On their websites where the only people that will find them are those already aware of their existence, yes. But good luck actually finding a store that would have copies of even one book sitting on their shelves.
Barnes & Nobles will maybe have a couple Fantagraphics hardcovers on hand but they usually keep them in their humor section for whatever reason instead of the actual comics section they have.
Do you want to know a very simple way of bringing Disney comics to a wider audience? Sell them at the theme parks. Have kiosks set up inside some of the gift shops there with single issues and trade releases available. You're bound to attract people who are longtime Disney fans but may not have checked out any of the comics before as well as people picking them up as a souvenir or to help pass time while waiting for something while at the park or read in their hotel room/the trip back home. Just reading one issue can be all it takes to make someone interested in getting more and become a fan for life, I would know.
Do you want to know a very simple way of bringing Disney comics to a wider audience? Sell them at the theme parks.
I'm not sure which park this one was sold at, but the DisneyParks barcode sticker suggest that it was bought in a park at some point (I'd be interested to know of more examples if anyone know)
When I visited Disney World in 2007, they had shops where you could buy the Gemstone comic books. No idea if you can still buy IDW's comic books or TPBs there today.
No one in North America would be willing to spend between 12$ and 15$ per month on a series, even if a single issue would contain 250 pages! I don't think it's in their culture, and it will not be Disney niche kid comic books to move the mountain. The alternative would be to make those pocketbooks as cheap as they are in Europe, by decreasing the quality of the paper. That also is not very much compatible with the way comics are sold in the US. The American readers want to spend little money AND yet have good plastic-like paper with super good printing. (The result of that is that they typically get only 20-24 pages of their favourite comics series every month...).
I think that while in this particular instance you're probably correct, if anyone has the ability to change the landscape of comics in America it would be Disney. Not just because of their massive infrastructure, but crucially, because their comics are aimed at children (and their parents). You've got to get them hooked when they're young, and if that means stocking comics in the theme parks (they used to do that, right?) then by all means.
I referred to the 1990-93 era of comics earlier in this thread, because it seems like a nice compromise on the quality of the paper. European paper quality is very brittle -- a few years back, you could crease a Dutch weekly just by reading it. They're introduced something with a bit more fibres since then, thankfully.
I've always found it strange how US Disney comics got stuck with glossy paper. It makes sense when you're aiming at a high-end audience (as Gladstone II did in those days), or when you have sleek, fully digitally-drawn comics, but for regular comics, they just make the experience prohibitively expensive. IMO, Disney omics should be as cheap as possible, in order to be as accessible as possible. One of the reasons I started to collect comics was because it was a relatively cheap hobby.
Fantagraphics has started to get a hold of some of the really classic Italian material but even with so many "Disney Masters" books, they're still just scraping the top of the iceberg.
Yeah, go convince Gary Groth to publish the rest of the iceberg, good luck. Have you ever heard him talk about comics? I am surprised that he allowed anything by Disney other than Barks and Rosa under the umbrella of his company. Compared to him, Don Rosa is a Mickey Mouse fan.
Sorry, but the Rosa comment made me chortle.
It would also allow for the adaptation of some more specific lines, without upsetting the traditional fans. Example? There are six German books of "Wizards of Mickey" so far. Boom!'s run stopped after what makes up the first book. For "Mickey Mouse Mystery Magazine", "DoubleDuck" and "Duck Avenger: New Adventures", the Dutch "Premium" publications are the ideal blueprint. The German Premium (which was the blueprint for the Dutch series, but the Dutch improved upon it) also housed "X-Mickey", "Darkenblot" and Darkwing Duck, although the latter has been rather well served in the US.
'Duck Avenger: New Adventures' was perfect to be sold in the American style, one issue monthly or bimonthly. The Italians in the 90's developed it having exactly the Marvel comics system in mind. Yet, the series was shut down by IDW, I assume for low selling rates. And we are talking of a top series qualitatively - for the low quality standards of modern Disney comics - I am sure somehow better than most of what IDW publishes nowadays, Disney or not.
'Mickey Mouse Mystery Magazine' is unpublishable in the US. Over there they have a strict code for comics. Since Disney ones fall under the 'kid comics' category, there is no way to publish a series where Mickey Mouse fights real crime, political corruption, mafias, and find himself seriously punching people in the jaws and escaping explosions or shooting helicopters. The first issue ends with a guy shooting in a train station with a big semiautomatic gun. Now try to pass that as comics for kids in the US. (You watch the news, you know that society: they only allow real shootings, as long as the kids barricaded at home don't see any gun or nipple drawn in a comic...)
