Keskustelujen arkisto

> Well, this doesn't change the fact Susan and you are great
> colorists (that's the name, isn't it? I somehow have a doubt typing
> it).

"Colorists" is exactly right. Thanks, Olivier.

Gary

>From: Marc Newman <marc.newman at comcast.net>
>To: dcml at nafsk.se
>Subject: Disney Comics 200th issues
>Date: Fri, 12 May 2006 20:39:52 -0700
>
>Hi everyone,
>
>I just joined the list tonight and am really looking forward to being
>here. Most of my Disney comics knowledge is of Carl Barks so I'm going
>to be learning a lot about other stuff from you folks.

welcome to this list! it's nice to see another American (assumption?) fan
pop up here as we seem to be few and far between outside of the actual
creators.

>By the way, this came out in today's Scoop newsletter from Gemstone:
>
>http://scoop.diamondgalleries.com/preview/scoop_article.asp?ai=12109&si=122
>
>A nice little piece about different Disney comics throughout the world
>that reached their 200th issue. The first was Topolino in Italy in
>1936--I had no idea!
>

i'm really fond of the anniversary issues myself as I know that we're
usually in for something pretty good. My first encounter with them - while
not a 250th issue deal - was the full print of the Miracle Master by
Gladstone. in (I THINK) 244. I was a little bit dissapointed that Mickey
Mouse 250 ended up being only Bill Wright's "Sinister Sorcerer" when I
finally found it. but considering how much they went all out for that
Miracle Master print I think missing the ball a bit on 250 was justified. :)

For anyone at Gemstone - What's the next major milestone issue coming up
with the various books anyway?

Jonathan Gray

Harry Fluks wrote:

> Egmont compiles 12 (or maybe 13) pocket books every year.

There are 13 so-called Jumbo books a year. There is also an annual
double-sized "Mammoth book", a hardcover Christmas book and several
theme books. The latter are 448 pages and usually consist exclusively of
stories used in previous Egmont publications, such as the Jumbo books,
the now-cancelled Uncle Scrooge book etc.

> This explains why chapter 1 of the "TNT" series was not used in
> Holland, while other chapters were: pure coincidence.
> (And now we may see TNT chapter 1 after all...)

Any thoughts on whether chapters 4 and 5 will be used?

Derek Smith wrote:

> Donald and Fethry return as TNT agents in "Let's Get Kraken"
> by Jensen (so popular they don't even need to say his first name
> anymore!) [...]

Good thing I wasn't drinking when I read this, or my new computer
would've short-circuited!

Lars

replying to several emails at once to save time:

>>>>Huck Akin's "The Oak Island Treasure," a Scrooge graphic novel

>announced by Disney (in 1991? I don't have my records here), was also
revived at Egmont, but shelved and never completed.

> Yeah, that jogged my memory. I remember suggesting to the sales and
marketing wizards that long stories would be a good thing to do. Maybe run
them
initially in several issues of one of the titles, then reprint the
compilation in
hardback book form. I think some of them ran about 96 - 100 pages, but these
were fully fleshed out stories with great plots, sub-plots and tangential
character exposition. I'd forgotten about Huck Akin's "Oak Island Treasure."
I
remember he did a ton of research and came in with an exciting plot outline
that just had to be done.

That sounds really interesting to be honest. i would have been all over
something like that in a second. Its really a shame that its probably
sitting somewhere on a shelf in limbo. =\ For anyone in the know, who was
slated to draw it? I suppose the idea of bringing it out of limbo and
possibly reviving it for the prestige Scrooge books is out of order at this
time and date. Ah well... :(

the idea of Disney comics graphic novels - both original material and
reprint material - is actually a very ideal one IMO (and maybe more cost
effective than the old school oversized album prints in the long run). I've
seen a scant few bookstores that have already done this with the Prestige
books i.e. stacking them alongside graphic novels and whatnot. Thats why I'm
really hoping that the Treasures books and the DuckTales books will work in
the long run, so we can get more graphic novel style Disney material out in
the open. Who knows, maybe someday we can have long style original stories
printed in graphic novels here in the states again...

>Pat McGreal did one involving Hawaiian mythology that
I did see in print.

Really? what was the name of the story.

>I recall another story notion based on a Swing Music
orchestra contest involving a symphony-sized gathering of Beagle Boys
entitled
"Boogie Woogie Beagle Boys," but I don't know what happened with that.

