Keskustelujen arkisto

>>Speaking of Marv Wolfman, what's the general opinion of Disney Adventures
>>Magazine?
>
>Almost all of the stories revolve around Disney Afternoon characters.
>The only recent comic book character story was the two part Mickey
>Mouse story 'Return to Blaggard Castle'. This story was a classic
>example of why Mickey isn't popular.

How so? I certainly didn't find the story to be on par with
Gottfredson, but I *did* enjoy it and find it to be well done.

What did you dislike about it?

On Thu, 23 Dec 1993 14:44:55 +0100, Mattias Hallin wrote:

> About where/with whom Grandma's car originated, I'm pretty confident it
>was with Taliaferro - at least I seem to recall her driving a car similar to
>the one she has in Barks' episodes in a fairly early Taliaferro strip... but I
>might be wrong?! Any one else has any ideas about this?

I remember a serailized Mickey Mouse story in WDC&S that had Grandma
Duck's electric car sitting on a flat bed rail car. Since many of those
stories were redrawn "modern" versions of Gottfredson stories, I wonder
if this could be one of those? Naw!

>Now, about that car being an electric, and recharging it's batteries and so
>on... well, there's is at least one story I can remember offhand: a Gyro story
>(incidentally the one where Mickey's nephews appear) where Gyro traps lightning
>in a box, by way of a kite a la Franklin, in order to get inexpensive eltric
>power. Which indeed he does... and how! Among other gags, he recharges
>Grandma's car (she just happens to drive by, it seems) from this lightning box,
>and it takes off at break-neck speed! I don't know off-hand whether or not
>Barks himself wrote this particular story, but it would least seem to indicate
>that the car in question is indeed electric, and that it does need recharging
>occasionally...

Thanks! Yes, I believe that one is a Barks Gyro from Uncle Scrooge #13.
(How could I forget a Gyro story?) The reason for Morty and Ferdie being
there instead of HD&L had something to do with getting a 2nd class mailing
permit for Uncle $crooge. Apparenty the US post office required at least
two separate stories with totally different characters. So the Gyro story
was added but HD&L had to go because they were in the US story, "Land
Beneath the Ground!" (As I write this, I can't help but think that this
has probably common knowledge here. I guess I better start reading those
digest archives. <g>)

>...which just might be a problem of it's own - I also seem to recall something
>somewhere that says that Grandma's farm doesn't have electricity - but on the
>other hand there IS (and of this I'm sure) the Grandma story where HD$L comes
>for a visit and Grandma says about the TV-set Donald has given her that "she

I do remember the that TV gag, but I also don't remeber there being
electricity on the farm. What a paradox! Maybe grandma had a wind-powered
generator for charging the car?

>Also, Tryg: I don't see no reason for you to go lurking again, just because
>we've had some subjects under discussion before;

Well, I haven't been here long enough (two weeks) to have been lurking for
long. (I only lurked for about 3 days...)

>you nice but shy lurkers out there to come out of your closets, and play a
>nice round of golf with the rest of us - I'm absolutely POSITIVE Gladstone
>Gander won't show up to spoil our fun!

With my skill at golf, I'll need Gladstone's luck!

Torsten:

>To uncompress ".gz" files, type "gunzip [filename]" at the UNIX command
>line. There should be a gunzip program somewhere at U.Minnesota.

Thanks for the tip. I couldn't find "gunzip," but I found "gzip" which
would do the decompression after a bit of coaxing. Anyhow, I unziped and
all the archived digests and downloaded them to my PC. Now all I have to
do is find time to read them... :)

