Since I am really into creating lists right now, here is another one I am trying to put together: the Disney comic publications (meaning physical Disney comic books, not individual stories) with the most obscure main heroes. The title of the publication does not have to include the name of the hero. The three publications with the most obscure heroes I could find:
Can you name more with similarly or even more obscure heroes?
On a different note, I am trying to expand on my list of Disney comics that are completely original in a sense that every character in them were created for those stories. This time including non-comic printed material too.
1943 - W CHES 1-01: Chesty and his helpers (Can someone please confirm that all characters in this comic first appeared in this comic / were created for this comic?) 1943 - The Gremlins (the children's book by Roald Dahl) -> Is there any other non-comic Disney book that is completely original? (Yes, I know that Disney was working on a Gremlins movie with Dahl but it did not get made so this does count as completely original in my book.) 1958 - W DDCA 1-07: Shutterbug in Smile, Please (As noted before, according to Inducks "strictly speaking this is non-Disney", but the Disney logo appeared above the title. Does anyone know more about this?) 1961 - I TL 317-A: Codino cavallo marino 1969 - W WDCD 7-13: When You Show Your Gums...Smile! (the first Buck Duck comic)
Could it be that these 5 are the only "wholly original" printed Disney material ever?
Since I am really into creating lists right now, here is another one I am trying to put together: the Disney comic publications (meaning physical Disney comic books, not individual stories) with the most obscure main heroes. The title of the publication does not have to include the name of the hero. The three publications with the most obscure heroes I could find:
Can you name more with similarly or even more obscure heroes?
On a different note, I am trying to expand on my list of Disney comics that are completely original in a sense that every character in them were created for those stories. This time including non-comic printed material too.
1943 - W CHES 1-01: Chesty and his helpers (Can someone please confirm that all characters in this comic first appeared in this comic / were created for this comic?) 1943 - The Gremlins (the children's book by Roald Dahl) -> Is there any other non-comic Disney book that is completely original? (Yes, I know that Disney was working on a Gremlins movie with Dahl but it did not get made so this does count as completely original in my book.) 1958 - W DDCA 1-07: Shutterbug in Smile, Please (As noted before, according to Inducks "strictly speaking this is non-Disney", but the Disney logo appeared above the title. Does anyone know more about this?) 1961 - I TL 317-A: Codino cavallo marino 1969 - W WDCD 7-13: When You Show Your Gums...Smile! (the first Buck Duck comic)
Could it be that these 5 are the only "wholly original" printed Disney material ever?
Stories like "The Further Adventures of the Three Little Pigs!" (or, in general, the first story of any "universe", it there was not a character from other "universe" to make the introduction) count? (probably, even in these cases, sometimes some charecter already appeared in movie...)
On a different note, I am trying to expand on my list of Disney comics that are completely original in a sense that every character in them were created for those stories. This time including non-comic printed material too.
Say Hi! to Benny Bug, the main character of a very small universe for which (as far as Inducks knows) only two stories were created (Western in 1936, British in 1938), in whihch Benny Bug is happily riding around on either skates or a bike, together with three small beetles.
I wasn't sure if what follows still falls under your intention of the question, but I leave it here nevertheless; feel free to ignore.
A much more modern example, which comes with a complete franchise, is of course W.I.T.C.H., which is seen as a universe that for the first time could be created 'without limiting itself to capitalizing on properties generated from movies or television' (and not by the creative centres in the U.S.A.). Later one, a television series and a video game was made, but only four years later, so I guess that was not directly foreseen to be made, and this counts for your question.
Another similar example is Real Life, a 'global tween girl franchise created in 2014'. The franchise was brought to the public with a magazine with 12 issues, with each issue consisting of a three-part 54 pages story (forming one big continuity) and three editorial pages (like quizzes or background of the characters). Also in this case, no television series or something like that was made with the characters, and the comics are the character's true origin. It didn't become quite a success as W.I.T.C.H. it was meant to succeed, though, and no digital traces made by Disney leading to this franchise are left, it seems (only some by designers, as Kevin Ramirez.
(By the way, caballero: I really like your almost daily question for list!)
Last Edit: Aug 30, 2023 5:20:40 GMT by Pim: Real Life story codes added
Basically I am looking for Disney comics and books in which all characters were created for those stories and books. Also, I found three more and then dismissed them:
Why did I dismiss them if these are "wholly original"? Because I am not seeing the Disney logo anywhere on them. In other words, these are Disney owned, but not "Disney comics". (Just like the Marvel movies are Disney owned but not "Disney movies".)
