Goliath wrote:The classic WDC Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse-stories by artists Carl Barks and Paul Murry, as well as newspaper strips by Al Taliaferro and Floyd Gottfredson can be read in their entirety for free at:
I read the Donald Duck adventures from Carl Barks and have a lot of these comics. I've collected the comic book series about the youth of Scrooge McDuck and further adventures, written and drawn by Don Rosa (I think second-best Duck-artist next to Carl Barks, but he definitely has his own style)
I had a subscription on the Donald Duck weekly magazine for many years, until 1996. These days I occasionally buy an issue (In The Netherlands Donald Duck is the favourite magazine among students )
When I was a small kid in the '80's, they started reprinting the great old stuff from Carl Barks and so on, and I got really into collecting them then. I have a whole trunk full of stuff like Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey Mouse, Walt Disney Comics and Stories, Disney Afternoon-based titles, Roger Rabbit, Roger Rabbit's Toontown, '90's movie adaptations like White Fang, and so on. There are gaps in my collection because I was a little kid through teenager as I collected them in the '80's and '90's and had very limited funds, but it's a big trunk full, ha. It was so special for me one day when I stayed home sick and was completely surprised by the 2 hour premiere of DuckTales, which was the cartoon totally made for me at the time! Anyway, the companies releasing them kept getting changed up and so often I was too short of money for comics during and since college, so I pretty much stopped buying them, but I did get the first issues from SLG of Haunted Mansion, Gargoyles, TRON, and Wonderland (never could find any other issues, except a couple more issues of Haunted Mansion; hope to get the collections of this stuff sometime), and so far I've picked up the first bunch of the new Disney comics of Mickey Mouse, Donald, Scrooge, and Walt Disney Comics and Stories. The second issues are probably already out, but Christmas has me broke. I'll look for them later if I can. I would like to keep up with them, but don't know if I'll be able to. I'm about to go into another transitional period, moving to Austin and hoping I can find some sort of job there with hardly any experience.
As for the Muppet and PIXAR comics, I have only managed to get the first collection of "The Muppet Show", and I have a couple of issues of Incredibles (#0 and 1, I believe). However, I think for these I will probably end up opting for collections rather than individual issues. There are just too many titles out there, which often would drive me to stop buying for a while in the past. That happened even with Gladstone. At one point, there were just too many spin-offs for me to keep up with.
Incidentally, I did start a thread here on this subject some time ago with images of the newest line of Disney comics. No one ever posted in it though, but it's here somewhere if someone wants to see the covers. They took some very interesting takes on the characters.
I grew up with Disney comics. Not the American 'Walt Disney's Comics and Stories' (WDC), but the Dutch weekly 'Donald Duck' magazine, which was (originally) modelled after WDC. I still collect old copies. The magazine has existed since 1952 and is still enjoying considerable popularity with children and adults alike, even though, in my opinion, quality has dropped considerably since the late 1980's (I grew up in the 1990's).
The 'Donald Duck' weekly (and the 'Donald Duck Extra' monthly) are filled mostly with stories produced in The Netherlands and Denmark. Denmark is home to Egmont Publishing, which employs hundreds of artists from all over the world (including big names like Don Rosa, Vicar and William van Horn). Occasionally, they will reprint old American WDC-stories.
The monthly only uses stories with the Ducks and the Beagle Boys. The weekly also uses all kinds of characters, like Br'er Rabbit, Big bad Wolf, L'il Hiawatha and Scamp. Besides these publications, they also publish all sorts of pocket books, which are filled with Italian stories, in which characters appear that are absent from the weekly and monthly, like Fethry Duck and Ludwig von Drake.
I cancelled my subscription on 'Donald Duck' in 2003. Since then, I check it in the store and occasionally buy an issue if the look of the stories interest me. I still have a subscription to 'Donald Duck Extra'. I don't buy the pocket books anymore, but I do buy every book from the series that reprint all the Carl Barks-stories.
@slave2moonlight: I agree way too many titles out there.
@Goliath: That's interesting as I never knew much about non-domestic releases of Disney Comics.
@Cordy_Biddle: That's a shame.
The_Iceflash wrote:@Goliath: That's interesting as I never knew much about non-domestic releases of Disney Comics.
Disney Comics are huge in Europe, especially in Northern-Europe and Italy. Most Europeans still think Disney comics are as popular in the US as they were in the 1940's, '50s and '60s. It's a shame really, that they're virtually non-existant in their country of origine.
I used to buy the Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast comics every month when they came out... I think I had Aladdin ones too. I donno, I was in maybe 6th grade... :lol
The classic WDC Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse-stories by artists Carl Barks and Paul Murry, as well as newspaper strips by Al Taliaferro and Floyd Gottfredson can be read in their entirety for free at:
We have lots of Disney comics here in Finland (e.g. a weekly Donald Duck comic, monthly Scrooge McDuck and Donald Duck pocket comic books, annual hardcover comics for such artists as Floyd Gottfredson, Romano Scarpa, Carl Barks, Don Rosa etc.), and I've been collecting and reading them for a long time. Our most popular Disney comic, Aku Ankka (Donald Duck Weekly), had at one point more readers than our biggest newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, and that's saying a lot.
Some things you see with your eyes, others you see with your heart.
I'm amazed how popular and successful Disney comics are non-domestically. Domestically they are very hard to find and they cost $5 more than the average comic book. (Average US comic books cost $2.99 each whereas Walt Disney's Comics and Stories cost $7.99). As a result I've gotten my Disney Comic fill via free comic book day.
The_Iceflash wrote:Anyone know why the comic costs so much? Perhaps that could be why they aren't as popular and successful domestically.
As I've understood it, the popularity of Disney comics (but really comics in general) started to decline from the end of the 1960's/beginning of the 1970's, until at one point, only a few thousand were being sold and production was stopped. Usually this is blamed on the rising popularity of television and video games, competing with comics for children's attention. I think it had more to do with the dropping quality of the comics. Barks retired in 1966 and most of the 'old guard' (Paul Murry, Tony Strobl) had become rather stale, and there was no new talent to continue to make good stories.
Anyway, when publisher Gladstone in 1987 started to do Disney comics again, after almost a decade in which no Disney comics had been published in the US, they faced a problem, because Disney comics weren't known to a wide audience and a whole generation had grown up without them. So to make money anyway, they had to cater mostly to adults (who still knew the comics from their youth) and publish in very little numbers (10,000 copies or so of each comic) to make a profit (or break even). This of course drove the prices up; prices no child would spend for a comic if they can read a superhero-comic for $ 2.00 anyway. So the high prices led to less customers. Which led to higher prices to keep making money. Which led to even less customers. Which... you get it.
In the beginning of the 1990's, Disney itself took back its license to Gladstone because they wanted to profit directly from the comics (little profit as it was) and they took over publishing themselves and royally screwed up. They offended big names like Don Rosa and William van Horn with their policies, who quit and left to work for Egmont Publishing in Denmark. Disney gave the license back to Gladstone late in the 1990's, with nobody interested in Disney comics anymore, since Disney had wrecked it all.
Disney comics vanished again in the US, but came back briefly from 2003 on, with Gemstone. But of course they faced the same problems as Gladstone. I don't think it will ever change anymore.
Goliath covered it pretty well. While Gemstone brought back wonderful Barks stories, and fabulous new Rosa stories, their books did eventually have a price tag of 7.99 per issue. While the size of a giant size or annual issue, this pretty much placed it out of the price range for children and many adults.
Boom seems to be doing an interesting job placing the characters in new stories and environments. Time will tell if this draws new fans or not.
One publisher not listed was Marvel. They published Disney comics for awhile (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, etc.)