Disney comics archive

[David Gerstein]

	Hey Gerd,

> Granted, but where are all those stats now? I don't imagine that 
> Western
> (or whatever they are called today) is still interested in keeping a 
> huge
> archive of old Disney comics they don't even have a publishing license 
> for.
>
> Or to put it into other words: to whom would Gemstone turn if they 
> wanted
> to reprint, e.g., an ancient Tony Strobl or Paul Murry story? To 
> Disney?
> Or rather to Egmont in Denmark?

	When Western lost its Disney license, they continued selling Disney 
comics stats to active licensees. They did this through the late 1990s. 
As I write this, nobody seems to be sure what happened to their stat 
archive after that.

	Today, most of our Western stats come from either Egmont or from 
Disney's Burbank office. A very few others come from the French, Dutch, 
or Italian publishers, or from private collections. Nobody has every 
story, but between the bunch of them, we can get about three quarters 
of what we might want.
	Sometimes we can only get stats where the word balloons are blank. 
Then we either restore and drop in the lettering from an old published 
comic (example: some stories in Gemstone's CHRISTMAS PARADE 2), or 
reletter the story from scratch (example: "The Ruby Eye of Homar 
Guy-Am" in MICKEY MOUSE 274).
	Occasionally it seems we have no source for stats at all, lettered or 
not. Then we may electronically recreate stats from scratch, using as a 
source the pages of a published comic. Rick Keene, an expert at this, 
has done this several times for us.

	Twice a lengthy stat search has seemed to end unsuccessfully and then 
afterwards, when it was too late, the original material ironically 
turned up after all. For example, with "The Ruby Eye of Homar Guy-Am," 
lettered stats were finally discovered, but only as we were going to 
press with our relettered version.
	Oh, well. We can use the lettered stats NEXT time we reprint the 
story. Groan.

	David