I think we also tend to overlook the fact that Mickey and Donald are much more sanitized in the US than they are in Europe. Despite the best efforts of the editors, when Americans think of Donald Duck, they don't think of Barks-Donald: they think of a buttonless mascot with a friendly face and about as much edge as a golfball. With Mickey, it's about the same.
So when you introduce a title like Duck Avenger, I'm not sure I know entirely who you're going to be aiming at. It's too grown-up for the six-year-old whose mother is looking for some cute comics, and it's not likely to appeal at a discerning ten-year-old who wants something cool. Maybe things have changed with the Paul Rudish shorts and the new DuckTales -- I don't know how those titles/covers impact sales, but that's the impression I got.
I think that, unless they start redoing their own version with a new generation of creators - Americans should just drop Disney comics, except for hardcover anthologies in the style of Fantagraphics. The few Disney nerds can survive with that.
For as long as they last. Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but I get the feeling that the average American Disney comics nerd is about 55 years old. Notwithstanding recent efforts to draw in new readers, it seems to me significantly older than the European fandom -- and that's a key issue. The main generation of fans either grew up reading Gold Key comics, or happened to stumble on earlier Gladstone issues.
Sorry for the cynicism, but sometimes I feel that in this forum we forget to take the world outside our bubble into account. All of us, me too, not just the guy that thinks that Van Horn father is Caravaggio.
Of course not, that's silly. Paolo Mottura is Caravaggio.
Last Edit: Apr 22, 2020 22:40:56 GMT by That Duckfan
If Disney comics were ever something that had been regularly sold at the parks at any period of time, as someone who visits the parks at least every couple years, I had never seen it and it's certainly not the case today. Okay, that's not entirely true. I did see a trade release of Marvel's Figment miniseries once and only once somewhere there but that's it. And there are some places within the parks and Downtown Disney/Disney Springs that sell Disney related books but comics are never among them.
If Disney comics were ever something that had been regularly sold at the parks at any period of time, as someone who visits the parks at least every couple years, I had never seen it and it's certainly not the case today. Okay, that's not entirely true. I did see a trade release of Marvel's Figment miniseries once and only once somewhere there but that's it. And there are some places within the parks and Downtown Disney/Disney Springs that sell Disney related books but comics are never among them.
I worked at Disney as a member of the DCP in 2016 and I only ever saw the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad comics sold in the park. That comic was tucked away in a hidden Frontierland gift shop.
Post by Monkey_Feyerabend on Mar 16, 2021 11:45:47 GMT
Browsing the one trade paperback from the IDW running that I own, a certain sadness has taken me. Never seen Disney comics receive a better treatment in term of paper thickness and quality of printing, out of expensive hardcover editions, of course. In European weekly titles and monthly anthologies the paper is getting thinner and thinner by the year. (In some French monthly titles they even still use newspaper, the one kind of paper used in US comic books until the early 90's, to give you an idea, so the quality of the printed colours is negatively affective too.) It is such a pity that the interest of north American readers cannot be increased enough to keep at least these publications alive on the direct market. Well, I guess it is what it is.
I was wondering if Fantagraphics would be interested in picking the license for the classical monthly titles. If there is one publisher in the world that sometimes overlooks sell numbers in favour of quality and historical relevance, that is Fantagraphics. I ama aware that they do not do regularly floppies, but every now and then they do, so they have the infrastructure for that purpose. They did it in the 80's and 90's for Love and Rockets, the funny animal anthology Crickets, Clowes's Eightball, and a few others. And this year they are doing monthly floppy comic books again for Ed Piskor's new gore series Red Room. Ramapith , ever considered that?
Am I the only one who's not a fan of the glossy paper used in American comics? Don't like to leave my fingerprints all over the comic. European paper quality is getting worse for some issues, but it's also gotten better. Ten years ago, the Dutch magazine would crease if you even read it. They moved away to sturdier paper more recently. But subscription rates are falling everywhere, so you gotta do something.
I'll never understand why the US comic industry decided that exclusivity was the way to go. I won't say "the comics were better when they cost a nickel", but there is a weird inverse relationship of comic production having become this really exclusive, high-end business, while the contents are still the same and the availability has dropped to zero. (See: every thread and blog that complains about collections being impossible to find.) It's absurd. Comics are mass entertainment.
