BRITISH MICKEY MOUSE POSTCARDS FROM 1935

I had very much wanted to buy this British Mickey Mouse postcard from 1935 off ebay, but unfortunately missed bidding for it. It was sold for a winning bid of 10.5 British pounds, an affordable price for such a vintage item with such a nice illustration in my opinion. Several more cards from the same series were also sold by the same seller. The below one fetched the highest bid at 25.8 pounds (app. 41 US dlrs), presumably because it was unused:
Close behind was this card which fetched 25.3 pounds:

And the below one, which should indeed be considered as highly collectible in my opinion as it features a mega-rare appearance of Patricia Pig, a supporting character from early Mickey Mouse cartoons, was sold for the winning bid of 22 pounds:
These cards were issued by the London-based H. Delgado Ltd. and carried the "By permission: Walt Disney - Mickey Mouse Ltd." tag. With the exception of the Patricia Pig one, which has been re-drawn from one of the illustrations in the illustrated story book The Adventures of Mickey Mouse (1931), the illustrations are very much in the style of the color plates of British Mickey Mouse Annuals. Those annuals are known to be the work of Wilfred Haughton 'though I am not 100 % certain if it was also Haughton who drew the color plates as well as the interiors; if so, the illustrations on these cards are also probably the work of Haughton. Any opinions are welcome..

BRITISH DEBUT OF DONALD'S NEPHEWS

Donald's nephews first appeared in a Sunday strip in the US newspapers on Oct. 17th, 1937. They were created by Al Taliaferro, Disney's Sunday strips artist of the time. By the time the first strips with the nephews were reprinted outside the US, they had already returned to their home after staying on with their uncle for six consecutive Sundays in the US newspapers (*). In the UK, Donald's nephews were first heralded at the bottom rim (see above scan) of the back cover of the no. 98 (dated Dec. 18th, 1937) of Mickey Mouse Weekly. The art on this slim herald, by an unknown British illustrator, is rather substandart, but it is somewhat historically important for being the first non-American rendition of the nephews. Nevertheless, talented British artist Wilfred Haughton used them in his cover illustration for MMW no. 100; below scan is of the portion of the said cover with the nephews
...and below image is of the full cover:
And here is the first strip with the nephews as reprinted in the color central pages of that issue:The same issue also featured a puzzle with British-made illustrations of Donald's nephews (along with Mickey's nephews):

(*) Donald's nephews would return to Donald's home in daily strips in 1938 for "just a few days", but stay on indefinetely.

RARE BRITISH DISNEY ITEMS

This British-made lead figurine, with a detachable head, was recently sold on ebay for a winning bid of 1,000 British pounds!.. The seller dates it from 1939.
Meanwhile, the below tray and plate set with beautiful illustrations was sold for a winning bid of 367 British pounds. The seller gave no date estimate, but it is almost certainly from 1930s. If I was rich enough, I would have loved to get this set; I am not sure, but I think the illustrations might be the work of leading British Disney artist Wilfred Haughton who had worked on merchandise art before embarking on a cover artist career for Mickey Mouse Weekly for which he is better known for.

On the other hand, the below Donald Duck plate from Britain's Wadeheath was sold for a winning bid of app. merely 14 pounds:

And finally, the below British knitting book from 1950 was sold for the openining bid of 4.5 pounds:

FIRST MICKEY MOUSE ANNUAL (1930)

The first Mickey Mouse Annual, published by London's Dean & Son Ltd, is of great significance in the history of Disney publications. Published possibly around Christmas of 1930, it is the first-ever Disney book published for retail, a Mickey Mouse Book which had come earlier in the same year in the US having been printed as a give-away for promotion purposes. Furthermore, this MMA marks the first-ever appearance of Disney comics produced for publication other than newspaper syndication.

The annual opens with the below color plate...

...opposite this title page:

Oddly, there is no reference whatsoever to any affliation to the Disney company in either this title page or anywhere else in the annual that I could spot (most subsequent British Disney publications would include a tagline about "permission from the Walt Disney Mickey Mouse Ltd.").
While the larger figure of Mickey is copied from a US cartoon poster, the small Minnie figures at the bottom of the title page are taken from a model sheet produced by Disney to be utilized in creation of graphics on misc. items. See post dated March 30, 2009 from http://vintagedisneymemorabilia.blogspot.com/ for some info on this sheet as well as further examples of its utilization in MMA, including the figures in the below introduction page:

Below is the scan of the first gag page (acc. to David Gerstein's index at inducks, it is "partly made up of US clip art").

This is in a format close the comics format in the sense it includes more than one 'panel', but, in my opinion, would qualify only as a 'pseudo-comics' because while the the panels are sequential in a sense, they are not in the same diegesis (ie. the event depicted in the second panel is not of the same plane of reality as of the first panel).
The subsequent page on the other had features the first gag in the 'proper' comics format:

The artist on this, and most of the other comics pages in MMA, is Wilfred Haughton, best known as the artist of the highly acclaimed cover illustrations of Britain's Mickey Mouse Weekly onwards from its inception in 1936 till circa 1940. Haughton had been working on Dean's MM Annuals prior to his assignment to the MMW project. The bulk of the first MMA consists of such gag-a-page comics. Below follows a sampling of my favorite ones or those which I find interesting for various reasons:

I find the above gag noteworthy for two reasons. First, the side-line inclusion of a secondary humour element in the monkey silently stealing Mickey's food in the second panel is remarkable. Furthermore, producing a gag about women's fear of mice personified in Minnie's such fear is, on one had, ironic since she is, after all, an andromorphized mouse, and, on the other had, significant in showing the degree of internalizing the andromorph nature of Minnie (and Mickey).

The below gag is interesting in its inclusion of proper human beings into Mickey's world, which is out of line with Disney comics in general:

For my taste, I personally find the two below gags some of the funniest in this annual:

Unfortunately, MMA also includes some rather distasteful gags as well:

Even if the majority of the gag-comics in the first MMA can be assumed to be the work of Haughton, there were clearly more than one artist working on the comics in this publication. Below is a sample with markedly different and far more cruder graphic style:

In addition to gag-a-page comics, the first MMA also includes several gags in the format of non-panelized illustrations accompanied with text. The below one is interesting because it features Minnie's "papa", which we never see or even hear about in US comics:

Several of these non-comics gag pages incorporate illustrations from the US Mickey Mouse Book, such as the below one (see the post on MMB from Nov. 22, 2008 on this blog for a comparison with its original US edition):

The first MMA ends with this advertisement:

However, in addition to the first one at the very beginning, there are three more color plates throughout the annual: