Disney-comics digest #707.

Don Rosa donrosa at iglou.com
Thu Jun 29 08:09:00 CEST 1995


COLETTE:
        So, I've figured out your question about comic "strips". But you
have a new mystery question: what is meant by "Is there a Carl Barks
collection in the state of California?" Have you accessed Par's WWW page
with the information on the fundamentals of what Disney comic books are? You
might be confused by finding that Disney comics (as created by Dell/Western
in the 40s-50s, the tradition still carried on in Gladstones and in the
European Disney comics) has very little (in fact, I say NOTHING) to do with
anything you may know about Disney's use of Mickey or Donald or anything
else you know about what Disney does. These are comics that were developed
quite outside the Disney corporation by licensees who built new characters
and worlds out of basic images licensed to them by Disney. Anyway, check out
those information pages to get a handle on all this.

STEVE:
        Perhaps that odd ad in the new CBG refers to Gladstone's plan for
WDC&S beginning with issue #601.
        They have decided to test the theory that the vast majority of (the
few American) people who buy the Gladstone Disneys are old collectors, not
kids or people looking for Pocahontas comic strips. Beginning with WDC&S
#601, that title will become a square-bound super-deluxe thick volume, and
cost $5.95. It will feature all the new material and Dell reprints and
newspaper reprints -- all the stuff that the "collectors" want, not the
kiddies.  
        I hate to hear this since this means that all my future $crooge
adventures will now appear in WDC&S rather than UNCLE $CROOGE. But worse,
they want to use my 3-part $crooge serials as such, and not use the one-part
versions I have already done for their use -- I dislike the 3-part system,
and have always looked forward to when Gladstone used them as one-parters. I
guess they still will use them as one-parters, but not until they reprint
them (someday) in their upcoming DON ROSA LIBRARY album series which they
plan to start next year. Anyway, the reason they want to use them as serials
is to please these "old collectors" who long to see Disney serials like the
Mickey serials they grew up with. Me, I think presenting any stories as
serials is NOT the "deluxe presentation" they think they are shooting for,
but that's the plan.
        They also wanted me to do ALL the covers based on my serialized
$crooge stories. But that would make $crooge the featured character on every
WDC&S cover, and also have every three covers feature scenes from the SAME
story. I think I tried to nix that idea -- they should have more variety on
their covers than that! But I guess that was just another idea for the
collector market, since they say any issue I have a story in or do the cover
for sells more issues. But that sure wouldn't meet the ad-line of "Disney
comics as they SHOULD be" to my way of thinking! WDC&S should have simple
gag covers like they did when I was a kid... not my detail-packed
eye-irritating adventure scenes. I've avoided doing a WDC&S cover so far.




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