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Quote from user: Robb_KRemember that Disney Comic books stopped being a profitable mass market item in USA and Canada during the early 1970s. They have never done well in Britain or the remainder The British Commonwealth.
Rob, what is your source for this information? As late as the 1980s, Egmont/London Editions' DISNEY MAGAZINE (a WDC&S-like comic, despite the name) was a blockbuster, moving from weekly to monthly and later spawning spinoff Mickey and Donald titles. The books were successful enough that a competing company, Fleetway, fought to take over the prestigious license, finally offering such a huge sum to Disney that London Editions was outbid.
About one year later, Egmont bought Fleetway??*that's* how much that license was worth.
Disney comics suffered in 1990s Britain because *all* comics suffered, largely due to astronomic paper cost rises (the prices of many British comics doubled between 1990 and 1995). Of the older British comics, only BEANO, DANDY, and 2000 AD seem to have survived to the present day.
But this reflects less on Disney than on the UK as a whole.Quote:The traditional Disney characters are lost in the mass of cartoons thrown at kids through the media these days. They are NOT connected to video games the way new characters are. Maybe we should be glad to have this nostalgic demand still met many years past the time of its youthful devotees. Maybe in 10-15 years there won't be enough demand for even this "nostalgic service"?
Rob, once again... forgive me for sounding argumentative, but??lost? Not connected to video games? Where do you get this?
In the 1980s and 1990s, Mickey, Donald and the gang did go through a fallow period in North America. Little new animation was being done; Disney did little to make the classic cartoons available; and in merchandising, the characters were domestically sidelined in favor of Winnie the Pooh. Kids knew Mickey and Donald as merchandising characters first: icons without personalities. People often talked about how popular they "used to be."
But then things changed. The cartoons were rolled out in highly visible and successful DVDs: Mickey Mouse became the first classic cartoon star to have his entire filmography made available. Donald, Goofy, and more recently Mickey have been featured as adventure heroes in Squaresoft's KINGDOM HEARTS, one of the top ten best-selling PlayStation 2 video games of all time in North America. ABC/Disney Channel's "House of Mouse" was a highly popular new Mickey/Donald cartoon series with older kids eight years ago, and remains highly visible; today, Disney Channel's "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" is just as successful with preschoolers. A September 2007 poll by Kidscreen magazine, the leading children's TV industry journal, asked hundreds of kids to name their favorite cartoon characters, from which top five lists were then compiled. The top five for boys 8-11, girls 8-11, and girls 12-15 included Mickey Mouse.
So where, today, is this unpopularity you're talking about?Quote:No sane businessman would invest in a business with such limited market potential related to costs and risks involved.
A significant problem we have, I think, in selling and distributing our comics isn't really that our characters are old hat. Instead, it's that a lot of marketing executives mistakenly *believe* that they are, or assume that they must be, as a side effect of living through the relatively mouse- and duck-impoverished 1980s and 1990s.
They couldn't be more wrong.

Quote from user: ramapith[
As late as the 1980s, Egmont/London Editions' DISNEY MAGAZINE (a WDC&S-like comic, despite the name) was a blockbuster, moving from weekly to monthly and later spawning spinoff Mickey and Donald titles. The books were successful enough that a competing company, Fleetway, fought to take over the prestigious license, finally offering such a huge sum to Disney that London Editions was outbid.
About one year later, Egmont bought Fleetway??*that's* how much that license was worth.
Disney comics suffered in 1990s Britain because *all* comics suffered, largely due to astronomic paper cost rises (the prices of many British comics doubled between 1990 and 1995). Of the older British comics, only BEANO, DANDY, and 2000 AD seem to have survived to the present day.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Mickey, Donald and the gang did go through a fallow period in North America. Little new animation was being done; Disney did little to make the classic cartoons available; and in merchandising, the characters were domestically sidelined in favor of Winnie the Pooh. Kids knew Mickey and Donald as merchandising characters first: icons without personalities.
But then things changed. The cartoons were rolled out in highly visible and successful DVDs: Mickey Mouse became the first classic cartoon star to have his entire filmography made available. Donald, Goofy, and more recently Mickey have been featured as adventure heroes in Squaresoft's KINGDOM HEARTS, one of the top ten best-selling PlayStation 2 video games of all time in North America. ABC/Disney Channel's "House of Mouse" was a highly popular new Mickey/Donald cartoon series with older kids eight years ago, and remains highly visible; today, Disney Channel's "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" is just as successful with preschoolers. A September 2007 poll by Kidscreen magazine, the leading children's TV industry journal, asked hundreds of kids to name their favorite cartoon characters, from which top five lists were then compiled. The top five for boys 8-11, girls 8-11, and girls 12-15 included Mickey Mouse.
So where, today, is this unpopularity you're talking about?
A significant problem we have, I think, in selling and distributing our comics isn't really that our characters are old hat. Instead, it's that a lot of marketing executives mistakenly *believe* that they are, or assume that they must be, as a side effect of living through the relatively mouse- and duck-impoverished 1980s and 1990s.
They couldn't be more wrong.
Thanks for enlightening me, David.

