I think this is how it works, or at least how it worked. I remember reading Becattini (?) claiming that Mondadori used to print English stories back in the days because they were cheaper, but I might be wrong and/or confused.
I assume he meant "cheaper than producing new Italian stories" and potentially "cheaper to translate than Portugese/French/Dutch stories"...?
In central Europe for instance Egmont has 100% rights to all Disney related comics and story books (Glenat included). As far as I know for a long time there was no talk of leaving any part of the rights to anyone else and money was no issue - They just didn’t want to let anyone else publish Disney. But - lately, it has been rumored that due to falling sales, they are maybe willing to lend certain rights for bizarrely high money - much higher than the markets can afford.
Again, I am not sure if I understood you correctly, but if you think that for example Fantagraphics paid Egmont any money for publishing the Life of Scrooge books, you are mistaken.
Caballero, why do you think this?
Fantagraphics absolutely pays Egmont to access stories that we need from them—over the years, this has run from Rosa stories to certain Murry and S-coded stories. For contractual reasons I can't go into more detail than that, but Egmont is absolutely reimbursed.
I've run into this belief among readers over the years—that Boom's use of the title Walt Disney Treasury, and their announcement that they planned to feature creators other than Rosa, was all some kind of blind to publish Rosa without Rosa's name—that there was never really a plan to create non-Rosa volumes at all.
I was not a fan of how Boom handled Rosa's material, but I do need to settle this one—there was absolutely a plan to create non-Rosa volumes of Walt Disney Treasury. I know because I was actively working on a Jippes volume for them when things shut down, and a Scarpa or Strobl one would have followed it. (The Jippes volume eventually became Fantagraphics' Disney Masters Vol. 4...)
Again, I am not sure if I understood you correctly, but if you think that for example Fantagraphics paid Egmont any money for publishing the Life of Scrooge books, you are mistaken.
Caballero, why do you think this?
Fantagraphics absolutely pays Egmont to access stories that we need from them—over the years, this has run from Rosa stories to certain Murry and S-coded stories. For contractual reasons I can't go into more detail than that, but Egmont is absolutely reimbursed.
Once, for the access, right? (As Mesterius and RobbK1 remarked earlier in this thread.)
But not for the rights to publish them, and not repeatedly. Meaning that for example Fanta did not pay Egmont for "King of the Klondike" each time they published it (first in the DR Library, then in the standard Lo$ book, then in the deluxe Lo$ book).
I've run into this belief among readers over the years—that Boom's use of the title Walt Disney Treasury, and their announcement that they planned to feature creators other than Rosa, was all some kind of blind to publish Rosa without Rosa's name—that there was never really a plan to create non-Rosa volumes at all.
I was not a fan of how Boom handled Rosa's material, but I do need to settle this one—there was absolutely a plan to create non-Rosa volumes of Walt Disney Treasury. I know because I was actively working on a Jippes volume for them when things shut down, and a Scarpa or Strobl one would have followed it. (The Jippes volume eventually became Fantagraphics' Disney Masters Vol. 4...)
Really? I wasn't aware of the mission statement. Even the second volume failed to arrive in here in Holland when Boom's license upended.
If somebody knows more about the extent of Don's personal copyright, I'd love to know as it has always confused me. I've seen plenty of comics that mention his name or credit him as author, without being authorized. Is it only the title, or is there more to it?
Don doesn't exactly give the Walt Disney Treasury volumes his seal of approval, did he? I've heard him speak very negatively of them in the past, I believe he explicitly refuses to sign them. Not sure what his beef with them is exactly, whether he believed them to be 'bootleg' Don Rosa books at some point, or if he's just fed up with fans who think they are (especially with those wonderful Fantagraphics books standing by!).
Don doesn't exactly give the Walt Disney Treasury volumes his seal of approval, did he? I've heard him speak very negatively of them in the past, I believe he explicitly refuses to sign them. Not sure what his beef with them is exactly, whether he believed them to be 'bootleg' Don Rosa books at some point, or if he's just fed up with fans who think they are (especially with those wonderful Fantagraphics books standing by!).
Boom's management made the odd choice to publish Rosa volumes that segregated Donald stories from Scrooge stories—even though the stories really needed to be intermingled and run chronologically for various cross-references to make sense. I did do some work on the volumes as an assistant editor, but that was because my co-editor and I had been told that Don would have an approval stage on them; then he wasn't given one.
Part of my determination to produce the Don Rosa Library was a quite deliberate urge to right this wrong and do a real Rosa collection that presented the stories the way Don wanted, both because Don's my friend and because the stories deserve it!
In central Europe for instance Egmont has 100% rights to all Disney related comics and story books (Glenat included). As far as I know for a long time there was no talk of leaving any part of the rights to anyone else and money was no issue - They just didn’t want to let anyone else publish Disney. But - lately, it has been rumored that due to falling sales, they are maybe willing to lend certain rights for bizarrely high money - much higher than the markets can afford.
