DCML digest #1272

[Don Rosa]

From: mateusz lis (lis- at wp.pl)
>>>>>>>>>>If you are interested, here is an index of your stories publihed
in my country:
http://disneymania.w.interia.pl/don_rosa_index.htm. It's quite small, isn't
it?

That's natural. Disney comics have only relatively recently begun appearing
in Poland, right? They would therefore only be marketed toward very young
children. My stories are for the teen and adult readers, and there would be
no older readers in places where these comics have not been around for
decades so that a buyer base has been long established, grown, and grown
old. Wherever Disney comics are the most popular (which would of necessity
mean that it includes readers of *all* ages) is where they have been around
the longest without interuption in their publication. My stories are most
popular in a place like Italy or Finland where a reader might well be
sharing the same issue with his father and with his *son*, all of whom have
grown up reading Barks' Ducks.
I'm sure my stories are avoided in the Polish weekly, and I doubt if they
have ever been used at all in Russia or China or other new Egmont markets.
My stories are too complex for kiddies to read *or* look at, and certainly
too complex for editors and translators to want to screw with when there are
thousands of pages of much simpler material to work on. And it doesn't
matter to me! As you know, these comics don't pay royalties! (I just wish
they'd send me copies when they use my stories for my collection.)
Perhaps those Polish album collections of my works were aimed at older
readers, which is why they used up my stories there rather than in the
weekly. My stories are never used in the weekly JOURNAL DE MICKY, but seem
the star of the monthly PICSOU; never used in the weekly TOPOLINO, but are
prominent in the monthly ZIO PAPERONE; never used in the weekly Dutch DONALD
DUCK, but used in the monthly DONALD DUCK EKSTRA and are the star of the OOM
DAGOBERT album series. Seems like a good sales strategy.