DCML Digest, Vol 42, Issue 18 (Postal Regs)
JTorci3511 at aol.com
JTorci3511 at aol.com
Tue Aug 15 13:36:16 CEST 2006
Everyone:
John Chadwick writes:
>>I was just reading in one of the essays in Carl Barks' Greatest DuckTales
Stories Vol.1 that postal regulations prohibited Scrooge and Gyro from
appearing in the same stories in Uncle Scrooge comics. Why should the Postal
Service care about such a thing?>>
First, thanks for buying the DuckTales book. The Postal Service thing was
as Steven Rowe explained it. Why? We may never know from this vantage point
in time. For some specifics, I'll quote from an APA article I did on Gyro
several years ago:
"In 1956, Dell began offering its comic books directly to the end consumer
on a subscription basis. Conforming to a seemingly inexplicable U.S. postal
requirement to obtain lower cost second-class mailing privileges, each
qualifying Dell periodical was mandated to run a single page of TEXT, and a comics
story which featured characters not used in ANY other story in the magazine (!)
"…Don’t ask me, I’m just a columnist!!!! Over the years, I’ve never
heard ANY practical reason for this one! It was this latter item which
brought the Gyro Gearloose short stories into being, and into the UNCLE SCROOGE
title on a permanent basis."
[End of Quoted Material]
Note that this text requirement of the regulation would have been
instrumental in bringing those "One-Page-Text" stories, that usually featured Goofy,
Li'L Bad Wolf, etc. into being... and, for other publishers, took the form of
educational or fiction texts and eventually gave birth to the letter columns.
Joe Torcivia.
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