As someone who likes to collect single issues of a magazine, trade paperbacks seem like such a useless idea. Maybe for serialized stories, but I have no interest in Timeless Tales. But again, that's me projecting my ideas of the collecting, which was formed by buying stacks of magazines at rummage sales.
Reading the German series in pocket book format and its tiny script has made me reappreciate the softcover album format of the eighties. In the US, too -- Gladstone was a master at albums, be it the regular ones or the CBL. But of course, in those days you had a lively collectors scene as well.
I wonder what the sales numbers of recent US publications have been like. I wouldn't be surprised if sales abroad were outselling US domestic.
EDIT: I don't want to appear like I'm bashing recent comic output. The last 10 years have been amazing with regards to the availability of archive material. Those luxury editions are well and truly deserved, too --- but it's sad to think that mainstream audiences have become so hard to reach for the most part. Remember when Gladstone stuffed its Donald title full of Barks ten-pagers and tried to collect all the Taliaferro strips? We've come a long way. But Gladstone also published new comics by new US artists. US comics feel more like archive titles today, since it's all just translations of stories I already own. (The recent Hubbard/Kinney volume excluded, of course.) That affects my interest.
Last Edit: Mar 16, 2021 14:16:48 GMT by That Duckfan
Am I the only one who's not a fan of the glossy paper used in American comics? Don't like to leave my fingerprints all over the comic. European paper quality is getting worse for some issues, but it's also gotten better. Ten years ago, the Dutch magazine would crease if you even read it. They moved away to sturdier paper more recently. But subscription rates are falling everywhere, so you gotta do something.
I'll never understand why the US comic industry decided that exclusivity was the way to go. I won't say "the comics were better when they cost a nickel", but there is a weird inverse relationship of comic production having become this really exclusive, high-end business, while the contents are still the same and the availability has dropped to zero. (See: every thread and blog that complains about collections being impossible to find.) It's absurd. Comics are mass entertainment.
As someone who likes to collect single issues of a magazine, trade paperbacks seem like such a useless idea. Maybe for serialized stories, but I have no interest in Timeless Tales. But again, that's me projecting my ideas of the collecting, which was formed by buying stacks of magazines at rummage sales.
Reading the German series in pocket book format and its tiny script has made me reappreciate the softcover album format of the eighties. In the US, too -- Gladstone was a master at albums, be it the regular ones or the CBL. But of course, in those days you had a lively collectors scene as well.
I wonder what the sales numbers of recent US publications have been like. I wouldn't be surprised if sales abroad were outselling US domestic.
EDIT: I don't want to appear like I'm bashing recent comic output. The last 10 years have been amazing with regards to the availability of archive material. Those luxury editions are well and truly deserved, too --- but it's sad to think that mainstream audiences have become so hard to reach for the most part. Remember when Gladstone stuffed its Donald title full of Barks ten-pagers and tried to collect all the Taliaferro strips? We've come a long way. But Gladstone also published new comics by new US artists. US comics feel more like archive titles today, since it's all just translations of stories I already own. (The recent Hubbard/Kinney volume excluded, of course.) That affects my interest.
As someone who enjoys trade paperbacks, I feel like I might be able to offer a bit of perspective.
I do agree that they're at their best when collecting specific stories - for a personal example, I collected most of the Darkwing Duck TPBs before the Definitively Dangerous Omnibus was released. It was a good way to read the story, and a volume like the first one, "The Duck Knight Returns", is a solid and simple way to start the series.
That being said, I think TPBs for episodic series also have their own value.
Ireland really isn't a great place for comic books. There aren't many comic book shops in the country, and the few around aren't nearby for me. The ones I've been to seem pretty decent for Marvel and DC fans (Moreso DC), though I can't really comment much because I'm mostly unfamiliar with both brands. There's a decent amount of content that's neither Marvel nor DC, though I can't really comment on how good the selection is (As, for the most part, I'm only really familiar with core Disney comics and series based on existing properties). Sadly, for me, there's very little - they'll randomly get in a few sets of Disney books, but overall it's not much. I've never seen any Barks or Rosa volume on their shelves. No Timeless Tales, no Disney Masters, no Gottfredson Library or the like. I saw one Taliaferro volume once, and they also had a copy of Search for the Zodiac Stone once. That was all, and I've been visiting the place every once in a while for the past ~5 years. TPBs were a little more varied - they'd always have a couple around. That was where I picked up my copies of the Joe Books Darkwing Duck TPBs. They also had Duck Avenger: New Adventures some of the time, and they had a few random scattered books that I was unfamiliar with at the time (Donald Quest was the name on the only one I remember - I didn't pick it up). They're pretty plentiful for stuff like Steven Universe and Sonic the Hedgehog, which is nice.
