February 7, 1938 – The Daily Donald Duck Comic Strip Begins
“Come back and fight like a man!”
On February 7, 1938, the daily newspaper comic strip for Donald Duck began publishing. Four years after his premiere in the Silly Symphony The Little Wise Hen, the series was first written by artist Al Taliaferro, who had worked on the Silly Symphony comics in the newspapers. Taliaferro lobbied hard for Donald to get his own strip, and after a lot of hesitation from Roy Disney and the comic department, Taliaferro was allowed to make Donald a solo star in the Silly Symphony comics. These strips were popular enough to be collected in a 64-page comic book from Western Publishing; the book itself surprised everyone with the high number of sales. This first strip in the Silly Symphony comic to feature Donald, and begin the comic career of the duck, has a plot similar to the Mickey Mouse short film Mickey’s Circus, where Donald is trying, and failing, to command the trained seals.
