Keskustelujen arkisto

Hi!

I think Disney comics in South America is a very vague and difficult
subject. There're so many different versions and publishers in Spanish and
Portuguese. Is there someone in South America that can explain it some more?
Like Fredrik said, we discussed this a few months ago, together with a guy
named Paulo Baretto, but I don't know if he's still here. This is a short
version of what I know:

Abril Jovem is one of the largest publishers in the world and is
headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This large company has a lot of smaller
publishers that all begin with 'Editora' which all have a little box with a
tree inside on the covers of their comics, like Editora Abril Cinco. This
company is situated in Colombia and publishes lots of small comics, which
are distributed to Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Puerto Rico, Panama, Venezuela,
Ecuador, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. Some are in other languages
because of the various dialects. Another publisher is Editora Abril Jovem,
which is situated in Brazil and makes Disney comics for both the Brazilian
market. All their comics are in Portuguese and are distributed to countries
like Portugal (!) Republic Cape Verde, Ginea Bissau, Madeir Islands and
the Azors. Finally, there's Editora Morumbi which is settled in Portugal
and also makes Portuguese comics, which are ALSO distributed to Brazil.
Before Morumbi got the license of publishing Disney comics in Portugal,
the Portugal population was used of getting their Disney comics from Abril
Jovem in Brazil. Now that Morumbi has taken over that job, the ones from
Brazil are still sold in Portugal. So actually, there're two different
lines of comics in Portugal. (Two "Pato Donald"'s for instance with two
different numbers).
Now ... besides this incredibly large publishing empire of Abril Jovem,
there're more smaller publishers like one in Argentina that makes their own
Disney comics. They used to have one called "El Pato Donald", but I don't know
if that one still runs. There's ALSO a publishing company in Uruguay that makes
Disney comics for that country. And of course the Walt Disney Company Spain
(another 'small' publisher) publishes Disney comics in Spain.

Bye!

Arthur de Wolf -- Roosendaal, the Netherlands
email: <(Email removed)> or <(Email removed)>
homepage: www.pi.net/~wolfman/disney
"The Dutch soccer team is going to play tonight against
Switzerland in the Euro 96 Championchips in England ..."

Hi!

JONATHAN MARKOFF:
Is the letter in WDC#604 from you? Cool! Nice letter! Good call of
telling Gladstone they ought to move the long adventure stories (the ones
from Don) to Uncle Scrooge Adventures and keep the tenpagers in WDC! I
agree with you completely!
I vaguely remember a letter of you in a WDC-Gladstone comic from
their first run (1988/1989?). Is that possible?

Bye!

Arthur de Wolf -- Roosendaal, the Netherlands
email: <(Email removed)> or <(Email removed)>
homepage: www.pi.net/~wolfman/disney
"... Aaaanvallluuuuuhhhh ..."

JONATHAN:

> *No* letters columns? Haven't you read the recent Walt Disney Comics &
> Stories?

Of course. Gladstone publishes 7 regular bi-monthly titles, right? And
there are two pages of letters column, all in ONE title. I do not call
that much. Especially compared to the days when every title had one
page, many sometimes adding an additional letters page.

> And if you subscribe to Gladstone's $1.50 publications, you get a
> bonus insert called the Gladstone Gazette, which contains a letters page

That's not a letters column. That is some half-*ssed attempt. The
letters column belongs in the book about which they are written. And I
refuse to be forced to subscribe in order to recieve my books late and
damaged in order to read letters.

