Keskustelujen arkisto

(a) The Gladstone Implosion: The optimist in me prefers to look ahead.
Rather than lamenting over harsh economic realities that brought about the
aforementioned "implosion", Gladstone's attention (and the readers'
attention) should focus on future, avoidable "mistakes".

Gladstone surely cannot alter the American public's preference towards
super-heroes. For the past 10 years it (and Disney for a brief interlude)
operated in the narrow confines of a reading public that didn't care much
for the Ducks. The period called Gladstone I was heroic and exhilarating:
many people re-discovered their old loves while a few new were brought to
the fold. When Gladstone first appeared around 1986, Disney comics hadn't
been published (!) in the U.S. for a good 5-6 years. The time seemed to be
ripe for a new wave of Barks re-prints.

Gladstone II was a totally different story; much of the original excitement
had waned; the Egmont material chosen was mostly uninspiring; the Taliaferro
strips seemed stale; the Barks re-re-re-prints brought (to me, at least)
negative marginal utility after a point (too much of a good thing, as I had
Barks in B&W, Barks in albums, Barks in regular comic in almost every
conceivable language); the only bright spots for me in Gladstone II were Don
Rosa, William van Horn, Daan Jippes, Paul Murry (the VERY little we saw of
him), and Romano Scarpa (I wish they'd given us more--I certainly hope they
WILL in the new U$).

So what am *I* looking forward to in the two remaining titles? Since they'll
be $6.95 comic books I want TOP (NEW or old unprinted to the nth degree)
quality; and for my humbleness that means: (1) Don Rosa, (2) Daan Jippes,
(3) 50's and 60's Romano Scarpa, (4) Pat Block (whatever happened to this
guy; still lost "Somewhere in Nowhere"? :-)), (5) Marco Rota, (6) 1950's
Paul Murry, (7) judiciously chosen new Egmont material, preferably by
Branca. I left out Barks. RIGHT! Since the two titles will be aimed at
collectors, and since most collectors have all the Barks in the world, more
Barks in a $6.95 comic book sounds crazy to me.

(b) The new issue of the "Barks Scene" (Newsletter #1, vol. #3) put out by
the Barks Studio (read Bill Grandey and Kathy Morby) contains an article on
a topic mentioned once on this List last Spring. It's titled "THE LEGAL
SCENE" and reads as follows:

<<Bruce Hamilton Sues Seattle's Becky Hoff

Bruce Hamilton, Disney comic book and litho publisher (Another Rainbow), has
sued Becky Hoff for a letter she wrote "to the editor" regarding Carl Barks.
Becky Hoff, owner of the "Sunday Funnies", claims that this was her opinion
only. After finishing a seven year litigation with a different customer in
LA, Hamilton sued Hoff in Phoenix about a year ago. With a lengthy venue
fight, the suit has been moved from Arizona.

BRUCE HAMILTON SUES KATHY MORBY

In separate issues from the Hoff case, Kathy Morby has been also sued about
a year ago. It too was knocked out of the State of Arizona. The suit has
been transferred to the State of Oregon. Morby said, "Hamilton is suing
because we were successful campaigning to have Barks elected for 8 fan
awards at the CBG Chicago Comic Convention. We were able to get Uncle
Scrooge elected as well." Hamilton claims campaigning was not allowed. The
CBG rules made it clear that it was OK.

BRUCE HAMILTON SUES CARL BARKS

Bruce Hamilton acted as Barks agent up until 1992. He claims *breach of a
verbal contract* on Carl Barks' part, on exclusivity. He demands millions of
dollars. Hamilton and Barks have not been on speaking terms for about five
years. Hamilton seeks to have a joint statement made by the two of them.
They are to publicly declare that they are two good friends...or that all
has been and is well between them.

BRUCE HAMILTON SUES BILL GRANDEY

Hamilton complains about not sharing in the spectacular financial success of
Barks during the last five years. He also complains about Grandey's success
with Barks at CBG awards.>>

A pretty "balanced" presentation, don't you think? :-))))))

Holiday Greetings,

Archontis

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Hi, I'm new here on the list. Georg Tempel - Germany.

Well, just to add a few comments on Dean Rekick's question about the Don
Rosa stories in Europe. At least in Germany, Switzerland and Austria the
longer stories are printed in the weekly "Micky Maus" magazine, so you
only have to wait for two weeks to get the three parts together. Each
issue costs about $2.30. Later these stories are collected in an album
series with Rosa-stories. Each album has about 48 - 56 pages for $10.00
and includes Don's comments on each story.

