Keskustelujen arkisto

HATHAWAY at stsci.edu (Wm. Hataway) writes:

>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.

One of the best things I ever did was to get my kid brother, who just
turned 10, a subscription to all of the Gladstones. Granted, it's a
tad expensive, but it is money extremely well spent. If I were in
dire financial straits and couldn't afford copies for him, I'd give
him *mine* after I'd read them.

Sure, they'ld get mangled, torn, stepped on, drawn on, spindilated
and muteled, but those comics would be cherished and re-read many
times - just the way that comics *should* be read. I know that my
brother will love those stories for the rest of his life. I'd be
perfectly willing to sacrifice my Gladstones for that.

(Fortunately, I don't have to :-) - He'll probably end up inheriting
*my* collection! "Hey - I remember *that* story...")

===========================================================================
"Why can't there be one *every* day...?"
-- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
mark a. semich mas at csa.bu.edu
===========================================================================

WILMER RIVERS:

>It really bothers me that most of the comics shops around here don't
>even carry Disney (or Gladstone) comics at all! I therefore try to
>patronize preferentially the one that does, even when I'm buying non-
>Disney items.

Its been a while since I've been in a comic shop that *didn't* carry the
Gladstones, but that may be because I don't go to shops that exlude them.
I would guess that simply not going to a shop that doesn't carry Gladstones
would do much good unless enough people informed the owner of why they were
not coming back. Of course, Gladstones are a small enough market that some
owners wouldn't consider carrying them even if a few people complained, but
it's worth a try...

>Still, where do they think the next generation of comics purchasers will
>come from? Also, do they really think that no one over the age of 10 is
>interested in Disney comics?

Good question! Maybe they are gambling on kids jumping directly into super-
heros as soon as they tire of Sesame Street, or (more likely) getting
indoctrinated into Super Heros from watching SH cartoons on television...

>I am glad that Marvel now has a deal to distribute them under their own
>label in newstands.

I wasn't aware of that... It may be too late, but it could help.

>characters. Don't they realize that these images will cease to be
>popular when the public no longer has any interest in the characters
>themselves? And this is likely to happen, when a generation grows up
>that has never read any stories featuring them...

Ive wondered about that from time to time, but now that Disney has their
cable channel, they seemed to have made some of those characters more
popular as icons. Of course, the substance has been stripped away leaving
just the image, but in the US image has become more important in the
public eye than substance...

DON ROSA:

> I don't have time this morning to go into this matter as deeply
>as I easilly could.

Well, if this is your "short answer," I wonder how you would answer an
essay question... :>

> 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...

Thanks for the story of the comic industry. I was familiar with most of
the pieces, but your description helped pull it together for me. I hadn't
really given much thought to the notion that Dell/Gold Key (aka Western
Publishing) had other more lucrative interests, so they had little
incentive to keep their comics alive.
>Tryg says that someday a generation will grow up having never read a
>Disney comic??? Where have you been? That's already happened!

Uh... With my head in a place where the sun doesn't shine? :>

Actually, I didn't say that (at least not in that message.) I said I
wondered what was the fate of Disney Comics in the US.

>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.

That probably depends on where you lived at the time. In Minneapols, I
could always find the Gold Key comics at a newsstand. Not all newsstands
carried them, though, and there were a few years in the early '70s where
they were hard to find. Whitman was a different story, however, and that
really *was* the kiss of death when the "bags of three, let them be" curse
hit. Eventually, comic stores were able to get individual comics directly,
but it was too late and the 5 years of darkness you mentioned fell upon us.

> 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.

And those "gap" children have now found a home in r.a.d... :)

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.

That is a dramatic illustration! 80 million copies a month is really hard
for me to imagine with what sales are in the US today. Maybe I have more
incentive to visit Norway beyond visiting my ancestors' homeland!

>Questions?

Not right now, thanks, I just had a big sip from the fire hose...

TORSTEN ADAIR:

>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.

Well, I started reading (again) Gold Key Disneys around 1969. It was in
the late '60s that they started reprinting Barks stories in WDC&S and U$.
I was alerted to it by a friend of mine who was in the Army at the time
(servicemen apparently read a lot of comics then...) Of course, I didn't
know about Carl Barks then, but I knew his stories! I was born in 1946,
(your turn to do the math), so I was introduced to Disney Comics in the
1950s.

