Disney comics are comic books and comic strips featuring Walt Disney characters.
The first Disney comics were newspaper strips appearing from 1930 on. In 1940, Western Publishing began producing Disney comic books in the United States. The most notable American Disney comics books are Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge. In recent decades, Disney comics have seen a lack of popularity in their country of origin.
In the rest of the world Disney comics have been very successful, especially in Europe, where stories are produced and also printed in the pocket format (see Donald Duck pocket books).
Production by country
United States
Comic strips
The first Disney comics appeared in daily newspapers. The Mickey Mouse daily comic strip began on January 13, 1930, featuring Mickey as an optimistic, adventure-seeking young mouse. In January 1932, the Mickey Mouse strip began appearing in Sunday papers, with an extra Silly Symphony strip at the top of the page. Donald Duck made his first comics appearance in the Silly Symphony adaptation of the 1934 Disney short The Wise Little Hen. As Donald's popularity grew, he became the star of the Silly Symphony strip, and he got his own daily strip starting on February 7, 1938. Other Disney strips over the years included:
Also for some years a special daily strip with a holiday theme utilizing the Disney characters was offered each year.[4] It generally ran for three weeks with the concluding strip appearing on December 25th. These were unique in that they often showcased the crossover of Disney characters that otherwise rarely interacted (e.g. the Big Bad Wolf and the fairies from Sleeping Beauty). Newspaper Enterprise Association offers a similar holiday themed special strip to this day. [5]
Among the artists working on the Disney comic strips were Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse), Manuel Gonzales (Mickey Mouse), Bill Wright (Mickey Mouse), Ted Thwaites (Mickey Mouse), Al Taliaferro (Donald Duck), Dick Moores (Uncle Remus), Paul Murry (Uncle Remus), Daan Jippes (Mickey Mouse) and Bob Grant (Merry Menagerie). Writers included Merrill De Maris (Mickey Mouse), Ted Osborne (Mickey Mouse), Bill Walsh (Mickey Mouse), Bob Karp (Donald Duck) and Floyd Norman (Mickey Mouse). Norman in an article listed the writers working in the comic strip department in the 1980s and mentions Cal Howard, Del Connell, Bill Berg, Don Ferguson, Tom Yakutis and Bob Foster and notes that their boss, Greg Crosby, had gotten his start as a writer for the strips before moving into management.[6]
Comic books
Comic book publisher Western Publishing brought the Disney strips to comic books in 1940, through Dell Comics Four Color title. The Four Color books reprinted a variety of newspaper strip material, and issue #4 featured a selection of Donald Duck strips. The Disney reprints were a big seller, and encouraged Western to convert Mickey Mouse Magazine [third series] (which had included comics along with text stories, poems, jokes, puzzles, games and full-page illustrations) into a full-fledged comic book, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, whose first issue was dated October 1940 and by the mid-1950s was the best selling comic book in America with a circulation of over three million a month. In 1961-62, Western ended its partnership with Dell and continued their comic book line under the Gold Key Comics label.
Disney comics in the USA were later published by Gladstone Publishing and then by Disney Comics, then Gladstone again (for the classic characters) and Marvel Comics (for the modern characters). In 2003, after a couple of years' hiatus, regular publication was restarted by Gemstone Publishing.
Currently, Gemstone's two monthly Disney titles are Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge.
Dark Horse Comics has also published occasional adaptations of the more recent Disney movies.
Notable American Disney comic book writers and artists include Carl Barks, Tony Strobl, Paul Murry, William Van Horn, and Don Rosa. Van Horn and Rosa now work for European publishers.
Denmark
Danish publisher Egmont (previously Gutenberghus) has one of the largest productions of Disney comics in the world. This production is not only for Denmark proper, but nearly identical magazines are being published simultaneously every week for all the big Nordic countries. The Danes started publishing their own series in the early 1960s, however, a large part of Egmont's production have been made by foreign artists such as Vicar and Daniel Branca. The Scandinavian countries are among the countries in which Donald Duck is more popular than Mickey Mouse.
