Dr. Syn alias the Scarecrow Novel Cover

In 1975, Disney decided to re-release Dr. Syn as a 75-minute feature film, and to tie into that, they commissioned Victoria Crume (aka Vic Crume) to write a novelisation of the film for young readers, something she had done before for other Disney properties and would do again.

I wanted to make an ebook version for personal use, so cleaning up a scan of the cover was in order.

Thanks to Kenneth Mourino for identifying Paul Wenzel as the cover artist. Wenzel also painted the portrait for the 1968 Walt Disney commemorative 6¢ US stamp, and worked for Disney for 42 years.

A raw scan of the covers.

The original cover rejoined and cleaned up for posterity’s sake.

The cover retouched to strip out the original type elements.

Some forensic design was done to identify the original typefaces so the text could be re-set, crediting Ms. Crume with her real name. A re-created Dr. Syn logo – which is the actual theatrical poster version – was placed. Finally, to fit the shorter format of a full-screen image in iBooks, a modern, slimmer Wonderful World of Disney banner was sourced and laid in.

The final, composited version.

The interior ink illustrations were done by Joseph Guarino and the limits of budget meant they were printed in black & white. Thankfully, ebooks don’t have that restriction, and I always liked two-colour illustration, which were popular during the period. The same blue as the interior type was used to keep the design united.

Scan of a split, two-page illustration.

Rejoined and cleaned up.

Final two-colour version.

Another illustration scanned.

Cleaned up.

Final two-colour version.

The layout in iBooks.

Double-tapping on the image brings it up full size.