-Augie
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Augie De Blieck Jr. * "I've got to start drinking more. My life wouldn't
(Email removed) * make any more sense but at least I'd have something
(Email removed) * to blame it on." -Dragon (TSD #28 by Erik Larsen)

ARTHUR:
I'm in Brazil.
What you wrote about Abril is mostly correct, except that the main
publisher is 'Editora Abril', and the subsidiary publishing Disney and
other comics is 'Abril Jovem' ('jovem' means 'young' in Portuguese).
You got them reversed.
Now to add some other info:
- the Abril company started in the 50's, publishing "O Pato Donald".
Afterwards it moved on to publishing other things, and today it's a
very large company. They have cable TV, satellite TV, and several TV
channels (including Brazilian MTV). They are the biggest magazine
publishers in Brazil.
- The Portuguese 'Editora Morumbi' also has that symbol with the little
tree in a box. So perhaps it is also owned by Abril? (By the way,
Morumbi is a Brazilian-Indian word, not 'true' Portuguese).
- I bought Spanish-language comics on two occasions: one was in 1972, in
Argentina. They were not published by Abril. It was Argentinian (if
only I could find them now...).
The other occasion was last year, in Mexico. Those were published by
Abril Cinco in Colombia.

Best regards,
Elon

The Philadelphia Inquirer
Opinion

Friday, June 14, 1996

Confessions of a guy who writes diabolical drivel kids watch on TV
The idea is to exploit the little suckers by selling them ever weirder junk.

By Jim Ryan
Story idea for a new animated series:

Have a super-insane, super-maniacal, super-genius super-terrorist blow
up cities and towns all over the world from his homemade flying
saucer. Then have the terrorist kidnap our president and four other
world leaders and surgically implant computer chips in their heads to
control their minds. Then have him order them to wage nuclear war on
each other.

And then have an obviously deranged scientist master, who has
vivisected a bunch of dogs so that they can be ``transdogmafied'' into
semi-humans, order his genetically altered mutant canines to get in
their hound-human vehicles and use their hound-human weapons to launch
a hound-human counter-terrorist attack on the vicious villain and
laser-blast his whole operation into a zillion chunks of radioactive
waste.

Who on earth would do a show like that for kids?

I would. And I did.

And every day that's passed since I wrote this diabolical drivel, I've
felt guiltier about it. Why did I take this idea from a major
animation company and write a script based on it? Because 10 months
ago, after 30 years of steady employment in animation writing, I got
laid off. I haven't worked much since. (A 60-year-old cartoon writer,
I've discovered, is as much in demand as a Hudson Hornet hubcap.) I
needed the bucks. So I rationalized. And I did it. And now I'm sorry I
did it.

But I'm even sorrier for what's happened to children's television in
the past few years. The idea is no longer to entertain or to enlighten
kids. The idea is to exploit the little suckers for all their parents
are worth. Sell them more and more weirder and weirder junk.

The program schedules are now loaded with insect-men, machine-humans,
gizmo-geeks, mega-maggots, alien-chimps, reptile-boys and
power-paranoids, all of which can be made into toys, models, coloring
books, backpacks, birthday party decorations. These are not really
shows at all; they're the big commercials in between the little
commercials.

What's even more disturbing is that often the most popular of these
merchandisable maxi-freaks are the villains in the stories. And even
the designated good guys throw lawful behavior out the window as they
go on their butt-busting rampages for comic ``justice.'' They act more
like super-sociopaths than superheroes.

But so what? Does this blurring of the lines between heroes and
villains harm anybody? Does watching hours of these mean-spirited
mixed messages every day affect kids' behavior? Could it possibly have
anything to do with the increased level of youth violence and the lack
of remorse shown by ever-younger lawbreakers?

Kidvid moguls all deny it, of course. Young people's actions, they
insist, are not influenced by what they see on children's television.
If so, the sponsors who spend billions of advertising dollars on kids'
TV, trying to shape youthful buying habits, have to be even more
mindless than the characters on the shows.

Years ago, I cowrote the award-winning series Fat Albert with Bill
Cosby. We had no glorified villains. No mind-controlling maniacs and
no nutcase nuclear terrorists. We did entertaining stories with a
point. Our young audience really learned something. And we got good
ratings. We could do shows like that again. But today, a kids' cartoon
with a nonthreatening, believable hero is unsalable. It takes an awful
lot to beat Atomic Nazi Phlegm Freaks at the toy store.

