Sometimes the unexpected stands out: a black and white cover amid a field of full color stands out. Western Publishing had a policy that used to bother Carl Barks when it was decided that the size of the body of the main character on each comic book cover had to be drawn a certain percentage of the total surface area. An early issue of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories had on it only Clarabelle Cow. Maybe it didn’t sell as well, but collectors do tend to remember it today. Gladstone published an Uncle Scrooge album reproducing an oil painting in a horizontal wrap-around for the front and back cover, the front showing only two nephews, while the back had the third nephew, Donald and Uncle Scrooge. It worked! Now -- for the first time in Disney comics history -- no characters are shown on the front of DDA #20 except for small silhouettes of the ducks in a canoe. What you see of Donald is a half inch high and Huey, Dewey and Louie … only 3/8ths inch! The uncredited cover art for this story is virtually lifted from the first panel of the classic Carl Barks story inside, “Darkest Africa” (see panel one, ninth page). The color is also uncredited, but we’re sure it was by Susan Daigle-Leach. “Darkest Africa” is the famous 22-page Donald Duck adventure in which Don and the boys are hired to go to Africa to capture an Almostus Extinctus, rarest of butterflies, but run into an evil collector, Professor Argus McFiendly and a tribe of cannibals. (First appeared in the giveaway, Boys and Girls’ March of Comics #20, in 1948.) A rapidly declining and an extremely limited quantity of this special comic remains in stock.
$25.00