>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 know the Disney line was being distributed here at newsstands, but
haven't looked to see if the Gladstones are being sold there.

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

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

>> 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?

A friend of mine who is an American car fanatic, proposed that Grandma
drove a Detroit Electric from the early 10s. We wrote an article in the
AmCar Magazine and later a book called Duckmobiles where we showed various
Barks drawings of Grandmas car and a Detroit Electric from 1909, the only
photograph we could find of that car.

I sent the book to Barks and he responded very nicely to it relating
stories to the various cars we had shown. He commented on Grandmas car that
it was indeed a Detroit Electric, and he got the idea because when he was
young, there was an old lady in his hometown who drove a Detroit Electric,
and thus it seemed to him that all old ladies had to drive electric because
they were so much easier to drive than petrol based cars, lacking gears and
all that.

I cant remember the earliest appearance of the car, but I dont think Barks
would have answered in that way if he hadnt hit upon the idea himself.

And think of the silly Egmont drawing people (cant call them artists)
including Vicar, who show Grandmas car with exhaust and a gas motor!

Geir Hasnes

Don Rosa:
Your history of Disney distribution and the rise of the direct market was
very good. I'd like to add a couple of points if I may.

The direct market was born precisely because newsstand distribution was
so spotty. If you cared about comics, you often had to go to two or three
stores on a regular basis to find what you wanted.

The major difference between newsstand and comic shops has to do with
the issue of returns. If a newsstand orders 10 copies of something and
only sells 2, it sends back the other 8 (or just the covers or logos) and
gets credit for them. A comic shop buys 10 and is stuck with whatever it
doesn't sell. The comics companies love this because they have a more
predictable print run and income from every issue. It's tough on the
comics shops because it takes money that they need to run the operation
and ties it up in inventory. If a comics shop buys too many titles that
don't sell, their cash flow disappears and they're out of business.

This creates a never-ending cycle where shops only buy what will sell and
people can only buy what shops have in stock. It re-inforces the status
quo and it's very difficult for any title to grow significantly.

Newsstand distribution has deteriorated since the invention of comics shops.
Comics were always a low-profit item under the best of circumstances. Now,
newsstands know that comic shops exist and some portion of their business
in comics is lost to the shops. They have less incentive than ever to stock
comics. Also, comics publishers are concentrating more effort on the shops,
since those copies are non-returnable.

The challenge for comics is now to get out of the shops. Disney Adventures
Digest (or whatever the heck it's called) is sold on newsstands and at
supermarket check-outs. I'm sure it's profitable or Disney would have
turned it over to Gladstone with the rest of the comic book line. It has
the benefit of being where families go for other reasons (like food shopping)
and so the digest can be picked up as an impulse item. You don't have to
make a special trip to buy it in a particular store the way you do most comic
books.

For the record, lots of alternative comics publishers (like Fantagraphics)
are in the same boat as Disney. Their main market is shops, and the shops
and their clientele only want super-heroes. Fantagraphics is experimenting
with getting sold in record stores, hoping that music fans will pick up the
comics on impulse. Gladstone needs to find someplace where kids are
already going and display the comics there.

Tryg:
>I listened to an interview with
>Annette Funicello recently; she said that they (the Mouseketeers) never
>knew of the fan mail sent to them. Years later when she learned about the
>tons of mail, she was told it was kept secret to protect the kids from
>being envious of the one with the the most mail...

Cynical me says that it was probably to stop the kids from asking for
more money. Same reason that Carl Barks never got his fan mail.

Geir:
Thanks for the fascinating info on Grandma's car.

William:
I'm introducing my 7 year old daughter to Barks right now. I was
able to afford some volumes of the Carl Barks library, so I've been giving
my daughter a lot of the comic reprints that I've got. I don't care how
much they get messed up if she reads them. She started on Lost in the Andes
and then read The Mystery of the Swamp. She enjoyed them both and I've
made it a point to tell her that the comics are by Carl Barks.

I didn't really become aware of Barks until I was in my late teens.
I read Funnyworld magazine by Mike Barrier because of my interest in animation.
I respected Barrier's writing on animation quite a bit, and since he had a
high opinion of Barks I figured I should check Barks out. At the time (early
'70's), it was fairly easy to get Barks reprints for 25 or 50 cents. I was
amazed to discover that Barks work was far better written than the super-hero
comics I was then giving up.

