Gladstone Articles From Comics Buyer's Guide

[Jason Gerstein]

For me, the $6.95 pricetag only makes me think more on whether or not to buy 
the book. Though the number of pages are priced fairly, the content isn't 
always up my alley. Not being a huge fan of the Mickey and non-duck stories 
as much, I rarely get 60+ pages of readability in an average issue(except 
U$, which is usually chock full). So if it's a choice between almost 3 
Marvel/DC type comics or 1 Gemstone comic, the Gemstone one has to have 
enough content to outweigh the 3 other comics. Luckily most Don Rosa stories 
will do it for me, as well as any Barks ones I may have missed. But one of 
the biggest knocks for me is when Gemstone reprints a story I already own 
from a past publication, because then suddenly the 60 pages of story drop to 
a potential of only 40 or less, which makes it much tougher to rationalize.
But this is all speaking as if these comics are competing with other talking 
animal books and that they're always available. Having gone through the US 
drought in past years and knowing that there is only one source for duck 
comics, I'll happily throw Gemstone my money when I can simply because I'm 
so excited to have these stories in English and at my local shop again!
-Jason