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Quote from user: arthurApparently the cover was hand-picked by Rosa. It's nice to read that Rosa is involved.
That is nice to hear. I'd read on the DCML that Mr. Rosa wasn't even aware of the plans to republish Life and Times until after the solicitation...

Link: http://nafsk.se/pipermail/dcml/2009-September/025849.html

Apparently he's been in contact with Boom since then, which is good news.

Let's just hope they add his name to the cover of Life and Times. The cover shown in this listing doesn't have his name on it, though it could just be a placeholder...

http://www.simonandschuster.biz/extras/pdfs/catalogs/Spring2010/KIDS-BOOM-Spring-2010-Catalog.pdf

Quote from user: KneonLet's just hope they add his name to the cover of Life and Times. The cover shown in this listing doesn't have his name on it, though it could just be a placeholder... http://www.simonandschuster.biz/extras/pdfs/catalogs/Spring2010/KIDS-BOOM-Spring-2010-Catalog.pdf
Thanks for posting. The Life and Times covers have to be placeholders. The pop colors doesn't fit at all.

By the way: The two "MICKEY MOUSE CLASSICS" look great. I hope for classic adventure stories, e.g. by Carl Fallberg and Paul Murry.

Quote from user: arthurSeeing that international subscriptions are so expensive, maybe these special covers are inlaid with gold!
:D

It would be awesome if Don Rosa could draw brand new covers for these editions, but I doubt his current health problems would allow it. :(

Yeesh, I'll have to hope for one to purchase on the 'Bay........No way I can make the 4 hour drive this weekend. Regardless of the re-used cover, I have been looking forward to the restart of this title since it shut down. I admit I am a bit worried about the variant cover idea.

