Keskustelujen arkisto

In a message dated 3/13/2003 11:28:09 AM Eastern Standard Time,
malines24 at hotmail.com writes:

> Or maybe it's just me expected some Barks' consciousness-expanding
> gag-covers from the 50's?
>
> http://eega.net/covers/usa/w_wdc/w_wdc_167_00.jpg

Haha.

Now see, if Gemstone resorted to senseless violence on their covers, then
maybe they would draw in a much larger audience! People like their senseless
violence, after all!

I think that Gemstone just might be slightly heading in the wrong direction
by marketing their books strictly towards children. I'm hoping that the
prestige format books will be marketed towards adults and collectors--or Just
About Everyone--and the "take along" books will be marketed towards children.
But there's always the hopefully-unlikely chance of marketing the entire line
towards children completely, ala Disney Comics back in the early nineties.

Ugh.
--
Thanks for reading this nonsense,

Dane Martin

In a message dated 3/13/2003 2:11:17 PM Eastern Standard Time,
deanmary at worldnet.att.net writes:

> Dane Martin asked me why I prefer the TPB format to the album
> format.

hmm, i must have missed the begining of this thread...
what are we defining as the difference between the two?

as far as i can tell by the words: an album (collection?) is probably some
sort of TPB

(a TPB is a paperback in non-pocketbook format - as defined by the ABA)

steven rowe

In a message dated 3/13/2003 6:27:05 PM Eastern Standard Time,
SRoweCanoe at aol.com writes:

> what are we defining as the difference between the two?

An album is generally larger than a TPB, which is the size of a traditional
comic book. As I've said, I prefer the album size *because* it's larger, but
most people prefer the easier-to-store TPB format.

If you're ever in a bookstore, they should have a few "mainstream" TPBs for
you to take a look at. (I doubt if they'll have any albums.)

I hope that clears things up a bit...
--
Thanks for reading this nonsense,

Dane Martin

In a message dated 3/13/2003 8:32:34 PM Eastern Standard Time,
Danehog at aol.com writes:

> An album is generally larger than a TPB, which is the size of a traditional
> comic book. As I've said, I prefer the album size *because* it's larger,
> but most people prefer the easier-to-store TPB format.
>

oh, you are using what apparently is USA comic book direct market term for
TPBs ----instead of the standard USA publishing term TPB (in regular
publishing the albums would be a subset of TPB). + Anybody use the term album
besides Gladstone?

+ so why does the direct market use a term that would confuse all non-direct
market buyers and sellers?
steven rowe

Hi all!

I suppose that it's a well known fact, at least
among the Scandinavians here, that there are
published more Don Rosa stories in Norway and
Denmark than in Sweden. The following six stories
have been published in Norway, but not in Sweden:

AR 106 Cash Flow (*)
AR 145 His Majesty McDuck
H 87173 Leaky Luck
H 89174 The Pied Piper of Duckburg (*)
D 93574 The Duck who never was
D 94144 The Lost Charts of Columbus
-----
* This story is not published in Denmark either.

Can someone here, like Stefan Di?s, tell us about
the reasons for this, and maybe also what hope
Swedish Don Rosa fans should have about seeing
these (forgotten) stories in the future?

Sigvald :-)

Sigvald:

>I suppose that it's a well known fact, at least
>among the Scandinavians here, that there are
>published more Don Rosa stories in Norway and
>Denmark than in Sweden. The following six stories
>have been published in Norway, but not in Sweden:
>
>AR 106 Cash Flow (*)
>AR 145 His Majesty McDuck
>H 87173 Leaky Luck
>H 89174 The Pied Piper of Duckburg (*)
>D 93574 The Duck who never was
>D 94144 The Lost Charts of Columbus
>-----
>* This story is not published in Denmark either.
>
>Can someone here, like Stefan Di?s, tell us about
>the reasons for this, and maybe also what hope
>Swedish Don Rosa fans should have about seeing
>these (forgotten) stories in the future?

