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.