The story of my relationship with Disney comics

[Hector]

I don't know when I first heard about Disney. That memory is lost somewhere in my infancy. As a very young child, I watched classic Disney cartoons and I knew only some very general info regarding classic Disney heroes (ex. Mickey is a mouse, Donald is short tempered, Scrooge is rich). Actually, the only characters I knew back then were Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Donald and the nephews. At some unspecified time during my early childhood, I watched some Ducktales episodes (the old series, obviously) and, thus, found out about Scrooge, Beagle Boys and Magica. I became aware of the existence of all other classic characters (ex. Gladstone, Grandma Duck, Clarabelle etc) only when I started reading comics.

The first Disney comic volume I got was one in the waiting room of my uncle's office (he was a doctor). I still have it! In that volume, I read my very first Disney story, which I reviewed here in the past. It was called 'The Money Ocean'.

Despite that, I didn't start collecting Disney volumes until a few months later. It was June 1995 and I was an 8 year old boy who went to the grocery store to buy something for mom (I don't remember what it was). There, I saw a Disney volume and, since I had nothing better to do that day, when I went back home, I asked mom for money to buy it. Then I went back to the shop and bought it.

Unfortunately, I have no idea what happened with that volume. Somewhere between me being a careless child and my family preparing to move during the same period, it was lost forever. In any case, the main story of that volume was this.

Over the following 4.5 years, I collected hundreds of Disney volumes. I found out about the most important artists' names (Barks, Rosa etc), the canon life of Scrooge McDuck and much more. I had countless boxes full of Disney volumes.

One time, towards the end of 1999, someone asked on the letters section of a Disney magazine, 'Where can I buy Carl Barks Library?' The answer was, 'Unfortunately, it is not available in our country. (Well, nowadays, it is.) But you can make it by yourself by cutting all Barkses stories off your volumes and then binding them together. This way, you can also make a Rosa Library, Scarpa Library etc'

I considered actually doing it! A voice inside me was yelling, 'Bad idea, bad idea,' but, being a stupid, 13 year old boy, I did it! After cutting off several stories, thus ruining several of my hard found rare volumes, I realized what a terrible mistake that was.

Over the following days, my interest in Disney comics and in Disney in general gradually faded. I grew more interested in other stuff, such as video games and trading cards. Alas, I stopped buying volumes, planning to spend my allowance on different stuff from then on, closed the boxes containing whatever was left of my collection after the volume-slaughter I had committed recently and never thought about Disney again for a long time.

In 2013, I discovered on the Internet 'Disney Comics Forum', where I was banned from a few months later, for reasons I mentioned in the past. In any case, that forum partly reawakened my interest in Disney comics. I even considered starting buying them again, except, by then, they had become way more expensive, to the extent of me thinking it's not worth it.

Even though I'm nowadays more interested in more adult comics, mainly mangas, even though I nowadays consider many of the Disney stories I used to adore as a child too childish for my taste, occasionally even catching myself being like, 'How the hell did I like that stuff?', Don Rosa's stories will always hold a special place in my heart; actually, his stories were the reason I started posting on Disney forums in the first place.

I still read Disney stories whenever I have the chance to do it for free. For instance, when I find a volume in a gabage bin or during the afternoons I spend at local bookshops (the bookshops that haven't forbidden me to enter again and threatened to call the police if I do, that is!)

Anyway, now post your story too or comment on mine.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jan 2, 2020 0:04:22 GMT Hector said:

One time, towards the end of 1999, someone asked on the letters section of a Disney magazine, 'Where can I buy Carl Barks Library?' The answer was, 'Unfortunately, it is not available in our country. (Well, nowadays, it is.) But you can make it by yourself by cutting all Barkses stories off your volumes and then binding them together. This way, you can also make a Rosa Library, Scarpa Library etc'

I considered actually doing it! A voice inside me was yelling, 'Bad idea, bad idea,' but, being a stupid, 12 year old boy, I did it! After cutting off several stories, thus ruining several of my hard found rare volumes, I realized what a terrible mistake that was.

