Four Color #16

Against a moody cityscape bathed in yellow-green light, Mickey Mouse recoils in wide-eyed alarm as an enormous, shadowy figure — the Phantom Blot — looms over him with outstretched claws, while a camera tumbles from Mickey's hand. Carl Buettner's cover art captures the menace of one of Disney comics' most memorable villains with real dramatic flair, all packed into 68 full-color pages at just a dime. Floyd Gottfredson and Merrill De Maris handle the story, with inking by Ted Thwaites and Bill Wright — a talented lineup that makes this 1941 Dell issue a genuinely exciting artifact of the Golden Age of American comics.