Tryg Heseth <tryve at maroon.tc.umn.edu>

"I wish the all could be Calisota Ducks!" -The Beach Drakes

Goofy
~~~~~
Don replied to Wilmer:
> Without going down to the comic "vault", I'm gonna guess the
> GOOFY comic you recall was FOUR COLOR #857. If somebody knows that not
> to be true, I'll actually have to resort to LOOKING.

It's not that one. It's Four Color #702, the "Goofy success story".
#857 is the "Goofy adventure story".
Both comics were drawn by Tony Strobl.
(This information is from Crone's list on our ftp site. So no need to look in
the actual comics, Don, but your guesswork was good...)

Dutch relatives
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I re-read the last few digests yesterday and I saw that Ole wondered about
Gus being Donald's *nephew* in Dutch translations. This must be a misunder-
standing of the Dutch language: the Dutch word for nephew is "neef", and the
Dutch for "cousin" is also "neef". We're about the only language in this
part of the world that does not distingush between those two relations...

--Harry.

Harry Fluks identifies the comic I was asking about as Four Color #702.
Thanks for the info! I figured it was probably Strobl's art, and I
appreciate the confirmation. The concept for the story was an interest-
ing one, and I wonder who it was that decided it would be O.K. to show
Goofy to be a Disney actor whose real name was Dippy Dawg. Do you
suppose Gladstone could nowadays get away with a story in which Mickey
is identified as an actor whose real name is Mortimer?

Wilmer Rivers

P.S.: Harry, I hope your own "vault" of comics remained dry during the
recent floods across the Netherlands that we've been seeing on tv!

Comic Book Confidential, a film by Ron Mann, takes the point of view that
comics are subversive of normal American values. Mann is in favor of
these "subversive" attitudes and examines the luridness of golden
age super hero comics, the EC horror and war titles, the underground
comics of the '60's and the modern alternative comics scene.

Because Disney comics are not blatantly subversive, they don't fit
Mann's thesis and are ignored.

The best thing about the films are the interviews. Mann's sense of
history and point of view are highly debatable. Because mainstream
media are so ignorant of comics, Mann's film got lots of good reviews and
won several awards. However, lots of informed comics fans and professionals
have problems with the film.

While there's no question that super-hero comics are the dominant form
of comic book entertainment in North America, I don't think Mann's attitude
can be taken as the majority of informed opinion. A list of the best of
American comic book creators would always include Carl Barks with people like
Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, etc.
___________________________________________________________________
Mark Mayerson Side Effects Software Inc.,
Internet: mayerson at sidefx.com Toronto, Ontario, Canada
(416) 366-4607

HARRY:

In America, the word "cousin" is commonly held to refer to your
aunt & uncle's kids. However, that is not the dictionary definition. The
true meaning of the word is "any distant relative". I guess there was no
specific name for those kids of aunts and uncles, so they were refered
to as "cousins", and people eventually incorrectly assumed that a
cousin is specifically that relative and no other. So the actual meaning
of "cousin" is not so different from your "neef".

TRYG:
I don't have time this morning to go into this matter as deeply
as I easilly could. But the reason that Disney comics are ignored in
America nowadays, even though they were as far-and-away the most popular
comics in America years ago as they have ALWAYS been everywhere else in
the world, reached all the way back to the early 60s, and is tied to the
whole reason for the twisted structure of the tiny but profitable
American comic market.
Because of TV, kids stopped reading comic books. Companies who
had their fingers in many other pies, such as Dell/Gold Key, had no
reason to try to save a failing industry, and let their product slide,
as well they should have. But there were TWO companies who did nothing
but super-hero comics (DC & Marvel) and had to stick it out. There were
fewer and fewer kids reading comics every years, so Marvel was the first
to hit on the idea of continued stories to make kids buy EVERY monthly
issue, whereas before that every kid in the country bought comics but
only a few each month. This worked, and the next idea was super-hero
teams and cross-overs and tying the "universes" all together to compel
kids to buy ALL the company's product, rather than specific titles. This