EDIT: Pim You are right, W.I.T.C.H. could count even though I dismissed it above. On the other hand, unlike W.I.T.C.H., Real Life does feature the Disney logo on its cover, so it seems more like a proper Disney comic. (I wonder what the exact reasons for the Disney logo not appearing on the covers of the W.I.T.C.H or Kylion comics but appearing on the covers of Real Life comics are.) Anyway, all these (WITCH, Kylion, Real Life) seem too far removed from classic Disney comics for my personal taste so I want to selfishly dismiss them all!
As for Benny Bug, yesss, that does fit all my criteria! Never heard of it before. So the first Benny Bug comic is another "wholly original" printed Disney material. Btw, it's pretty funny that with Bucky Bug, Shutterbug and Benny Bug, there are three completely separate bug universes in Disney comics.
Second EDIT: According to this wikipedia page, Benny Bug isn't Disney material, but who knows? According to Inducks Shutterbug isn't Disney material either, but the Disney logo does appear above it's title. Also, the Benny Bug comics are indexed as Disney material on inducks, unlike the "Bobby & Chip" (also from the 1930s) strips for example.
1958 - W DDCA 1-07: Shutterbug in Smile, Please (As noted before, according to Inducks "strictly speaking this is non-Disney", but the Disney logo appeared above the title. Does anyone know more about this?)
A more closer look today revealed that on the first panel of the second Shutterbug story, 'Copyright, 1956. By Western Printing & Litho. Co.' is printed, suggesting that the publisher itself is the copyright holder. The Brazilian comic attributed the copyright for both stories to Walt Disney Productions though, but that is probably just a mistake on their side.
Basically I am looking for Disney comics and books in which all characters were created for those stories and books. Also, I found three more and then dismissed them:
Why did I dismiss them if these are "wholly original"? Because I am not seeing the Disney logo anywhere on them. In other words, these are Disney owned, but not "Disney comics". (Just like the Marvel movies are Disney owned but not "Disney movies".)
Disney bought Marvel of course only after that Marvel created their universe while the other properties you mentioned were created while being owned by Disney, so there is a difference.
But agreed, Disney was sued by the initial creators of W.I.T.C.H. for the rights, so that's an argument for saying indeed that it wasn't at least completely clear who owned the rights. The creators of W.I.T.C.H. also created the Monster Allergy series, at it seems that it was published by one of Disney's publishing subsidiaries, Buena Vista Comics, but I don't know who owns the rights.
(Kylion was published by the same publisher, Buena Vista Comics.)
For Real Life: this is was the colophon mentions about its development, if that helps:
Original project developed by Disney Publishing with the contribution of Barbara Baraldi, Paola Barbato, Micol Beltramini and Diana Tomatozombie
I consider this as Disney as the other similar franchises (Violetta, Soy Luna, Star Darlings), perhaps also because, as mentioned in your comment, a Disney logo appears indeed on the cover.
Similar to that Speed Loop Episodio Zero comic, Buena Vista Lab created (at least) two more independent graphic novels: Jungle Town, Century West, But I would not call those as Disney graphic novels, no, but as graphic novels that happen to have been published with the help of Disney.
As for Benny Bug, yesss, that does fit all my criteria! Never heard of it before. So the first Benny Bug comic is another "wholly original" printed Disney material. Btw, it's pretty funny that with Bucky Bug, Shutterbug and Benny Bug, there are three completely separate bug universes in Disney comics.
According to an auction, a 'near full page "Benny Bug"' comic strip has been published in volume 1, number 11 of the Mickey Mouse Magazine. This almost aks for a small comic book featuring those Disney(ish) bug stories!
Second EDIT: According to this wikipedia page, Benny Bug isn't Disney material, but who knows? According to Inducks Shutterbug isn't Disney material either, but the Disney logo does appear above it's title. Also, the Benny Bug comics are indexed as Disney material on inducks, unlike the "Bobby & Chip" (also from the 1930s) strips for example.
I didn't knew that Wikipedia statement! According to a blogpost, Bobby & Chip is a re-titling of Otto Messner's Bobby Dazer, and as such clearly non-Disney. We can perhaps state that it is Disney unless another legal entity can be find that owned the rights, but I haven't been able to find anything about it (but perhaps someone here owns a copy of the book by Becattini to which Wikipedia refers with this information in it?).
