predicting becoming comics

[Simo Malinen]

GARY LEACH (Nov 23.):
>But there is a tidy backlog of Rosa material that has not been seen in the 
>States, and catching up with that - as with the work of William and Noel 
>Van Horn, the Blocks, The McGreals, Dave Rawson, the Gilberts, Vicar, Daan 
>Jippes, Daniel Branca, Marco Rota, David Gerstein, Don Markstein, Geoff 
>Blum, even yours truly, et al - is what Gemstone will be about for the near 
>future.
>


Just does anyone know could certain economical points effect
what becoming U.S. (and all other) Disney publications might
contain?

If Gemstone has agreed to pay for the licence to print
Disney-comics does it also have to pay for the comic
stories it is going to publish?
Gemstone hasn't produced any Disney(Duck/Mouse)-comics
of it's own so it should get all the material from
"external sources". Gemstone and on the other hand all
Disney stories producing parties are all separate
companies. And naturally all aiming for the best possible
profit they can get.

So: Are there differences between the market-prices of
stories manufactured by different Disney comics producers?
If there are, then I think it could be one thing to direct
the selections about stories to be published.

Let's say if Italian stories are more expensive than
Brazilian stories. Then it wouldn't be a big surprise if
becoming issues would have more Brazilian than Italian
stories.

What is the case with the old already existing (and many
times reprinted) material? Who owns the rights for
Western/Dell stories, S-coded "Disney Studio" stories,
AR-coded Another Rainbow stories, or old KF Sunday pages?
Who gets the license fees from them? They all just can't
be some kind of common-free filling-material allowed to
use for free by everyone who has paid the license to
publish Disney comics? (- in such case you'd expect all
weeklies and other issues to flood old re-re-re-printed
stuff much more)


Perhaps some attempts about cutting the costs have take
place in a real world already?
Some ten years ago the pocket books (260 pages) sold in
Germany, Finland and all around the Scandinavia were
compiled almost solidly about Italian stories. But since
the mid-90's some 1/3 up to half of every book have been
Danish Egmont's own stories.
Since the Italian producktion has been rather massive
all the way there shouldn't be any troubles of filling
the whole book purely with Italian stories. Maybe it was
to replace old poor random S-coded fillers with better
fitting larger stories - or maybe a decision to increase
variety or different kind of mood inside the book?
(I'm not complaining about the quality - atleast some of
the new stories are great)

On the other hand for the couple past years Egmont's
weeklies have had quite a lot of short (2-6 pages) Dutch
stories. Could this be because for Egmont it'd be more
inexpensive to purchase some of the needed fillers from
the Dutch producer than use it's own writers and artists,
as it did yet some years ago? (Surely not the only reason
but who knows?)


- Simo







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