Georg Tempel

Like everybody else I have bought and immensely enjoyed Don's Life of
Scrooge book. But one thing puzzles me: In one of the early chapters
(I didn't bring the book, so I quote from memory), Scrooge meets the
professor who travelled to Plain Awful and brought back the square eggs.
(I don't know the English name of this character either, sorry).

But surely, in my (Danish) edition of 'Lost in the Andes', we are told
by the old blind indian, that the guy who returned from the valley of
Plain Awful had lost his senses, and that he lost consciousness and
'slept into eternity'. Via Cuzco the square eggs, thought to be stones,
then ended up in Duckburg Museum.

So what is going on? If the death of the professor is due to bad
translation, how come the world never knew the eggs were really eggs?
And if the professor really died immediately upon returning from Plain Awful,
who is the guy Scrooge meet on the train? 'Lost in the Andes' clearly states
that nobody, besides the professor, had ever visited the valley before Donald
and the kids.

A mystery. To be solved, I hope.

Kristian

Thanks to Steven Rowe for helpful comments.
<<um, not sure what you want.>>
I guess I also thought that maybe maybe, if Gladstone leaves the sinking ship,
or is forced to leave it (losing its licence some day, as other grapevine
messages might seem to imply), perhaps perhaps Acclaim could take over some of
"our" products too.

From a business perspective [as partly opposed to the literary perspective] it
would make sense to look at sales, distribution apparatus, aimed-for consumer
groups (of children?), reputation, success. And perhaps, in America, finding
Disney books with Hercules, Lion King, the de-H.C.Andersenised Mermaid, the
10001 Dalmatians, etc., has been easier than finding "our" products.

Nils Lid Hjort

Hi all again...

KATIE:

> I'll blow off a little steam now about obscure Disney comics characters.

In the Brazilian Disney comics marketing model, you buy Mickey or
Scrooge titles and get many of those obscure ones along (the Scrooge
title has 84 pages, covers and advertisements included, so they have
reasons to fill space as possible). There are 3 solutions:

a) give Chip 'n' Dale, Bucky Bug etc. their own titles when and if
they can sell enough by themselves. Theoretically more feasible in
the American model, for U.S. regular comic books have less pages.
Anyway, those titles are more likely to be canceled (mainstream
character titles are proven to sell better).

b) make them fill up space in mainstream titles. That may make
trouble for Ducks, but it may be the only way to allow them to be read
(if Duck fans don't simply skip them)

c) accept seasonal trends. These days we rarely see Bucky Bug or Lady
and the Tramp in Brazilian main titles, but they made regular
appearances in the past. Eega Beeva also is all but extinct here
since the mid-80s. They had their time, but if one wants to check out
their good stories, there are always 200-plus-page themed digests and
digest reprints. Not typical of U.S. Disney comics.

P.C.Barreto
(Email removed)

EVERYONE

All right, we're upset. A lot.
But, then, are we helping Gladstone in any way by either picking at them,
telling them what they should do or, even worse, what they should've done?
I'm sure we already did it before individually, didn't we?
Either we wanted more ducks or less mice, more bugs or less wolves, more
pages in less books, less pages in more books, and we liked this author,
and hated that other...
They surely have files full of the silliest requests, as probably every
other publisher does.
I, for one, some time ago presented them with a portrait of my "ideal"
comics line, something that, in short, went like this

Two prestige format comic titles of 100 pages, one for Ducks and one for Mice.
Album lines for all the "main" authors.

It's not exactly what happened but, still, close enough.
Now, I'm not particularly skilled in foretelling the future. Fact is, I
just always regarded Gladstone as a "Collectors Publisher".
They're not, IMO, to be compared with the likes of Egmont or Disney Italia,
it's a matter of sheer size and related interests, but rather to the second
Disney publisher in Italy, Comic Art, who, in fact, does only collector's
editions (And how!).

I reckon Gladstone could make a fair day with collector's editions as well.
After all, haven't we all been desperately looking for Gladstone comics
everywhere in the past months? Haven't we begged or threathened for them,
regardless being in Greece, Lapland or Italy? That's because they're darn
GOOD, in the end, and we want to read Don Rosa and William Van Horn in
their original language since, as Martin Berglund and others pointed out,
translations are not always... er... faithful to the original, so to speak.