Ha! That sounds like fun as well. :D

> I think the Disney "implosion" was more of a 1992 event and was one of
>the
things that motivated my departure.

As one of the disney fans who was introduced to the books during your tenure
I was wondering where you had went after the line crumbled. :(

> As for "...so they could no longer afford to have the stories
drawn..." good
grief! If the money controllers had just stood behind us and supported us,
we might have done some memorable, groundbreaking stuff. But, no... they
had
to squeeze us into monetary oblivion.

i've come to the conclusion in my very very *very* small time in the comic
book industry that its the corporate executive type that almost always kills
comic books if only because they don't seem to understand simple things we
in the real world like to call "common sense". Things that actually do make
sense are often "far too much like right" to go on ahead with. The worst
however comes from those corporate power happy types who micromanage the
creative process to insanely minute details, thus killing potentially
brilliant ideas before they can really even come to conception. Sad really.
=\

>Gladstone operated for years on a
handful of dedicated and talented people in modest offices in an
affordable area
(Arizona). Disney had about 35 people in some of the most expensive real
estate
in Burbank, with computers (I didn't get one), secretaries (not me), and
supervisors (I had four).

And I think thats part of whats made Gemstone/Gladstone so successful: A
small close knit group of people who love what they do and aren't busy being
inflated on thier own egos. you don't have to modernize everything or change
the formula to everything to make it work. Sometimes if you're just genuine
about what you do and you do it RIGHT it shows and pays off. Even worse than
the oft-maligned Disney run, compare what Marvel Comics did to the Disney
Afternoon characters as opposed to what Disney did to the DA characters.
They turned the more interesting modern Disney characters into regurgitated
kiddie pap. If they'd gotten thier hands on the classic characters they'd
have probably maimed them into something unrocgnizable. Thankfully (if I
remember correctly) its a small blessing that Gladstone II had not quite
folded yet so they still had the classics liscence. My guess is that they
(Marvel) probably were trying to emulate DC's Looney Tunes/Scooby Doo line
but had no clue what they were doing (and it really showed too). Honestly i
think that the very short lived Marvel/Disney series did more damage to that
specific set of characters than the Disney company could have ever done. =\

>No wonder they couldn't afford to publish comics. My
favorite quote by one of the semi-suits - "Here at WD Publications,
we're not
building a publishing empire, we're building resumes." They saw Disney
Comics as a way to prove they could reduce budgets and still get the work
done,
then used that skill to get jobs elsewhere.

typical suits in action. =\

> Hey, I'm just really curious here what the deal was
with the Disney-published comics circa 1990. As this
forum and others have demonstrated, there is a lot of
resentment, anger, and generally unhappy feelings
about Disney publishing.

I think a lot of it stems from two major things:

If you're a fan of the classic characters (for fun, let's call them Pre-80's
BGB - Before Gummi Bears ^__^), and an old school Disney fan - it really
does look as if they totally raked Gladstone over the coals. Here's this
small close company (Gladstone I) that basically revived the Disney liscence
from limbo all on thier own (not an easy feat). Disney sees this success,
says "Hey, we can do this ourselves and get more of a cut on this revenue!"
takes it, and tries to change the formula entirely (going back to "if it
aint broke don't fix it") - Goofy barely appeared as Goofy in his own book,
following on the heels of Gottfredson and Scarpa made Disne'ys "modernized
Mickey" look like bunk. And at first everything just came out garish. So
Disney realizes that maybe they bit off more than they can chew "imploding"
all books into 3 and shelving all the modern characters into 1 magazine
book. This fixes things temporarily but it still doesnt work. Disney then
tries to give the people what they want to some degree (what should have
been done at first) while still doing thier own thing. While they succeed in
many areas, ultimately they fail. Disney realizes they cant do it anymore,
and hands back over the semi-battered remains of the liscence back to the
company that originally made it work (Gladstone II). But the damage done to
the liscence is too much. Without a steady readership, most of the fan base
burnt out and wondering where the other characters are, and the industry
having changed tremendously since they'd started out - small company folds.
Then the entire line folds. Fast forward to reboot of line: take two
(Gemstone II) in which they must start all over again at rebuilding what
they once had from scratch.

