Unknown British print of "Christmas on Bear Mountain"

Nothing is more irritating than to buy a second hand comic only to discover that some of the content is missing. Usually this is soon forgotten, but one case has been bugging me for years!

As part of a lot, I got this British Mickey Mouse comic published by World Distributors.

World Distributors #13

The front cover was taped on and the back cover was missing. And to compensate for the missing back cover two random page leaves from another comic was taped on (!)

Extra pages taped on at the end

I already got another copy of this comic, so at first it didn’t bother me that much. But curious as I always am, I tried to figure out where the extra pages came from, and that’s where the mystery started.

The stories are easy enough to identify. The Mickey one is The World Under the Sea from Dell Four Color/One Shots #194, and the one with the ducks is the Barks classic Christmas on Bear Mountain. The page numbers are 59, 60, 63, 64 and judging from what pages of the stories they are, both stories seems to be from the same comic; printed after each other. I tried to do a search in the I.N.D.U.C.K.S. database, but no comics are known to have both these stories printed. At least not in English.

While trying to solve the crime done to this comic, I noticed the word "jolly". That got me thinking "did Barks really write that?"  Comparing to the original he sure didn’t, and the dialogue is clearly changed to be more British.
 

British dialogue compared to the original

So, like the issue the pages are taped on to, the extra pages are probably from a British publication too and not from an American import. The dialogue change got me even more curious. Now it’s not enough to just know where the mysterious pages came from, I really want to read the British dialogued version of the story too!

I suspect it’s printed the late 50’s or in the 60’s. The fact that the comic has more than 64 pages got me to think about Giant Super Mag, another British series from this period.
 

Giant Super Mag

But based on size and paper type I think I have to rule out any unknown issues in that series. If anyone got an idea about what comic the orphan pages are from, please let me know!

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Update Feb 25, 2016: The mystery is solved, check the comments! Apparently the pages are from a British book called The Walt Disney Treasure Book, published by Odhams Press.

The lettering in this book was partly used to restore "Christmas on Bear Mountain" for Fantagraphics’ Carl Barks collection, resulting in one British word being included by accident.
 

The original Dell Four Color print to the left, Fantagraphics' restoration to the right

British classic in Donald Duck #371

IDW's Donald Duck #4 (#371) - Regular and subscription cover

I got Donald Duck #371 from my local comic shop today. But I won’t talk about the lead story this time, for that you can join the discussion on the translators own blog.

Instead I want to compare the old Mickey Mouse story in this issue to the original print in the British Mickey Mouse Annual.

Mickey Mouse Annual 1937

At first glance they look pretty much identical, only that the IDW print has been colored.

Here’s a photo of the first page if you want to compare with your own copy.

 
The story starts off with some minor dialogue changes and localization:

 But on the last page the changes are more significant. First, there’s a new speech balloon and dialogue for Goofy.

 And the purpose of this new is dialogue is to censor and rewrite the original gag, because in the original Goofy seems to have something completely different in mind for that poor little kitten…

 But the biggest change is in the last panel. Two of the originally four nephews are edited out of the art! Probably because in modern stories Mickey only have two nephews.

I can certainly understand why this gag story had to be censored, and I can understand the reason for attempting to fix a continuity problem with the nephews. Still, I’d rather have these oldies reprinted as close to the original as possible. Or not reprinted at all if they require this kind of editing. I guess the reason for printing the old British gags is mostly to show rare old material to new readers, and not to have a great story told. But I’m not sure IDW succeed in doing that when they make changes like this.

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Mickey’s nephews first appeared in Floyd Gottfredson’s 1932 Sunday serial “Mickey's Nephews “. In that story there are only two of them, and with one exception Gottfredson never used more than two in his comics. The exeption is “Rumplewatt the Giant” a Sunday serial from 1934 that (partly) adapts the 1933 animated short “Giantland”. And that is also the first animated appearances of Mickey’s nephews. But Gottfredson only penciled that story.

In the “Giantland” short we can see 14 nephews, while in “Rumplewatt the Giant” there’s a total of 9.

From the beginning of "Giantland" (1933)

From "Rumplewatt the Giant" (Mar 18, 1934)

 Wilfred Haughton however was happy to use more than two in his comics. And for those reading modern stories wondering where all the other nephews went, Haughton might have a solution for that too! In a 1935 rhyming story he starts off with “Ten little Mickey’s”, then kills them off one by one until two remains, ending the rhyme with “That is only natural, at least there must be two. If we ran out of Mickey kids what would the artist do?”

Page 1 and 5 from "10 Little Mickey Kids", British Mickey Mouse Annual 1935