TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Sixteen: AT LAST!!!

Staggering winded and achy across the finish line of this sixteen-post marathon, it's time to keep a semi-promise I made earlier in this (gasp!) sixteen-count-series... TOP THREE COVERS, finally  - naming a THIRD cover to join THIS ONE...

...Which shared co-honors with the one below, both by Bugs-master Tom McKimson (... and both counting as a single-occupant of one of those precious three slots - yes, I'm doing TWO-INTO-ONE here, but I was never very good at math)! 

And, of course, THIS magnificent Batman cover by Neal Adams! 

An image so strong, so powerful, so awesome, that you don't even bother to question why Batman remains masked... and "pants-ed" for that matter!  

And, while all of these had great stories backing those covers, they were primarily selected on the sheer brilliance of the covers themselves!   

But for that final slot, I find myself looking beyond strictly images, getting into the story it illustrates and the significance of said story - simultaneously noting that the cover is great in and of itself!  

So, without further ado (and "further a-don't", even) my list of  TOP THREE COVERS - in no particular order - is rounded out by (...pause for effect, while we cue the drumroll)...

DONALD DUCK in LOST IN THE ANDES by the great Carl Barks (originally published in 1949 by Dell Comics, as part of their unparalleled-in-comics-history FOUR COLOR SERIES!) 

...But, NOT the original printing as seen above!  No, the one that means much more to me is its first American reprint in THE BEST OF DONALD DUCK #1 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: 1965)!

While it has a little less detail than the original FOUR COLOR cover, I feel the BLUE background served the illustration far better than the garish orange of the Dell version!  You can take your pick! 

But, as I indicated, it was what this version REPRESENTS that makes it special!  

Walking up the corner street to the nearest soda fountain store that carried comics with my aunt (not the one with the nice house - but the "more fun" one who lived off-and-on with us) on a Friday early evening (knowing there was no school for two whole glorious days) and finding this on the rack!  I was so excited, I didn't even WANT a fountain soda!  I just wanted to get this baby home, and leap into it!  

...And finding it to be (what *still is*) my choice for THE SINGLE GREATEST COMIC BOOK STORY OF ALL TIME!  THIS POST can tell you why, and spare me the additional marathon-depleted-effort!   

And so we name THE BEST OF DONALD DUCK #1 our well-deserved and final (whew!) cover number sixteen! 

Now, if you'll excuse your exhausted and beleaguered host, I'm going to completely self-dissolve in a pail of liquid human-goo!  If any portion of me remains, those parts (once congealed) will be back soon!  

TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Fifteen: Preposterous Puppetry!

A gimmick often used by Silver Age DC comics was the "TRANSFORMATION", where DC heroes would somehow be (all together now) transformed into some... rather unusual form of themselves, making for an eye-catching cover image.  

Why it happened and how it was overcome was secondary to the image itself, which was often said to be handed to the poor writers who were tasked with writing a story around the bizarre looking covers!  

While virtually every DC hero underwent this sort of publisher-mandated metamorphosizing, the ones who... um, "carried most of the weight"...

...And sometimes carried it literally, were THE FLASH and JIMMY OLSEN! 

.

I've never done an official count (...and probably never will... Horrifically Busy, you know) but THE FLASH and JIMMY OLSEN just seemed to have more of these experiences than the others, and of a wider variety too! 

But there was one FLASH transformation cover that, for the sheer outrageousness of its execution, outdid all the rest!  In fact, it's become a legend among Silver Age DC aficionados.  It is  (...pause for effect... Say, can you actually "pause for effect" when you're WRITING?  It's not as if the reader is going to stop reading and hold his or her breath, simply because you said so! Did any of you really do it?)  ...THE FLASH #133 (DC Comics, Cover Date: December, 1962)!  

Abra Kadabra was a recurring Flash villain, and responsible for a share of Barry (Flash) Allen's strange twelve-cent era transformations!  

A flamboyant showman, Abra Kadabra was a common stage magician - but from the 64th century!  He had no actual magic powers but his mastery of 64th century science and technology seemed like true magic and sorcery to the masses of the comparatively backward, primitive 20th century.  