also worked. However, the buyer base was still shrinking too rapidly and
there were not enough comic buyers in America to make national
distribution profitable. Then the magic idea of DIRECT SALES was
invented, which saved American comics and is the ONLY reason they
continue to exist -- without direct sales and the circumvention of
national distribution, American comics would cease to exist overnight.
With these direct sales came the idea of comic books as "collectibles"
rather than reading material, all promoted by the only two companies
with any market share, DC & Marvel. Nowadays, because of the direct
sales system, even TINY companies can wrestle the market share away from
theose two former giants, since distribution, formerly the most COSTLY
part of publishing, now costs nil. As a result, in 1990s America, comic
books are a tiny "cult" hobby which makes large profits for several
very, very tiny companies.
How does this relate to the unpopularity of the Disney's? Simply
that DC & Marvel did not publish the Disneys, so they literally
disappeared from the scene, and were no part of the reshaping of the
industry. Tryg says that someday a generation will grow up having never
read a Disney comic??? Where have you been? That's already happened!
There were NO Disney comics in America for over 5 years, and due to Gold
Keys bad handling, there were effectively no Disney comics in America
from about 1970-1986. This loss of a generation is the single biggest
hurdle for Disney comics to jump, and one that I am convinced is far too
big to ever manage. No matter HOW good the comics are that Gladstone or
Disney or whoever turns out, American Disney comics are doomed to being
shunned by the "cult" of comic buyers since they are of the generation
that are taught upon entering the hobby that they are to SHUN Disney
comics and ONLY read Super-hero comics. Of course, as you say, it's the
super-hero comics that are childish and silly, no matter how violent
they are, but when an American gets a particular impression of what
peer pressure expects him to believe, THAT'S what he believes without
thinking for himself.
Since America is the only place on earth where the comic book
market collapsed and a super-hero based "cult" sprang up, this is the
only country where Disney comics are not king. The rest of the world is
just as America would still be if they had never invented TV.
And if you haven't been on here long enough to hear how well the
Disney comics sell in Europe, here's my usual example: In Norway, a
country of 4 million people, DONALD DUCK sells 250,000 each WEEK. For an
American comic to sell that well PER CAPITA, it would need to sell about
80,000,000 copies per month!!!! But a good-selling American comic sells
about 100,000 copies a month, made profitable by the "cult hobby"
system. In 1950, Dell's cut-off for cancelling a failing comic book was
when it sold only 1,000,000 copies per month. UNCLE $CROOGE sold 2 to 3
million copies per month. That was over 40 years ago. With all the
extra kids in the country now, what should those sales have risen to? 5
million? 10 million. Instead the sales of an American Disney comic is
about 50,000.
That's how it happened and it will never change since American
kids (and their parents) are only getting stupider, not smarter, as each
year goes by.
Questions?

On Mon, 27 Dec 1993, Tryg Helseth wrote:
> Hello All:
> Last night I watched a documentry on television titled "Comic Book
> Confidential." I had never seen it before, but I think the copyright date
> was 1988. Anyhow, it was a brief history of comic books in the US
> featuring artists, writers, publishers, etc. In this 1-1/2 program,
> however, not a word was said about Disney comics. (They did pan over some
> comic book covers and Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold was there, but...)

Disney comics has received very little attention by comic book historians.
This is due in some part to Disney hiding credits and creators from fans.
Considering the people featured, Carl Barks was a glaring oversight.

> I began to wonder about the fate of Disney comics in the US. Since Disney
> gave the publication rights back to Gladstone, I assume they didn't find it
> profitable enough. While kids under 10 may read them, older kids don't.
> On a recent visit to a local comic book store I watched two kids (about 12
> years of age, I would guess) pawing thorugh a box of old comics. They came
> across some classic funny animal comics (including Dinsey) and one kid
> remarked "there's nothing in here but silly stuff!" (And here I thought
> costumed super-heros looked silly... <g> )

Some would argue that Disney Comics' staff did not know what they were