I have spent the equivalent of several years living in England, and know a lot of people in several generations. When I talk about Disney comics with them, they all said they didn't grow up with them, and that they weren't very popular in Britain, in comparison to comics of British origin. Whenever I looked for 2nd hand comics in book stores, I found British comics, and USA non-funny animal comics, but never found any British Egmont comics. Apparently, the parents were buying The Egmont Disney comics for their very young children, and they threw them away after a few years. There seemed to be no collectors, and thus, no market for buying 2nd hand. Therefore, there would also be no market for better quality reprinted collections. I'm not saying that no one ever made a profit selling Disney comic books in Britain or The Commonwealth. I know that mickey Mouse Newspaper strip was popular in the '30s and '40s. My bottom line point was that the Disney classic characters don't have enough "clout" in the British market, to allow us hope that new lines of Disney comics with the classic characters will start up again.

This thread was regarding a forum member's complaints about Gemstone being late on some shipments, and my point that we are lucky that Gemstone is publishing Disney Comics in English. If we could get Stories produced in other parts of The World in English from a British publication, we wouldn't need to be happy that Gemstone is even in business, and we wouldn't have to depend upon them. But, currently, Britain has no Disney Comic publisher (at least for classic characters), and what they had in the 1990s printed few stories longer than 8 pages, and seemed to aim at the very young age groups in terms of story plots chosen for print. The Singapore publisher didn't last long. For English language stories other than Gemstone, we have to count only on India, which publishes few long stories, and also seems to aim at a very young age group. My point was that if we don't depend upon Gemstone for our English language Disney comics with the classical characters, there is no where else to turn.

When I said that Disney classic characters are "lost" in todays market among the myriad other choices, I didn't mean to imply that they are unknown, or even secondary. They are still known, but I think have mainly little kids as their devotees, and are not thought of as "cool" by young adolescents, as opposed to those from the genre of the human or fantasy-human (alien) and violence-related computer games. It's just that they don't dominate the media as they did during the late '30s, '40s and early '50s in US and Canada. When I was young, almost every kid
had Walt Disney Comics in their house and they all saw the cartoons in the cinema. There wasn't all that much else in the way of media entertainment that people could afford. Nowadays, there are many many, many more different things to occupy kids' free time than comic books, as well as many, many, many more cartoon characters in games, videos, films, etc. Disney's market share is much, much less. Comic books' share of children's media exposure is much, much less.

All this was meant to point out that, if an English speaker is hoping to obtain new English language Disney comic books to read, he/she doesn't have much hope of getting that need satisfied, if Gemstone isn't counted on. So, if Gemstone has some trouble with a printer and delivers late, here and there, we have to accept it and move on. Demanding perfection in delivery dates won't change anything. There is no competition to turn to. In addition, my point was that the lateness is NOT a "sign" that Gemstone is on the way to folding, and there is no need to worry. The 6000+ hard core Disney Comics (in English) fans will remain in the marketplace.

I didn't mean to imply that Disney comics were never popular in Britain or The Commonwealth-just that they aren't popular enough that we can expect a new publisher to start printing high-quality stories, oriented for older readers, in a good quality format for collector types (as gemstone does). I didn't mean that Classical Disney characters are unknown today because modern animated characters have obliterated them. I just meant that they have a much, much smaller part of the market, and what recognition they have is from young children who wouldn't form the basis of a market for high-quality Disney Comics, that could make Disney comics a mass-market item again (or, at least no publishers think that could happen). My point was that we Disney Comics collectors can't count on Gemstone being able to be selling 3-5 million books per month, and we can't count on another English -speaking nation opening up a high-quality Disney Comics operation, if we choose not to patronise Gemstone.

Quote from user: Robb_KThose of us who like to read comics created by English-speaking authors in their native language should feel lucky that Gladstone and Gemstone even dared to try to publish them at not far above "break-even" levels of return. If Gemstone has a few late deliveries, I'm not about to turn my back on them. And neither are their 6,000 regular customers (who will always buy Disney comics printed in English, regardless of how poor the release availability is).

I'll wager that Steve Geppi is not making much profit on his Disney comics. They are basically a miniscule return "loss leader"-and prestige line to give his distributorship more attention, and he's doing it mostly because he loves Disney comics, and thinks they should be published. No sane businessman would invest in a business with such limited market potential related to costs and risks involved. We should be happy to have them printed at all, and not mind waiting to get them.

