Disregarding whether or not Vicar's work looks like Barks', all the pages posted here are really very good. Compare this to something like "Bird Bothered Hero" and you'll see just how good Disney readers have it if Vicar is something to complain about!
Well, compared to that we cannot complain about almost any Disney artist ever! It is so weird that it is almost attractive in a way.
Oh, of course. As I said before, the worst of Vicar is better any day than the Kay Wright/Jack Manning/Vic Lockman stuff that Western was putting out in its dying days. I wonder if the Western line would have survived longer if they had instead chosen to import and translate Vicar/Branca/Jippes stories? From what I understand they only published one translated European story. I always wondered why they didn't do that more often, since I'm sure they could have availed of such material through the Overseas Program.
Back to Vicar, I still don't see much Barks, even in his early work; I guess Barksianism is in the eye of the beholder. However, there is no doubt the samples of his early work presented on this thread are superior to the 1990s/2000s material put out under his name. But given that there was such a thing as the "Vicar Studio" (something I had only peripherally been aware of before), and given that I've never seen a story credited to said studio, could it be that stories like Uncle Scrooge Goes Medieval were not actually drawn by Vicar himself?
I wonder if the Western line would have survived longer if they had instead chosen to import and translate Vicar/Branca/Jippes stories? From what I understand they only published one translated European story. I always wondered why they didn't do that more often, since I'm sure they could have availed of such material through the Overseas Program.
WDC 510, Western's last issue, published D 4598 (it was later republished by Gladstone, with a better script, in DD 268.)
The previous issue used a studio story, S 82090, so maybe they were going to move that direction...if the ax hadn't fallen.
I wonder if the Western line would have survived longer if they had instead chosen to import and translate Vicar/Branca/Jippes stories? From what I understand they only published one translated European story. I always wondered why they didn't do that more often, since I'm sure they could have availed of such material through the Overseas Program.
WDC 510, Western's last issue, published D 4598 (it was later republished by Gladstone, with a better script, in DD 268.)
The previous issue used a studio story, S 82090, so maybe they were going to move that direction...if the ax hadn't fallen.
If I remember correctly, Western's (Whitman) last issue had a Branca story as the lad story. The problem was that Americans and Canadians couldn't find them on the magazine racks in supermarkets and newsstands. Weren't they bagged in groups of 3-4 Western comic books, in toy stores. Maybe the books on the outside were very unpopular, and not Disney (at least on one of the 2 sides. Even Disney Comics fans might not gamble on buying them, not able to open and look through them.
That's interesting, that Gladstone redid the script for the only European story that Western published. At inducks, The Western version is listed as "The Talking Dog" and Gladstone's is "(Dogged Resistance)". I should get them out and compare them.
The studio story, Ed Nofziger and Tony Strobl's "Big Prize For Donald" seems to have never been reprinted in English.
The way I remember Western's marketing in 1984, was you would find the bags in just about any store (supermarket, drugstore, etc.} except not in comic book stores. The bags were priced cheaper than the total prices of the contents, but you had no idea how old the bag was. There could be several different issues of a comic available, each in a different bagged set. Bags with a Disney duck/mouse title would usually include other 'funny animal' titles for kids the same age. You could usually handle the plastic bag enough to recognize the names but not many of the issue numbers. A total mess for fans and collectors.
The hilarious part is that as junky as those late Westerns were, as far as production quality (just look at some the garish cover color schemes, for example) they're worth a lot of money in some cases because they're rare.
I found copies of WDC 510, US 209, and DD 245 in quarter bins in 1991. Now they're going for double-digit prices on auction sites. And lets not forget the "holy grail" Whitmans, the ones with the lowest print runs: DD 222, MM 208, US 179, and WDC 480. They can easily go for triple-digit prices.
Since you are discussing whether Western would have sold more copies in its late days and survived longer or not had they done different choices, I guess it's better to use the topic How well do Disney comics sell? and keep this topic for discussions about Uncle Scrooge #22.
