CBL, Fleetway, MM-identification, etc.

[David A Gerstein]

	FRANK:
> Ok, so why can't I buy these Gladstones from Fleetway, whoever they
> are? :-) Or are you maybe saying that Fleetway are _publishers_ who've
> secured a no-competition licence...
	That's right.  They publish their own lineup of Disney comics:
MICKEY AND FRIENDS, LITTLE MERMAID (Egmont TLM stories as in the
German monthly), and DISNEY AND ME (a very childish mixture of text
stories and Italian one- and two-page gags).  These comics are not
very good or successful IMHO, although the MM is the only English
source for a lot of Egmont weekly material.
	Regarding the CBL, I said:
>> Later Gladstone convinced them to turn-around, but figured
>> that if they printed the whole works in a NEW format, they could then
>> sell it to a lot of people who already had the bw CBL, too.
	And here you got me:
> Aha! So it's still Gladstone's fault after all, at least in part...
> They could have reprinted the CBL but didn't.
	I don't know about that.  They may have only been able to get
Disney to endorse the project in softback, or color, form.  I think
Gladstone might ALSO reprint the hardback CBL were they able to get
the license again, and John has noted this when talking to me.  I was
just trying to point out one reason why it occurred to Gladstone to do
this color album-version.

	MIKE remembered a Mickey story where
	"He was in the French Foreign Legion.  One image I
particularly remember is he was crawling through the sands after his
boots had burned through..."
	This story is a Gottfredson 1936 story called, appropriately
enough, "Mickey Mouse Joins the Foreign Legion."  In many ways it is
an excellent story -- it's my favorite conflict between MM and Pete,
and MM is particularly engaging himself.  But a black caricature
appears in two strips, and some incidental Arab characters have big
noses that Disney thought would offend people in a reprint (and maybe
they would; remember the flak over "Aladdin".)  Theoretically, the
story could be reprinted with a minor art alteration. 
	But Disney also felt it was an insult to the greatness of this
story to change anything about it, so Gladstone couldn't just alter
the noses and print it.
	Originally Gladstone was told they could make the changes, so
they had Daan Jippes draw two covers for its two halves.  The ruling
was changed after those covers had been completed, so Gladstone
printed the covers alone in, I think, MM 256 (in a column called "The
Gladstone that Never Was").
	The story does appear relatively unscathed in the 1978
Abbeville Press MICKEY MOUSE BEST COMICS volume.  It's relettered like
the others in the book, but unlike many of them, its text is almost
identical to the original.  The book was reprinted again in 1986 (with
a new, yellow paper cover), and that edition is still pretty easy to
hunt down.

	David Gerstein
	"I s'pose Pete thought this 'd be the end o' me!  An' all I
can say is... he was RIGHT!"
	<96dag at williams.edu>