style is very similar to Arild's Disney comics.

Here are the comics from the last two years as slideshows (external links, might not work forever):

2017

2018

Source: https://www.tine.no/påske

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit: The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons

This book is not about comics, but was one of my most fascinating reads last year and deserves to be covered!

Written by David Bossert with help from David Gerstein the book is all about the Oswald cartoons produced under Walt Disney in the late 20’s. A total of 26 cartoons were made where some are still considered as lost, and this book covers all of them and the history of how they are tracked down.

The book first start with a history section about the Disney Studio before, during and right after the Oswald cartoons. Then we get chapters about the reacquiring of the rights to Oswald, how the hunt for the cartoons began and details about the preservation and restoration process – all filled with new information I hadn’t read anywhere else.

After the intro articles the main part of the book starts, where each cartoon has its own section with a detailed synopsis, information about the source used for restoring the cartoons and lots of illustrations. In the cases where a cartoon is considered lost we sometimes get the full script or survived story-sketches or pencils that can give us information about the story. While reading the book I almost felt glad the cartoons were lost or we probably wouldn’t see all this background material on print!

 

Example from inside the book

When talking about sources and restoration, the book is usually referring to the restoration done for the 2007 DVD set released in the Walt Disney Treasures series. But much has been discovered after this and we also get details on things that should have been done different. Ex. what title cards were used, sequences that should have been in another order and such. After reading the book I wish we could get a new home media or digital release of the entire collection – updated with all the new information discovered the last 10 years. I also hope the detailed information on what is know and not result in more information being discovered in the future.

***

Even if the book is not about comics, it does have some references and bits of information about the comics too. Even things that was new to me and that I don’t remember reading about in the Gottfredson library.

One is about the re-use of gags from the Oswald cartoon Africa Before Dark in the daily strips. The gag where Oswald is shooting off an owl’s feathers is re-used in the January 29, 1930 Mickey-strip, and the sequence with a lion, hollowed-out log and a gun is also re-used.
 

From "Africa Before Dark" (top) and the Mickey Mouse daily newspaper strips (bottom)

Also, story-sketches from the lost cartoon Hot Dogs reveals that gags are re-used in the comic strips.

Not specifically mentioned in the book, but we also get to see sketches from The Banker’s Daughter, another lost cartoon. Those sketches were used as reference for the design of Mr. Whiskers and his clothes in Just Like Magic (check out my old blogpost about this story)
 

Mr. Whiskers in cartoon sketches and the comic story

***

As an endnote I’d like to show something else I got about a year before the book was released. One day I came across the magazine pictured below while browsing online. And it’s not every day you come across a Disney Oswald magazine, so I just had to get it even if I can’t read a word Japanese!

Inside there are pictures of a lot of Oswald merch and a few pages dedicated to the cartoons with still images and sketches.

 

My immediate thought was that I wish there was a book like this in English, with background information about all the Oswald cartoons. And what happened… soon after the book was announced, and now I have exactly what I wanted!