Collectors being satisfied, the serious problem here seems to me the
actually very likely risk of having, in a couple of generations, no Disney
comics whatsoever produced NOR published in the States, which would mean,
BTW, no new Disney American readers NOR authors at all, pretty soon...

I reckon The Disney Company should worry about that, in the first place.

But we're losing sight of the core of the problem, it seems to me.

The Disney Company's attitude should be more open, we all agree on that,
and Gladstone surely made their own mistakes, but there is a rubber wall
between publishers and the "end user" (us).
It is called distribution, and it's a worldwide problem, not just an
American one.

I'll summarize my own experience in the past year or so, and that should
give you some ideas.

There's no Gladstone comics at all to be found at newsstands, where I live,
so I tried with comic bookshops but, even there, no one kept a regular
line, and I had to make specific orders, kind of a "local" subscription,
for the titles I wanted (all!).
The order was made around Sep. '96, and the first comic I got was USA #45,
some 4 months later. US and DDA begun arriving some other 3 months later,
and of the remaining titles, DD and WDC, I learned they had been
discontinued by the publisher! This was one year ago! Luckily, I kept my
WDC subscription with Gladstone ongoing, so I could show the current issues
of the "discontinued" title to the bookshop's owner, thus persuading him
that I wasn't mad!
The very same local distributor, Diamond based, also denied the very
existence of TAUS and US&DD, a few months ago, and is still now happily
accepting orders for every Gladstone title appearing in Previews in the
past months, and still maintains knowing nothing about the infamous
"Diamond Affair".

It is not a matter of comics hidden behind female anatomical parts or
Spawns of some sort, the rule is "If it doesn't appear on Previews, it
doesn't exist!", so, many Disney comics just don't. How could readers be
interested in something that doesn't even exist? And it's not a problem
related to just imported material, quite a few good Italian titles were
killed by total lack of distribution, too.

Now, what could a poor publisher (or reader, or bookshop's owner) do, at
this point?
I, for myself, purchased the last issue of "Spawn"... quite good, I
daresay... ;-)

Cheers

Eta Beta

E-mail to : Eta Beta <(Email removed)>

On Dec 17, 11:30am, Dr. Archontis Pantsios quoted from the Grandey
house organ:

> BRUCE HAMILTON SUES KATHY MORBY
>
> In separate issues from the Hoff case, Kathy Morby has been also sued about
> a year ago. It too was knocked out of the State of Arizona. The suit has
> been transferred to the State of Oregon. Morby said, "Hamilton is suing
> because we were successful campaigning to have Barks elected for 8 fan
> awards at the CBG Chicago Comic Convention. We were able to get Uncle
> Scrooge elected as well." Hamilton claims campaigning was not allowed. The
> CBG rules made it clear that it was OK.

This is fairly bizarre phrasing: "the CBG Chicago Comic Convention."
CBG is the Comics Buyer's Guide, a weekly trade paper, and the fan
awards were a kind of fan popularity contest conducted among the
paper's readers. The awards were merely presented at the Chicago
Comics Convention, which had and has no ties (management, ownership,
sponsorship, whatever) with CBG. Looking at the contest as something
to be "elected" to as the result of "campaigning" is even more
bizarre, but if you want to maintain the election metaphor, "stuffing
the ballot box" would be the term that applies to what the Grandeys
did. It may have been technically legal, but only because CBG had
never anticipated anyone violating the spirit of the informal
popularity contest like this. As I understand it, CBG has since
tightened the rules to avoid anything like this happening again
and so the awards really would be an accurate reflection of fan
sentiment. As a friend of mine remarked, "Who would have thought
that the time would come when Barks would be given a whole slew of
fan awards -- and you'd feel bad about it?"
>

> BRUCE HAMILTON SUES BILL GRANDEY
>
> Hamilton complains about not sharing in the spectacular financial success of
> Barks during the last five years. He also complains about Grandey's success
> with Barks at CBG awards.>>
>
I don't know enough about the financial end of things to comment on the
first part, but as for "Grandey's success with Barks at CBG awards,"
Bruce has every right to complain. _I'm_ complaining. Grandey found a
loophole to use a trivial fan contest in order to promote his business as
Barks's agent, embarassing Barks's fans and cheapening the awards
themselves since no one could take the results seriously.

--Dwight Decker

Can anyone tell me what the "infamous incident involving German
customs and Diamond Distribution" was?

Also, you can see the latest comic news (including Gladstone's
announcement) at:

http://www.mania.com/newsarama/newsarama.htx

Eric

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