Generally speaking, Egmont has been publishing all Disney comics in Scandinavia for many decades, too. But this has actually started to change recently. The small company Comic Factory has picked up the Danish license for the Glenat albums, as Egmont showed no interest in publishing more than the first two Mickey albums in Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. Comic Factory released "Mickey et l'océan perdu" (Mickey og det forsvundne ocean) in Danish in December 2020, and are reportedly also working on "Café Zombo".
Does anyone know more about how the art (not neccessarily original art) of each Disney comic is stored? I am assuming Egmont for example stores the art of all their new comics digitally but what about the older ones? Have they digitized them all? And does Egmont store the art of any non-Egmont stories? For example when they reprint a Brazilian comic for the first time, I am assuming they have to contact the Brazilian publisher to get the files of that comic, but does Egmont store those files after that too, or do they have to request them from Brazil every time they want to reprint that specific comic?
More broadly: are the files of Disney comics not stored in a centralized way anywhere? Also, are there any significant Disney comics that still exist in older publications, but cannot be reprinted at all, because the files have disappeared or have been destroyed?
Does anyone know more about how the art (not neccessarily original art) of each Disney comic is stored? I am assuming Egmont for example stores the art of all their new comics digitally but what about the older ones? Have they digitized them all? And does Egmont store the art of any non-Egmont stories? For example when they reprint a Brazilian comic for the first time, I am assuming they have to contact the Brazilian publisher to get the files of that comic, but does Egmont store those files after that too, or do they have to request them from Brazil every time they want to reprint that specific comic?
More broadly: are the files of Disney comics not stored in a centralized way anywhere? Also, are there any significant Disney comics that still exist in older publications, but cannot be reprinted at all, because the files have disappeared or have been destroyed?
I know that, in France, Picsou Magazine often resorts to *scanning* old issues because the files don't exist or were lost. Lastly, they republished "Aventures à Eurodisney", but they had to make a new lettering from scratch because the original has disappeared.
Last Edit: Aug 22, 2022 11:20:17 GMT by juicymcduck
Does anyone know more about how the art (not neccessarily original art) of each Disney comic is stored? I am assuming Egmont for example stores the art of all their new comics digitally but what about the older ones? Have they digitized them all? And does Egmont store the art of any non-Egmont stories? For example when they reprint a Brazilian comic for the first time, I am assuming they have to contact the Brazilian publisher to get the files of that comic, but does Egmont store those files after that too, or do they have to request them from Brazil every time they want to reprint that specific comic?
Obligatory IANAP (I am not a publisher). I believe that once a story is bought from another company you can use it for as long as you keep the files (digitally or in print). I'm not sure what the deal is with publishers that no longer exist, if you wanted to publish a Western or Studio story for the first time, for example.
Sometimes a publisher splits up or sells off some of their library to other publishers, the way movie companies do as well. I don't know if this has ever happened with Disney comics, since those comics are useless to anyone who doesn't own the license to publish them. Maybe it happened with the recent changeovers in Brazil and Italy?
I don't think all comics are digitized at this point, simply because the sheer volume of comics weighs against it.
More broadly: are the files of Disney comics not stored in a centralized way anywhere? Also, are there any significant Disney comics that still exist in older publications, but cannot be reprinted at all, because the files have disappeared or have been destroyed?
As to your first question: I don't think so. Remember, the comics belong to the publishers, so unless there's some sort of agreement with Disney that I wouldn't know about, the comics are mostly separated that way.
As to your second question, there are some famous examples of this, particularly the March of Comics stories by Barks: Marahajah Donald, Race to the South Seas, and Darkest Africa. Dutch edits of the latter two stories served as the basis for Barks collections for decades, and not just because of the spicy racial depictions in them. Whereas other Barks stories could be got by by photocopying the original issues if needed (which is a kind of last resort measure), the originals of these stories were so rare and expensive and printed on such bad paper that they couldn't get proper copies of the originals. I believe the Atom Bomb story suffered from the same problems. And this was back when Western Publishing still existed!
In theory, any comic that exists can be reprinted as long as you've got a scanner nearby, but there are plenty of cases where the original files/proofs are no longer extant. Accidents happen, or worse...
Hold on to your comics, folks. You never know if you've got the last copy in existence.
And to answer the more general question you seem to be searching for: is there some kind of central administration that contains every single Disney comic ever published? Yes there is, and chances are you're looking at it right now. It's called INDUCKS, and people like me keep finding new issues to add to it every day!
Just the other day I found this advert in the Belgian online newspaper archive BelgicaPress, which is the first nine-tier comic known to exist. It also confirmed the name of the studio that created the Belgian Mickey magazine of the 1950s: Studio Rali-Tenas. So that goes to show: there's still plenty to discover in the world of Disney comics!
Yep, it was an extremely nice discovery! We now have a slightly better idea of the stories and material created by the Rali-Tenas Belgian studio, including, quite probably, for the Dutch editors.
Scanned images of old comics, in many cases, can not be used directly for reprinting stories, because it is difficult to extract the line art from the colors, and to erase many of the printing defaults found in old and new comics.
Does anyone know how it would be possible to get the high-quality scan of one Disney comic strip from any of the publishers' archives? I know, I know! "It's impossible, they can't just send the scan to a fan, etc., etc." I am talking about ONE comic STRIP.