Walt Disney's Peter Pan (comic)

Walt Disney's Peter Pan is a comic book published by Dell Comics in conjunction with the release of Disney's Peter Pan in 1953. It is a 32-page adaptation of the film, rather than being based directly on Peter and Wendy or the play.

The story is simplified even more than the animated film, with some of the more serious bits skipped over. For example, the "Wendy bird" is not struck by an arrow, but merely tumbles out of the sky into Peter's arms when the Lost Boys attempt to shoot her down. Later, Tinker Bell is merely shaken up when the bomb she plucks from Peter's hands explodes, and the scene immediately shifts to the Darling's on the Jolly Roger.

Although the indicia contains a large number of credits – to the executives of Dell Comics and copyright notices recognizing J. M. Barrie as original author, "The Hospital for Sick Children, London, England" as the licensor, and publishers Lady Cynthia Asquith and Peter Llewelyn Davies – the individuals who scripted it for comics and illustrated it are not credited.

Most pages are done in a variation of an 8-panel grid: 4 rows of two panels each. The format is slightly wider than the format of modern comics. It's drawn according to Disney's model sheets for the characters, but without the constraints imposed by hand-drawn animation, the figures are at times more expressive. The cover, however, looks like it was drawn based on animation cels, so it's an unusual case of comics cover art being weaker than the interiors. Backgrounds, on the other hand, without the painstakingly produced paintings of the film, are often simplistic or blank. As typical of comics of the era, the coloring is simple, and the print registration – on newsprint, with fairly cheap presses – is somewhat... loose.

The film was in production long before its February 1953 release, and this comic book was produced in advance of that, so it has a copyright of 1952. The original printing of it is item number 442 in Dell's catalog, and sold for 10 cents. The material has been reprinted several times since its first publication, first by Dell, later by Whitman Publishing (aka Gold Key).