And it was with such amazing future-tech that he performed his evil miracles... including turning The Flash into a PUPPET!  

Now, the very image of it was outrageous enough, even for Silver Age DC, but what really puts it over the top, and into a class of its own is Barry's line of thought-dialogue!  

I mean, it's not like Bugs Bunny saying: "Did ya ever have da feeling ya was bein' watched?"

Because, at different times and in different situations, we all HAVE been watched!  

...But how many of us have ever been "TURNED INTO A PUPPET"?  

I'd figure that. even if I *DID* live in the Silver Age DC Universe (...which made my kid-hometown look like Mayberry, USA -- or I lived in TODAY'S DC Universe, which makes the *Silver Age DC Universe* look like Mayberry, USA!), there'd be little chance of my ever "being turned into a puppet!" 

I mean, how would you KNOW you were "being turned into a puppet!" 

What would it even FEEL LIKE so that, without being near a mirror, you could just sense that you were "being turned into a puppet!" 

If merely looking at your own arms and legs, it could probably - and more likely - be an ordinary, run-of-the-mill Silver Age DC transformation... like being turned to wood!  

In fact, that even happened to him at least ONCE!  ...And it would account for any stiffness he'd be feeling in his arm and leg joints!  

But nope, this month's metamorphosis is unapologetically of the puppet variety! 

...And, if YOU ever get "the strangest feeling that YOU are being turned into a puppet", please let me know what it feels like!  I've been wondering about it for years!  

For all I know, perhaps I *HAVE* been "turned into a puppet" for some time, but no one could summon up enough nerve to tell me!  "Say, doc, about this stiffness in my joints... Oh, just get some rest and take a few pills, eh? Oookay! ...And why have all the MIRRORS been removed from my house?  The car's kinda tough to drive without those rear and side-views!  How do you explain all these STRINGS in my clothes closet? ...Long shoelaces?  I guess..."

So, for its SHEER AUDACITY (...and because we puppets gotta stick together) our Cover Number Fifteen goes to THE FLASH #133... with (wait for it) "no strings attached"! 

...WHAT? You're STILL WAITING?  That WAS the joke! 

 TELL 'EM, FOGGY!  ...Aw, skip it! 

JUST ONE MORE TO GO, AND I'LL BE FREE... FREE... FREE!  F-R-E-E!!!  ...Ya know, maybe I just might miss doing this!  

TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Fourteen: "OG We There Yet?" Part Two!

Yesterday we highlighted DONALD DUCK # 109 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: September, 1966), and its lead adventure story "Og's Iron Bed"... but hold on to your "iron bedsheets", 'cause we ain't done "OG-in'" yet!  

Let's review a few historical facts about this book, and the day I acquired it...

A bi-monthly Gold Key title, as was DONALD DUCK # 109, with a  SEPTEMBER cover date would have been released in JULY.  Therefore, I would have come across this issue in JULY, 1966. 

And, in July, 1966, I would have been delightfully on summer vacation from THIS STRUCTURE...

...Back when it had REAL doors and windows, and no attending dumpsters!  

In those primitive and barbaric - yet, paradoxically, warmly nostalgic - days, comic readers (...we weren't FANS back then, we were READERS - and stop READING on my lawn, ya pesky young'un) were at the mercy of the newsstand distribution system! 

Okay, maybe not as far back as THAT!  We're talkin' 1966 here!  But what a GREAT picture! 

I can count as many as FIFTEEN comics in that photo that are in my collection... one of which I just got last week!  You can probably guess most of them!  ...And, no... I never wore overalls and a beanie-type hat like that! But, advance it somewhere close to 20 years in time, and that could have been yours truly!  Single-digit-age me even kinda LOOKED like that... such an adorable little tyke!  Whatever could have gone so wrong!   

ASIDE TO SERGIO: That last paragraph is an example of the loopy and improvisational typing I referred to in another set of comments!  I just looked at the photo and began typing away, on the road to who-knows-what!  Didn't know any of that was coming... and only the vaguest idea of what's coming next... if that! 

Where were we?  Oh, yeah... newsstand distribution of comic books!  

Most kids looked forward to Saturdays and Sundays - and I was no exception - but MY favorite days of the week were Tuesdays and Thursdays!  

WHY?  Because on Tuesdays and Thursdays NEW COMICS were put out on the shelves and racks of small stores all across the (still safe, but inching toward eventual danger by 1966) town in which I lived.  Not only in my town were Tuesdays and Thursdays what we now call "an event", but anywhere else in my region that traveling to was possible!  By 1968-1970, I would be traveling by bus to the far corners of my region in search of increasingly elusive comics on almost a weekly basis - and those days (and those trips) began in me an interest in bus transportation that led me to being a local bus transit advocate today!  

From other accounts I've noted, the "Tuesday and Thursday thing" was sort of the standard for the release of new comics. 

It was one such Thursday toward the end of July, 1966 that, for reasons long forgotten, I was spending a nice summer afternoon at a nearby aunt and uncle's house, in a decidedly nicer neighborhood than my own - both then and now!  

Their house had a nice screened-in attached back porch with a large picnic table -- the very definition of comfort vs. the "uncovered brick fortress" we had at the back of our house!  Though I really did have many years of enjoying 1960s comics out on that "uncovered brick fortress".  And, on that Thursday in July, 1966, I would have a particularly memorable day-of-same in the "nice screened-in attached back porch with a large picnic table" at my aunt and uncle's house!

Earlier in the day we'd gone shopping. In their local strip mall center there was a newsstand store. As it was THURSDAY, I made sure to check it out!  ...AND WHAT DO YOU THINK I FOUND?  

Try THIS...

But even more amazing was THIS... 

And out on the SAME DAY, just like my 1965 experience with UNCLE SCROOGE #58 and THE FLINTSTONES #28, as detailed HERE!  

Only I didn't have to rush through them during my "home lunch period" and go back to school!  NOPE, I had the WHOLE AFTERNOON to enjoy these puppies... or perhaps "ducklings"?  

And, enjoy them, I did!  In the LAST POST, I described "Og's Iron Bed" as "one of the best - and most ambitious - Donald Duck stories of the period".  I dove into it first, and it well and truly lived up to my "future-hype"!  Vic Lockman and Tony Strobl's best collaboration, with the possible exception of their consumerism-satire story in THE JETSONS #2 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: April, 1963), discussed somewhere in the depths of THIS POST! 

However, THE BEST OF UNCLE SCROOGE AND DONALD DUCK #1 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: November, 1966) was nothing short of a magnificent gift from the Comic Book Gods!  

As the cover says, it did indeed reprint "Two Famous Disney Classics"...

"Back to the Klondike"... 

 Cover by Carl Barks. 

...And "The Ghost of the Grotto".

 Cover by Carl Buettner. 

Ah, but there was a THIRD "Famous Disney Classic" to be found in the pages of this 25-cent ticket to Comic-Readers'-Nirvana... Carl Barks' famous story of "The Land of Tralla La"!  The "Bottle Cap Corruption" story! 

And, needless to say, it was the first time I saw any of these great Barks stories!  

One funny thing is that Carl Barks' art had evolved so much over the years that, while I could tell that  "Back to the Klondike" and "The Land of Tralla La" were by the same artist, I thought that "The Ghost of the Grotto" was by a different artist entirely!  

...And that "Giant Robot Robbers" and the other "contemporary-to-1966" Uncle Scrooge stories I was then reading were by a THIRD different artist!  

Nevertheless, that was quite an afternoon out on my aunt and uncle's (all together now) "nice screened-in attached back porch with a large picnic table".  One that I recall so vividly to this day!  

Of course, with these two ever-memorable comics, it would have also made for a special day on my family's stark "uncovered brick fortress"!  ...Maybe even in some dingy alley, somewhere!  Yes, they were THAT great!  

Gosh, I hope that was enough "stream-of-consciousness-typing" to satiate Sergio!  :-) 

Finally, what could possibly put a capper on such a perfect day?  ...How 'bout THIS?  

It was a THURSDAY, in 1966, remember?  

That meant that, by the time I was deposited back home, there was a summer rerun (...remember "summer reruns"?) of Part Two of this week's installment of BATMAN to enjoy on top of all that great Duck stuff (...as opposed to "Stuffed Duck") 

 "Stuffed Duck"... That's ANOTHER JOKE, SON! 

