Wednesday, October 31, 2012

"Witch Hazel"

I must apologize in advance for the fact that our Mystery Halloween Climax kinda bites.  But hey--you can't win 'em all, can you?

At any rate, this story may be of interest simply because it's the most obscure thing I've ever covered on this blog: a 3-D Cheerios giveaway from 1954 that has never been reprinted anywhere ever.  Unlike most Western Disney comics, you can't find these things online, but I bought a copy of this on ebay and scanned it for The Masses.  Here! Enjoy!  I can verify that if you can rustle up a pair of old-school red/blue 3-D glasses, you can indeed see the 3-D effect, even on a screen (pro-tip: view the images at a fairly small size; blowing them up makes it harder to see properly).  In fact, if you don't have the glasses…well, as you can see from the images in this entry, they're not literally illegible, but they sure don't look too great.  If you're desperate, you can try painting one of your eyes red and the other blue, but I will not be held responsible for the consequences.

Now, primitive and gimmicky though it may be, I nonetheless find the 3-D effect quite cool.  Which is good, because…well, I seem to have an irrational tendency to assume that because a story is rare, it's also going to be good.  That assumption, to put it mildly, does not hold up in this case.  The story is by those stalwart workhorses Strobl and Fallberg, but neither of them were particularly on their game in this instance.  Apart from the 3-D, this thing is really Historical Interest Only.


I have a strong tendency to want to think of this story as being entitled "Donald Duck and Witch Hazel," but ultimately, I think it works on the same principle as "Donald Duck in X," in which "X" is the only part that we generally assume counts as being THE title.

Anyway, it's not even a Halloween story in any but the broadest sense.  Really, the only connection to our holiday theme is the second-ever appearance of Witch Hazel.  What's especially interesting about this is that this is--as far as I know--the only other Western comic in which she's actually referred to as "Witch Hazel."  Dave Gerstein notes this peculiarity of Western's way back here, and theorizes that it may be because the company didn't want to mess up name recognition for Little Lulu's Witch Hazel.  That seems plausible, but if so, this one slipped through the cracks, or else just appeared before there was any official policy.  Who knows--maybe it was only with this story that it occurred to the powers that be that Hazel could be a recurring Disney character and thus instituted said policy in the first place.

As you will see if you download the comic, the word "spelunking" comes up a lot here.


Yup--looks like someone had a word-a-day calendar.


So what's wrong with this story in particular?  Well, it's one of these things: there's nothing glaringly egregious; it's just that it essentially goes nowhere and features very thin, unconvincing, and generally unlikable characterizations of everyone involved.  And it doesn't do at all well by Hazel.


Caaaaave exploraaaaaation.  That's what takes up most of this story, with minor mishaps like this, which are really, really none too interesting.


And…here's Hazel herself.  She's doing "experiments."  What kind of experiments?  Shut up, that's what kind.


She tries to pull a trick or two, but it's all feeble, uninteresting stuff like this; there's none of the energy and brio of "Trick or Treat"--cartoon or comic.


And then, HDL take her wand and we get the deeply unappealing image of her breaking down and begging for mercy.  Nobody needed to see that.  Note that there's no indication in the story that the ducks remember knew her from their previous meeting.


And then, after she agrees to help them out, Donald is a major dick about it.  Of course, he was also a major dick in "Trick or Treat," but there are different kinds of dickdom, some of which fit the character, some not so much.  This clearly falls in the latter category.


More begging.  This whole thing is just such a train wreck.


And I would like to think that this was intentional trickery on Hazel's part, but given the overall tenor of the story, I very much doubt that that was the intent.  

So there you have it!  Boy, that was anti-climactic, wasn't it?  Let's take a brief look at the weird little Cheerios ad that accompanies this thing:


Not that all of those "our cereal will make you into a great athlete!" ads aren't pretty ridiculous, but at least if you're talking about baseball or football, you can see how the process would theoretically work--but the idea that Cheerios are somehow going to help you shoot straight?  Um…you'll need to show your work on that one, guys.  Maybe they're implying (shades of Metal Gear Solid) that they're laced with diazepam.  Sure, that'll hunt.