Now if you're a fan of the Modern characters (Post 80's AGB - After Gummi
Bears ^__^) and new school Disney fan you got screwed over moreso. For the
most part, outside of the ever popular DuckTales, Gladstone didnt really
have much to do with the modern characters. Wuzzles had a few entries in
early G1 Comics and Stories, Gummi Bears was nowhere to be seen, and Pooh
Bear was always more of a classic character than a modern one depending on
your preference. So the INITIAL Disney line dealing with the "Disney
Afternoon" characters was a GODSEND. But it was inherently flawed. Disney
relied on Studio artists to get the bulk of thier work done on classics and
modern: specifically the oft-maligned Jaime Diaz studios. Some of them could
not do proper ducks and mice to save thier lives, and outside of perhaps
Cosme Quartieri on Duck Tales (who is a personal favorite of mine), the
Saavedra's on Rescue Rangers, and I know I'm forgetting one other whom I did
like - the majority of the Jaime Diaz studio artists were kinda crappy. =\
For things that were not studio work (such as Mickey Mouse or Roger Rabbit)
they expirimented with industry professionals who'd done superhero comics,
such as Marv Wolfman of Teen Titans doing the first 7 issue arc story for
Duck Tales (I still say it is a fact that The Gold Odyssey was 10 times
better and a hell of lot more readable and coherent than the very disjointed
"Scrooge's Quest" ever was - just cause Wolfman wrote it didnt make it any
good...) or Kurt Busiek doing an issue of Mickey Mouse or Sparky Moore on
Roger Rabbit. They also introduced the concept of overarching story arcs to
Disney comics (failing badly on Mickey Mouse but IMO succeeding very well
with Rescue Rangers which was, I think, a very strong book - I'd love to see
parts of that collected some day). And here is where the problem here came
in: basically a huge clash with the classic material. With the new material
it was OK to try out new things without stepping on what came before it, but
with the old material classic fans seemed a bit enraged and jaded that the
stuff that had been PROVEN to sell was being virtually ignored (just look at
the various Mickey Mouse and Goofy Adventures letter columns) .Then came the
implosion and all the modern characters were shuffled rather haphazardly
into the Disney Adventures books. Here went all this potential for new
characters and good storylines shunted into the back of a magazine that - as
time went on - devoted less and less space to then (now you can barely find
ANY actual Disney characters in DA). When the Disney line folded, Gladstone
got the classics back, but the DA characters went to Marvel where they took
good attempts at moden characters and turned them into (as I stated earlier)
"marvelous examples of vomitous kiddie pap".

Outside of DuckTales (and what seems to be a recent resurgence of Launchpad)
- all hopes of seeing the modern characters get the same respect that the
classics vanished into thin air. Here is an entire gamut of fun characters
that intoduced many modern fans to the classics, that will never get a
chance to be the next Scamps, Bucky Bugs, Chip and Dale, or 'Lil Bad Wolfs.
and you cant even use Comics and Stories - what has always been the variety
showcase book - to showcase these characters because the liscences for said
characters cant be obtained by the people who HAVE done the classic
characters right.

If you're old you're bitter at them. If you're new you're bitter at them. If
you're a creator you're bitter at them. long story short: EVERYBODY BOT GOT
SCREWED AND EVERYBODY'S BITTER! YAY, LETS HAVE A COOKIE!!! :D :D :D :D

>Don Rosa also once wrote that he only did
"The Money Pit" (the story in the first Disney issue
of "Donald Duck Adventures") as a goodwill gesture.

considering the tone of this whole conversation and whats been said about
Disney by people in the know, maybe a title such as "The Money Pit" ended up
actually being more of a jab than anyone might have guessed... ;)

> It's funny, because I was introduced to Disney
character comics in 1990 with the beginning of this
run, and I thought they were fantastic. Good paper,
good coloring, great stories (so I thought, anyway).

Ditto. I like some of what they did and dont think all of it was bad.
Without them I wouldnt know who Carl Barks was or why DuckTales was so
different. =\

They were almost completely responsible for the
appreciation I currently hold for the comics of Donald
Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and so on.

its like that for many. Surprisingly, most people I know still miss the old
stuff and are under the crazy assumption that the line is still gone. It
takes time to rebuild a fan base that was pretty much scattered to the
winds. =\

Jonathan H. Gray

replying to several emails at once to save time:

