Classic Comic Cover Corner (New Year Edition) – Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #88

Every Sunday morning we showcase a classic comic cover, complete with compelling commentary, for your cordial contemplation. It’s the Classic Comic Cover Corner!

Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #88 – January, 1948

Cover art by Walt Kelly

Woo hoo, it’s 2015! Per Back to the Future II we’re now only ten months away from flying cars and Jaws 19. (Come on technology – and Max Spielberg – let’s get with it already.) Here at the CCCC this marks the beginning of our third year of bringing you a weekly dose of classic and colorful comic book covers coupled with current (and captivating) pop culture commentary.

We’re starting off this year with Donald Duck and his mischievous nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, celebrating the New Year in 1948 on the cover of Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #88 (with art by Walt Kelly.)

Besides being a fun New Year themed cover, this issue of Uncle Walt’s namesake series (which is one of the longest running and most popular comic titles ever published) also introduced the world to Donald’s illogically lucky cousin, Gladstone Gander.

The good luck goose makes his first appearance in the Carl Barks WDC&S story, “Wintertime Wager,” where Gladstone and Donald have a bet that Donald won’t go swimming in a frozen lake, and if he fails, the ownership of his house goes to Gladstone. Fortunately Daisy Duck is around to remind Gladstone of his own ill-fated wager – drinking a couple gallons of lemonade or the house goes back to Donald.

Here’s hoping all of our readers have an incredibly lucky new year, and that you avoid bad bets, frozen lakes and lemonade over-indulgence (or any combination thereof.)

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