Well, maybe not exactly Separated at... "Mirth"... unless your idea of fun is being under attack by fireballs - but, for any of you Fireball Fanciers out there, we humbly submit...
DONALD DUCK #101 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: (May, 1965)...
...And WONDER WOMAN #99 (DC Comics, Cover Date: July, 1958).
And, while not a comic book cover, I'd be remiss if I didn't include this striking image from LOST IN SPACE, "Condemned of Space" (1967), with the Jupiter 2 narrowly avoiding a catastrophic collision... with guess what?!
All three are guaranteed to "light up your life" in their own unique ways!
8 comments:
I find it remarkable that these two issues in their numbering are separated by two digits. 101 minus 99 equals 2. But also if you add up the digits of 1958 you get 23, and adding up 1965 you get 21. 23 minus 21 also equals 2. I'm not that much at math, but this intrigued me on top of the intrigue already established with the comparison of the fireball covers. Throw in the months, 7 and 5 respectively, and you get 30 minus 26 which leaves 4, and 4 is twice 2. So, not only are we comparing 2 similarly-themed comic book covers, but the number 2 crops up frequently in the mathematics. No wonder Donald Duck spent so much time in Math-magic Land! No doubt Wonder Woman was a whiz at numbers as well.
This Donald Duck issue #101 is significant to me in other ways. This was one of the comics that I inherited from my cousin. I got it about a year after its original release. As soon as my cousin was "done" with a comic book, my aunt would pass it on to me. (I realize that people like us on this blog are never or at least rarely ever "done" with a comic book!). The content is really what grabbed me. This was the first I had ever known about Magica de Spell, and to this day I think the image of her in the clouds is one of the scariest images in comics, particularly in a Donald Duck comic book! I found her incredibly frightening in this story. Of course, later on I grew to enjoy her as one of the better class of villainesses. Then, later yet when June Foray voiced her on "Duck Tales"....but that's a whole other topic for another time! (or another dime?)
Even Barks’ cover couldn’t save “The Golden Iceberg”. I read that story in a Whitman reprint. Strobl’s art was up to its usual standard for the time period it was created in, but the story just wasn’t much.
Forgive the inattention to this humble Blog of late. A whole lot of mixed-bag things have gotten in the way!
We *may* be discussing more about that situation later – or, maybe not! …You never can tell with anything these days!
…BUT, HEY… WE’RE FINALLY GETTING REAL DISNEY COMIC BOOKS BACK – AND BY THE PEOPLE WHO DO THEM BEST! …GLORIOUS!
Now, let’s get to our (unusual as of late) backlog of comments!
Scarecrow:
My first reaction to the mathematical wizardry leading off your comments was that you might be channeling the truly (Extremely Overused Word Alert) “legendary” mathematical wizardry of my great (and, alas, late) friend Chris Barat!
…And, having never been a “math person”, left me just as glassy-eyed as he always did! That’s a COMPLIMENT, by the way! Oh, and of course Wonder Woman was “a whiz at numbers”! It’s an essential part of her rigorous Amazon training of mind and body!
“(I realize that people like us on this blog are never or at least rarely ever "done" with a comic book!)” That’s certainly true for me and my copy of DONALD DUCK #101, as it was another of those comics – and those circumstances – that I wrote about HERE!
Not only do I still have my original 1965 copy of it in my upstairs comic room today but, in 1972, it inspired a painting I did in high school art class – no ducks, but fireballs as best I could approximate them without (horrors!) having the comic with me in class! Further connecting that painting to my post, the Jupiter 2 from LOST IN SPACE also snuck into the upper left corner of the canvas. Perhaps I should do a post on that painting before… um…
At that time, I had relatively little exposure to Magica De Spell – probably not much more than from stories like ”Rug Riders in the Sky”, and had a not dissimilar reaction to your own!
The cloud image remains frighteningly memorable to this day, and the notion of Scrooge leaving behind a note containing his last instructions presages Captain Kirk doing so in STAR TREK ”The Tholian Web” (1968). In fact, I thought exactly that upon my first time seeing ”The Tholian Web”.
Despite what Deb says above, “The Incredible Golden Iceberg” was, and remains, one of my all-time favorite Donald Duck adventure stories that was not by Carl Barks!
Awww, Deb…
How about after all I said in praise of it? You know there was much worse… MUCH much worse – but unlike certain others we know, I’m not in the habit of gratuitously denigrating Western stories to (A:) make myself look “too cool for school” and (B:) to pander to a slavishly (and inexplicably to my generally polite and respectful sensibilities) devoted audience.
