DCML Digest, Vol 42, Issue 18 (Postal Regs)

[JTorci3511 at aol.com]

Everyone: 
 
John Chadwick writes:

>>I was just reading in one of the essays in Carl Barks'   Greatest DuckTales 
Stories Vol.1 that postal regulations prohibited Scrooge  and Gyro from 
appearing in the same stories in Uncle Scrooge comics.  Why  should the Postal 
Service care about such a thing?>>
First, thanks for buying the DuckTales book.  The Postal Service thing  was 
as Steven Rowe explained it.   Why?  We may never know  from this vantage point 
in time.  For some specifics, I'll quote from an  APA article I did on Gyro 
several years ago: 
 
"In 1956, Dell began offering its comic books directly to  the end consumer 
on a subscription basis.  Conforming to a seemingly inexplicable U.S. postal 
requirement to obtain  lower cost second-class mailing privileges, each 
qualifying Dell periodical was  mandated to run a single page of TEXT, and a comics 
story which featured characters not used in ANY other  story in the magazine (!) 
 
 
"…Don’t ask me,  I’m just a columnist!!!!   Over  the years, I’ve never 
heard ANY practical reason for this one!    It  was this latter item which 
brought the Gyro  Gearloose short stories into being, and into the UNCLE SCROOGE 
title on a permanent  basis."
 
[End of Quoted Material] 
 
Note that this text requirement of the regulation would have been  
instrumental in bringing those "One-Page-Text" stories, that usually featured  Goofy, 
Li'L Bad Wolf, etc. into being... and, for other publishers, took  the form of 
educational or fiction texts and eventually gave birth to the letter  columns.  
 
 
Joe Torcivia.  

 
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