First of all, a question, which maybe David can answer:

Who is responsible for the distribution of Gladstone comics in
Australia? Not the direct stores, who I assume get their stuff
airfreight from the US distributers (Marvel?), but the news-stand
copies. The reason I ask is that up until a few months ago, every
newsagent (seller of magazines and newspapers) had copies of the
Gladstone titles, but lately, and I have checked about a dozen now,
there are none to be seen! Just Marvel and DC, and the usual English
comics. What's happened? It is a bit annoying that casual buyers don't
have access to these comics, especially given the historically strong
interest in Disney comics here. (We had our own reprints from 1947-1975,
and I have most of the Barks classics in this form.)

Now a warning:

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE DISNEY CORPORATION

If the Disney corporation gets it into its corporate head to object to
Don Rosa's Life of Scrooge series and curtail its english language
publication, then it wouldn't surprise me at all if someone felt
strongly enough about this to personally swim the pacific ocean with a
box of matches in his teeth and burn down Disneyworld. You have been
warned...

(Ok, I probably don't feel quite that strongly, and anyway, I don't
think I could even swim to New Zealand with a grapefruit balanced on a
noodle, but this spectre of Disney interference really annoys me. They
seem to want their characters to be blancmange-like cutsie types who
never do anything even remotely controversial, even when their bad
actions are justly punished [as sounds to be the case in Don's LoS 11].
As a result, the average Disney comic story is really dull. Here I mean
the typical European story which to me at least, pad out the issues
around the worthwhile Rosa, VanHorn and Barks stories.  Sorry guys, but
that's how it strikes me.)

	Andrew Davies

P.S. Exellent creative reading on the behalf of the member of this group
(sorry I didn't note who it was...) with the "Pennywise" link. It really
fits.