I feel that Jungle Town may belong to this thread. The cast is anthropomorphic animals of various species that, as far as I know, don't appear in any other production.
sim Jungle Town is a great find, but it seems to belong in the category of Disney owned but not "Disney comic". For example it explicitly shows dead characters in a way that they would not allow in "Disney comics": sobrecomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/jungle-town-2.jpg
Pim Even the first American printing of the first Shutterbug story attributes the copyright to Disney. This scan is tiny but there seems to be a Disney logo in the upper left corner.
That Duckfan The True-Life Adventures strips are based on a series of documentary films with the same title, so they do not count. As for those YF-coded Mickey comics with no reference to existing characters, what a great find! And thank you for bringing the No One character page on Inducks to my attention! One can find many interesting Disney comics with its help. I now spent over an hour doing various Inducks searches with using "no one" in the character field on the advanced search page. For starters, here is a list of all Disney comic strips (except the True Life Adventures strips, the Merry Menagerie illustrations and the various ZT-coded sunday strip adaptations) that have no (recurring) characters according to Inducks:
1. 8 Donald Duck dailies:
- recurring characters appear but are not visible: YD 79-07-05 (assuming that Donald is the one talking to the customer), YD 87-08-27, YD 91-08-07, YD 91-10-19, YD 95-01-23 (assuming that it's HDL under the snow, also, it's one panel, not really a comic), YD 95-06-24 Btw, it's interesting that Inducks list these as strips without any characters even though recurring characters do appear, they are just not visible. I like it though, had they listed the recurring characters on the pages of these strips, I never would have found them! So please don't change this practice, Inducks! - strip without any recurring characters: YD 88-11-28 - strip without any character (!): YD 41-12-25 How have I never heard about this strip?? This is incredible, I instantly fell in love with it and it has immediately become my single favourite Taliaferro comic and single favourite Disney gag-a-day strip ever.
2. 11 Mickey Mouse and His Friends daily strips (the ones The Duckfan linked to earlier):
- recurring characters appear but are not visible: YG 86-11-13, YG 87-02-16, YG 87-05-21 - btw, all three have only one panel, I don't count these as comics - strips without any recurring characters: YG 87-10-08, YG 88-11-07 - these only have one panel each too
4. 1 Winnie the Pooh daily:
- recurring characters appear but are not visible: YW 87-05-07
- recurring character appears but is not visible: ZX 77-11-20 - another strip without any character (!): ZD 89-10-08
Summarizing the above:
APPENDIX I: In 13 stories listed above recurring characters do appear but they aren't visible. There are the reasons for them not being visible: - 3 stips: they are in a doghouse - 2 strips: complete darkness - 2 strips: they are under snow - 2 strips: they are in a car - 1 strip each: they are in a hole, they are in a store, they are in a tent, they are too far away in planes
APPENDIX II: Characters in the strips in which no recurring characters appear: - 13: various animals - 1: bin men (YD 88-11-28)
Sorry for the very OCD comment, I had a lot of fun putting this together. Also, shoutout to Inducks for making these kind of research relatively easy. DC or Marvel fans for example don't have a search engine anywhere this great, so for them doing these kind of research must be far more difficult.
Pim Even the first American printing of the first Shutterbug story attributes the copyright to Disney. This scan is tiny but there seems to be a Disney logo in the upper left corner.
This is true—but it's evidently an error.
Shutterbug stories, drawn by Vivie Risto like the first one, continued to appear in every issue of Dell's Comic Album for awhile, including non-Disney issues, where they absolutely weren't attributed to Walt.
Ramapith Nooo, David, you have destroyed one of the three Disney comic bug universes! Hopefully Benny Bug isn't a similar case. And at least we have a new trivia: that first Shutterbug comic on Inducks might be the only comic ever that isn't a Disney comic but has the Disney logo on it in its first publication.
That Duckfan The True-Life Adventures strips are based on a series of documentary films with the same title, so they do not count. As for those YF-coded Mickey comics with no reference to existing characters, what a great find! And thank you for bringing the No One character page on Inducks to my attention! One can find many interesting Disney comics with its help. I now spent over an hour doing various Inducks searches with using "no one" in the character field on the advanced search page. For starters, here is a list of all Disney comic strips (except the True Life Adventures strips, the Merry Menagerie illustrations and the various ZT-coded sunday strip adaptations) that have no (recurring) characters according to Inducks
I always mix up the True-Life Adventures and Merry Menagerie comics. They both have animals and no characters! Any reason why you exclude the Merry Menagerie strips? They seem some of the most original of all, from a creation point of view.