>>>>>Huck Akin's "The Oak Island Treasure," a Scrooge graphic novel
>
>>announced by Disney (in 1991? I don't have my records here), was also
>revived at Egmont, but shelved and never completed.
>
>> Yeah, that jogged my memory. I remember suggesting to the sales and
>marketing wizards that long stories would be a good thing to do. Maybe run
>them
>initially in several issues of one of the titles, then reprint the
>compilation in
>hardback book form. I think some of them ran about 96 - 100 pages, but
>these
>were fully fleshed out stories with great plots, sub-plots and tangential
>character exposition. I'd forgotten about Huck Akin's "Oak Island
>Treasure." I
>remember he did a ton of research and came in with an exciting plot outline
>that just had to be done.
>

That sounds really interesting to be honest. i would have been all over
something like that in a second. Its really a shame that its probably
sitting somewhere on a shelf in limbo. =\ For anyone in the know, who was
slated to draw it? I suppose the idea of bringing it
out of limbo and possibly reviving it for the prestige Scrooge books is out
of order at this time and date. Ah well... :(

the idea of Disney comics graphic novels - both original material and
reprint material - is actually a very ideal one IMO (and maybe more cost
effective than the old school oversized album prints in the long run). I've
seen a scant few bookstores that have already done this with the Prestige
books i.e. stacking them alongside graphic novels and whatnot. Thats why I'm
really hoping that the Treasures books and the DuckTales books will work in
the long run, so we can get more graphic novel style Disney material out in
the open. Who knows, maybe someday we can have long style original stories
printed in graphic novels here in the states again...

>
>>Pat McGreal did one involving Hawaiian mythology that
> I did see in print.

Really? what was the name of the story.

>>I recall another story notion based on a Swing Music
> orchestra contest involving a symphony-sized gathering of Beagle Boys
>entitled
>"Boogie Woogie Beagle Boys," but I don't know what happened with that.

Ha! That sounds like fun as well. :D

>> I think the Disney "implosion" was more of a 1992 event and was one
>>of the
>things that motivated my departure.

As one of the disney fans who was introduced to the books during your tenure
I was wondering where you had went after the line crumbled.You were IMO one
of the only really good editors there. :(

> > As for "...so they could no longer afford to have the stories
>drawn..." good
>grief! If the money controllers had just stood behind us and supported us,
>we might have done some memorable, groundbreaking stuff. But, no... they
>had
>to squeeze us into monetary oblivion.

i've come to the conclusion in my very very *very* small time in the comic
book industry that its the corporate executive type that almost always kills
comic books if only because they don't seem to understand simple things we
in the real world like to call "common sense". Things that actually do make
sense are often "far too much like right" to go on ahead with. The worst
however comes from those corporate power happy types who micromanage the
creative process to insanely minute details, thus killing potentially
brilliant ideas before they can really even come to conception. Sad really.
=\

>>Gladstone operated for years on a
> handful of dedicated and talented people in modest offices in an
>affordable area
>(Arizona). Disney had about 35 people in some of the most expensive real
>estate
>in Burbank, with computers (I didn't get one), secretaries (not me), and
>supervisors (I had four).

And I think thats part of whats made Gemstone/Gladstone so successful: A
small close knit group of people who love what they do and aren't busy being
inflated on thier own egos. you don't have to modernize everything or change
the formula to everything to make it work. Sometimes if you're just genuine
about what you do and you do it RIGHT it shows and pays off. Even worse than
the oft-maligned Disney run, compare what Marvel Comics did to the Disney
Afternoon characters as opposed to what Disney did to the DA characters.
They turned the more interesting modern Disney characters into
regurgitated kiddie pap. If they'd gotten thier hands on the classic
characters they'd have probably maimed them into something unrocgnizable.
Thankfully (if I remember correctly) its a small blessing that Gladstone II
had not quite folded yet so they still had the classics liscence. My guess
is that they (Marvel) probably were trying to emulate DC's Looney
Tunes/Scooby Doo line but had no clue what they were doing (and it really
showed too). Honestly i think that the very short lived Marvel/Disney series
did more damage to that specific set of characters than the Disney company
could have ever done. =\

>>No wonder they couldn't afford to publish comics. My
> favorite quote by one of the semi-suits - "Here at WD Publications,
>we're not
>building a publishing empire, we're building resumes." They saw Disney
>Comics as a way to prove they could reduce budgets and still get the work
>done,
>then used that skill to get jobs elsewhere.

typical suits in action. =\

> > Hey, I'm just really curious here what the deal was
>with the Disney-published comics circa 1990. As this
>forum and others have demonstrated, there is a lot of
>resentment, anger, and generally unhappy feelings
>about Disney publishing.