So, basically, as a Disney comics fan, you're really testing your luck if you're looking in Ireland. And the odds aren't in your favour. As you can imagine, I had to turn to Amazon, eBay and a few scattered other sellers (Like AbeBooks or Book Depository) for most of my collection.
It's fine when buying stuff at retail price or thereabouts - stuff like Disney Masters, the current Barks Library or the Gottfredson Mickey Mouse collection are easy enough. Borrowing someone's Prime gives me free shipping, and on the few occasions where I couldn't do that, shipping from Amazon UK isn't too bad. When it comes to other content, things get sketchy - stuff like the Silly Symphonies collections, the Taliaferro collections, DoubleDuck... not always available. That leads me to places like Amazon US, eBay or similar stores.
Between import charges and shipping, the price (which is usually already higher than retail) goes up by a decent amount - sometimes up to double the price. When you get to more obscure titles or collections, this can be a problem - mainly because options are already pretty limited.
As such, I like to make my purchases count. When I'm reasonably sure that the offer is the best I'm going to get for something, I want to make sure that the content that I'm getting will be worth it. That's where TPBs come in.
As an example of the problem, I'll use Duckman - it, to my knowledge, never had any TPB releases. As such, I had to get each issue individually (Issues 0-5 and a sub-series that had 3 issues). I got lucky with a set from the UK which knocked the price down a little, but most of the issues were either absurdly high in price or only available from America. As such, plenty of sellers wouldn't sell a single issue for less than €20, even though the price of the item was only around €2 - all because of shipping and import charges. Combined shipping helped, but there was the problem that no seller was selling all of the issues, so I had to split between a few. Which dramatically increased the price. Now, I love Duckman - but the issues are short. That's how it is with single issues. I paid more than they were worth (Though I got lucky in a few places and saved myself a decent amount), which did suck. Buying single issues of comic books in general is a pain here - for a more recent example, there was a specific Steven Universe comic I wanted (A special issue about Greg, that wasn't available in any of the TPBs) - I tracked it down, and had to pay a decent amount extra for shipping and import charges. Again, I was glad to have it (and still am), but it sucks to pay so much for such little content.
Trade paperbacks eliminate this difficulty to a degree - you're obviously paying more than you would for a single issue, but it's more than that; for the most part, you get around 4 issues, a compilation of alternate covers and, in some cases, some nice commentary to go with it. I'm getting 4 issues for a decent price, and am only paying shipping for one item. That doesn't sound like a huge deal, but it's a lifesaver for me - the TPBs are more readily available (usually available on Amazon UK, which isn't the case for single issues), they offer more content and I'm saving a lot of money on shipping and import charges (which would be huge if I was to collect each issue individually).
Basically, comic book collecting sucks in Ireland, especially for core Disney comics. Trade paperbacks make it a lot easier for me to access the content that I want to read, and help me to get my hands on stories that would otherwise be either very pricey or outright unattainable.
Resident autistic, diabetic duck fan.
I love hearing about bizarre/obscure Disney works - recommendations welcome!
Yeah, TPBs have always been a major publication vehicle for Disney stuff in Europe. They can go back to print, stores can have a whole bunch of them on sale at once without removing them at the end of the week/month, they're in general a lot easier to track down used copies of, they can contain specially curated selections of thematically connected stories or all the parts of a multi-episode series... they have all kinds of great advantages over regular floppies.
I think that monthly Disney Comics just aren’t a priority for Disney lately (at least in the US). The IDW Disney comics from “My First Millions” on were crap, and comic shops are probably stuck with back issues that no one wants, and that isn’t exactly encouraging for IDW/Disney either. On one hand, I’d love to have the Core Four Disney Comics back (with the Core Four of US localization as well), but on the other hand...at this point, the direct market in the US (and their customers as well) is still trying to recover from the pandemic and maybe the market just can’t support these books at the moment.
...at this point, the direct market in the US (and their customers as well) is still trying to recover from the pandemic and maybe the market just can’t support these books at the moment.
True. I know that there was some talk about a continuation of Darkwing Duck, for instance, but it seems the pandemic has derailed or at least pushed all that back...