I kinda like some of the early 80s Western Disney product. I found the Daisy and Donald story enjoyable with humor and pleasing Bob Gregory art. I miss the days when first run Disney Comics were released in the US rather than the way its been for decades where we get the world's 'hand-me-downs.'
I just wish that 'Gladstone I' could've expanded into other licensed humor characters (Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, etc), and morphed into a more complete successor to Western.
WDC 510, Western's last issue, published D 4598 (it was later republished by Gladstone, with a better script, in DD 268.)
The previous issue used a studio story, S 82090, so maybe they were going to move that direction...if the ax hadn't fallen.
It's still kind of hard to wrap one's head around all this, though. Did Western's editors sit down and say, "Well, we've got two issues left, let's mess around with people's heads and show them there was much better stuff we could have been printing all along!" For that matter, did they even know that WDC&S 510 would be their last issue, or, like the Disney Comics Implosion, was their demise an unforeseen overnight cataclysm? The end of the Western Disney line is a story I'm not sure I've heard properly told.
[quote author="Baar Baar Jinx " source="/post/3958/thread" timestamp="1488424344The previous issue used a studio story, S 82090, so maybe they were going to move that direction...if the ax hadn't fallen. [/quote]... Did Western's editors sit down and say, "Well, we've got two issues left, let's mess around with people's heads and show them there was much better stuff we could have been printing all along!" For that matter, did they even know that WDC&S 510 would be their last issue, or, like the Disney Comics Implosion, was their demise an unforeseen overnight cataclysm? The end of the Western Disney line is a story I'm not sure I've heard properly told. [/quote]
I suspect that Western's Whitman team knew that the bagged comics were not earning enough, and produced WDC&S 509 and 510 as samples to see if there would be enough magazine distributor interest in issues with new lead stories.
Well, compared to that we cannot complain about almost any Disney artist ever! It is so weird that it is almost attractive in a way.
Oh, of course. As I said before, the worst of Vicar is better any day than the Kay Wright/Jack Manning/Vic Lockman stuff that Western was putting out in its dying days. I wonder if the Western line would have survived longer if they had instead chosen to import and translate Vicar/Branca/Jippes stories? From what I understand they only published one translated European story. I always wondered why they didn't do that more often, since I'm sure they could have availed of such material through the Overseas Program.
Back to Vicar, I still don't see much Barks, even in his early work; I guess Barksianism is in the eye of the beholder. However, there is no doubt the samples of his early work presented on this thread are superior to the 1990s/2000s material put out under his name. But given that there was such a thing as the "Vicar Studio" (something I had only peripherally been aware of before), and given that I've never seen a story credited to said studio, could it be that stories like Uncle Scrooge Goes Medieval were not actually drawn by Vicar himself?
I may have gotten this wrong, but I thought I remember hearing that starting in the 1990s, Vicar started employing a few inkers, and started training a few pencilers to work on his excess story work. Vicar drew the storyboards/layouts for all the stories, and penciled most of them. He inked some, but handed over his inking to inkers more and more in later years, and increasingly handing over more of the pencilwork during the 2000s. As to the "Scrooge Goes Medieval" story, based on the artwork, I would guess that Vicar drew the storyboards AND the final pencils, but that he did NOT ink it himself. But, on the 5 pages I posted above from the 1970s, Vicar did ALL the work, including the inking.
The end of the Western Disney line is a story I'm not sure I've heard properly told.
I'd love to know more about the end of the "classic" American Disney comics as well. For instance, it's strange that Western/Whitman didn't publish anything in 1983, but made several attempts again in 1984...
I kinda like some of the early 80s Western Disney product.
I'm one to defend the much-maligned late Western era stuff myself, but I have to say that most Disney comics of the Whitman era (starting in February/March 1980) are really quite forgettable. There's only about a dozen stories from that period (1980-84) that made it onto my "wouldn't mind to read it again some time"-list.
Last Edit: Mar 18, 2017 22:27:13 GMT by sirredknee