Four Color #4

History

Dell's Four Color series had opened in 1939 with Dick Tracy and a handful of other newspaper-strip characters, and by early 1940 the publisher was actively expanding its Disney licensing with Walt's studio. The strips reprinted in this issue were drawn by Al Taliaferro, the Disney staff artist who had championed a solo Donald Duck newspaper strip since the late 1930s and who drew it from its February 1938 debut until his death in 1969; the gags were scripted primarily by Bob Karp, Taliaferro's long-running creative partner, while the cover was produced by Tom Wood and the Grand Comics Database credits also list Floyd Gottfredson as a contributor to the interior content. The GCD notes that detailed credits for the issue derive from Alberto Becattini's scholarly 'Disney Index – Dell Comic Books' volumes published in Italy in 1992 and 1994, reflecting how much of the early production history required decades of archival reconstruction.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Published February 1940 by Dell Publishing (Four Color Series 1, issue #4); cover-dated title: Walt Disney's Donald Duck.
• Recognized by Key Collector Comics and multiple reference sources as the first appearance of Donald Duck as the main character on the cover of a standard-size American comic book.
• Interior content consists of approximately 134 reprinted daily newspaper strips drawn by Al Taliaferro and written by Bob Karp, the creative team behind the strip since its February 1938 debut.
• Cover art credited to Tom Wood; interior credits also include Floyd Gottfredson, per GoCollect and QualityComix — though the precise extent of Gottfredson's contribution is not detailed in available sources.
• The issue is part of Dell's Four Color Series 1 (issues 1–25, 1939–1942), a distinct run from the much longer Series 2 (1942–1962) that would eventually exceed 1,000 issues.
• The Donald Duck newspaper strip reprinted here was, at the time of publication, one of the fastest-growing syndicated comic strips in history — King Features promotional material claimed it was picked up by 203 papers in 12 weeks.
• This issue directly preceded the 1940 launch of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, which also relied on Taliaferro's Donald Duck strip reprints as foundational content, making Four Color #4 an editorial prototype for that landmark title.
• Starting in 2015, IDW Publishing's Library of American Comics imprint began releasing comprehensive hardcover collections of the Taliaferro/Karp Donald Duck daily strips, making the source material for this issue newly accessible to modern readers; five volumes had been released by 2019.

Full credits

Key issues in Four Color

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#25 1st appearance — Sea Hag

Variants (1)