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Quote from user: Dutch Duckfan Down UnderTwo) Should we open a new topic for discussing who should be the next publisher, or should we continue in this one?
This thread has pretty much centered on BOOM! and past Disney publishers (and now Don Rosa), so yes, there should probably be a new thread about the successor to BOOM! (Assuming BOOM! do indeed stop publishing Disney comics on a permanent basis. Not to be naive, but I'd still like to get an official word from BOOM! and/or Disney before I write off BOOM!)

I think the announcement in the DT 6 and DW 17/18 descriptions they sent out to Midtown Comics sounds official enough. 8-) Considering BOOM!'s previous behavior, it's doubtful there will be anything going much further than this.

I agree with Mustang Rockstar. Maybe all the negative things that a lot of people say are why Boom is losing Disney Comics license.

Well said bergdoll. I think the hard part about all of this is that Disney comics can be a frustrating hobby. For me at least, you almost come to expect to have the rug pulled out from under you. It's hard to get stoked for a publisher when you know that there is a very good possibility that they wont last as long as a presidential term. While I enjoy the small, niche aspect of Disney comics, part of me wonders what it would be like to have it mainstream.
So many publishers have tried, and so many have failed. At some point, even with mistakes, you've got to acknowledge that our hobby is at the very least in trouble; at worst, on borrowed time. At 28 I'm on the younger side of our hobby, but I'm also a pretty rare breed with not much of a younger generation following suit. I benefitted from having Ducktales serve as an introduction into the "duck world." For as much as old timers/purists complain about the show, I don't know if I would have discovered Disney comics without it. So what does that say for anyone born in the years after me?
I think Disney comics suffer from a bit of a catch-22. The purists and the old-timers are what keeps it going, but so many of them are resistant to change that they also run the risk of holding the hobby back. I get it, Carl Barks was one of the greatest comic writers ever, but we have to move on. We can't let the entire hobby be defined and dominated by a 20 year span, no matter how great. We need to let new concepts emerge and accept them as different points of view, not bastardizations of our sacred canon. The quesions are how do we do that without a tv show, a game or a hook for younger audiences? How do we keep the old fans happy? How do you raise visibility without a huge budget? I don't have a bunch of answers for you, but I will say that I think too many modern Disney comics lack a sense of timely adventure. They either dummy down the story, or they try to serialize it and end up losing their audience. I think that's where Don Rosa and William Van Horn have especially succeeded where so many others have failed. The only criticisms I have of Rosa is that I think his stories try too hard to stick to Barks canon that it almost becomes an unnecessary deterrent, and his Scrooge is just a little too "nasty" for me, at times.
Get back to the Indiana Jones style of self-contained, National Geographic-like stories, and I think you'll have something great to at least try and build and audience around. You'll still have some mighty challennges, but you'll at least have something worthy to try and build upon.

And looking at that exchange I still agree with what I and others were saying. Rationalizations notwithstanding, the US has seen as many presidents as it has Disney comics publishing attempts since 1985. In the last 20 years, we average a new publisher every five years, and that includes periods without production.
Companies aren't just buying the licenses to lose them (and money) fellas. Either we have some of the greatest marketing minds that have yet to be tapped on this forum, or there just aren't as many of us as we'd like to believe. As strange as it seems, 1985 was 26 years ago. It's also been 13 years since 1998. Some of those collectors just aren't around anymore. The times are a changing, I'm not sure there is any easy (or popular) remedy for this.
I think some of our anger is a mask for disappointment. But ask yourself, how many people under 25 are buying Disney comics featuring classic characters? So what does that say about things 15 years from now? Even if we survive the next few years, long term, these comics still need to build an audience. And right now, it doesn't have one for the long-term. Few comics do and many of those are a result of movies, shows and video games. A lot of people saw the most recent Batman movies. How many do you think really know the comics?

@Lars Jensen - thank you for the link you provided re: sales of Gladstone and the profitability of the books for various other publishers. I am a little confused at the information because it doesn't match the sales numbers I see from Comic Buyers Guide and the Diamond pre-order numbers they publish on their site. The Disney books are very low sellers.

However, the information they have is post-consolidation or "Comic Wars" in which there were many distributors and more channels for sales. They have about 1996 to present, so it wouldn't cover the early Gladstone material.

