I guess this would go here since this is neither Mice and Ducks or Disney Afternoon.
DISNEY PRINCESS COMIC #1 Publisher: JOE BOOKS INC. (W/A/CA) Amy Mebberson Disney's beloved heroines have returned in this hilarious collection of Disney Princess comic strips! Featuring laugh-out-loud stories from the worlds of Ariel, Belle, Rapunzel, Tiana, Cinderella, Aurora, and more, this charming new ongoing series will make all your royal dreams come true! Item Code: DEC151425 In Shops: 2/24/2016 SRP: $2.99
This is the other monthly comic series Joe Books is going to be releasing besides Darkwing Duck. (and Madagascar but that's not Disney) This series is being handled by Amy Mebberson who is also behind the Pocket Princesses webcomic. The first issue comes out on February 24th. Not sure how many people here would be interested in this but I'm looking forward to reading it.
So it's basically going to be an official version of Pocket Princesses?
Not really because they aren't going to be allowed to show the Princesses actually interacting with each other. (A mandate Disney has had with all Princess related merch. They're never allowed to even look at each other.) This series is supposedly going to be a bunch of short comics about each individual princess.
Hey, Amy Mebberson! Love her Pocket Princesses, loved her BOOM Muppets (and occasional IDW Disney covers). I may have to check this out, despite my very strong aversion to Disney Princess marketing. Seems odd that the release says "comic strips"--which sounds like four-panel newspaper strips--but then says "stories." I wonder what the format will actually be?
Post by ElectricAngel on Jan 29, 2016 20:41:29 GMT
I'm honestly not sure what to think of this. It looks really cute, and I love Amy Mebberson's art, but from what it looks like, it's going to be four short stories per issue. Taking into consideration most US comics are around 32 pages, that would be 8 pages per story. For some reason I feel these would fit better if they were inserted in a bigger comic magazine. But then I remembered that in the US, comic magazines don't exist much. I'm going to have to wait until the first issue comes out to have better thoughts. Right now it seems like it could be a short series rather than ongoing, but maybe that's due to the limited ideas in my head about a series like this. :S
It's a marketing rule, been around for years if you'll notice merchandise on the Disney Princesses line- the Princesses can't interact. They can be together in a picture, but they must all look away from each other, and there can't be a sense of shared place between them. Notice even in these covers, they're individual scenes for each one.
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jan 30, 2016 18:54:24 GMT
I know that. What I'm asking is… why ? Why do the Disney marketers fear so much the combination of the different Princesses ? What's the problem with it ?
I know that. What I'm asking is… why ? Why do the Disney marketers fear so much the combination of the different Princesses ? What's the problem with it ?
There was once a time when Disney didn't have any rules like that and we ended with weird nonsensical stuff like this.
It's just them trying to maintain control of their brand. Disney tries to consider each of their main animated features to be separate from each other. Having them crossover all the time would damage that.
Post by Scrooge MacDuck on Jan 31, 2016 16:27:29 GMT
I'm quite aware that there weren't borders in those times… but I think that the results were pretty good ! I loved "House of Mouse", for one thing… And the concept of the cover you're showing doesn't strike me as disagreeable. Sure, it was often handled badly because bad writers and bad artists, but I would have had no objections on Don Rosa or Marco Rota doing a Madam Mim/Beagle Boys story.
The original plan was to release the comic strips digitally, but that plan was never realized as far as I know. We got to see a few teaser strips back in 2014, and I guess they are now going to end up in the printed comic instead.
Also Inside the Magic recently got an exclusive look at another strip.
but from what it looks like, it's going to be four short stories per issue.
I don't think that is the case, even if the covers have four different parts. I think it's going to be a mix of individual strips and short stories that is made up by individual strip gags. A week or two ago Amy said on her twitter that she had just finished a 9 strip story arc, but that was just going to be four and a half pages in the comic. So it sounds like there's going to be two strips printed on each page.
Anyone else get the first issue of Disney Princess last month, and if so, do you have any reactions? I found that I enjoyed several of the standalone single strips a lot (e.g. Rapunzel on hair-washing day), and wasn't particularly charmed by the short stories made up of a bunch of strips. But then, I'm an adult; perhaps a child would like the very-short-stories better. For me, though, Mebberson's humor works best in the single-strip format...or single-panel format, like her online cartoons. I liked the art overall, especially Merida's embroidered tapestry of herself defeating a dragon. I want merch with the image of that tapestry: a poster, a pillow, a 500-piece puzzle (hmm, merch that starts with a "p", apparently!). Are you listening, Corporate Mouse?
I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. I liked that they used elements from the movies instead of havng the princesses do something random and out of character. They also have their own personalities. In other Disney Princess stuff I've seen that are targeted at pre-teen girls, they don't really have a lot of personality. They just live in a perfect princess world doing "princess stuff". The new strips however can be enjoyed by all ages I think.
But for people that haven't seen the movies, I guess some of the humor is lost. Like Scuttle the seagull pretending to know everything about human objects – you'd have to know the movie to get that. And the thing I really didn't like in the first issue was that they used 11 pages to preview a cinestory (basically 11 pages of ads for one publication). So you didn't really get a whole lot of comics for your $2.99