I think a lot of it stems from two major things:

If you're a fan of the classic characters (for fun, let's call them Pre-80's
BGB - Before Gummi Bears ^__^), and an old school Disney fan - it really
does look as if they totally raked Gladstone over the coals. Here's this
small close company (Gladstone I) that basically revived the Disney liscence
from limbo all on thier own (not an easy feat). Disney sees this success,
says "Hey, we can do this ourselves and get more of a cut on this revenue!"
takes it, and tries to change the formula entirely (going back to "if it
aint
broke don't fix it") - Goofy barely appeared as Goofy in his own book,
following on the heels of Gottfredson and Scarpa made Disne'ys "modernized
Mickey" look like bunk. And at first everything just came out garish. So
Disney realizes that maybe they bit off more than they can chew "imploding"
all books into 3 and shelving all the modern characters into 1 magazine
book. This fixes things temporarily but it still doesnt work. Disney then
tries to give the people what they want to some degree (what should have
been done at first) while still doing thier own thing. While they succeed in
many areas, ultimately they fail. Disney realizes they cant do it anymore,
and hands back over the semi-battered remains of the liscence back to the
company that originally made it work (Gladstone II). But the damage done to
the liscence is too much. Without a steady readership, most of the fan base
burnt out and wondering where the other characters are, and the industry
having changed tremendously since they'd started out - small company folds.
Then the entire line folds. Fast forward to reboot of line: take two
(Gemstone II) in which they must start all over again at rebuilding what
they once had from scratch.

Now if you're a fan of the Modern characters (Post 80's AGB - After Gummi
Bears ^__^) and new school Disney fan you got screwed over moreso. For the
most part, outside of the ever popular DuckTales, Gladstone didnt really
have much to do with the modern characters. Wuzzles had a few entries in
early G1 Comics and Stories, Gummi
Bears was nowhere to be seen, and Pooh Bear was always more of a classic
character than a modern one depending on your preference. So the INITIAL
Disney line dealing with the "Disney Afternoon" characters was a GODSEND.
But it was inherently flawed. Disney relied on Studio artists to get the
bulk of thier work done on classics and modern: specifically the
oft-maligned Jaime Diaz studios. Some of them could not do proper ducks and
mice to save thier lives, and outside of perhaps Cosme Quartieri on Duck
Tales (who is a personal favorite of mine), the Saavedra's on Rescue
Rangers, and I know I'm forgetting one other whom I did like - the majority
of the Jaime Diaz studio artists were pretty crappy. =\ For things that were
not studio work (such as Mickey Mouse or Roger
Rabbit) they expirimented with industry professionals who'd done superhero
comics, such as Marv Wolfman of Teen Titans doing the first 7 issue arc
story for Duck Tales (I still say it is a fact that The Gold Odyssey was 10
times better and a hell of lot more readable and coherent than the very
disjointed "Scrooge's Quest" ever was - just cause Wolfman wrote it didnt
make it any good...) or Kurt Busiek doing an issue of Mickey Mouse or Sparky
Moore on Roger Rabbit. They also introduced the concept of overarching story
arcs to Disney comics: failing badly on Mickey Mouse but IMO succeeding
somewhat with Rescue Rangers which was, I think, one of the stronger books
("For The Love of Cheese" is an amazingly good story). And here is where
the problem here came in: basically a huge clash with the classic material.
With the new material it was OK to try out new things without stepping on
what came before it, but with the old material classic fans seemed a bit
enraged and jaded that the stuff that had been PROVEN to sell was being
virtually ignored (just look at the various Mickey Mouse and Goofy
Adventures letter columns) .Then came the implosion and all the modern
characters were shuffled rather haphazardly into the Disney Adventures
books. And with that shuffling went went much of the story quality as well.
Some of the DA stories are good (a few of the earlier ones really stand out
and shine ? The Darkwing Duck ?Fluffy? trilogy, A few early Duck Tales
stories, The Legend Of The Chaos God crossover, Return to Blaggard Castle
for instance) but the further you go, the worse they get. Here went all this
potential for new characters and good storylines shunted into the back of a
magazine that - as time went on - devoted less and less space to then (now
you can barely find ANY actual Disney characters in DA). When the Disney
line folded, Gladstone got the classics back, but the DA characters went to
Marvel where they took good attempts at moden characters that had already
been dumbed down and turned them into (as I stated earlier) "marvelous
examples of vomitous kiddie pap".