Yeah, after a "joke" like that, I'd run away too!  

But, before you do, Dynamic Duo (Aren't you glad I didn't say "Before you DUO"?), stick around for one Bat-moment more as I name  THE BEST OF UNCLE SCROOGE AND DONALD DUCK #1 our Cover Number Fourteen!  

Wheee!  Only TWO MORE TO GO, and then I get my life baaack!!!  ...Haaaa-haaaa-heeeee-heeeee! 

TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Thirteen: "OG We There Yet?" Part One!

Welcome to TIAHBlog at 16 Presents 16 Covers -- Number Thirteen:  "OG We There Yet?" Part One! 

...Or "A TALE of THREE COVERS!"  ...And our "three covers" are now on the runway, so let's meet them!  

FIRST: From the year 1966... the Pinnacle of Pop Culture (at least if you're ME) hailing from Western Publishing, Poughkeepsie, New York, by way of Gold Key Comics, Los Angeles, California... PLEASE WELCOME...  DONALD DUCK #109 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: September, 1966)...

This prime specimen of Silver Age splendor contains the FIRST PRINTING of the Donald Duck adventure "Og's Iron Bed", one of the best - and most ambitious -  Donald Duck stories of the period!  

Heh! Being a "first printing" you might call it (...wait for it) ...the "OG" "Og"!  ...Get it?  

So "Prime-Silver-Age-y" was "Og's Iron Bed" that it was chosen for the Silver Age section of the Fantagraphics hardcover DONALD DUCK THE 90th ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION (2024)!

 

The cover is not reprinted with the story... BUT the original cover illustration is reproduced at approximately 3" by 3" in the book's Table of Contents -- marking the first time the original unaltered cover illustration has ever been reprinted in the USA!  

Oh, no... wait... there IS one tiny difference... the LITTLE BLUE CLOCK STAR (...If you were expecting a pun on "ROCK STAR"... sorry!) that is to the LEFT OF THE CRESCENT MOON  is missing!  Oh, well, ya can't win 'em all!  I guess we now have FOUR VERSIONS of this cover!  

 Sing it with me: "When you MISS upon a star..." 

Here's the GCD INDEX for DONALD DUCK #109!  ...With lots of recent additions made by yours truly, so, unlike like the comic, this index is NOT ...the "OG" "Og"!  Ya gotta milk these jokes for all they're worth! 

NEXT: With a noticeably different take on the same cover... ALSO from Western Publishing, Poughkeepsie, New York, by way of Gold Key Comics, Los Angeles, California... SAY HELLO TO... DONALD DUCK #198 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: August, 1978)...

Aside from many of the cover elements, including the title, moved around or outright eliminated to accommodate the (all together now) INTRUSIVE UPC BOX, the sides of this cover image are not cut-off or trimmed in this illustration... the original (you, know... the "OG" "Og") was simply WIDER and could display more of the vertical edges of the image.  ...Oh, and Gyro has BLUE HAIR! 

FINALLY: Rounding-out our cover competition, from Gemstone Publishing, Timonium, Maryland or York, Pennsylvania (they moved around a bit)... LET'S GIVE A WARM ROUND OF APPLAUSE TO... DONALD DUCK AND FRIENDS #342 (Gemstone Publishing, Cover Date: August, 2006)...

A THIRD variation that makes room for the (all together now) INTRUSIVE UPC BOX, but fakes us out by putting it on the back cover instead!  

I've spent so much time introducing our three contestants that it's time for bed (...another one of those late-night ramble-written posts that have become the hallmark of this series), therefore ("and to-wit", as Snagglepuss might say)... 

 ...You can read about their quirks and the reasons for their differences HERE!  

Now, eyeball 'em all in order and send your thoughts to our Comment Section.  

Sorry, later editions... but for our Cover Number Thirteen, we proudly select DONALD DUCK #109 -- the "OG" "Og"!

So, are we finished with "Og's Iron Bed"?  At this late hour, who can tell... Maybe yes... Maybe not-yes... Come back tomorrow and see!  G'night!