I am sick about what Boom is doing with the Disney license. Of course, I mostly mean that metaphorically, but I am *so* upset about it that I am not altogether sure that it is not actually making me somewhat sick to my stomach.
You may wonder why I am writing about this on this thread. Well, I guess the info Arthur posted was finally the straw that broke the camel?s back, and I will get to that later. I have not until now posted anything about my views on what Boom is doing. For the most part I thought doing so would just rile myself up and get me in a worse mood. However, I am now at a point were I really to need vent and get my thoughts out. So yes, what is coming up is a long rant. If you have no desire to read a rant, I don?t blame anyone for skipping this whole posting by me. However, this rant does contain some concrete points and points of view, so I hope it is not totally without purpose.
Boom is publishing 4 monthly standard Disney comics. In 3 of these though, the characters will not really be themselves. In one, they will be fantasy ?Lord of the Rings? type characters. In another they will be superheroes. And in the 3rd it will be Donald Duck as James Bond.
It appears as if Boom doesn?t have much of an interest in printing stories where Donald, Mickey, and Goofy act like or are, well, Donald, Mickey, and Goofy. Instead they want them to be superheroes, fantasy characters, or super spies. It makes me wonder why they really wanted the Disney license. After all, if these are types of stories they wanted, why use the standard Disney characters in the first place? Boom does not seem to be doing that with the Pixar stories. For example, Boom *could* have say the Toy Story characters of Buzz and Woody I guess be magicians, wizards, etc. However, they seem to realize that if kids want to read about Buzz and Woody, they want the characters to act like and be Buzz and Woody, *not* have them being totally different characters. Is Boom worried that ?plain old? Mickey, Donald, and Goofy are so boring as themselves that no one would want to read them? If that is the case, why get the license at all?
I realize that Gemstone published some stories in their pocket book titles and other titles where Donald, Mickey, Goofy, etc. ?acted? as different characters. However, that was the exception rather than rule. How many people would have wanted *most* of these type of stories published and very few ?regular? stories?
For the moment though, forget about the types of stories being presented. Instead focus on the *length* of the stories. One of the odder, but in my opinion finest things about most Disney stories is that that are short enough to be published complete in one issue. In fact, often Disney comics contain more than one complete story. So when there are literally *thousands* of such ?one and done? Disney stories never printed in the USA, why would Boom *not* publish such stories in their monthly comics? It is not like there is not a format for long stories or sets of related stories. These stories would be great for a graphic novel, or ?pocket book? type format. Yes, I know that Boom plans on collecting these long stories in graphic novel form later on. However, why not publish them *first* in this format and leave the monthly titles for stories that can be told in one issue? That way couldn?t they both have their cake and eat it too?
So many people seem so thrilled that the 4 monthly comics are only $2.95. However, do people care if what they are getting is a good value price wise? If say Boom Disney comics have about 24 pages each month, you are paying about 12.5 cents per page. Now Gemstone?s 2 ?pocket book? titles, Donald Duck Adventures and Mickey Mouse Adventures, printed almost exclusively 3 panel stories. Before they were cancelled, they cost $7.95. However let?s say that today they would cost about $10.00. They had approximately 120 pages each issue which works out to about *8* cents a page if they cost 10 dollars an issue. So even though we heard so much about how expensive Gemstone comics were, weren?t such 3 panel stories a *bargain* compared to what Boom is charging? Yes, in the last few years Gemstone printed a number of 3 panel stories in their 2 prestige titles. However, I think the majority of them were stories bought for the pocket book titles when they were still being printed, and most were never intended for the 64 or 32 pages monthly comics. I would have much preferred these 3 panels stories *not* be printed in the two prestige monthlies, however I guess Gemstone could not just ?eat? the cost and have never published them.
People also were and still are so upset about the 2 prestige titles costing $8.00 by the end. However, that was not a bad deal either. Each prestige title had about 60 pages of stories which worked out to about 13.5 cents an issue. So can the difference of about 1 cent a page make Boom comics a great bargain while at the same time make the Gemstone prestige titles ridiculously expensive?
Now I do understand for both children and adults that it is easier to spend 3 dollars on one issue than 8 dollars. However, why not take advantage of this and publish complete stories in the cheaper issues with fewer pages and keep the long stories in graphic novels that contain the whole story in one volume?
A few other things that really bother me. Boom is publishing some hardcover collections of some more classic Disney stories. However for both collections solicited so far, Boom has not told us which stories will be in these collections. Does Boom really expect us to order a 25 dollar volume with little or no idea of what stories are printed in it? Imagine if Marvel comics published say a Fantastic Four hardcover collection called ?Great FF Stories? but didn?t indicate *which* stories were in the volume? How many people would buy that?
Many people are excited, with good reason, that Boom is reprinting Don Rosa?s ?Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck?. However, does it not boggle the mind that when they announced and listed this volume that they never notified Don Rosa himself? How do I know this? Two sources. One, someone on the Disney Comics Mailing List wrote that they told Don about it after they saw it announced. The second way is from Boom?s very own website! On one of their forum threads is written the following: ?Don Rosa, the writer/artist of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, wants to contact Boom! Studios regarding the upcoming hardcover book. Is there someone he can contact?? Are we to believe that no one at Boom knew how to contact Don? Of course that is the better option than the idea that they never thought of contacting him in the first place. I am no apologist for Gemstone as I had numerous problems with what Gemstone published and other issues and have posted about them previously. However, can you imagine when Gemstone reprinted the ?Life and Times? them not even bothering to let Don know? Instead the often asked Don to write special articles when they printed or reprinted one of his stories.
I now come to what Arthur posted. It sounded good at first, but went very bad the more you read and examine it. In ?Uncle Scrooge? Boom is going to publish more traditional 4 panel stories where the characters actually are themselves! Well, not exactly though. Instead they are doing the following in the words of Arthur, ?However, as you can see in the scans below, Boom has cut up the story to show three tiers on each page.?
So, instead of publishing the story in the original format, they are going to chop it up to make the story take up more pages than they would need if they just left it as originally published! Is this not a way in which they purposefully make the comic have less value for the cost?
At first though I thought Boom was literally chopping and rearranging the panels. That is not the case however. If you look up the story at: http://coa.inducks.org/story.php?c=D+2007-053
you can see the first page of the story in publications from different countries. All of them look very similar *except* for when it was printed in Italy. There it was reformatted as a 3 panel story. But they did much more than that! Compare the 3rd and 4th panels of the 4 panel story with same panels in the Italian version. In the Italian version these panels are cut up with the sides cut off! That is not the worse thing though. Look at the 2nd panel in the 4 panel version. This *entire* panel is left out of the 3 panel version! If you look at the preview of the second of the first 5 pages of the Boom issue you can see that the 5th panel of the 4 panel version is *also* entirely left out!
So Boom is *choosing* to publish a version of the story that is reformatted *and* has panels omitted! Why in the world don?t they present the story as it was designed? Instead we get a version of the story that will take about the same amount of pages to print, but has pieces cut out of it! If that ever makes sense to me, I will be *very* worried about myself and what has become of me...
Before Gemstone lost the license they had plans for a Barks and Gottfredson Library. I hope I am wrong, but does this sound like a company who would have interest in archival projects such as these? We live in a time when various newspapers strips such as Dick Tracy, Nancy, Family Circus, and many others are being lavishly reprinted. It breaks my heart that we can not have a Gottfredson one when we were closer to one than perhaps ever before.
I realize that there may be many people who like the direction Boom is going. If you are one of those people, *please* make yourself heard here on the DCF! It is great to hear about all sorts of views. However, if you are upset with what Boom is doing, please post about that as well. I can?t imagine I am the only one who is not very happy...
Perhaps Boom will be much more successful with their Disney comics than Gladstone or Gemstone ever was. However, even if that is the case, how we will know that they would not have been just as successful or more printing more traditional stories? And if children today have no desire to see Donald, Mickey, and Goofy ?be themselves? and just act as different characters, well I think that is a sad commentary on today?s youth and perhaps it would be better if there were *no* more Disney comic if this is all we can get.
Which brings me to one more point. I imagine someone or several people will respond with something along the line of ?Just be grateful we get *any* new Disney comics to read?. That may be a fair and good point, but I myself am *totally* fed up with ?just being grateful? when it comes to Disney comics! There are *thousand* of Disney comics never printed in the USA, and yet I had to be grateful for the relative ?trickle? amount of them that have been published in the past 25 years or so. Then Gemstone would print the *umpteenth* reprint of a Barks story and I had to hear that that is what people wanted printed, even though it was almost always possible to get a copy of such a story for the cost of or often even less than the copy of that Gemstone issue. We live in a time of collections of all types of great comic strips, but I am supposed to be OK that somehow we can not have a reprint of the Mickey Mouse comic strip. Well, at this point, I don?t want to be OK with such things! I would rather have righteous anger and indignation than to just passively try to be happy with however bad things are Disney comics-wise. I realize that may not make sense to most people but that is how I feel.
So, for anyone that actually read this far :), I am very grateful that you took the time to read the views and complaints from what must sound like the crankiest old man in the world, though I am not *that* old and on most subjects not *that* cranky. It was truly therapeutic and cathartic to share my thoughts. I would love to hear what others think.

