Keskustelujen arkisto

I work at the Omaha Public Library, and as an employee, I may order books
via the Library, using the discount that the library uses (sometimes as
high as 40%). So, last Friday, after work, I spent thirty minutes
searching the database of Baker and Taylor (B T Link) looking for various
titles. (Baker and Taylor is one of the largest book distributors in the
U.S.)

Here's what I found concerning various Disney titles:

All of the graphic novels must be ordered directly from the publisher
(either Gladstone or Disney).

Uncle Scrooge McDuck : His Life and Times is still available in print
from Baker and Taylor. (That's what the database says. Perhaps when I
place an order, B&T will discover that it's out of print.)

What does this mean for the rest of you? Well, I know that Waldenbooks
uses B&T Link for book orders. Also, I saw a nice copy of the paperback
edition in a comic book store Friday, and it looked brand new, so it might
still be in circulation.

So, here's the information you will need to order the book:

Author: Barks, Carl (it's edited by someone else)
Title: Uncle Scrooge McDuck : His Life and Times
ISBN: 0-89087-510-3 (paperback) $35 (ISBN is VERY
0-89087-511-1 (hardcover) $60 IMPORTANT!!!)
Publisher: Celestial Arts

Thumbing through this book, I noticed that many of the stories were
colored with pencils. There is also a text story at the end, presented in
the manner of a children's book. The introduction is by George Lucas.

It's oversized, like most art books (35 cm?), and it is thick, at about
200 pages. If you want to look at this book before buying it, use the
Interlibrary Loan service at your library. They will look in a special
database and find a library which has a copy, and will request it via
mail. This might cost you a few schekels in postage.

Torsten Adair torsten at cwis.unomaha.edu Omaha, NE, USA

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 3 Oct 93 22:35:24 CDT
From: matthew high <mhigh at tusol.cs.trinity.edu>
To: comix at world.std.com
Subject: Top Publishers for October

Here's a quick list of the top publishers for October 1993,
by dollar share of the direct market, as reported by
Capital City.

Publisher Year 92 6/93 7/93 8/93 9/93 10/93

Marvel 45.76% 32.01% 30.70% 30.74% 32.50% 31.12%
DC 19.34% 16.19% 16.13% 24.75% 19.01% 20.28%
Image 20.10% 16.02% 15.22% 14.30% 12.18%
Valiant 4.11% 8.69% 13.21% 7.46% 7.99% 7.19%
Malibu 8.55% 2.16% 2.40% 3.20% 4.29% 5.62%
Dark Horse 5.55% 2.97% 3.18% 2.77% 3.89% 3.57%
Defiant 1.66% 1.22% 1.66%
Wizard Press 1.51% 1.26% 2.33% 1.16% 1.29% 1.38%
Continuity .26% 1.60% 2.20% 1.48% 1.00% 1.19%
Topps Comics .22% 1.58% 1.65% 1.13% 1.00% 1.17%
[...]
Gladstone .26% .17% .24% .24% .28% .22%

Gladstone beat Archie, Aardvark-Vanheim (Cerebus), and Fleetway, so it's
not a bad as it seems.

Torsten Adair torsten at cwis.unomaha.edu Omaha, NE, USA

What's this about sending copies of the Digests or condensed
versions of them to Gladstone? Through a modem? I think I can safely say
that the people at Gladstone have neither the time or inclination to
read through such stuff, whether it's in one GIANT batch or on a daily
basis. They are busy and have other things to do while at the office.
And once they go home, they aren't SUCH fans that they would want to
still be messing with Disney crap (nor are any of them so well paid that
they'd have home computer systems). But if somebody there said they were
interested, sure, go ahead. It WAS very smart of you to delete MY
remarks... I don't know what I'd say that Gladstone would not like, but
I STILL would not be speaking 100% freely if I thought someone at
Gladstone were reading my words.

This long list of questions for Gladstone that someone printed
-- I can help with a few.
I thought we'd covered the ground of why the Disney stores
cannot carry Gladstone comics. They can't get them from local
distributors without becoming full-fledged newsstands and carrying
EVERYTHING the distributor offers to every drug store and supermarket.
That's not how local distributors work. And they can't get them direct
from Diamond or someone because that requires LOTS of coordination and
ordering and non-returnable products and products with shelf-lifes of
1-2 months and.... a thousand other things that a Disney store would NOT
be the least bit interested in screwing with, especially for such a LOW
PROFIT item which would require the ability to READ from its customers.
There is no chance of Disney Stores carrying Gladstone comics or albums
(the albums are not marketed as books but as periodicals). Anyway, this
whole idea presupposes the completely wrong idea that (as I've said
before) the American Disney "fans" have any interest in Disney comic
books. They want T-shirts and cute figurines for the mantle, period.
Gladstone, as well as most or all the European publishers, will
collect the 210+ pages of my "Life of $crooge" into huge books after it
runs its course in the comics. I will provide extensive "annotation" for
all the Barks references in these volumes, making them more like 220
pages? 230 pages? However, the foreign publishers won't do this for
several years after the series appears in the comics, and though
Gladstone won't wait that long, it will still be several years before
they can even complete the comic book use of the series. So all these
books are long off. Gladstone has told me, to my displeasure, that they
will do it as TWO volumes instead of a single one, as it is their
experience that once you cross the $9.95 price barrier, sales drop off
dramatically, and such a single volume would cost over $20.
"Creators" at DC or Marvel would not be interested in writing or
drawing Disney comics because of how much $$$$ they can make in the
normal American comic system. The Disney system is still operating on
1940's style attitudes and treatment of the writers/artists. You can't
guess how rich these folks are getting, and even if they did feel it
might be cute to go "slumming" in Disney comics, I, for one, would
resent such an attitude and prefer they stay out unless they wish to
fight for the rights of us who don't get the deals they get -- and it
has been my experience in the past that they are too selfish to care
about helping the plight of people so stupid as to write or draw Disney
comics as a full-time job.

