Disney-comics digest #830.

[Augie De Blieck Jr.]

TODD ended his message with a note about how sad it is that American 
doesn't appreciate Don Rosa's work (and, by extension I'm sure, the Duck 
books in general) as much as Italy or any of the other European countries.

Arthur had some pretty interesting numbers about circulation figures for 
Uncle $crooge and Donald Duck comics in Scandinavia a week ago or so.  
And I just found some interesting ones posted on rec.arts.comics.misc.

In America, super-heros rule the comics scene.  I have no quarrel, per se, 
with that. After super-heroes in spandex usually comes the licensed books 
(such as Topps' immensely popular X-Files and Dark Horse's Star Wars 
line.)  After that comes all the trash of the recent "Bad Girl" trend.  
And the Ducks (and Archie, I'd imagine too) are somewhere behind that.  I 
never realized how bad it was until I saw these numbers.

[The following numbers are for comics solicited for November, I believe.]

Roughly 170,000 copies are sold of Spawn each month.  That is the number 
one comic in the nation.  That didn't sound too bad to me.  Sure, I 
remember when it first came out and number 1 issues were selling at a 
million a clip.  I realize things have calmed down considerably, but...  
After that there is a steep drop-off.  The fifth-best selling title in 
the States is Superman with just around 70,000 copies. The 25th top 
seller (Robin, this month) is around 50,000 copies monthly.  #50 is 
around 36,000.  #100 is at around 20,000 copies.  #124 was around 15,000 
copies.  (This title, by the way, won't be put to press due to low numbers.)

None of the Gladstone titles are in the top 150.  Not even Uncle $crooge, 
which I believe is Gladstone's top-seller.

Meanwhile, in Norway a quarter of the entire population reads Donald Duck 
comics alone.

No wonder Gladstone is having all these problems.  Sheesh.

-Augie
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