''Walt Disney Comics Digest'' was one of three

digest size Digest size is a magazine size, smaller than a conventional or "journal size" magazine but larger than a standard paperback book, approximately , but can also be and , similar to the size of a DVD case. These sizes have evolved from the printing ...

comics published by

Gold Key Comics Gold Key Comics was originally an imprint of American company Western Publishing, created for comic books distributed to newsstands. Also known as Whitman Comics, Gold Key operated this way from 1962 to 1984. Currently, Gold Key Comics is owned b ...

in the early 1970s. The other two were '' Mystery Comics Digest'' and '' Golden Comics Digest''. It was the first digest-sized regular Disney comic published in the US, and was very successful, offering relief from the company's slipping comic book sales. ''Walt Disney Comics Digest'' was published for 57 issues from 1968 to 1976. The contents consisted of both new material and reprints, mainly from the various licensed Disney properties published by Gold Key. Most focused on the Disney animated characters (

Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an animated cartoon Character (arts), character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime mascot of The Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red sho ...

et al.,

Donald Duck Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is known fo ...

et al.,

Junior Woodchucks The Junior Woodchucks of the World is a fictional scouting organization appearing in Disney comics and the '' DuckTales'' animated television franchise, most notably in adventures featuring Disney characters Huey, Dewey, and Louie as members. Th ...

Uncle Scrooge ''Uncle Scrooge'' (stylized as ''Uncle $crooge'') is a Disney comic book series starring Scrooge McDuck ("the richest duck in the world"), his nephew Donald Duck, and grandnephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and revolving around their adventures in Du ...

Gyro Gearloose Gyro Gearloose is a cartoon character created in 1952 by Carl Barks for Disney comics. An anthropomorphic chicken, he is part of the Donald Duck universe, appearing in comic book stories as a friend of Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, and anyone who ...

Chip 'n' Dale Chip and Dale (also spelled Chip 'n' Dale) is a cartoon duo of anthropomorphic chipmunks created in 1943 by The Walt Disney Company. Concept The characters were first drawn by Bill Justice and introduced in the 1943 Pluto short '' Private ...

, Scamp,

Peter Pan Peter Pan is a fictional character created by Scottish novelist and playwright J. M. Barrie. A free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythi ...

, etc.), but also included adaptations of live action Disney films and TV shows, such as ''

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (french: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. The novel was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre-J ...

'', ''

Zorro Zorro ( Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed as a dashing masked vigilante w ...

'', ''

True Life Adventures ''True-Life Adventures'' is a series of short and full-length nature documentary films released by Walt Disney Productions between the years 1948 and 1960. The first seven films released were thirty-minute shorts, with the subsequent seven films ...

'', '' Summer Magic'', ''

Kidnapped Kidnapped may refer to: * subject to the crime of kidnapping Literature * ''Kidnapped'' (novel), an 1886 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson * ''Kidnapped'' (comics), a 2007 graphic novel adaptation of R. L. Stevenson's novel by Alan Grant and Cam ...

'', and more. The new material was mostly drawn by

Paul Murry Paul Murry (November 25, 1911 – August 4, 1989) was an American cartoonist and comics artist. He is best known for his Disney comics, which appeared in Dell Comics and Gold Key Comics from 1946 to 1984, particularly the Mickey Mouse and Goo ...

Tony Strobl Anthony Joseph Strobl ( ; May 12, 1915 – December 29, 1991) was an American comics artist and animator. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio and attended Cleveland School of Art from 1933–37, with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who actually g ...

, Pete Alvarado and Al Hubbard, and featured characters from ''

Song of the South ''Song of the South'' is a 1946 American live-action/animated musical drama film directed by Harve Foster and Wilfred Jackson; produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. It is based on the Uncle Remus stories as adapted b ...

'', ''

Bambi ''Bambi'' is a 1942 American animated drama film directed by David Hand (supervising a team of sequence directors), produced by Walt Disney and based on the 1923 book ''Bambi, a Life in the Woods'' by Austrian author and hunter Felix Salten ...

'', ''

Dumbo ''Dumbo'' is a 1941 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The fourth Disney animated feature film, it is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl, ...

'', ''

Little Hiawatha ''Little Hiawatha'' (also called ''Hiawatha'') is a 1937 animated cartoon produced by Walt Disney Productions, inspired by the poem ''The Song of Hiawatha'' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. It does not appear to have historical correlation to legen ...

'' and ''

The Jungle Book ''The Jungle Book'' (1894) is a collection of stories by the English author Rudyard Kipling. Most of the characters are animals such as Shere Khan the tiger and Baloo the bear, though a principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, w ...

''. A new character, the cowboy hero Buck Duck, was introduced in issue #7 (Jan 1969), in the Murry story "When You Show Your Gums... Smile!" Buck, "the Last of the Good Guys", lived in the Old West town of Bootsville with his trusty horse Spot. Buck had a laconic personality who spoke little, and when he did speak he used terse sentences of monosyllabic words. The Sheriff was a cowardly fowl named Chicken Duck, and the love interest was represented by Calamity Duck, who owned a sarsaparilla saloon. Buck made five appearances in ''Walt Disney Comics Digest''; the last story, "Showdown in Dishwater Gully", was published in issue #42 (Aug 1973). Buck also appeared in a 1970 ''

'' story, and a 1977 ''

'' story. ''Walt Disney Comics Digest'' also featured six stories with the rarely seen character Glory-Bee, introduced in the ''

'' comic strip in 1969. Glory-Bee first appeared in ''Digest'' in "The Goofy Trap" (issue #33, Feb 1972); her final appearance in the comic was in "Hero for a Day" (issue #53, June 1975). Besides stories, there were various text features, including puzzle pages and Minnie Mouse's Hollywood gossip column, plus reprints of Disney's panel

comic strips A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st c ...

''Merry Menagerie'' and ''True Life Adventures''. Initially, the digest was 196 pages, but gradually shrunk until the last issues were 132 pages. As distinguished from standard comics, the digest was square-bound with a glued binding. In many cases, stories were reformatted to fit the digest format.

References

External links

*
Former Western Publishing scripter Mark Evanier's comments on the Gold Key digests and their eventual demise
{{Disney comics navbox Gold Key Comics titles Disney comics titles Comic book digests Defunct American comics 1968 comics debuts

See also

References

External links