More on Marvel

[Sue and Gary Leach]

I have been reflecting on the Gladstone/Marvel arrangement, which had some
definite similarities to that of Western/Dell. Marvel, too, was strictly the
newsstand distributor for comics that Gladstone produced, and for taking on
that role Marvel got to have their imprint on the newsstand copies of those
comics. The direct market copies, which Marvel had nothing to do with,
retained the Gladstone imprint.

The key to the imprint situation with Marvel rested on the fact that Marvel
purchased the newsstand copies from Gladstone outright; they owned the
physical product they were distributing, assuming all profit and loss from
them. To this day I'm not sure what spurred Marvel to make this arrangement
with Gladstone, since they knew quite well how dismal things were on the
newsstand, and the only thing I can figure is that they were still feeling
flush from the direct market boom and wanted participation in all Disney
comics publishing after having secured the "modern" character license for
themselves. Terrific idea, really, and a great deal for Gladstone, but the
timing was about as bad as it could be. The U.S. direct market picked just
about that moment to go plotz, and with the newsstand situation continuing
its downward trend I have no doubt that Marvel really sweated out their
contractural obligations to all things Disney after that.

I don't know if Dell bought the comics they distributed outright, but having
their imprint on the books strongly suggests they did. Whatever the facts of
that, there was no direct market in those days ‹ no other market at all,
outside of subscriptions ‹ to create any need or purpose for an in-house
imprint by Western, so long as Dell was in the picture. And yet Gold Key
(the imprint I saw on Western's comics when I was a kid, with no awareness
then of the Dell era) was faced with something of the same dilemma that
Gladstone tackled decades later when the newsstand distribution situation
changed: how to keep things profitable in that arena. Whole essays could be
written to just scratch the surface of this particular subject, but suffice
it to say that the newsstand problem contributed significantly to both
Western's and Gladstone's decisions to eventually get out of the comics
publishing biz.

That's all in the past, of course, and things are very different now even
from the early-to-mid 1990s. Diamond/Gemstone may yet bring the Disney
comics back to North America, but under what terms, to what extent, and for
how long is still anybody's guess. But they have a chance at a fresh start,
an opportunity to put things together in a way that truly focuses on,
accommodates and, yes, exploits the market conditions of today. I truly hope
this is what happens, because in that way North American Disney comics
readers may finally get a badly needed break.

Gary