Give it another peek someday and let me know what you think! Ya know, I just might be pushing for it to be reprinted somewhere, now that it’s once again possible… We got my other favorite from that period, “Og’s Iron Bed”, reprinted and this one’s definitely on my list of Western stories to be revisited in modern print.
I happened to first read it after reading years worth of Barks, Rosa and others, having acquired my copy as part of a group of Whitman comics I bought in a Bruce Hamilton catalog. There are quite a few other Strobl stories that I am fond of, like “The Weighted Crate Mystery”, “Adventure on Bomb Bird Island”, “The Fabulous Fiddlesticks” and a story in which Donald decides to make his fortune by catching lobsters after reading a booklet from “Cap’n Jack”, who made enough money to retire…(but from selling pamphlets, not catching lobsters!). I could list more, but the titles escape me now. I may well have to reread the Golden Iceberg story at some point. “Og’s Iron Bed” isn’t really one of my favorites either, but it isn’t awful. In a strange way, I hope we get Tony Strobl’s art for “King Scrooge the First” in Fantagraphics’ Carl Barks library, as I liked his take on the art.
I don’t think that I’m “gratuitously denigrating Western stories”. Some of them that may not be masterpieces of comics storytelling are still fun, like Jack Manning’s Beagle Boys and Road Runner comics.
Ohhh, Deb… No! “NO!”, even!
I would never say that YOU were “gratuitously denigrating Western stories”! And my sincerest apologies if I gave any impression to the contrary! Nothing could be further from the truth!
I was referring to a certain other blogger in this particular lane, who (certainly in my opinion) takes delight in doing exactly that! I doubt I need to explicitly name the person in question!
The sad part of it is that he is not merely a good writer, but a GREAT one! A great one who squanders his talents by regularly indulging in a level of “MST3K” type foolishness that is sharply and deliberately aimed at the Western output when EVERY phase and era of Disney comics has its own collection of clinkers!
It is that repeated sort of self-inflating and indulgent behavior that has cost him my once enthusiastic admiration (not that possessing said admiration could possibly matter to anyone) and has relegated his works and his aforementioned great talents, at least in my view, to the status of an annoying, constantly buzzing small insect! But, to his credit, it must work for him, given his collection of loyal followers and high comment-count. Do they really thrive and rally ‘round his unprovoked servings of raw meat, I wonder? If so, perhaps it’s ME who’s living in “the wrong world”!
Maybe, given the dramatic increase in “less pleasant discourse” in politics and life in general, I might very well be blogging in an outmoded… er, “mode”! I put my own name on everything I write, while he works comfortably behind a pseudonym to lob low-balls at professional creators who have had long careers, while he has no such work in this arena, at least to my knowledge. Have *I* become the outlier, with my reputation for courtesy and respect for both my “audience” and those creators who laid the groundwork for so much that we still enjoy today?
Perhaps it is my own status as a working professional that fuels this attitude, but I *know* how it is to work under the sometimes-unfathomable dictates of IP or copyright holders, navigate the vastly different structures of various publishers, meet all deadlines (reasonable or otherwise), and simply hold a perspective that would seem alien to one whose online life appears dedicated to “making fun of things”! Those things being the honest efforts of men and women who have and/or do contribute to a field that appears to have eluded him.
Oh, sure I’ll put down certain things that are just SO EGREGIOUSLY BAD, such as the infamous “Bird Bothered Hero” or the equally unspeakable dialoguing of “My First Millions” with its “Legendary Super Pickax” – the latter example being all the more unforgivable for having been released in modern times when you KNEW the greater sophistication level of your readership! But, overall, I RESPECT the efforts of professionals who “did their jobs” – and did them well enough to have attained a level of longevity that this humble Blog (and that other not-so-humble-Blog) will never see!
I didn’t intend to go this long and this deep on the matter, but I wanted YOU to be absolutely certain that none of it was directed toward you! You remain a special friend to this Blog (for however long it may continue in this upside-down world), and to me personally!
I’ve always tended to celebrate the things we love and if, in this “not-so-brave-new-world”, it becomes a choice between “celebrate” or “denigrate”, I emphatically choose “celebrate”…for as long as we continue to hang on. Though, in terms of observable reader response, I fear “denigrate” appears to be winning the day – and I’ll quit before I change my course to THAT!
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