Bad Sales

[Gary Leach]

> Mr Leach,
>
> How come Disney comincs sells so bad in the US compared to the good  
> numbers in Europe, among them Norway?
> Ever since I first picked down a copy of Whitman's Donald Duck and  
> WDC&S around 30 years ago at a newsstand, and was allowed to buy one  
> of them, I have been an eager reader and collector of the US Disney  
> Comics, and followed up with subscriptions when Gladstone took  
> over... There ought to be a huge potential over there! I mean, you  
> population is above 300 millions, we are not even five, and Donald  
> Duck weekly sells a few 100 thousands, every week!
>
> Erlend, Norway

Famelien,

Your question's not an easy one. In my own case I'd read a lot of  
Disney comics as a kid (in the 1960s), but by the time I was a  
teenager they'd fallen off my reading radar. Working on the Disneys at  
Gladstone gave me a whole new appreciation for them, but by then the  
hope of their regaining more than marginal interest to American comic  
book readers was dimming fast.

Some quick and dirty history: after World War II sales of comics books  
starting trending downward in the US. One response to this was to  
revive the superhero genre, which is generally agreed to have started  
in earnest with a new version of The Flash published by DC in 1956.  
This kicked off what is now known as The Silver Age, an era that  
certainly did revive superheroes--so much so that the genre pretty  
much dominated the comic book medium in the US from that point onward.  
(Lines like Disney and Archie and Harvey weren't out of the game by  
any means, but they did get pushed more and more to the margins as The  
Silver Age ran on.) This dominance was further bolstered by the  
advent, in the early 1970s, of the direct-market retail distribution  
model. This model served super-hero fans above all others, since these  
were the bulk of American readers (including yours truly) who still  
wanted comic books--by that time most of the US population had largely  
forgotten that comic books were even being published.

By 1986 superheroes had to all intents and purposes become the US  
comic book business, leaving bare scraps of market share to all other  
genres. But here's the kicker: that sales slide for comic books in the  
US that started back in the mid-1940s was never really halted, let  
alone turned around, so every genre had to struggle for a slice of an  
ever-dwindling pie. The sales we considered disappointing at Gladstone  
for our Disney's back in the late 1980s would be welcomed today by  
even DC and Marvel for more than a few of their superhero titles.

Countless articles and even books have been written about why the  
American reading public soured on comic books so long ago and, on the  
whole, never got back their taste for them. In the final analysis it  
follows that Disney comics suffered right along with the rest.

Gary
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