I still have a collection of Marvels from the '60's. I do pull them out to
look at art by Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. However, I never find myself
re-reading the stories. With Barks, I can't open up a comic without re-reading
it. For me, that's the proof of Barks' value.

Anybody:
Is there any video of Carl Barks in any comics documentaries? I seem to
remember seeing an ad for a documentary that I think that Ed Summer was
working on that included Barks. Has this been released? Anybody see it?

___________________________________________________________________
Mark Mayerson Side Effects Software Inc.,
Internet: mayerson at sidefx.com Toronto, Ontario, Canada
(416) 366-4607

TRYG:

You were surprised that Disney gave artist credits. If not for
Bruce Hamilton, they never would have. When Hamilton was originally
bargaining to get the license in 1986, he gave in to many of Disney's
archaic attitudes, but one thing he INSISTED on in spite of Disney's
refusals was that writer and artist credits would be given. When Disney
took over, they couldn't very well stop giving art credits without
looking very, very bad -- however they weren't as honest about it as
Gladstone was and is again: when Gladstone uses foreign stories, they
credit the country and publisher... when Disney gave foreign credits for
the reprints, they would imply that it was all new material being done
just for Disney Comics.
On the other hand, when they got back in contact with me in 1992
and wanted to finally agree to return my art so that I'd do some covers
for them, one of the other things that I required that they agree to is
that they were contractually obligated to give me full credit, in print,
in the issue, for any work I did. Therefore, though it should never have
been so, in one swell foop that made me the first human being to ever
get artwork officially returned from Disney or get obligatory credits
in a Disney licensed or owned comic book. They wanted to put my name on
the cover of the issue that reprinted "Return to Xanadu", but I said
that I would decline having my name on a cover before Barks had his name
on a cover. I think Barks and I shared that honor of being the first
people to get cover credits on a Disney comic on UNCLE $CROOGE #275,
when I wasn't looking (unless I'm mistaken).
Without my knowledge, I found out that I received the first-ever
cover credit on a Danish Disney comic when they recently printed that
"Guardians of the Lost Library" story, and it was so surprising to the
Danes that there was an article about the event in the paper there.
When I went to work for Egmont in 1990, they soon thereafter
started printing full credits in all the European Egmont countries (I'm
not sure if my presence had anything to do with it -- it was never
something I asked them for), but Disney soon demanded they stop due (so
I hear) to European laws that say that if a writer or artist gets
printed credits he then gains some form of ownership in his own creation
(an idea intolerable to Disney!).

GEIR:
What is a DETROIT Electric? Was "Detroit" the name of a company
(I assume, in Detroit)? I always vaguely recall the sound of "Studebaker
Electric", even though I know Studebaker manufactured gas cars,
normally.
But please excuse the artists who gave the Electric exhaust
fumes. I just used the Electric in my "Donald Duck 60th Birthday" story,
and quickly found that there's no other way to show that the Electric is
moving unless there's a little puff behind it, since it moves far too
slow to show motion lines. I can claim that it's a dust cloud? Also, the
only sound a creaky old car can make is "chug chug"; to use an electric
hum would be very distracting to readers and confusing to the 99% of
them who have no idea that's an electric car.

And to the folks discussing Gladstones and Marvels and newsstand
distribution: there was never anything "wrong" with the American
magazine distribution system except that the local distributors (a
business purportedly controlled by the underworld) didn't do their job
when they didn't feel like it. Large companies would send agents around
the country to make sure the local distributors were placing their
magazines on the stands properly, as they were PAID to do. But tiny
companies like comic book publishers couldn't do this, so many
distributors didn't bother to distribute the very LOW profit items. Here
in Louisville, I know for a fact that in the 70s the local distributor
would let the comics sit in bundles in the warehouse for a few months
then open the bundles, tear off the covers, send in the covers for their
FULL REFUND, then dump the comics.
Gladstone comics now are NOT distributed to newsstands -- only
comic shops. The "Marvel Gladstones" are the ones which are supposed to
be distributed to newsstands. But since the Disneys don't sell or
because they are not perceived as being part of the American comic hobby
since they aren't super-heroes (as we've said), I have never seen any
Marvel-Gladstones on the newsstands with the Marvels. They probably toss
them on the floor in the back room to make sure there's room for all
those REAL comics. And then I go to Europe where the FIRST thing you see
in any newsstand you walk into is the rack of Disney comics. What a
weird country we live in.