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!
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