Disney Digests: Lacuna Matata

 

                      Walt Disney Comics Digest #36 (August 1972)

                    Walt Disney Comics Digest #37 (October 1972)

                   Walt Disney Comics Digest #38 (December 1972)

                    Walt Disney Comics Digest #39 (February 1973)

                       Walt Disney Comics Digest #40 (June 1973)

The Comics Digests were shrinking in length, down to 160 pages from the 192 pages of Issue #1. Why was there such a big lacuna in publishing from February to June? Were they just gearing up and building suspense for that 50^th Anniversary business? All I can tell you is that I remember 1973 as a very ‘tinny’ sort of year, the year the Sordid Seventies really began to show their nature. We had none of these issues, and today I only have #37 and #40. Why the abrupt radio silence at the time? Perhaps inflation was starting to pinch; perhaps the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ ban on ‘worldly fun’ was cracking down in the family. That Christmas issue certainly wouldn’t fly under the circumstances!

Kurt Russell at the time was another one in Disney’s stable of young actors, in this instance meant to appeal to the teen crowd. His compromise appearance of a ‘wholesome hipster rebel’ made him an acceptable figure to a more cautious if still somewhat defiant middle class who wanted to know 'the kids were all right'. The future Snake Plissken made his way through such romps as The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Barefoot Executive, and, as shown here, Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (among many others), modestly confronting all stuffy authority figures and making himself Disney’s top star in the Seventies.