Report from Portugal

[Fredrik Ekman]

Hi all!

Like I promised a few days ago; here's my report on the state
of Disney comics (insofar as I was able to see it) in Portugal.

First of all, I'd like to say that I didn't see much of
Portugal itself. I was in the province of Algarve which is the
smallest province in Portugal save for the islands in the
Atlantic. Thus, I have no idea what things are like in Lissabon
or any other major city.

But so far as I could see, comics are generally in quite a
miserable state. The two only sources for comic book buyers
seem to be book shops and newsstands. In the former you may
find albums with popular European comics such as Tintin,
Asterix and Lucky Luke. This is very well, but things are very
much different in the newsstands. Almost all comic books there
seem to be imported from Brazil. The most dominating by far
are Marvel comics, about 1/4 the size of the American originals
(although still slightly larger than the normal Italian comic
book). There are also a few DC and a _lot_ of even smaller
pornographic comics that seemed to be, in every meaning of the
word, cheap.

And then there are the Disney comics. They, too, are imported
from Brazil and all have very weird titles. While I was there
I saw "Gladstone Gander", "Joe Carioca" (sp?), "Daisy" and a
character of whom I don't even know the English name ("Skogs-
Ola" in Swedish). I can't remember having seen any of these
characters having their own title in ANY other country I've
been to before. There used to be a Brazilian member on this
list, right? If you're still out there; don't you even have a
Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck title over there?

Anyway, I bought a copy of "Gastao" (Gladstone Gander) and it
turned out to be a 68 pages mix of just about everything;
Egmont, Western, Disney Studios, King Feature and some locally
produced in Brazil. Price: About $1.

I also found and bought a copy of "Hiper Disney". These are
similar to the German "Lustige Taschenbucher" (I've forgotten
the name of the Italian originals again) but with slightly
different contents. In addition to the usual Italian comics,
there was one Murry story and even two Barks. The price is
about $4 and there also exists "Hiper Hiper Disney" consisting
of two older "Hiper Disney" bound together and with a hard
cover.

And that's it. That's all I could find and I can tell you that
it wasn't easy to find even that. Of course it's difficult to
tell when you come as a tourist, but my impression was that
Disney comics in Portugal are not even close to the popularity
they have in many other European countries.

  /F