"At the End of the Quest, Victory"

 

              Walt Disney Comics Digest #31 (October 1971)

This morning, quietly unheralded on this damp, gray day, the dream of decades was at long last fulfilled. For many years just a wistful, vague longing, I have today fulfilled my desire to own all fifty-seven issues of Walt Disney Comics Digest (1968 – 1976). I ordered this last volume, #31, on November 30, as soon as I could, in the wake of last month’s fiasco. I still haven’t heard from THAT company about my complaints; I probably never will.

But #31 is here now, and all is well. It features, of course, the familiar tale of ‘Captain Hook and the Buried Treasure’ which I read in comic book form in the 2^nd Grade, and later when it was reprinted in the Gladstone Digest series. It is the familiarity of the story that somewhat muddies the water of memory.

Did we have this digest in the past, or at least read it somewhere? There are a few stories that seem to ring a distant bell: Scrooge lets Daisy and the girls use a repossessed ice cream truck to sell their cookies with disastrous results, Bongo tricks Lumpjaw into hibernating early, while on vacation Donald loses his wallet and he and the boys try to live off the land (this one seems very familiar), Gyro uses a wand to hypnotize sea creatures to do his bidding at a water show, Chip and Dale help the Aristocat kittens do a little growing up.

Others, closer to the end of the book, stir no memories at all: Practical Pig builds a super-fast brick-laying machine, Pluto finds a fledgling bird, Gus Goose and Dimwitty Duck try to renovate an old hotel infested with ‘varmints’, Ludwig Von Drake tries to make Gus a more efficient farmhand for Grandma, Mickey tries to sleep through a shark attack at the beach.

There are the usual ‘real life’ features that I probably wouldn’t have been too engaged by: a short life of Sam Houston, an article about pirates, the adventures of an African lion.

Did we used to have it? The question remains, at least until I can get some corroborating evidence. But what is sure is that I have it now, that the collection is complete, and that I can heave a deep sigh of contentment over the completion of a childhood dream. Time, once more, to crumble into dust.