The Federal Communications Commission used to ban programs that were
obviously produced just for their merchandising appeal to kids. They
ought to do it again. But the government, the networks, the producers,
the toy makers won't change anything unless we so-called grown-ups
raise some hell about our kids being hustled. Until we stop sitting on
our thumbs, young people will never get quality entertainment. They'll
only get what their parents will allow: wall-to-wall toongoon
infomercials.

I don't know if I've actually hurt any kids by writing the story I
did. I do know I haven't helped any. But, as I said, I needed the
money. Maybe that's not a good reason, but it's my excuse. What's
yours?

[IMAGE]
Jim Ryan's animation credits include The Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry,
Scooby Doo and The Flintstones.

_________________________________________________________________

Philadelphia Online -- The Philadelphia Inquirer, Opinion -- Copyright
Friday, June 14, 1996

FREDRIK
on the case of German Donald-names:
- "Schnatterich" was the name for Donald in his first German appearance
in a SWISS comic book named "Micky Maus Zeitung", 1933
- on the other hand he was called "Emmerich" in the German version of
"The Wise Little Hen", 1938 in an AUSTRIAN youth-magazine called
"Schmetterling"
- so it's interesting to know that Donald was probably called "Donald
Duck" in his first German appearance in GERMANY - after WWII

MORE ON ERLANGEN
At the Comic-Salon Erlangen they have an award called the "Max
und Moritz Preis", the biggest comic-award around the German speaking
area. In one of the categories, Don Rosas "Life of Scrooge" (in the German
version) was nominated in the category of "Best album for children".
Though his nomination in this category is debateble, it's nice to see
he got the publicity (there were only five nominations, "Batman
Animated" was one of the others). Well, he didn't win, but discussed
the possibility with me before the ceremony. We thouught over what he
could say, if he won, as he didn't feel he was doing comics for
children. Finally he decided to say something like "I'm glad to
receive this award and hereby learn that my comics are also enjoyed
by children".
The world didn't come to hear it - but now, at least, you heard.

Harald

---Harald Havas (Email removed)

Augie wrote:
>That's not a letters column. That is some half-*ssed attempt. The
>letters column belongs in the book about which they are written. And I
>refuse to be forced to subscribe in order to recieve my books late and
>damaged in order to read letters.
>

Late and damaged? Are you referring to bad memories from years ago? If so,
you'll be glad to learn they've cleaned up their act. I subscribe to all 7
titles, and they come with thick cardboard inserts, and they have never been
damaged. Generally I get them exactly 2 months before the cover date.
Sometimes I get them only a month before their date, but that's usually when
the post office is rerouted by bad weather. In fact, this year I got DD 297
(July issue) on April 29!

Arthur wrote:
> Is the letter in WDC#604 from you? Cool! Nice letter! Good call of
>telling Gladstone they ought to move the long adventure stories (the ones
>from Don) to Uncle Scrooge Adventures and keep the tenpagers in WDC! I
>agree with you completely!
> I vaguely remember a letter of you in a WDC-Gladstone comic from
>their first run (1988/1989?). Is that possible?

I haven't read that issue, but it will probably come in the mail
tomorrow (stop snickering, Augie!). But the letter you describe certainly
sounds like one I remember writing! In fact, I wrote that
"don't-serialize-Rosa" message in every one of my letters after every single
chapter of "TToC," and I don't plan to stop for "TUS" or any other broken
Rosa story! It's like, Gladstone made WDC into a giant to fit more stories
in there, but what's the point if they keep serializing everything at 8
pages every two months? Aren't giant comics made to *AVOID* serialization?
I didn't start writing letters until a breif spurt in 1991--the first
one published was in Goofy Adventures 16. After GA 16, I don't think there
were any more until Gladstone's second run--I think the first of those was
in WDC 593. So you might want to check that issue date again.
(Interestingly, if it was my name in an '88-89 issue, I guess that would
mean there's ANOTHER Jonathan Markoff out there!)
Speaking of letters, I wrote a letter about the deletion of a Taliaferro
gag from DD 290. I missed issues 292-296, so was my letter in there? If so,
what was the reply?