Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #1 (1940)
Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #1 Review
The first issue of Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories was published in 1940. This was the beginning of this Disney anthology series.
This comic book has over sixty pages of content that includes a crossword puzzle, some trivia and most importantly as the title would suggest stories and comics. Let’s first talk about the stories. The Robber Kitten and Water Babies are the two stories here and both were quite forgettable. I actually quite liked both of these Silly Symphonies, but here they weren’t utilized best. The former fared a bit better as its classical storytelling was fun while the latter had good descriptive passages, but a slight plot.
As for Donald Duck, most of his single-page comics in this book are only solid. A couple of them are great, but most serve their purpose without being particularly memorable. The highlights were those comics that saw the duck getting punished for his misdeeds and it is always a lot of fun seeing him get angry.
This book would have been pretty slight without the main comic that made it worth reading alone. Goofy’ll Try Anything Once! is a tremendous story for sure. In it, Mickey and Goofy encounter a flying car while flying in their helicopter. The mystery of how this car is operated and who is driving it was genuinely intriguing and this first half of the story is where it was truly enchanting. The story ended with Peg Leg Pete abducting the gang and the scientist to steal his plans. It concluded with a terrific cliffhanger and Pete was such a great foil here. The illustrations were at their most creative and colorful in this story.