The Gemstone and Boom! numbers are there though - and they don't look good in reference to profitability.
For example, Uncle Scrooge #325 shows sales of 6,055 copies in 2003 and Uncle Scrooge #361 shows 4,502 in 2006. Given that these were direct sales only and there is only one distributor (Diamond - which is Geppi's company, the publisher of Gemstone) - I assume these figures to be pretty accurate.

Reading the link that Gladstone has sales in the 100,000 range is news to me as well. I have the digests they published close to start-up and have heard they are really low print runs (especially Uncle Scrooge Digest #5). However, I do find the Gladstone I books easier to find at conventions and online than the Gladstone II or even the Disney/Marvel books, so the numbers may indeed have been higher. Of course, there was also the huge speculation market of the 90's (which I thankfully avoided as I was on a collecting hiatus at the time). This may have driven numbers up.

The only Gladstone number I can find is for Uncle Scrooge #310 in 1998 at 4,110 copies. Thankfully I have my copies of that book because it is HARD to find! So I am inclined to agree on the accuracy again.

I think that Boom! is very, very likely selling less than 5000 of most of the Disney books (Darkwing turned out to be a bit of a hit though). The most recent number for Uncle Scrooge I have found there is 3,747 copies sold of issue #390. Which would indicate it is even harder to find than the elusive Uncle Scrooge #310 (or will be at some point). Usagi Yojimbo #129 (a black & white "funny" animal) sold 4,863 near the same time-period of US #390. That book is a single-creator, no licensing fee property being done in black & white. I'm assuming it is profitable as the artist has been doing the book for years. 3,747 copies *may* be profitable, but is it "Disney" level profitable? I do not know - I really do not.

The post is interesting, but I'm going to have to question when it was last profitable to publish Disney books. Geppi is very well-known as a fan of the Ducks, so I wouldn't be surprised if the article had it backwards. I *suspect* his other enterprises were subsidizing the unprofitable publishing and not the other way around.

edit: a couple more eye-opening numbers from April 1998 (all Gladstone II)
Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color #44 2,141 copies
Uncle Scrooge Adventures in Color #43 2,136
Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck #1 2,000

No wonder completing my album sets is driving me nuts!!!

Yipes - if selling 5000 comics is considered profitable, then I *really* feel sorry for anyone working in the industry. I know that retailers get about 45% off the cover price, and I would imagine that printing accounts for at least 20-30% of the cost of production - which leaves a huge 25-35% for everything else (paying creators, office, salaries, marketing, etc).
I do not know the personal financial situation of Mr. Geppi, and it is none of my business either. From what I understand, his business was/is a very large real estate and development company, so I am not going to suggest that his museum and/or comics were a significant enough portion of his economic portfolio. I can't see them as being a bastion of profitability that was brought down by his other ventures. Hence, I'm still not buying the story the the books were "profitable" to the extent that they could have continued indefinitely. Going from 6000 to 4000 in sales is a 33% reduction in output - and I can't imagine an equal 33% could be realized in production costs (printers have minimums and price breaks, you can only get rid of so much staff, etc)
However, being an armchair comic book economist is not really the point. The point is - the books we love have seen multiple publishers that for one reason or another have decided not to publish them. In the case of at least two of these publishers, we know it was a labour of love as well as a business. In one of the cases, we know it was a corporation that valued it's licenses. I'm thinking that they would have had to have been unprofitable. It makes more sense than any other explanations I have heard. Again, unless we were part of the business we just don't know.
I'll buy any Disney books that see print!

Quote from user: MustangRockstarAt 28 I'm on the younger side of our hobby, but I'm also a pretty rare breed with not much of a younger generation following suit. I benefitted from having Ducktales serve as an introduction into the "duck world." For as much as old timers/purists complain about the show, I don't know if I would have discovered Disney comics without it. So what does that say for anyone born in the years after me?
Here's one, but probably the only one on this forum: I'm from the post-Disney Afternoon generation. Lucky me, I found a program which was nearly identical. It gave me DuckTales, Rescue Rangers, and the classic cartoons (mostly 1936-1945), yet there was little Darkwing Duck and no TaleSpin. But in Europe the problems are less big than in America, the weekly and monthly comic titles are still read by many around here.