Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales

"Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales" was a weekly syndicated comic strip that ran from July 13th, 1952 to February 15th, 1987 and serialized (usually in 13 weeks) the Walt Disney movies that were currently in theatrical release. I grew up a huge fan of the Disney live-action comedies of the 1960s and '70s -- especially the ones starring Dean Jones, Kurt Russell, Tim Conway and Don Knotts -- but only had limited exposure to the comic strip because the newspapers in my neck of the woods never carried it. I caught up with some of the stories when they were reprinted as comic books in the "Walt Disney Showcase" series...


...but many of the films, like the nine sampled below, never appeared in comic form again after their initial newspaper runs. I'd like to see these and others get reprinted in color eventually (Jack Kirby's adaptation of THE BLACK HOLE would be a great way to kick off the series), but for now I'm satisfied with the black-and-white copies I've been able to track down.

X, THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES comic book

This comic book adaptation of Roger Corman's 1963 film X, THE MAN WITH X-RAY EYES was published not long after Western Publishing severed their ties with Dell and launched their own Gold Key imprint. As you can tell by the cover scan above, my copy has seen better days, but at least it's still in one piece. I don't think the artist watched the movie, because none of the characters in the comic resemble the actors who play them in the film.

A couple of sample pages...

"The Strange Body in the Purple Trunks"

Pictured above is issue #1 of The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis (July/August 1952), a comic book series published by D.C. Comics until 1957 (issue #40) when Martin and Lewis split up. The comic continued for another fourteen years as The Adventures of Jerry Lewis, ending with #124 in February/March 1971.

The following story, "The Strange Body in the Purple Trunks," is from issue #110 (above) of The Adventures of Jerry Lewis from February 1969.