Don Rosa on Disney Comics circulation

[David A Gerstein]

        "You know you can't rely on those circulation figures 
Disney published in their "statement of ownership"s. After one year 
of publication, their titles all featured those statements, with 
such figures as MICKEY selling (I'm pulling these figures from 
memory) about 120,000 and ROGER RABBIT selling about 140,000. Then, 
2 months later, these annual legal statements appeared AGAIN for 
unknown reasons, and the sales were now more like MM at 40,000 and 
RR at 35,000."

	I hate to tell you, but the large figures you're quoting are
how many they PRINTED, and the small figures are how many copies they
SOLD out of the larger number!

	Roger Rabbit originally sold extremely well at comic shops, so
those shops began ordering very large amounts.  This caused Disney to
make a much larger print run for newsstands, too.  Then around issue
#4 the quality declined noticeably.  Suddenly comic shops couldn't
sell their back issues (they'd ordered extra just so they'd have a big
back issue stock), or all the new ones they had been ordering.  The
comic shops had to keep 'em, but the newsstands could send them back,
which they did.  So Disney was stuck with MILLIONS of unsold RR
comics.

	See the situation?  RR really did sell very well for the first
few months for some reason.  So did most of the other titles.  Then
around month 6 came a BIG slump.  Disney suffered from miscommunication 
in its ranks....  by the time the sales department let the heads of
Publications know about the sales figures for the first issues, the
first year of Disney Comics' publication was almost over.  It was
another half-year before the management knew about the slump.  And
then came the cutdown...

	The only title which sold poorly from the very first was GOOFY
ADVENTURES.  At first it did just well enough to stay in print, but
later sank in popularity to the point where even the ORDERS for the
issues looked bad, this being before the sales records came in.
That's how it happened to be cancelled before the cutdown.

	I believe this is the story.  There are sales figures around
DDAD 7, I believe, reflecting the first few months, and then again
around DDAD 19, and the difference is obvious.  I believe that CHIP
'N" DALE RESCUE RANGERS #19 has sales figures in it as well.  That's
the only one of the cancelled titles to make it to #19, because they
needed to finish a continued story.  It would be interesting to
compare the sales figures to those that presumably appeared around #7.

	David Gerstein
	<David.A.Gerstein at williams.edu>