Buried Treasures: Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 275

Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #275 (August 1963)
"Necessity May Be the Mama of Invenshun..."
George Stallings-Dick Moores

"Ghostly Confession"
Pencils - Nat Edson

Doug: Totally out of my comfort zone today, friends! A couple of weeks ago as I was continuing the Great Purge that has been the reduction of my collection, I came across three comics that I'd forgotten I had -- primarily because I was given them only several years ago and cannot recall from whom! They never made it into my longboxes, but had been stored separately. So here is some new fodder for today, and maybe for future Monday reviews. And by the way, this has shaped up to be a "Buried Treasures" week, with three more posts in this category to follow. Enjoy your visit to your hosts' archives!

The Grand Comics Database was a wonderful resource to find out a bit more about this comic. While credits for the entire book's contents are incomplete, it did help to answer some basic questions. My first query was about the Ducks story -- and yes, it was by Carl Barks. It's a 10-page farce with Donald trying to make a million and failing miserably... until his nephews bailed him out and saved the day.

The second tale is 4-pager starring Lil' Bad Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf, and of course the 3 Little Pigs. It was a cute little story featuring a plot by Lil' Bad Wolf to thwart his pop's plans to eat the Piggies. In the end, the Big Bad Wolf is saved by the Piggies from being eaten by a gator!

After a one page text story featuring Mickey Mouse, we come to the first of two stories I'll feature today. I chose this one simply on the grounds of Disney's ban on the sale of Song of the South - to my knowledge, it was released on VHS in the 1980s and/or '90s but has never been pressed to DVD. Presently, it is available on YouTube. I recall seeing it in the theater as a child, and when my kids were little we had a Disney Sing-a-long Songs videotape that featured Zippity-do-dah. In later years Song of the South has come under heavy scrutiny for its use of racist stereotypes. The 2-page story below (read across the two scans - there are three full rows of panels in the story) features characters from that film. Personally, I found about as much enjoyment reading the dialect in this story as I did attempting to read Tom Sawyer in high school (which would be none!). But overall I don't see anything racially offensive in this strip (no Tar Baby... yikes!). Note: all scans used in today's post were enhanced with photo software. The comic book from which the scans were made is pretty faded!

I also decided to include the full 5-page Zorro story. When I found the book and saw Zorro on its cover, I had hoped that I might stumble upon an Alex Toth production, but such was not the case. But the story was good, with an ending we've seen before and with quite a bit of action squeezed into such a short space. In a modern comic, this would have filled a six-issue arc and would be packaged as a trade paperback!

The book concludes with an 8-page Mickey and Goofy adventure and a 1-page Scamp feature. The Mickey and Goofy story features the boys on a mission to find Inca gold. Black Pete is along to complicate matters, and the story is actually continued to the next issue -- something I didn't expect. I guess I always viewed these humor mags as pretty much self-contained.

Below is a series of gags that readers could submit. This page immediately followed the Zorro yarn. While there aren't any knee slappers, there are a few in there that made me smile as if I was a little kid. But then, that's the mindset one may have to have when reading a comic like this. And when I could remind myself to do so, I had a pretty good time. It was good enough to make me want to, at some point, dig into the other issue of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and the issue of Bugs Bunny that were "found" alongside today's book.

Discuss: Pulp Heroes

Doug: During my recent trip to Washington, DC, I used my Kindle and the flight time to devour (for the third time) Jungle Tales of Tarzan. I chose that because it is a collection of short stories and I knew I could down it during my allotted four hours of air time. Of course I take the racism of Burroughs' day for what it is/was and move on from there. A few days after I got home, while on the treadmill, I watched an episode of The Lone Ranger. It, too, had racist overtones: "Some man in a white hat and a redskin!" was one line. But I don't really want to get bogged down in the unsavory aspects of our past. Rather, let's have a conversation on these pulp heroes who persist to the present in their various incarnations. Take this any direction you want to - favorite iterations, multiple media representations, actors and/or comic book creators, etc. But be sure to have some fun before you leave.

The All-Day Face-Off

Doug:  It's been awhile since we've done a Face-Off post.  Today, how about if we just run a collaborative discussion, where anyone who wants to comment can leave a thought or two on a previous suggestion, and then leave a little food-for-thought of his/her own.  You can expound on your Face-Off suggestion if you want to, or just leave a topic behind as you leave.  Hopefully we generate a nice, organic conversation with many either-or considerations to carry us through our Sunday.

Doug:  I'll start by tossing out several topics, some of which we've previously dealt with.  You can give your two cents on my list, and then be sure to give a query of your own.  We ran a Face-Off a long time ago on the Inhumans sisters, Crystal and Medusa.  Of course the focus of that one was "who was the better substitute for Sue Richards during her time away from the Fantastic Four?"  I'm personally still partial to the Crystal/Johnny romance, but will readily admit that Medusa was on the team when I became a regular reader.

Doug:  We've run posts recently on the Lone Ranger and on Zorro.  Who ya got?

Doug:  Lastly, Neal Adams at Marvel or at DC?  For me, this one comes down to what I consider outstanding storylines at the House of Ideas, but pretty pictures inside some occasionally ham-handed tales over at the Distinguished Competition.  While I love looking at his GL/GA stories and of course his Batman work, it's the grandeur of the "Kree-Skrull" War and the last-gasp awesomeness of his run with Roy Thomas on the X-Men that put Adam's Marvel work over the top for me.

Doug:  So, feel free to give a thought on any or all of my topics, and then be sure to leave one or two of your own.  Thanks!

Discuss: Zorro