Reading Room DONALD DUCK IN DISNEYLAND "TomorrowLand" Conclusion

We Have Already Seen..

...the Disney cartoon characters are given total access to Disneyland the day before it officially opens.

Splitting up to visit the various sections, Mickey Mouse and his nephews Morty and Ferdie go to TomorrowLand and meet Gyro Gearloose, who rigs the Rocket to the Moon flight simulator to actually work!

On the Moon, they run into the villainous Black Pete who stole Gearloose's spare space-travel device...

Yes, it's the "It was all a dream!" plotline!

Written by Carl Fallberg, penciled by Tony Strobl, inked by John Liggera (all of whom had extensive experience working on Disney characters), this section of the 100-page 25 cent comic Donald Duck in Disneyland is a classic example of Disney's knack for cross-media marketing for promotional purposes.
In fact, it was so effective that, when DisneyWorld opened in Florida in 1971, most of this issue (including this chapter) was reused in Walt Disney Comics Digest #32 (1971) as promotion for DisneyWorld along with new material about the elements of the theme park that differed from Disneyland!

Note: the various Disney characters did not appear in the actual TomorrowLand theme park.

They're just used here to introduce Disney-oriented kids to the concepts promoted by the exhibits.

TomorrowLand the Movie

opens Friday!

Reading Room DONALD DUCK IN DISNEYLAND "TomorrowLand" Part 1

When DisneyLand opened in 1955...

...Dell Comics produced a giant-sized one-shot promoting the new theme park.

To Be Continued...

Written by Carl Fallberg, penciled by Tony Strobl, inked by John Liggera (all of whom had extensive experience working on Disney characters), this section of the 100-page 25 cent comic is a classic example of Disney's knack for cross-media marketing for promotional purposes.

Note: the various Disney characters did not appear in the actual TomorrowLand theme park.

They're just used here to introduce Disney-oriented kids to the concepts promoted by the exhibits.

TomorrowLand is coming...

With the new movie TomorrowLand opening this week...

...we're going to take a look at a classic comic used when Disneyland opened in 1955 (60 years ago) to promote the theme park attraction that inspired the new flick.

Note that the first things listed after Main Street and The Hub are the primary elements of TomorrowLand; Space Station X-1, Rocket Pylon and Autopia Freeway.

It was the only part of the theme park not based on previous movies, cartoons, or live action tv shows.

(However, the year it opened, the Disney TV series [also named Disneyland] ran several episodes dedicated to science and future technology.)

Tomorrow, join Mickey and his nephews as they are given access to TomorrowLand the day before Disneyland opens!

Design of the Week Redux USA IS READY!

Each week, we post a limited-edition design, to be sold for exactly 7 days, then replaced with another...unless it does really well, in which case we retain it for one more week!

This week: As hawks beat the drums of war against everyone from Iran to North Korea, we offer a kool cover from a one-shot comic produced just before we entered World War II...U.S.A. is Ready!
The book itself was re-presented on our "brother" RetroBlog War: Past, Present & Future several years ago.
You can read those posts HERE.
Besides being the basis of the perfect kitschy Memorial Day gift for the veteran in your life, it's a symbol of a time when we were ready to fight because we were the Good Guys and we had to oppose the Bad Guys simply because they were Bad and we were Good.
Unfortunately, since WWII, our military efforts have not always been for the right reasons.
And now, the same conservatives who created the current power vacuum in the Mid-East want us to go back and screw things up further.
But, let's look back on a simpler time when Good and Evil were clearly defined, and we knew that, eventually, we would have to enter a war we had no part in creating.

Reading Room FANTASY MASTERPIECES "Those Who Change"

We wind up this issue with a Stan Lee / Steve Ditko piece...

...that takes the old "if you time travel, don't change anything in the past" concept to an extreme!

This story from Amazing Adult (wonder why they left that out of the reprint credit) Fantasy #10 (1962) was actually a reworking of an earlier Stan Lee-written tale called "The Scientists" from Astonishing #9 (1952) which was longer and had additional plot twists!
You'll be seeing the original (ironically, never-reprinted) version sometime in the next two weeks.
As for this particular tale, since its' 1965 appearance in Fantasy Masterpieces #1, it lay unseen until 2005 when it popped up in Marvel Visionaries: Steve Ditko with additional reprintings in Amazing Fantasy Omnibus (2007) and Marvel 70th Anniversary Collection (2009)