>From: Don Rosa <72260.2635 at compuserve.com>
>... So, posters of comic book Duck art or ideas would seem to
>me to be an impossibility. The only chance MIGHT be for Gladstone to
>produce a tiny, folded-up poster as an insert in a comic -- I think the
>license would allow them to produce such an item if it were not sold
>separately or was not as big as a full-size "poster" (whatever that size
>is). We'll see if they can do that.

A while back, Disney Comics did something akin to what you described,
and published a map of Duckburg as a series of centerfolds that were
designed to be pasted together to form one big poster. So I would
guess that if Gladstone *really* wanted to publish that Family Tree,
they could work something out. Perhaps it'll be published in the
Hardcover "Life of Scrooge" book...

And to answer Don's question, I think that the talk was of sending
an edited *printout* of the digests through the postal service to
Gladstone.

After reading the latest issue of Uncle S. it brought up the question in my
mind about the cover art.

How come the cover seems to have only a minor tie-in to the stories? When
did this practice start? It would seem to me that whoever drew the story art
would also do the cover but this does not seem to be the practice.

For example on the latest US, he seems to be visiting some sort of amusment
park. But the story had nothing to do with that.

Just wondering,
Chris Lawton

Dear Folks,

Chris Lawton asked why on the cover of USA #22 Scrooge was
visiting an amusement park, but that had nothing to do with the
stories inside. I'll explain: This cover originally appeared eight
years ago on Gladstone's first published comic book, a giant called
"UNCLE SCROOGE GOES TO DISNEYLAND." That reprinted in its entirety a
Dell Giant of thirty years before *that*. The only change was in the
cover; instead of reprinting the Dell cover, Gladstone had
someone named Mel Crawford *paint* a version of the same drawing.
Beautiful result!

Now that it's been so long since that painting was first used,
Gladstone obviously concluded that it was high time they used it
again. Sure, Disneyland isn't related to any story in USA #22...
*but* the painting includes *Mickey* and Gladstone wanted to emphasize
that Mickey was in the issue (in the story, "Uncle Scrooge Meets the
Phantom Blot," originally printed as "Culprits Inc.").

It's easy to tell why Gladstone didn't mind re-using it.
Compared to the dismal printing quality that made the painting muddy
when it appeared in 1985, USA #22 does it real justice.

A good issue, no? I thought Esteban's Danish story was one of
the best I've seen in this country...

David Gerstein

"The only way to get ahead of Mickey Mouse is to *run* in
*front* of him!"
<David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu>

P. S. Cris, what happened to your traditional signature?
Aren't you still with me as Mickey's other 'Number One Fan'??

I write:
> And [in Italian comics] Scrooge has dollars in his money bin.
> Does that mean that Duckburg is in the USA, even in the Italian translations?
> (In Holland, Duckburg is in some undefined country, but they pay in
> guilders.)

Per:
> In Sweden it's also in some undefined country, but they use Swedish
> crowns. In German they use "Taler" which is the etymological
> counterpart to dollars and helps to set the Duckburgian world apart I
> guess.

I think the reason for the German Taler is that the comics are sold in 3
countries with different currencies: Germany (Mark), Switzerland (Franc),
Austria (Schilling). The people in these countries wouldn't accept the
Ducks to pay in a currency of one of the other.

One big disadvantage for the German speaking is that they have no symbol for
the 'Taler' (like $ for dollar). This means in the various Scrooge comics,
that they replace the $ by a big T, or just delete it! I've seen a German
version of "The Magic Hourglass", where all the $$ are removed! (Remember
the scenes where Scrooge eats an egg in his home.)
We Dutch are lucky to have a symbol for our guilder (some kind of 'f').
How's that in Scandinavia? What sign is used on $crooge's money bin?

--Harry.
"Mickey's #2 fan" 8-)

Torsten wrote:
> Well, considering most of the old U$ covers from Dell and Gold Key, it
> would seem that this is the "traditional" way to do it. I don't have the
> Photo Journal Guide to Comics in front of me, so I can't take a census of
> which had generic covers and which had story covers. Anyone out there
> care to answer this?

I can try: as far as I have seen the Dell and Gold Key comic covers I come to
the following conclusion:

On WDC, the covers mainly were gag covers, until the mid-60s when the covers
contained all kinds of drawings illustrating inside stories.

The DD, MM and US one shots initially had covers illustrating the main story.
Somewhere in the mid-50s, they all got gag covers. In the mid-60s, the story
covers re-appeared.

Other comics like Chip 'n' Dale, Grandma Duck's Farm Friends, etc. etc. etc.
mostly had gag covers.

--Harry.