Gottfredson original for sale, Del Connell dies.

If you like to get your hand on some original art by Floyd Gottfredson, now you can! As part of their internet auction coming Sunday, Heritage Auctions is now selling the original comic strip by Gottfredson from July 9, 1964 (YM 64-07-09). It's 17.75" x 5" (for us Europeans that means it's 45 x 12.7 cm). The bidding closes in two days, so you better hurry! (click the strip to get a really good look!) the strip is part of the period when Gottfredson was doing newspapers comics with Roy Williams. That was until 1968, when Del Connell (left) took over as storyman. Sadly, Connell just past away this month (August 12) at the age of 93. Just last July he was awarded with the Bill Finger Award for comic book writing at the San Diego Comic-Con International, which he couldn't attend because of his illness. Beside being a storyman for Disney, he also worked as an editor for Western Publishing on its Dell and Gold Key.

Connell started working at Disney in 1939 on feature animations ('Fantasia', 'Dumbo'). After serving in WWII he continued as a screenwriter on 'The Three Caballeros' and 'Alice in Wonderland' and a whole bunch of animated shorts. Working as an editorial director for 28 years from 1956 at Western, he created and wrote comics like 'Wacky Witch' (1971), the 'Space Family Robinson' with Dan Spiegle in 1962 and 'Super Goof' with Paul Murry in 1965. 'Space Family Robinson' was turned into the popular tv series 'Lost in Space' by producer Irwin Allen (which was the basis for the 1998 movie starring William Hurt and Gary Oldman). Until his retirement in 1988, Connell worked on the Mickey newspaper strips. The last strips were done with Mexican artist Roman Arambula and inker Bill Langley.