I bought the first issue of Disney Adventures from a PayLess Drug Store in October of 1990 along with a box of Wheatables cheese crackers, which I munched on while reading the first half of it. The magazine got its hooks into me right away, but I remember being perplexed by one letter printed in the mail section, in which a kid magician thanks the staff for featuring him in an earlier issue. This was Issue 1! There WAS NO previous issue! What was he talking about?
He was talking about this:
ISSUE ZERO, I can't find anything out there on this issue, why it exists or where it was distributed. There is no price tag or barcode, so it was not sold in stores. I never saw it anywhere or knew of its existence until well after the widespread adoption of the Internet. Issue Zero was a giveaway, but....where was it given away? Readers, help?
UPDATE: According to reader Erased Paper, you had to get it from eating Corn Flakes, and not by reaching inside the box -- you had to send for it.
What makes this extra-fascinating is that Disney Adventures Issue Zero is on the surface a "preview," yet contains entirely original content that was never repeated. This applied to the comics as well. It's also 128 pages, the size of a regular issue -- no skimping here. This was quite a freebie for those who found it.
Having a lost issue of Disney Adventures is nice. It's like uncovering a lost piece of my childhood. Now all I need is Wheatables to return. Come on, Keebler, get your elves moving.
When you open the issue, you get an ad for DuckTales The Movie, which must mean this was distributed at least two months before the release of Issue One. I don't know when The Little Mermaid hit videotape but I'm assuming it was around the same time frame.
The first opening letter from editor Tommi Lewis doesn't end with "Adventure On," but that didn't happen in Issue One either. That issue ended its opener with "Look out" and this one ends with "Hang on." It took a while to find the proper sendoff.
The "Passport" table of contents looks identical to what we'd get on newsstands, and MOST of the departments are there. Big Adventures is the most glaring omission, and there's an extra department called "Face" that didn't make the final cut. "Pocket" appears in this preview and that one didn't show up in the regular run until Issue Six. And just to be a stickler, "TaleSpin" is misspelled.
It's insane how much work went into the first year of this magazine. Corners would eventually be cut, but for a while, the volume of content you got for $1.95 (or free, in this case) was unbelievable. At twice the page count of a Cricket, this was the heftiest kids mag you could get at the time and it could keep you busy for hours.
And despite the name, the majority of text articles had nothing to do with Disney at all -- they were simply things the writers thought kids would find interesting. The exception is this little bit called "Inside Disney" that was also missing by the time the mag officially launched.
Well, the mystery thickens...perhaps there could have been a letters page in Issue One if there was an Issue Zero, but where are the letters in Issue Zero coming from?? The third letter provides a hint...Disney must have asked some schools to write to them in advance.
The first few issues of this magazine had comics with painted backgrounds under cel art, which looked amazing, and again...THIS is the amount of effort they put into this. They did not even rerun this comic -- a lot of kids (including me) never saw it!
In "The Chaos Coin Catastrophe" Scrooge McDuck is counting his money and realizes he came up one coin EXTRA -- which never happens. He has an eidetic memory of the history of every coin he ever hoarded, except for this one -- and it has his face on it! To get to the bottom of this mystery, Scrooge travels to the tiny island of Usayvus; which was mentioned on the coin. He finds that even though the inscription says he's a "hero," the villagers don't want him there. So how is all this explained?
This way: Scrooge traveled to Usauvus in the past to bury some of his money so the Beagle Boys couldn't find it. The villagers told him this was actually the sixth island they've had to relocate to, as the previous five all experienced volcanic eruptions shortly after they got there. Scrooge figured out their "sacred rock" was actually a meteorite that disintegrates stone, which destabilized the islands. Scrooge offered to take the rock off their hands, and they carved it into a coin with his face as a way of thanking him. Then they wiped his memory, to make sure he would never return to Usauvus with that coin.
Having recovered his memories of this incident, Scrooge apologizes and agrees to leave once more. Then he drops the coin into a volcano so this can never happen again. It's the first of THREE comics in the issue with caricatures of native tribes that wouldn't fly today.
"Street" was eventually renamed "Ticket" and focused on showbiz news, but not yet. In this prototype the section is about baseball cards, silly putty and other low-cost items on the kiddie market, with material about movies and music shoved to the back. No celebrity interviews yet, which would become the marquee feature. In a brief sentence on Super Mario 3, they misidentify Mario's occupation as a "spy" -- that's a new one on me.
CHIP 'N DALE RESCUE RANGERS: CAUGHT IN A FLASH
Dale is running around with a camera, annoying everyone by taking constant pictures of them with a high-powered flash bulb. He turns out to catch Fat Cat's henchmen trying to break into a bank, and now they're after him because he has the only evidence. The Rangers play a game of keepaway with the cats as they try to grab the camera. Eventually Dale has the idea to disorient THEM with the flash bulb, so they can be captured. On the last page Gadget finally has the chance to tell Dale what she couldn't at the beginning: there's no film in the camera.
The "Backpack" section is identical to what it would be...stories about nature and history from around the world. This is one of those sections that was sneakily educational, but they bizarrely recite the fable of the Pied Piper in one article as if it really happened.
DUCKTALES: THE RELIC RACKET
The Beagle Boys have dressed like Native Americans and are selling stolen ancient relics to people. Shame on them. Even worse, Scrooge seems to be interested in the deal because he wants to re-sell them at a huge markup. I thought this guy was supposed to be relatively good? It's the nephews who morally object, insisting the artifacts belong to the descendants of the tribes who created them. An indigenous goose shows up to scold the Beagles for their crimes, but they just tie him up and keep digging for more relics. The boys and Webby come up with the Scooby-like plan of posing as ghosts and scaring the Beagles into leaving. It works on them pretty easily, but not Scrooge, who recognizes his nephews right away. He's about to leave with the relics when the old goose shows up again, and convinces Scrooge he is stealing. Scrooge repents and returns the relics, and the goose vanishes -- he really WAS a ghost.
The one and only installment of the "Face" department is the one where the aforementioned kid magician showed up. There's also a profile of a helicopter traffic reporter and two pages of photos of kids playing in the street. Altogether it's not that interesting, which is why it was dropped.
"Cyber," the science / technology department, is another section that didn't really change. I've spoken in the past about my favorite childhood toy, the Video Painter, which was initially released in 1991. I didn't discover until recently that Sony beat VTech to the market by one year with a similar device. Being first doesn't make you the best though...it had slightly fewer colors and less special features. I used my Video Painter for many years and it turned out to be good training for the digital future.
RESCUE RANGERS: UNDERMINING SCHEMES
It's Monterey Jack's worst nightmare: his favorite cheese store is all out of the stuff. The other Rangers think that's odd and sure enough, their iinvestigation uncovers Fat Cat's henchmen have hired a gang of moles to dig a tunnel under Monsieur Rodant's Cheese Shop and swipe his inventory. The Rangers foil their scheme by sticking a water hose into their tunnel and flooding it. Monsieur Rodant rewards the team with cheese, which Monty is all too eager to devour.
Still waiting for Gummi Bears? Not happening. There was never a Gummi Bears comic in the magazine, not even here. Maybe it was viewed as a dead show walking since it would be the first to be dumped once Darkwing showed up the following year. But there was a new season coming, one that debuted on TDA to get the series to 65 episodes. It could have benefitted from a little promotion.
"Impulse" was what they called the sports section, though true to its name, it was mostly about extreme sports. Gymnastics, monster trucks and the history of skateboards are all covered in Issue Zero, along with a brief blurb mentioning this new invention called "rollerblades." Wonder if it'll catch on.
TALESPIN: MISSION MAYBE SORT OF A LITTLE IMPOSSIBLE
Realize that, at this point, TaleSpin wasn't on TV yet. This was the first introduction anybody had to the characters in the series, and probably the first time the writers of this comic were introduced to it as well, which is why this story feels a bit off (and so does the color of Baloo's fur).
Baloo, Kit and Rebecca are flying to a remote island to locate a plane that a billionaire lost. What they find is Don Karnage, who has convinced a native tribe he is their leader and Baloo is their enemy. Karnage doesn't talk in the flamboyant manner we're used to, and the Sea Duck is DESTROYED in this story (I mean completely, beyond repair). They're able to escape because they found an old war plane they were able to get working. Turns out that's the plane the billionaire was looking for and they're rewarded handsomely, and they use the money to build another Sea Duck. Baloo is rather attached to his plane in the TV series and if the writers had been a bit more familiar with it, it might not have been treated as disposable.
Like I said, we wouldn't properly see the "Pocket" section for another six issues, but the content here is the kind of content the final thing got: articles about food, and short stories. There are sandwich recipes, a blurb about the history of money that could have gone in "Backpack," and a story called "Mary Louise and the Alligator."
For a VERY long time, the last thing you saw in a Disney Adventures magazine was the puzzle section. It varied in length...there were some issues where it was like half a page...but it was always there up until the early 2000s when all the comics were gathered to one place at the end. Here, all the puzzle pages are black and white, which is...a choice. The puzzles in Issue 1 were in color. The most common type of puzzle, extreme close-ups of common household items, wouldn't become a staple for a while.
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And that's it -- that's the issue. But it wasn't the only giveaway. I've found two more that occurred in the fall of 1992 and the fall of 1993 (if 1991 got a free issue, I've yet to see evidence).
From what I hear, these giveaways were handed out at fast food joints like Burger King and they had the stamp of the region's affiliate that carried The Disney Afternoon (which could mean some kind of monetary transaction between said affiliate and Disney for the promotion). And this one's more in line with what a sample issue typically is: it's all reprint material from recent issues. The Culkin interview isn't new, the shark stories aren't new....but the exception is the Goof Troop stuff, which is.
There's a never-before-seen sixteen-page Goof Troop comic called "The Power Of Positive Goofing" starting on page 16. It was later reprinted in an issue of Colossal Comics Collection, a digest for Disney comics, and I originally assumed it was a rejected story DA didn't have room for.
Another sixteen pages in the middle are original articles and interviews about Goof Troop, mixed in with 100% local advertising. much of it from the affiliate. Also, two pages of Dairy Queen coupons, which was not something you typically saw in DA.
The last known one was from the fall of 1993 and followed the same template as the one before it. In fact, the feature comic featuring Bonkers isn't exclusive either -- it might've been new at the TIME, but it eventually ran in the regular magazine.
Bonkers looks kinda drunk there. Wonder if Mayim can smell his breath.
The only truly exclusive material is the Bonkers section in the middle which, again, is sprinkled with local ads, this time for a South Carolina regional clothing store caled "Belk." It was tricky doing an overview of a series that changed so radically mid-development. They just mixed up elements from the Lucky shows and the Miranda shows, because what else could they do? The feature comic is Lucky and Bonkers exploring the Rubber Room, which was a Miranda thing. Lucky never got to really go there.