Wow, that's really bad advice from a publisher! But then, IIRC, Gladstone I in its early days wanted us to cut up our comic books to send in subscription orders.

[pollux]

I have started reading them in like 2003 or 2004 when I was a lil lad and just learned to read.

I've readen them ever since, the Duckburg universe was the largest and most important incluence on my personality, outlook and world view.

Nowadays, I borrow books from my local libraries - I have access to my country's national library which includes like literally every book that's ever been published here. Or I just pirate the comics and read them on my tablet. Come on lassies, nobody'll ever notice...

[Hector]

Jan 2, 2020 3:16:53 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Jan 2, 2020 0:04:22 GMT Hector said:

One time, towards the end of 1999, someone asked on the letters section of a Disney magazine, 'Where can I buy Carl Barks Library?' The answer was, 'Unfortunately, it is not available in our country. (Well, nowadays, it is.) But you can make it by yourself by cutting all Barkses stories off your volumes and then binding them together. This way, you can also make a Rosa Library, Scarpa Library etc'

I considered actually doing it! A voice inside me was yelling, 'Bad idea, bad idea,' but, being a stupid, 12 year old boy, I did it! After cutting off several stories, thus ruining several of my hard found rare volumes, I realized what a terrible mistake that was.

Wow, that's really bad advice from a publisher! But then, IIRC, Gladstone I in its early days wanted us to cut up our comic books to send in subscription orders.

Well, to be fair, their exact advice was 'Buy a second copy of every issue, then blah blah blah,' but that was obviously impossible, since I could barely buy a first copy of every issue, especially the old and rare ones.

[deb]

And to think, all these years I’ve been doing it the hard way...my parents would buy my brother and I the Whitman three-pack comics (not just Disney...also Bugs Bunny, Looney Tunes, Woody Woodpecker, Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry, etc.). It was the Gladstone issues that made me a fan and regular customer, up through the Gemstone era. Honestly, my interest in the monthly comics has pretty much dried up after the past year, and going forward, I’m going to stick with the Fantagraphics volumes for my Disney reading (and I’ll leave any books I find in garbage bins for Whatever). My official conscience Jiminy Cricket won’t let me condone pirating the books. You don’t want to listen to that blathering beetle when he’s in a snit about something...sheesh!

[RobbK1]

I grew up in the late 1940s and 1950s, living in a family complex consisting of 4 houses near to each other, where my parents and grandparents started reading Disney Comic books to me at 2 years old, and I learned to read them back to them at age 3. We had so many of the books to read because I grew up with 13 other grandchildren of my father's parents, including 4 male cousins who were older than I, 3 of them by 3 years or more. ALL of them read comic books, as there was no TV in people's homes back then. So comics were a big part of our evening and blizzard, and rainy day entertainment. My cousins didn't collect the comics after I became about 5 or so only read them a few times), so I "inherited" all their comics. That's how I got almost all the US Disney Comics from the 1940s, and I kept buying them, myself during the 1950s and early 1960s. We spent summers and Christmas vacation in The Netherlands, so I collected Disney comics there as well, getting much of the 1950s and early 1960s comics there, and starting to buy them again during The Golden Age of Oberon in the early 1970s (especially after moving there for all year long) through 1980s, and also started buying Gladstone Disney Comics in the 1980s. As to making my own "Carl Barks Library" from my own books, in The Netherlands, we had those "Donald Duck" cover ring-binders for holding your Dutch Weekly issues. Two of my cousins used them. But I didn't, because I liked to keep mine separate, because I liked to toss them up in the air and let them fall on my head. But, at 17 years old, I decided to make black and white photocopies of all my Carl Barks pages, and hand-colour them with brush-pen markers, and have the volumes bound professionally. I started doing that, which is how I ended up meeting Carl Barks in 1966, because he was curious about anyone who would do such a bizarre thing.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