Well, since you ask me so nicely...!

Most of these stories came as extra supplements to the regular weekly. Now,
due to marketing reasons, the Swedish weekly traditionally doesn't use as
many supplements each year as do Denmark or Norway. That's because we have,
or had, a larger pool of subscribers, percentagewise, who already paid for
the magazine. Our Scandinavian counterparts, on the other hand, had to rely
on some extra incentives to attract the regular, single-copy buyers on
which their sales figures depended. Obviously, supplements cost money, so I
guess it was an easy decision for our business people not to use all the
suggested supplements, since they weren't needed for profit in the same way
as in Denmark or Norway. So it wasn't an editorial decision at all.

That's the way it was explained to me some years ago. I'm not in marketing
and generally don't understand anything about finances or business, but
this reasoning makes sense to me. A Donaldist might argue that a Don Rosa
supplement would profit anyway, since so many extra Rosa fans would buy
that particular issue. This may or may not be true, but at the time when
this happened, it was unreasonable to expect marketing executives in our
company to make any qualified decisions based on the contents of the
magazine. Again, this was decided away and above from the editorial office,
which probably wasn't aware that there even *was* a supplement that could
have been made. So I can certainly understand how it happened, even though
I naturally would have preferred to see those fine Rosa stories in Sweden.

I don't know if the same subscription differences still apply, but I do
know that Sweden still uses fewer supplements than Denmark and Norway. But
we have more of them than we used to, and we also have (supposedly) a
greater awareness of what's in them, even in marketing. So it's possible
that some of these stories might show up once in a while, maybe in
supplements like the summer extras or something like that. It's not my
decision, far from it, but on some occasions my opinion is asked, and I do
believe we picked up one such "forgotten" story (The Ten Avatars) some time
ago. Maybe it can happen again. Otherwise, we'll have to wait until the
stories are reprinted somewhere. When this happens, they're usually offered
all over Scandinavia (and the rest of Egmontland, I believe), and we may
decide to run them.

I might add that there's one notable exception to the above: "The Duck Who
Never Was". That was indeed an editorial decision, and a rare one at that.
It was taken out simply because people at our editorial office didn't like
it. That's also fine with me, even though I was a little disappointed at
the time. It's exactly that kind of decisions the editors are there to
make, and they are entitled to their opinions and to act accordingly. They
don't have to agree with me, or other Don Rosa fans, or non-Rosa fans, or
any other readers. People will always disagree. And again, there might come
a time for a reprint, and maybe we'll have other editors who decide that
the story is hunky-dory.

These are my personal views and understandings, and I apologize in case I
got something wrong. Thanks for listening, or not listening, whatever the
case may have been.

Stefan Dios
Malmo, Sweden

Gemstone has plans to print brazilian and french stories? I mean...the many
good ones?

Fernando!

Harry:
>Christopher Burton:
> > In the most recent Gemstone press release, they mention
> > that the three stories appearing in the first Take-Along
> > Books are The Deep, Panicking Pachyderm, and End of Days.
> > Would someone be so kind as to tell me who the creators
> > were for each of these stories?
>I think these stories are very recent, so they haven't shown up yet in a
>European comic.
>This means there is no information yet in Inducks (http://inducks.org)
>about them.
>At least I can't find the stories, looking by their titles.

Actually the duck stories have been published: in Finland - and in most
of the pocket book countries too, I think - End of Days was published in
November and The Deep in February (and apparently they were published
a month later in Poland).

They were both drawn by Massimo Fecchi, End of Days was written
by Rune Meikle and The Deep by Andreas Pihl.

>My guess is that all 3 stories are Danish (Egmont) production.

Your guess was right, at least about the duck stories.

>They probably chose Egmont stories instead of Italian stories, because
>the Egmont Ducks and Mice are more close to the traditional American
>characters. But I *do* hope Gemstone will print Italian stories too,
>later on!

Me too.

--
Ari Seppi (ari.seppi at iki.fi)
http://www.iki.fi/mani/