doing. I read Disney Gold Keys as a child, ignored them when I twelve
(the golden age) and then I started collecting them when Gladstone
published them. I was born in 1969, so I'll let you do the math. At the
time I started buying Gladstone, I was heavily buying Marvel titles. I
was also buying some Star Comics, DC, and an occasional Epic.

See Jack Kirby's Destroyer Duck for an interesting combination of Funny
Animals and gratuitous violence.

> How well do Disney comics sell in Europe? I get the impression that they
> are much more popular there. The fact that this mail list originates out
> of Sweden is a good indicator of that.

Disney has as much influence in Europe as it has in the USA. Moreso with
comic books.

> Torsten posted some stats about Gladstone here a few weeks back. If I
> remember right, they showed a slight increase in Gladstone sales toward the
> end of the year, but it was still less than 1/2 a percent of the market. Is
> that good or bad?

Those figures were for the direct market (comicbook stores), and do not
include newstand sales. Also, anything the comicbook stores order, they
keep. If it doesn't sell on the new issue racks, it's put in the back
issue bins, where it SITS. If a customer collects Disney comics, good.
If a customer does not collect Disney Comics (note capitalization), then
it is bad.

I consider it bad if the stores don't sell them, as many collectors are
now at the age of being parents. Even worse is if the newstands don't
sell them.

I wonder what Egmont would have done if they had gotten the Disney license
for the USA?

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

(I hope this goes to the list - my machine still gets confused - depending
on the state it is in, a REPLY goes to either the list or the poster -
and it sometimes doesn't tell me which it is doing until it is done -
the only reliable address is to manually type it in - I thought computers
were supposed to relieve us of such tedium - so Don, if you got a version
of this directly to you instead of through the list - I apologize. Or
it may show up on the distribution list twice ... groan. This flakiness
is one the the reasons I usually 'lurk' and not post. In my other mailing
list a REPLY goes to the distribution list - here it seems a REPLY goes
to the sender? Someday I'll learn.... )

>From: STSCIC::IN%"72260.2635 at CompuServe.COM" "Don Rosa" 28-DEC-1993 10:26:21.84
>To: IN%"disney-comics at minsk.docs.uu.se" "INTERNET:disney-comics at Minsk.DoCS.UU.SE"
>CC:
>Subj: +Postage Due+Disney-comics digest #196.
>
...
>big to ever manage. No matter HOW good the comics are that Gladstone or
>Disney or whoever turns out, American Disney comics are doomed to being
>shunned by the "cult" of comic buyers since they are of the generation
>that are taught upon entering the hobby that they are to SHUN Disney
>comics and ONLY read Super-hero comics. Of course, as you say, it's the
>super-hero comics that are childish and silly, no matter how violent
>they are, but when an American gets a particular impression of what
>peer pressure expects him to believe, THAT'S what he believes without
>thinking for himself.

Ah - whatever became of the American tradition of individualism - the
rebellious streak of those who buck the tide and delight in thinking for
themselves? Those who look to peer pressure only to discover what to avoid...
But then I remember the great flowering of hippiedom of the 1960's.
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered the great mass of non-conformists
joined the movement as sheep and when it became unpopular they dropped
their beads and tresses like pet rocks. If the sales figures reflect
us true believers in quality, then we are indeed an endangered minority.
Yes I collected some Spiderman from the 1960s (Numbers 20 - 100 or thereabouts)
and other such early Marvel, but they sit in their boxes, while the Duck
clan piles up on my nightstand for reading.

...
> That's how it happened and it will never change since American
>kids (and their parents) are only getting stupider, not smarter, as each
>year goes by.
> Questions?
>

I do have a problem with turning on my god-children to Disney Comics -
I can't afford two subscriptions and I'd be afraid of my set being
mangled or lost if I gave it to them to read. (No one ever prizes
ones possessions the way an owner does - particularly so with mothers
and comics - 'throw it away' seems to be in their nature.) That long period
of missing publication gave me fear of famine of never seeing the stories
again. They are reaching the age of being careful though, so maybe I can
chance it before they 'learn to outgrow' them.

Wm. Hathaway