Here's the sort of thing sure to induce groans among collectors: back in the day, you coulda had a complete set of twenty-four of these 3-D comics for the price of seventy-five cents and three boxtops.  Even adjusting for inflation, that's dirt-cheap.  Whereas these days, if you can find such a set, it'll run you hundreds of dollars.  Yowch.

(Seriously, if you, by hook or by crook, obtain complete scans of this series and send them to me, I will kiss you on the mouth.  Tongue optional.  This is a standing offer.)

As you may recall, during Disney's publishing days, they made a brief--very brief--foray into publishing 3-D comics.  That resulted in this (also some Roger Rabbit thing, but I can't bring myself to care about that), which printed 3-D versions of a few Barks/Rosa/Van Horn/Gottfredson things--a sort of greatest-hits medley.  Given that it's numbered, I can only assume that it was meant to be a continuing series, and given that no further numbers were forthcoming, I can only assume that it was a dismal failure.  It's still pretty cool, though, and this presumed failure too bad--if the series had continued, they could mayhap have reprinted some of these old stories.  No, this one isn't very good, and my confidence regarding the quality of the others is not high, but it would still have been a really historically nifty thing to do.  Oh what might have been.

I'm out!  Happy Halloween, everyone!

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8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

In case you'd want more unpublished stories, here's a list of such stories up to 1979:

W CHES 1-01 --: Chesty and his helpers (10p.) (1943-03) [us/CHES 1-01]
W AGW 1-01 PP: (14p.) (1953) [us/AGW 1-01]
W AGW 1-03 PP: Further adventures of Peter Pan presented by Admiral (15p.) (1953) [us/AGW 1-03]
W KGA 1-01 PIN: Pinocchio learns about Kites (8p.) (1953) [us/KGA 1-01]
W CTD 1 3-01 HDL: The Fabulous Inventors (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 1 3-01]
W CTD 1 4-01 MM: Secret of the Ming Vase (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 1 4-01]
W CTD 1 6-01 MM: Moaning Mountain (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 1 6-01]
W CTD 1 7-01 DD: Apache Gold (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 1 7-01]
W CTD 1 8-01 MM: Flight to Nowhere (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 1 8-01]
W CTD 2 1-01 DD: Treasure of Timbuktu (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 2 1-01]
W CTD 2 3-01 DD: The Magic Cows (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 2 3-01]
W CTD 2 5-01 DD: Mystery Ship (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 2 5-01]
W CTD 2 6-01 MM: Phantom Sheriff (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 2 6-01]
W CTD 2 7-01 DD: Circus Adventure (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 2 7-01]
W CTD 2 8-01 MM: Arctic Explorers (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 2 8-01]
W CTD 3 1-01 DD: Witch Hazel (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 3 1-01]
W CTD 3 2-01 MM: Darkest Africa (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 3 2-01]
W CTD 3 4-01 MM: Rajah's Rescue (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 3 4-01]
W CTD 3 5-01 DD: Robot Reporter (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 3 5-01]
W CTD 3 7-01 DD: In the Foreign Legion (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 3 7-01]
W CTD 3 8-01 MM: Airwalking Wonder (27p.) (1954) [us/CTD 3 8-01]
W ADA 1-01 BR: Ice Cream for the Party (14p.) (1955) [us/ADA 1-01]
W ADA 2-01 CIN: Fairest of the Fair (14p.) (1955) [us/ADA 2-01]
W KGA 4-01 BR: A Kite Tail (16p.) (1955) [us/KGA 4-01]
W RIG 1-01 --: Adventure in Disneyland (13p.) (1955) [us/RIG 1-01]
W ADA 5-01 --: Johnny Jingle's Lucky Day (14p.) (1956) [us/ADA 5-01]
W OS 964-02 --: The Hardy Boys in The Secret of the Caves (31p.) (1959-01) [us/OS 964-02]
W OS 1260-02 --: The Horsemasters (32p.) (1961-11) [us/OS 1260-02]
W GPSB 4-01 DD: Missing Mine Mystery (12p.) (1961-12) [us/GPSB 4-01]
W GPSB 4-06 DD: Using the Old Bean (14p.) (1961-12) [us/GPSB 4-06]
W KAB 1-01 DD: The Litterbug (14p.) (1963) [us/KAB 1-01]
W WOADV 2-01 --: Johnny Shiloh (21p.) (1963-07) [us/WOADV 2-01]
W MOC 258-01 --: The Sword in the Stone (14p.) (1964-02) [us/MOC 258-01]
W WDCD 26-19 Captain Nemo: Mr. Malison's Mansion (10p.) (1970-12) [us/WDCD 26-19]
W WDCD 36-20 Captain Nemo: Isle Of The Lost (10p.) (1972-08) [us/WDCD 36-20]
W WDCD 38-21 Dimwitty: The Spotted Polar Puss (10p.) (1972-12) [us/WDCD 38-21]
W WDCD 43-09 AMJ: The Cake Caper (8p.) (1973-10) [us/WDCD 43-09]
W SCGK 20-04 SC: Hero First Class (8p.) (1974-11) [us/SCGK 20-04]
W SCGK 23-02 SC: Suds In Your Eye (7p.) (1975-05) [us/SCGK 23-02]
W SCGK 29-01 SC: The Growing Bone Hill (9p.) (1976-05) [us/SCGK 29-01]
W SCGK 31-02 SC: The Well-Dressed Pup (7p.) (1976-09) [us/SCGK 31-02]
W SCGK 31-04 SC: Junkyard Guard (7p.) (1976-09) [us/SCGK 31-04]
W CDGK 45-01 CD: Thumpy-gram to Gramps (9p.) (1977-03) [us/CDGK 45-01]
W CDGK 46-01 CD: Forest Raiders (8p.) (1977-05) [us/CDGK 46-01]
W SCGK 39-01 SC: Lost and Found (7p.) (1978-01) [us/SCGK 39-01]
W SCGK 43-01 SC: To the Rescue (8p.) (1978-09) [us/SCGK 43-01]
W WDS 49-01 --: North Avenue Irregulars (32p.) (1979-03) [us/WDS 49-01]