Quote from user: Dutch Duckfan Down UnderWhy has Boom for every issue 3 (or 2) covers? It's ridiculous!
Or clever. There are a lot of kooks among comic collector folks who "must" have everything, and when one and the same comicbook appears with a dozend different covers, then they "must" buy all variants. And each one, of course, in two or three copies. ;)

(Speaking of kooks: There exist two de luxe editions of the collected works of Carl Barks in Germany, and a third one is already almost half complete which presents nothing essentially new compared with the two others, borrowing colouring, lettering etc. from those others. I, however, since I started with the fuss, buy also this edition, having already the other two. Yes, very clever, Egmont. :mad:)

I was considering getting the Uncle Scrooge issues, because I thought they might contain some stories I don't already have, and if I *do* have them, I would at least get the original text. But now I've realised that Boom are publishing the same stories that I've already got, and, while published in the original *language*, the original text isn't used, since the stories seem to be translated from English to Italian and then back again to English. And so the stories are changed too. So I'm no longer planning to get the issues.
Reminds me of the giant white books in Sweden ("Io Topolino" / "Jag Musse Pigg" and so on), where many of the stories were made in English, then translated from English to Italian and then from Italian to Swedish. I wonder how they did with the US versions of those books, did they translate them from English to Italian and then back to English again?
As for the other stories, I might consider getting Ultraheroes since I haven't read that yet, but I already have the other ones in Swedish. What's the point in getting a translation of a story, when I already have another translation of it? Getting them in Italian would be another thing, though.