I can relate to those Whitman three-packs that were ubiquitous in American bookstores and toy stores in the early-to-mid '80s. Unfortunately, I never got anything good in those packs; it was mostly Super Goof, Winnie-the-Pooh, Junior Woodchucks and Donald and Daisy, never any Scrooges, WDC&S or other Barks-containing material). Mine were at least all-Disney. I know I've mentioned this before, but my first exposure to Barks was a Whitman Dynabrite book that collected "The Golden Fleecing" and "Billions Down the Hole"; that was also part of a three-pack, the other two being a Paul Murray-heavy Mickey Mouse Album with stories featuring obscure Mickey relatives (not bad actually) and, IIRC, a Winnie-the-Pooh book. I knew then that some Disney comics, at least, were better than the run-of-the-mill stuff (especially Uncle Scrooge stories!). There was an advertisement for other Dynabrite books in my issues, including for another Uncle Scrooge collection featuring "Land Beneath the Ground" and a Donald Duck book featuring "The Golden Helmet" and "No Such Varmint!". Those titles meant nothing to me at the time, but I now wish I had somehow managed to procure those books then. Anyway, like deb, it was Gladstone I that finally properly introduced me to Barks (and of course Gottfredson and European talents and, later Rosa and Van Horn) and I continued to subscribe through the Stale-and-Outdated IDW issues. The only time I dropped the "Core Four" titles was during Boom!'s early run when they were exclusively publishing "Wizards of Mickey" and "Double-O-Duck" stuff in which I had no interest.

[RobbK1]

Jan 3, 2020 14:06:47 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

I can relate to those Whitman three-packs that were ubiquitous in American bookstores and toy stores in the early-to-mid '80s. Unfortunately, I never got anything good in those packs; it was mostly Super Goof, Winnie-the-Pooh, Junior Woodchucks and Donald and Daisy, never any Scrooges, WDC&S or other Barks-containing material). Mine were at least all-Disney. I know I've mentioned this before, but my first exposure to Barks was a Whitman Dynabrite book that collected "The Golden Fleecing" and "Billions Down the Hole"; that was also part of a three-pack, the other two being a Paul Murray-heavy Mickey Mouse Album with stories featuring obscure Mickey relatives (not bad actually) and, IIRC, a Winnie-the-Pooh book. I knew then that some Disney comics, at least, were better than the run-of-the-mill stuff (especially Uncle Scrooge stories!). There was an advertisement for other Dynabrite books in my issues, including for another Uncle Scrooge collection featuring "Land Beneath the Ground" and a Donald Duck book featuring "The Golden Helmet" and "No Such Varmint!". Those titles meant nothing to me at the time, but I now wish I had somehow managed to procure those books then. Anyway, like deb, it was Gladstone I that finally properly introduced me to Barks (and of course Gottfredson and European talents and, later Rosa and Van Horn) and I continued to subscribe through the Stale-and-Outdated IDW issues. The only time I dropped the "Core Four" titles was during Boom!'s early run when they were exclusively publishing "Wizards of Mickey" and "Double-O-Duck" stuff in which I had no interest.

Wow!!  I didn't know Boom was printing the Double-O-Duck stories!  I'd have bought them to compare their text to my Dutch issues.  But, my local Santa Monica comics store was only caring Boom issues very sporadically, so I only bought a handful of the Boom issues.  Now they are extremely difficult to find.  Can anyone tell me in which issues the Double-O-Duck stories were printed?

[Ramapith]

Boom published the "Double Duck" series (modern Italian stories about Donald as a secret agent), not the "Double-O Duck" stories (1960s Studio stories about tall non-Donald pipe-smoking secret agent and his lady partner Mata Harrier).

"Double-O Duck" of the 1960s remains unpublished in the USA.

[RobbK1]

Jan 4, 2020 18:36:37 GMT Ramapith said:

Boom published the "Double Duck" series (modern Italian stories about Donald as a secret agent), not the "Double-O Duck" stories (1960s Studio stories about tall non-Donald pipe-smoking secret agent and his lady partner Mata Harrier).

"Double-O Duck" of the 1960s remains unpublished in the USA.

Thanks, David.  It sounded too good to be true.  It would be nice if IDW would print those "Double-O Duck" Al Hubbard stories.

