Walt Disney's Christmas Classics

[hex]

Information about a new book collecting daily strips has been added to Amazon. The description says:

A Disney holiday gift book. The Disney Christmas newspaper comic strip was a yearly tradition from 1960 to 1987, running daily for the 3-4 weeks before Christmas. All 28 special holiday stories are collected in a book for the first time.

A delightful book for Disney fans of all ages. The Disney Christmas newspaper strip debuted in 1960 with "Peter Pan’s Christmas Story," in which Captain Hook tries to sabotage Christmas. It was such a success that new stories were created yearly, each self-contained, each featuring characters from another animated movie, and each leading up to Christmas Eve and Santa off to deliver his presents. The “Disney-villain-wants-to-spoil-Christmas” plot was exploited with inventive variations each year. Stories include “Cruella’s Very Furry Christmas,” “Snow White’s Christmas Surprise,” “Dumbo and the Christmas Mystery,” "Cinderella’s Christmas Party,” “The Three Little Pigs’ Christmas Story,” and many more.

It sounds like this book is going to collect the rare stories coded YC in inducks. But looking at the list there the series didn't stop completely in 1987, it just had a few years break and then was published from 1992 to 1997 again. The last years are a total of 143 strips and with a landscape format with 3 strips on each page it would be an additional 48 pages (a few more printed in parts and with intro articles). But it's possible to include all those stories too and have a book with about the same page count as the Donald Duck daily strips collection. So I wish they could have made a real complete collection of Christmas strips.

[Matilda]

Oooh, looking forward to this one, thanks for the heads-up! The only one of these I've read is Cruella's Very Furry Christmas, since that was twice reprinted with the comic adaptation of the movie (in the comic, and in the softcover CartoonTales series). And I like that one--a fine story for younger children especially. I've paired it with the Little Golden Book "Mickey Mouse Delivers the Christmas Mail' (recently reprinted classic) as a gift, since the Christmas Mail book shows the elves wearing little fur coats, and the Cruella story explains where they got them! (No, the coats are not made of puppy fur!)

[deb]

I would suspect that with the second series revolving around Beauty and the Beast, Alladin, Pocahontas and other (then) modern Disney films, they are part of a different license than the classic characters in the original Christmas newspaper strips.

[squeakyboots]

Might be a good idea to come up with a different title for this. There's already a book titled "Walt Disney's Christmas Classics".

coa.inducks.org/issue.php?c=us/WDCC+1

[niko]

Wow. Another great book to buy. I should start saving money now, there is so many good comics coming up by IDW.
What I would be looking forward to be published is: Mickey Mouse Sundays by Manuel Gonzales! This would be really great!

[alexoni97]

The book has officialy been released and it also contains the strips from 1992 till 1997. However it does not actually contain the story from 1986 (YC 8601) so it is not a complete collection. I do hope we can get an answer from David or somebody from IDW as to why this story was not included, leaving the collection incomplete.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Getting that one for Christmas with not a doubt. I've been trying to read these FOREVER.

[niko]

I would love to get those Manuel Gonzales sundays too. He was almost as talented as Gottfredson.

[hex]

Today I finally got this book in the mail too, but it came without a dust jacket. All other Disney-books under "The Library of American Comics" logo had one. Did any of you recieve a copy with a dust jacket?

[Matilda]

Mine has no dust jacket, either (ordered from Amazon on release).

I've read most of them, and so far my favorite is "Santa's Christmas Crisis" (1970), where the protagonist is one of Maleficent's Goons, who wants to stop being a bad guy and finds redemption by helping Santa. Disney creators can't bring about real character change in a major character: the good stay good and the bad stay bad, though the bad guys may be temporarily enchanted or forced into doing good. So it was clever of the author of this story to use a minor character who could actually change.

[squeakyboots]

My copy did not come with a dust jacket either.

[hex]

Dec 12, 2017 17:07:38 GMT Matilda said:

Mine has no dust jacket, either (ordered from Amazon on release).

Dec 13, 2017 1:25:09 GMT squeakyboots said:

My copy did not come with a dust jacket either.

Sounds like this book didn't come with one then, thanks for confirming that.

I haven't had the time to read much of the book yet, but it's great to finally have all these Christmas strips collected in a book! But I too wish they had made it complete by including the 1986 serial A Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah Christmas!. The reason might be because it features Uncle Remus and the controversies with Song of the South. (we still haven't seen a proper American home media release of the movie). But the book does have the "Publishers note: bygone era" note, so I think it would have been safe to include the serial.

Most of the content in the book looks like are from high-quality sources, but according to the credits some restoration work is done too. And ex. "Snow White's Sinister Christmas Gift" (1987) is not of the best quality. So not being able to acquire good source material for 1986 might be a reason too.

[squeakyboots]

It could just be that Disney doesn't want IDW releasing anything with Uncle Remus in it rather than IDW choosing to not include it. The bygone era note is something that I just assume they print in anything with content that old in it. I haven't read the whole book yet but there isn't anything in the earlier strips that I would think was politically incorrect by today's standards.

[Scrooge MacDuck]

Right! So as planned, I got it for Christmas, and just started reading it; and it's very nice, although there are a couple of stories whose plots don't really make sense. I liked the Von Drake story best for the moment.

[deb]

Dec 24, 2017 22:30:49 GMT Scrooge MacDuck said:

...there are a couple of stories whose plots don't really make sense.

You're not kidding. What some of them lack in logic or plotting, they make up for it in charm and Christmas cheer.