WDC&S 598: good news and bad news

9475609@arran.sms.ed.ac.uk 9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk
Sun Jun 4 10:25:19 CEST 1995


ME (discussing DDA 33, last week):
> Don mentioned that the paper quality was going to get a bit poorer 
> now.  It has (it's now the quality of the paper in Hamilton's 
> Power Rangers comic), but really, it's not a big problem.  The paper 
> is a bit rougher in its feel, but it's not newsprint, and the pages, 
> when printed correctly, look just fine.  The slightly poorer paper 
> quality is only noticeable when you compare the comic to, say, one of 
> last month's Gladstones.

      Well, while DDA 33's paper quality was only a bit poorer than past 
Gladstones, WDC&S 598's paper quality was MUCH poorer.  I'm glad to say 
that the printing quality inside was perfect (something I'd griped about 
in DDA 33 and was worried was to become a pattern), but this comic's 
innards were printed on NEWSPRINT -- I can't check because I have no 
"old" American comics with me here in Scotland, but I think that the 
paper is the same that Gladstone used from 1986-1989, or else only 
slightly better.  It's strange to see Gladstone's current print quality, 
with airbrushed color and everything, on this kind of paper.
      Every company is jacking up its price now -- Image, for example, 
used to charge $1.95 for Sergio Aragones' GROO and Mark Evanier tells me 
this will change to $2.50 (or something) in the next month or two.  So 
we aren't alone.  But why are we Gladstone readers paying more for LESS 
than before?  Would they have to charge even MORE than $1.95 for what, 
until now, we've been getting for $1.50?
      (I don't doubt it -- I'm just asking questions, not trying to ream 
out Gladstone.)

      WDC&S 598 is still very much worth buying.  The Van Horn story 
("Meteor Madness," which we discussed when it was published in Europe 
last January) is pretty good if IMHO kinda overwritten (much like my own 
"Case of Too Much Money" translation, which shows that we all make these 
kinds of mistakes).  "Monarch of Medioka" is great, as usual, and at its 
penultimate chapter;  then you get 5 pages of rare storyboards and 
commentary from the 1928 Mickey cartoon "Plane Crazy" (one minor nit:  
nowhere is the plot of "Plane Crazy" recounted;  I guess they thought it 
was obvious from the storyboards themselves, but in fact if I'd never 
seen the cartoon I might be baffled by part of it).  Despite the 
only-fair paper inside, the comic is a real gem, Gladstone doing what it 
does best once again.

      Another note.  The storyboards to "Plane Crazy" have a few gags 
"X-ed out" which don't appear in the final film.  Bruce Hamilton doesn't 
mention it in his accompanying article, but the gags appeared instead in 
1929's "The 'Plowboy'" -- and were reinstated in the "Plane Crazy" plot 
when it was turned into the 1930 comic "Lost on a Desert Island".

      David Gerstein
      <9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>




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