Disney comics in USA

Tryg Helseth trygve at maroon.tc.umn.edu
Wed Dec 29 05:46:08 CET 1993


WILMER RIVERS:

>It really bothers me that most of the comics shops around here don't
>even carry Disney (or Gladstone) comics at all!  I therefore try to
>patronize preferentially the one that does, even when I'm buying non-
>Disney items.

Its been a while since I've been in a comic shop that *didn't* carry the 
Gladstones, but that may be because I don't go to shops that exlude them.
I would guess that simply not going to a shop that doesn't carry Gladstones 
would do much good unless enough people informed the owner of why they were 
not coming back.  Of course, Gladstones are a small enough market that some 
owners wouldn't consider carrying them even if a few people complained, but 
it's worth a try...

>Still, where do they think the next generation of comics purchasers will
>come from?  Also, do they really think that no one over the age of 10 is
>interested in Disney comics?

Good question!  Maybe they are gambling on kids jumping directly into super-
heros as soon as they tire of Sesame Street, or (more likely) getting 
indoctrinated into Super Heros from watching SH cartoons on television...

>I am glad that Marvel now has a deal to distribute them under their own
>label in newstands.

I wasn't aware of that...  It may be too late, but it could help.

>characters.  Don't they realize that these images will cease to be
>popular when the public no longer has any interest in the characters
>themselves?  And this is likely to happen, when a generation grows up
>that has never read any stories featuring them...

Ive wondered about that from time to time, but now that Disney has their 
cable channel, they seemed to have made some of those characters more 
popular as icons.  Of course, the substance has been stripped away leaving 
just the image, but in the US image has become more important in the 
public eye than substance...

DON ROSA:

>    I don't have time this morning to go into this matter as deeply
>as I easilly could.

Well, if this is your "short answer," I wonder how you would answer an 
essay question... :>

>	Because of TV, kids stopped reading comic books. Companies who
>had their fingers in many other pies, such as Dell/Gold Key, had no
>reason to try to save a failing industry, and let their product slide,
>as well they should have. But there were TWO companies who did nothing
>but super-hero comics (DC & Marvel) and had to stick it out. There were
>fewer and fewer kids reading comics every years, so Marvel was the first
>to hit on the idea of continued stories to make kids buy EVERY monthly...

Thanks for the story of the comic industry.  I was familiar with most of 
the pieces, but your description helped pull it together for me.  I hadn't 
really given much thought to the notion that Dell/Gold Key (aka Western 
Publishing) had other more lucrative interests, so they had little 
incentive to keep their comics alive.  
>Tryg says that someday a generation will grow up having never read a
>Disney comic??? Where have you been? That's already happened!

Uh... With my head in a place where the sun doesn't shine? :>

Actually, I didn't say that (at least not in that message.)  I said I 
wondered what was the fate of Disney Comics in the US.

>There were NO Disney comics in America for over 5 years, and due to Gold
>Keys bad handling, there were effectively no Disney comics in America
>from about 1970-1986.

That probably depends on where you lived at the time.  In Minneapols, I 
could always find the Gold Key comics at a newsstand.  Not all newsstands 
carried them, though, and there were a few years in the early '70s where 
they were hard to find.  Whitman was a different story, however, and that 
really *was* the kiss of death when the "bags of three, let them be" curse 
hit.  Eventually, comic stores were able to get individual comics directly, 
but it was too late and the 5 years of darkness you mentioned fell upon us.

> This loss of a generation is the single biggest hurdle for Disney comics
> to jump, and one that I am convinced is far too big to ever manage.

And those "gap" children have now found a home in r.a.d...  :)

	And if you haven't been on here long enough to hear how well the
Disney comics sell in Europe, here's my usual example: In Norway, a
country of 4 million people, DONALD DUCK sells 250,000 each WEEK. For an
American comic to sell that well PER CAPITA, it would need to sell about
80,000,000 copies per month!!!! But a good-selling American comic sells
about 100,000 copies a month, made profitable by the "cult hobby" system. 

That is a dramatic illustration!  80 million copies a month is really hard 
for me to imagine with what sales are in the US today.  Maybe I have more 
incentive to visit Norway beyond visiting my ancestors' homeland!

>Questions?

Not right now, thanks, I just had a big sip from the fire hose... 

TORSTEN ADAIR:

>Some would argue that Disney Comics' staff did not know what they were
>doing.  I read Disney Gold Keys as a child, ignored them when I twelve
>(the golden age) and then I started collecting them when Gladstone
>published them.  I was born in 1969, so I'll let you do the math.  At the
>time I started buying Gladstone, I was heavily buying Marvel titles.  I
>was also buying some Star Comics, DC, and an occasional Epic.

Well, I started reading (again) Gold Key Disneys around 1969.  It was in 
the late '60s that they started reprinting Barks stories in WDC&S and U$.
I was alerted to it by a friend of mine who was in the Army at the time 
(servicemen apparently read a lot of comics then...) Of course, I didn't 
know about Carl Barks then, but I knew his stories!  I was born in 1946, 
(your turn to do the math), so I was introduced to Disney Comics in the 
1950s.  

>I consider it bad if the stores don't sell them, as many collectors are
>now at the age of being parents.  Even worse is if the newstands don't
>sell them.

I know the Disney line was being distributed here at newsstands, but 
haven't looked to see if the Gladstones are being sold there.

Tryg Heseth  <tryve at maroon.tc.umn.edu>

"I wish the all could be Calisota Ducks!" -The Beach Drakes



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