Unfortunately, the list does not include stories such as W WDC 24-08 which were only reprinted as small excerpts and are still very rare.

François (http://coa.inducks.org)

November 2, 2012 at 1:03 PM  
Blogger Pan Miluś said...

Yo Geox! I love to read youre articles so much I made a FAN-COMIC I dedicated especially for you :D


http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/3647/funnystory.jpg

Hope you enjoy it!

Yours
Pan Miluś/Maciek of Poland

November 3, 2012 at 6:54 PM  
Blogger Pan Miluś said...

This comment has been removed by the author.

November 3, 2012 at 7:05 PM  
Blogger Pan Miluś said...

Better scan (page split in two) :

http://img248.imageshack.us/img248/5272/funnystory1.jpg

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/4374/funnystory2.jpg

ENJOY :D

November 3, 2012 at 7:09 PM  
Blogger GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

Wow--I've never had anyone dedicate art to me before.

Thank you for that; I find your sense of humor bizarre and appealing.

November 3, 2012 at 8:19 PM  
Blogger Pan Miluś said...

Glad you like it!

If you like that check out my Uncle Scrooge fanfiction :

http://panmilus.blogspot.com/2012/08/niesamowite-przygdy-wujka-sknerusa-in.html

Has some good in-jokes ;)

November 4, 2012 at 4:34 PM  
Anonymous Duckfan said...

Say GeoX, could you review Barks' "The Great Wig Mystery" someday? There's a lot to say about it, from 60s Barks weirdness to the biggest lying jerkass Barks ever invented. I'd love to see you rant about him.

November 6, 2012 at 11:15 AM  
Blogger Jennifer Walsh said...

I thoroughly enjoyed your blog about "Witch Hazel." It's a fascinating read about the uses and benefits of this natural remedy. For those interested in trying it out, exploring "https://usepromos.com/" could be a smart way to find quality witch hazel products. Thanks for the insightful information!

September 11, 2023 at 9:50 AM  

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