I did a general search on stories with no characters, and I found a couple of interesting things.
There's also Four Color Comic 843, which is a Disney comic that doesn't seem to be based on their movies or TV episodes (unless they retitled an episode of Disney's anthology series).
Last Edit: Mar 27, 2022 21:46:50 GMT by That Duckfan
The copyright notice suggests that this was printed before in 1956. My bet is that is was published in non-DIsney Dell comic Gene Autry and Champion, issue 107 (or at least, that is the only one on GCD that matches the hero, page count and date; the title is unfortunately not indexed).
There's also Four Color Comic 843, which is a Disney comic that doesn't seem to be based on their movies or TV episodes (unless they retitled an episode of Disney's anthology series).
Google got me the following:
"Starting in 1957, copies of “Walt Disney’s ‘First Americans’” were available at the Book & Candle Shop on Main Street U.S.A., and the Disneyland Newsstand. The first published editions of this comic book magazine were contemporaneous with two other popular First Peoples-related Walt Disney Studio releases. Walt Disney Productions theatrically released “Navajo Adventure” (half of a Disneyland anthology episode, that was originally entitled “People of the Desert”, and which was the latest True-Life Adventures People and Places film). The publication’s release also coincided with the opening of Disneyland’s All-New American Indian Village (after the attraction was relocated to Frontierland, from Adventureland). This important piece of Frontierland history, is best remembered for its attempt to showcase the stories of peoples that were represented in the Disneyland Indian Village. These unique publications met a certain educational standard and wholesome tone, and were sold inside Disneyland during a time when comic books were held somewhat controversial and taboo."
That Duckfan The reason I excluded the Merry Menageries from the list of "wholly original" Disney comics is that I don't consider them comics. I have always believed a comic needs at least two panels. That Zorro comic without Zorro is pretty interesting though! I have found a couple others with the help of Inducks advanced search (Hero: Zorro, Characters who should not appear: Zorro).
Back to my previous comment about Disney comic strips with no visible recurring characters, I found a couple more:
- ZW 87-03-22: Sir Brian in castle - YX 88-06-22: Scamp in doghouse - YM 67-03-06: recurring characters visible but completely in disguise. - YD 83-04-29: LvD is invisible (unlike the other cases where characters are not visible becasue something blocks them from the view such as snow or a doghouse, in this case the recurring character is literally invisible). - YD 77-09-08: borderline case. Only recurring character is LVD's doctor who appeared in 1 other strip.
There could be more but only IF a non-visible recurring character is listed on a strip's Inducks page without any special appearance comment such as "voice only". Here is the updated summary of Disney comic strips without visible recurring characters (excluded story codes: YC, YL, YR, ZS, ZT): i.imgur.com/6toRd7a.png
To expand this topic a bit more, here are some strips which do feature recurring characters but only very minor ones (so no Ludwig Van Drake, or Morty and Ferdie):
YM-coded Mickey strips: - Li'l Davy - Jiminy Cricket - Goofy's parrot - Millie & her mom - Alvin - H.I. Presser Here is a list of the 16 strips with the above listed characters and without any major recurring character: [link]
Donald daily strips: - Fido from ZD 59-07-19: 5 strips
Winnie the Pooh strips: - Sir Brian and Sir Brian's dragon: unlike the above ones, these two very minor Winnie the Pooh characters really took off and appeared in over two hundred strips without the traditional Winnie the Pooh cast! This seems to be a truly unique phenomenon in Disney comic strip history. Btw, does anyone know if they have ever appeared outside of comics other than one Sir Brian And The Dragon children's book?
Some more noteworthy "no character" non-strip Disney comics too:
- an Italian one-pager with only kites (okay, a Beagle Boy appears in the first panel, but he is there only to hold the title) - Italian 10-pager in complete darkness, recurring characters are not visible - 3 "Berni and Schiri" Egmont one-pagers (D 10124, D 10126, D 10152). These came up because Inducks does not list the characters. Does anyone know more about these? Are these official Disney comics or not? - Duckmall. Has anyone read this? Does it really not feature any recurring characters?
Finally, I wanted to ask, are YD 41-12-25 & ZD 89-10-08 really the only two Disney comics which truly only feature inanimate objects? Has anyone found any others? (Btw, now that I think about it, these two might be the only two examples of narrative storytelling by the Disney company without any human/animal characters or animate objects in any media, not only comics!!)