Outside of DuckTales (and what seems to be a recent resurgence of Launchpad)
- all hopes of seeing the modern characters get the same respect that the
classics vanished into thin air. Here is an entire gamut of fun characters
that intoduced many modern fans to the classics, that will never get a
chance to be the next Scamps, Bucky Bugs, Chip and Dale, or 'Lil Bad Wolfs.
and you cant even use Comics and Stories - what has always been the variety
showcase book - to showcase these characters because the liscences for said
characters cant be obtained by the people who HAVE done the classic
characters right. And even if you did get the liscence would you **really**
want to reprint the majority of the DA stories for the ones you do have
access to? Pick and choose, pick and choose. =\

If you're old you're bitter at them. If you're new you're bitter at them. If
you're a creator you're bitter at them. long story short: EVERYBODY BOT GOT
SCREWED AND EVERYBODY'S BITTER! YAY, LETS HAVE A COOKIE!!! :D :D :D :D

>>Don Rosa also once wrote that he only did
> "The Money Pit" (the story in the first Disney issue
>of "Donald Duck Adventures") as a goodwill gesture.

considering the tone of this whole conversation and whats been said about
Disney by people in the know, maybe a title such as "The Money Pit" ended up
actually being more of a jab than anyone might have guessed... ;)

> > It's funny, because I was introduced to Disney
>character comics in 1990 with the beginning of this
>run, and I thought they were fantastic. Good paper,
>good coloring, great stories (so I thought, anyway).

Ditto. I like some of what they did and dont think all of it was bad.
Without them I wouldnt know who Carl Barks was or why DuckTales was so
different. =\

>They were almost completely responsible for the
>appreciation I currently hold for the comics of Donald
>Duck, Uncle Scrooge, and so on.

its like that for many. Surprisingly, most people I know still miss the old
stuff and are under the crazy assumption that the line is still gone. It
takes time to rebuild a fan base that was pretty much scattered to the
winds. =\

Jonathan H. Gray

>
>
> welcome to this list! it's nice to see another American (assumption?)
> fan pop up here as we seem to be few and far between outside of the
> actual creators.
>
> Jonathan Gray
>
>
Thanks Jonathan!

It's been quite the education for me in the last five years as I delved
deeper into Barks fandom to learn that these comics that I loved as a
child are so well-regarded in Europe yet are now practically unknown to
a generation or two of Americans. I would say that our Disney back
issue sales are about equally spread between Europe/Australia and the
U.S. with the bigger orders actually going "international" instead of
domestic. Even as late as 1985 one of my favorite family restaurants
had Gold Key Disneys available for kids to read in the lobby as one
waited for a table. No longer. (I know this topic has been
well-discussed before on this list as I've been browsing the archives.)
It's hard to imagine a restaurant buying a $6.95 current Duck book for
kids to look at. Too pricey.

Another topic I happened to notice in the archives is a discussion about
starting titles over with issue #1. I'm usually against this as one of
my primary interests in comics is the history of same. Plus, having to
list
Donald Duck Adventures (Gladstone) and Donald Duck Adventures (Disney)
on the website is a pain. I know we sometimes forget to designate too,
so that's more work cleaning up our database.

However, there is one positive thing to starting numbering over and that
is that people might use the occasion as a "jumping on point." I know
that it sometimes works that way for me. I happen to be buying the
superhero comic New Avengers right now and it's actually the first time
I've bought the Avengers on a monthly basis in 20 years! The fact that
I could start from the beginning was kind of fun and different for me
and I've been enjoying it. So the diehards will buy the Disney titles
anyway but a new start might make a few people pick it up who wouldn't
otherwise. Some will stick with it.

By the way, it might please everyone to know that Carl Barks is
extremeley well-regarded in a surprising place: The CGC message
boards. I assume quite a few of you only have a passing-at-best
knowledge of CGC. That's the company that professionally grades comics
for a fee and "slabs" them in a special tamper-proof holder. Well, the
people who use the service are usually pretty superhero-centric (and a
whole bunch of other things, lol) but the company's message boards
actually seem to attract the most knowledgeable and passionate fans of
American comics that I've ever seen. It's gratifying to see that so
many people there love Barks.

I'll try to remember to post some links next week.

Regards,
Marc Newman
www.HouseofComics.com
"Super-Selection of Silver and Bronze Age Comics"

Marvin,

Do you or do any of you on the list know if the Gremlins "reprint" will also include editorial content and material as planned when that project was first announced?

Best.

Didier