The story codes

[Per Starb{ck]

Great!  I think that treatise on the story codes were very much
needed, and I was just going to summarize what I know about them when
your post arrived.  I'm glad I didn't have to do that, as your post
was much more informative than mine could ever have been.  On to some
questions and comments:

> Most stories as they were (re)printed in Holland before 1970, did
> not have a code at all.

That's about when they started to show us the codes here in Sweden
too.  I guess they took the trouble to remove the codes before
publication before that.  Sometimes they slipped through even earlier,
though.  Especially when they where somewhere else than in the first
panel.

> USA - King Features Syndicate
> -----------------------------
> These are the newspaper comic strips. They are indicated by their
> publishing date, sometimes preceded by 'WDP', 'WDE' or 'KFS'.

Or just `KF'.  The date is given as MM-DD-YY (perhaps obvious?), and
it should perhaps be noted that these codes don't identify the strips
(or Sunday pages) uniquely, as e.g., "KF 5/2/65" could be a Donald
Duck Sunday page, or a Mickey Mouse, or something else.

> USA - Disney Studio's
> ---------------------
> From 1963, the Disney Studios's produced comics for the 'Foreign market'.
> (These are the 'S-coded' stories Per St. was talking about).
> In the 60s, the code was built as follows:
> 1st digit = the last digit of the year
> next digits = sequence number.
> There was no letter in the code. Example: #6178. This is the 178th story
> the studios made in 1966.

Are these #-codes the same as the codes that begin with a little
square followed by a number?

What about the X-coded stories?  They are also from the Studio, right?
(I think X stands for eXtra.)

> Holland - Oberon
> ----------------
> In Holland, they made an occasional Disney story since 1953. From 1965-1969,
> they let the Toonder Studio's make 4-page stories of Li'l bad wolf and
> Hiawatha. These stories are *very* Dutch, I think no foreigner would
> understand them.

Sounds really interesting, but if you're right I wouldn't understand
it...  I love Tom Poes though.

> Italy - Mondadori
> -----------------
> Since the beginning of the 60s (or late 50s?) Mondadori Studio's produced
> many stories, in a very own style.

"When Romano Scarpa first took Mickey Mouse under his artistic wing in
the mid-1950s, ..." (from the introductory text to Scarpa's "Kali's
Nail" in MM 255), so I guess it's the 50s.

> Most of the stories that are reprinted in Holland have no code; those that
> have, have an I, followed by the Italian comic issue (mostly 'Albi d'Oro',
> Golden Books)

Abbrevs are also used.  ADO = Albi d'Oro.  AT = Almanacco Topolino.
T = Topolino.  I've also seen codes like I-1425-A, whatever that
means.

Mondadori doesn't publish Disney stories any longer btw, because
Disney started to publish their own stories in Italy some years ago
(before they took the same step in the USA I think).
--
Per Starback