Gladstone's economy moves begin

[DAVID.A.GERSTEIN]

      The title says it all.  DONALD DUCK ADVENTURES #33 is out 
today, not as the planned 68-pager but (as we were told by John 
Lustig) as a 36-pager.  The price:  $1.95 (well, stlg1.40 for me).  The 
number of pages of comics inside:  32.  Gladstone's logic was smart:  
they decided to print Carl Barks' "The Golden Helmet" in this issue 
anyway, even though it meant there'd be no ads except on the covers, 
to give readers a little more than usual in a normal-size comic and 
thus ease us into the price change.

      Unfortunately, there are other things about this issue that 
give me the feeling it's not going to sell all that well.  First, 
the decision to leave "The Golden Helmet" in the issue DID wipe out 
the letter column, but that's probably a minor quibble.  On the other 
hand, although I usually like Van Horn's covers, he drew what I 
consider his worst one ever (a very undetailed scene of wild-eyed, 
helmeted DD waving the deed to North America -- which isn't labelled 
as such -- in the air).  Gladstone REALLY should have used Barks' 
original cover here, which was great.

      Don mentioned that the paper quality was going to get a bit 
poorer now.  It has (it's now the quality of the paper in Hamilton's 
Power Rangers comic), but really, it's not a big problem.  The paper 
is a bit rougher in its feel, but it's not newsprint, and the pages, 
when printed correctly, look just fine.  The slightly poorer paper 
quality is only noticeable when you compare the comic to, say, one of 
last month's Gladstones.

      The copy of this issue that I bought was special-ordered for me 
by the shop because laws prevent the comic being sold normally on the 
racks in Britain.  The quality of the printing was TERRIBLE, with 
misaligned colors, overly light black inks here and there, and slight 
ink "blurs" muddying Sue Daigle's very nice coloring job on about 
half of the pages (pgs. 6, 9, 13-15, 17-20, 22-24, 26, and 27). Since 
I've only seen one copy of this issue... are they all this bad? 
Gladstone had this problem months ago, but I thought they had fixed 
it for good.  I sure hope every DDA 33 doesn't look like this.
      And I REALLY hope WDC&S 598 doesn't look like this next week!  
I've been awaiting Ub Iwerks' "Plane Crazy" storyboards for months!

      David Gerstein
      <9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>