Your alternatives are to learn to read French (Picsou), German (Donald Duck Sonderheft), Greek, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Dutch (Donald Duck Grappigste Avonturen), or Finnish, and read one or more of those countries' fine Disney comics publications.
Well, I don't rightly enjoy being offered the alternative, even in jest, of learning to read a European language. We Duck fans should not be made to feel that way. We've had to endure that dishonor for far too long here in the US. Amen! Still, I speak and read Greek and have enjoyed many a Barks and Scarpa tale in that language since I was a wee lad. I do not ever recall such lateness from the Greek publishers since way back in the late 60s. And believe me, the Greek way of conductiong business and industry generally speaking is like waiting for the thick molasses to conduct your flapjacks in the coldest of December mornings. So, that's saying quite a lot.

And no, I doubt that many of us slaves of our passions will "turn our backs" to Gemstone for being late??and umm... I do mean LATE! That's not the point at all. But I feel that they have of late been letting down their reradership. I will not stop buying Gemstones. But I am dissapointed and can't help but to feel that Gemstone could be and should be doing better. If you are committed to a service and a product, do it with excellence and a full heart! Call me stony, but after all it's not Rocket Science Weekly??it's just a four color printing process of a comic book.

>potential Disney comics carriers will never again feel that the classical characters will have enough of a market to sell the comics en masse in regular retail outlets.
Unfortunately, most "regular retail outlets" (e.g., drug stores, grocery stores, bus stations) that used to sell comics in the USA no longer offer them. There's likely a market out there, but few stores sell them. (There are only a few thousand dedicated comic shops in the USA, and many of them don't carry Disney comics.)
LL

Quote from user: WBIf only we could get that oft requested "third prestige" (Mickey and Donald or a bimonthly Donald/Mickey subset) in the current set of books to at least balance things out for more variety.
While I too am disappointed that Gemstone has gotten behind schedule, I do hope and think that in the long run this may be just (hopefully) a bump on the road.

I agree with WB that we really need a third prestige title. This has been brought up numerous times on the DCML. There seems to be a lot of support for it. Plus I think it makes sense economically. After all, wouldn't most people that bought DD&F and MM&F monthly be interested in buying a third prestige title? It would only be 2 dollars more than the cost of DD&A and MM&A each month, and while no one wants to pay higher costs, I feel the people that do buy Gemstone comics are dedicated fans and would be willing to pay the 2 dollars difference. After all, we are people who are willing to spend 8 dollars each on two titles a month! :)

Now if only there was some way to get the powers at be at Gemstone to produce a third monthly title! After the holidays I am going to write Gemstone and encourage them to print a third monthly, along with publishing more TPBs as well. I have written to them before about this, but it can't hurt to try again. Maybe others that would like to see a third monthly could write Gemstone as well? Just an idea.

Quote from user: Louis Lane>
I wonder how current readers would react if Gemstone replaced the monthly "prestiege" format with a quarterly trade paperback format.
LL
I love the idea LL! How about going one better though and having a *bi-monthly* TPB? It would be great to have a TPB that equalled the number of pages of *3* prestige titles IMHO. TPBs have at least 2 big advanatges over the prestige comics.

One, TPBs are more acceptable to libraries. I know some at Gemstone think the 2 monthly prestige titles plus Barks/Rosa collections etc. are more appealing and have a better chance ending up on shelves than the former monthly titles. While I can't speak for bookstores, I have had a lot of experience with libraries and they want TPBs, *not* prestige titles. I imagine it would be the same with bookstores, but I am not sure about that.

Two, TPBs are much more economical. Look at the upcoming 2nd Walt Disney Treasures TPB. Amazon lists the cover price as $16.99 and that it has 160 pages. So for $16.99 we can get 160 pages where as with 2 monthly prestige titles for $16.00 we get 128 pages. But it gets even better! Sites like Amazon discount TPBs where as they do *not* discount prestige titles. So if you order from Amazon, the 2nd Walt Disney Treasures sells for only $11.55. Quite a bargain!

Plus, it looks like TPBs are the way of the future in comics. Are "monthlies" going away soon? I don't think so. However it seems like TPBs are becoming an increasingly bigger part of the comic book market, and that is not even counting things such as how manga is so dominated by titles with large page counts.

What do others think about this?

Diamond has listed Scrooge's Quest on their initial shipping list twice in the last few weeks (including their 12/28/07 list), so I'd assume they've been told it's coming. However, it is not coming out on 12/28/07.
Neither are any of the other late Gemstone titles. The soonest anything will ship will be 1/4/08.
LL

What about the special book with the long Pat Block story? Has that been canceled,-or has it already been released?