DCML digest #816

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Sun Jan 27 15:01:30 CET 2002


From: "Francesco Spreafico" <frspreaf at tin.it>
>>>Disney Italia sometimes publish stories in English. For example some
Barks'
ones in the "Tesori" hardcover series, but also a bunch of Italian new
stories were published in English recently on "Topolino" (to teach the
language to kids).

And that's a big difference. TOPOLINO is an Italian magazine, primarilly in
Italian, which prints a few stories side-by-side in Italian & Eglish for
instructional purposes. Or collector purposes, either way. They cannot
publish an all-English book and even if they managed to obtain a license to
do that, then they would not be allowed to distribute it in America -- it
would need to be sold via mail order to individual buyers. And even if they
obtained rights to do *both* of those things, they would sell so few copies
even compared to the measly comic-shop sales that we mentioned before that
it would be *beyond* laughable.

From: Paulo Barrez <maurepas0002 at yahoo.com>
>>From: Don Rosa
>And Egmont is the world's largest publisher
>>>>I don't know where you heard this. AFAIK the world
largest publisher is Barnes & Noble, then Groupe
Lagardere.

Of BOOKS. Egmont publishes books, magazines, comics, newspapers, coloring
books... well, they publish everything that has pages, I guess. I recall
being told they even publish all the phone books in parts of Europe. If you
just counted all the weekly comic books that Egmont publishes,  I would
feel certain that alone would beat B&N's reprinting of public domain books.
Actually, I heard once that there's a bigger publisher in China, but even
though that's a big country, it's only ONE country compared to all the
dozens of countries that Egmont publishes everything in (which *includes*
China as well).

 From: deanmary <msalony at mail.wvnet.edu>
>>>>Just for the sake of argument, lets imagine that Disney
grants Diamond a license and they make not even one *penny* out of it; they
just
come out even.  Even if Disney doesn't make a single cent from it, wouldn't
they
still come out "ahead" in the sense that the new Disney comics in stores
would be a
form of free advertisement for Disney and the Disney characters?

Donald and Mickey are *dead* characters for Disney. They exist only as
beanie-babies and T-shirt icons in theme parks and to license to toy
manufacturers (though I see no current interest in those classic characters
by toy companies) . And as such, they need no further promotion. Disney
comics would promote nothing that would make Disney any $. There could be
comics of whatever Disney's new project is, but no one produces those
comics in a series (just one-shots), and no one will buy them, anyway.
American kids do not want comics based on movies that they can watch
repeatedly at any moment on their VCR. Comic book movie adaptations were
good in the old days when you saw a movie at the theater and then it was
gone and you could not see it again for about ten years (or, in a kid's
frame of reference, you could not see it again *ever*).

 >>>I realize that to Disney having its
characters on comic books would be a drop in the bucket compared to all its
other
publicity.  However, isn't a drop in the bucket better than nothing?

No, their corporate policy insists that it must be buckets and buckets full
or they will divert their efforts or attantion elsewhere.

Reply-To: "Olivier" <mouse-ducks at wanadoo.fr>
>>>>Also, what if  the publisher loses money? Disney doesn't lose anything;
on the contrary, it's pure
profit: they just sell the license and let the publisher take the risks.

You're right about the publisher doing all the work and taking all the
risks, but they must also pay a huge percentage of the profits to Disney
for the privilege of doing this. That percentage must be a significant
amount of $, or there's no reason for Disney to bother. Also, as I hear it,
the success must grow year by year and the percentage also grows as time
goes on. If a publisher loses money, not only can they not meet their
promised royalty payment, but they are out of business.
Here we have a license that is very costly to obtain, and which involves a
great deal of micro-managing by the licensing corporation. The publisher
must know *everything* about the history of Disney comic stories worldwide
(as Gladstone's people did) to know *what* there is to publish and what
stories are better than others, etc., even if they just do reprints (which
is their only chance). The publisher does all the work and takes all the
risks. And it would be in a market where newsstand distributors do not want
comic books on their stands and charge extra to handle them... and where
kids do not want Disney comics, where there is only a marginal success by
small publishers (by corporate standards) in selling superhero comics to a
cult of collectors.
If you were a publisher, would you want that license?
The only hope is Steve Geppi, a successful distributor who has the
Gladstone people to help him, who loves the material and is willing to go
to all the trouble and support the project with his other businesses (or is
willing to try to). He is the only hope in the world for the future of
English language Disney comics.




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