Phew! It's hot!

deckerd@agcs.com deckerd at agcs.com
Thu Aug 3 23:38:49 CEST 1995


> I'm a little behind in receiving the latest issues here in Holland, so
> can someone tell me what's going on with Gladstone? 
> 
Er...you're apparently a little behind in reading the ML, too. Every one
of your questions has been discussed to death for the last month or two.

> I heard that it's not going very well with Gladstone, because Disney 
> comics aren't very popular in the States anymore. I don't know if this
> is true, but does it have anything to do with all of the things 
> I mentioned here? I can't believe, that Disney comics are becoming less
> and less popular in the States. I thought it was going very well with
> Disney lately. 

The problem isn't Disney, the problem is comics. Comic books as a whole
are a shrinking medium in the United States. A 1940s issue of Archie
boasted on the cover that it had a print run of over a million copies.
It's currently down in the 40,000 sales range. Comic books are simply
not the mass medium they once were. Distribution has dried up (that is,
not many grocery stores or drug stores sell them now), while comic shops
cater to older collectors who aren't much interested in children's comics.
It's getting so that many people are very aware of Disney, see the movies,
watch the cartoons -- and have no idea that there are Disney comic books
even being published (or would not be much interested even if they knew).
Sure, Disney makes umpteen quadzillion dollars a year, but the company is
barely aware that somebody publishes comic books based on its characters,
and didn't spend a dime to develop the market even when one of its own 
divisions was publishing the comics.

A friend of mine is production manager at a comic-book company. We're
talking color comics with big-name licensed properties and big-name
artists and writers. The circulation figures are little short of pathetic
compared to what comic books used to sell in the US. My friend's tales
of woe in scrambling to make the printing company's minimum copy amounts
just to save a few dollars are heart-rending. It isn't just Disney comics;
it's industry-wide in the US. Comics are too expensive now for kids, or else
they're just an old-fashioned medium when the kids would rather be playing
beep-beep games. Or maybe nobody _reads_ any more...
> 
> I'm from Holland, you know. And I'm not quite aware of all these 
> things happening in the States (with Gladstone), so I hope someone can 
> tell me more about it.

Sorry to be so blunt, but...read the mailing list! Answers to all of your
questions and more are pouring into your e-mailbox straight from Sweden
every day!

--Dwight Decker



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