[Hector]

Jan 3, 2020 4:37:57 GMT deb said:

And to think, all these years I’ve been doing it the hard way...my parents would buy my brother and I the Whitman three-pack comics (not just Disney...also Bugs Bunny, Looney Tunes, Woody Woodpecker, Pink Panther, Tom and Jerry, etc.). It was the Gladstone issues that made me a fan and regular customer, up through the Gemstone era. Honestly, my interest in the monthly comics has pretty much dried up after the past year, and going forward, I’m going to stick with the Fantagraphics volumes for my Disney reading (and I’ll leave any books I find in garbage bins for Whatever). My official conscience Jiminy Cricket won’t let me condone pirating the books. You don’t want to listen to that blathering beetle when he’s in a snit about something...sheesh!

I'm against pirating too, but, one time, I stole a Disney volume from an unguarded charity bench in a mall. I'm neither proud nor ashamed for it.

[Matilda]

Childhood in the 1960's USA: like Rosa I benefited from the comics accumulated by older siblings, and as in Rosa's case the preponderance of these were Disney Duck comics and Little Lulu. I read some Mickey stories in WDC&S or in Christmas Parades, but only a couple of them actually stuck with me, and Mickey and his world never became "real" in my mind in the way that Barks's Duckburg did. I discovered the Gladstone I run by the second or third issue and bought every issue of the Duck titles (and some others) throughout Gladstone I, the Disney Interregnum, Gladstone II, Gemstone, BOOM and IDW up until they turned "fresh and modern." I also bought the complete set of the Gladstone Barks Uncle Scrooge comics albums and about half of the Gladstone Barks WDCS and Donald Duck albums. When there was a stretch of time between Gladstone II and Gemstone, and then between Gemstone and BOOM, and then between BOOM and IDW, I fed my Disney Ducks habit by buying back-issues from Europe. That has gotten easier over time, with the help of INDUCKS to find what I want and the international network of eBays to buy stuff. Now, in the "fresh and modern" era when I am no longer buying the comics coming out from IDW, I am buying Fantagraphics' books and resorting once again to back-issues from France, Germany, the Netherlands and occasionally Italy. I read French easily, Dutch pretty easily and German adequately; Italian I read mostly by Google Translate (besides, the postage from Italy is much higher). It's too bad that the Scandinavian countries don't use eBay, because I would like to be able to get some stories that have only been published there.

At this point, more than half of my approx. 250 favorite Duck stories by writers other than Barks or Rosa are stories which have not been published in English. That makes sense, because the stories I order from abroad have a greater likelihood of becoming favorites, since I'm choosing stories by my favorite creators or stories dealing with a subject I care about or stories friends have recommended to me. One exception to this overall ratio is Christmas stories. Of my top ten favorite Christmas stories, only one hasn't been published here (Korhonen's "Home for Christmas?"). Though I haven't yet seen the much admired Mickey story "Holly's tree"--it was just published in French as a supplement to Journal de Mickey, and I'm hoping to get hold of that issue some day!

I keep only those comics which contain stories I'm going to want to re-read (or at least refer to), a very small percentage of the total comics I buy. That's enabled me to hook several younger people on Disney comics over the years, as I've passed on comics to them. When I did choose to keep a comic for myself, I usually bought another copy of that issue for the child I was currently giving Disney comics to, so that they'd get to see my favorites, too. Part of the story of my relationship to Disney comics is the way that Duckburg has become a shared fictional world for me with various friends and relations of younger generations.

[Baar Baar Jinx]

Jan 2, 2020 21:24:00 GMT Hector said:

Jan 2, 2020 3:16:53 GMT Baar Baar Jinx said:

Wow, that's really bad advice from a publisher! But then, IIRC, Gladstone I in its early days wanted us to cut up our comic books to send in subscription orders.

Well, to be fair, their exact advice was 'Buy a second copy of every issue, then blah blah blah,' but that was obviously impossible, since I could barely buy a first copy of every issue, especially the old and rare ones.

Ah! Correction, then ... that's really good advice from a publisher!