Disney-comics digest #239.

[Gary Leach]

DON:

A slight cavaet to your remarks on why the Disney Stores don't carry Disney 
comics (either ours or the late-lamented theirs). The fact is, they can order 
only Disney comics from Diamond, Capital, Heroes World, what have you, so long
as they put in a minimum order for each Disney title they would desire to 
carry. No distributor requires that dealers in comics, if they order one title
from one company, must also order titles from other companies-if that was so, 
there would be no more comics retail industry because they all would have gone
hopelessly broke years ago. And today, more than ever, retailers are becoming 
selective, so the Disney Stores would be right in there ordering what the 
distributors would confidently know they would order and be happy to provide. 
This, of course, has no direct bearing on the basic problem you stated: the 
stores just won't fool with it, partly because comics are periodicals, partly 
because comics require attention that t-shirts and pencil erasers do not, and 
because they ask customers to consider the concept of READING. In short...TOO 
MUCH TROUBLE!

ALL:

Comics get no respect in the USA. People who think that is changing to any 
significant degree are only fooling themselves, I'm afraid. Even TV, which has
tapped the vein of comics more often of late, still treat them as cartoons, 
whether animated or live action. Nothing has or is going to change the fact 
that, to the general public, long-underwear heroes and talking mice are just 
plain silly, nevermind that what they do take seriously-soap operas, 
docudramas, local news-wallow in some of the most egregious nonsense 
imaginable. Comics have been defined as kid's stuff, and there is no will or 
inclination on the part of the general public to embrace a new definition. TOO
MUCH TROUBLE!
 
Since the WDCiC fiasco, I've been considering the outlandish notion that 
somehow, someway, Disney-the corporation-could be tried in court and found 
incompetent to administer the affairs of the corporation. At the very least it
could be established that they possess no competence in the market area of 
comics and therefore such administration should be awarded to the various 
comic book licensees worldwide. Pipe dream as that is, it does make me wonder 
if someday a large group of stockholders might notice that Disney management 
is not handling certain of Disney's affairs at all properly and call them on 
the carpet for such bonehead moves as not allowing licensees to produce 
products that will pay royalties to the corporation. If I was a stockholder, 
that would certainly leave me somewhat perlexed.

"How come you don't want to earn any money for me, guys? Hmmm...?"