Hallo

deckerd@agcs.com deckerd at agcs.com
Wed Jul 12 20:53:28 CEST 1995


> I'm new to this mailing list...

Welcome, Dutchguy!
> 
> Another thing, that I'd like to know is why the american disney comics (the
> bi-monthly six by Gladstone) are published so many months in advance. I mean,
> the month of July has just begun, and already I'm reading comics from Septem-
> ber, and the ones from October are already on their way. Isn't this a little
> awkward. That way, you're reading Christmas-stories in February-dated issues.

This is something historic that goes back many years in American magazines.
Basically, the dates on magazine covers are kind of theoretical and
shouldn't be taken seriously. The idea in pre-dating magazines was at one time
to fool retailers into leaving unsold copies on the racks that much longer.
The retailer might remove a September-dated magazine on October 1 even though
it might have eventually sold if left on display longer. So magazines began
dating themselves earlier and earlier, with the result that comic books
come and go from the racks two months or more before their printed
cover dates. The practice has been going on so long that I doubt if any
retailers are fooled by it, but maybe the idea now is that the customer
might not realize a June-dated comic he buys in June has been on display
since April. 

Most American comic-book collectors I know pay little or no attention to
cover dates anyway (except, perhaps, as a rough reference point if doing
research about when something came out, and even then, everybody knows
enough to estimate the actual appearance on the newsstands of a given
issue at two months or more before the cover date). The key datum is the
issue number. One sure giveaway of a naive or unknowing journalist in one
of those "Zap! Pow! Old Comic Books Worth Big Money to Crazy Collectors!"
newspaper articles is a reference to some valuable comic book by its date
(the June, 1938 issue of Action Comics) instead of by its issue number
(Action #1). The issue number is the important thing in American comic
books; the date is theoretical and usually ignored.

Hope that helps.

Tot ziens!

--Dwight Decker



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