Italy
The first Italian Disney comics was published already in the early 1930s, and Federico Pedrocchi wrote and illustrated the first long Disney comic book as early as in 1937. Italy is the country of origin for some of the most famous Disney comic artists, including Romano Scarpa, Giorgio Cavazzano, and Giovan Battista Carpi. Italy has introduced several new characters to the Disney universe, including Donald's superhero alter ego Paperinik. Production was handled by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore (commonly referred to as just Mondadori) from 1935 until 1989, when Disney Italy took over.
Recently, Disney Italy has launched several new lines, including PK (a comic book version of Paperinik), W.I.T.C.H. , and the comics published under the imprint Buena Vista Comics (including the original Monster Allergy comic series and a few other titles, such as Kylion and a comic inspired by the Alias TV show).
The Netherlands
Also the Netherlands (current publisher: Sanoma) has a significant school of Disney comics. The first Dutch Disney comics appeared in 1953. In 1975, Daan Jippes became the art director for production of these comics, and created a heavily Barks-inspired line that remains the best-known Dutch Disney style. Donald Duck is the most popular Disney character in the Netherlands, but Sanoma also produces comics starring lesser-known characters such as Li'l Bad Wolf.
France
French-produced stories started in 1952, as a one-pager comic published in each issue of the Journal de Mickey, drawn by Louis Santel (Tenas) and written by Pierre Fallot. After a few issues, a new series started (Mickey à travers les siècles) and continued up to 1978, drawn almost entirely by Pierre Nicolas and written by Fallot and Jean-Michel le Corfec.
Later in the beginning of the 1980s, a new production started, led by Patrice Valli and Pierre Nicolas as editors with adventures of Mickey Mouse, Uncle Scrooge, Donald Duck. Among the best artists, one recalls Claude Marin, or Claude Chebille (known as Gen-Clo), and Italian artists like Giorgio Cavazzano. Some of the best writers were Michel Motti and Pierre-Yves Gabrion. In the late 1980s up to now, an increasing number of Spanish artist from the Comicup studio provided the art, while the writing stayed to French authors.
Among the most popular characters in French stories are all mice characters and more exotic local characters like Ellsworth (originally created in the USA) or the Disney babies.
Brazil
In Brazil, through the publisher Abril, national stories have been published since the 50's, with artists like Jorge Kato, hugely inspired by Carl Barks. In the 60's and 70's, Renato Canini drew a number of stories in a style inspired by the popular design of the era. He also developed an universe around José Carioca, a very popular character in Brazil. In the 70's and 80's, Abril intensified the production. Except for José Carioca, recurring characters in the production included Daisy (turned feminist) and Fethry Duck. Among the most prolific authors, were the writer Arthur Faria Jr. and the artist Irineu Soares Rodriguez.
At the end of the 90's, the Brazilian production ceased, to start up anew for a short while in the 2000's. Recently, only a few stories are produced for special events.
Brazil are also known to have retained many "obscure" characters, largely forgotten elsewhere.
Others
- Disney Studio: from 1962 to 1990 the Walt Disney Studio had a unit producing comic book stories exclusively for foreign consumption, in response to complaints of foreign comic book licensees that Western Publishing was producing less stories they could reprint plus their voracious need for material (some European titles are weekly) was using up the available inventory of stories. Tony Strobl, Al Hubbard, Jack Bradbury and Romano Scarpa were among the artists for this program during its early years. Floyd Norman and Mark Evanier were among those who at some point did scripts for the program. From the late 1970s on, the Jaime Diaz Studios of Argentina drew most of the stories. In a few cases studio stories were reprinted in the United States in promotional giveaways of Gulf Oil and Procter & Gamble. This program was merged into Disney Comics and is the precursor of the comics that appear in Disney Adventures.
- United Kingdom, most known for its 1930s-1940s area (Wilfred Haughton, Ronald Neilson, Williem A. Ward, Basil Reynolds)
- Egypt, (in the 50s)
- Argentina, (Luis Destuet in the 1940s and 50s, some stories reprinted in Brazil and Italy)
- Yugoslavia, (Vlastimir Belkic, 1930s)
- Other countries produced a few rare stories of their own, Finland (Winnie the Pooh), Belgium (by Louis Santel), Australia (one known gag), Sweden (1930s, remakes of British stories)
- Many other countries produced covers and illustrations by various local artists like Spain or Norway.
- Japan: many original Disney comics by American or European authors such as Carl Barks, Joaquín Cañizares Sanchez or Flemming Andersen have been entirely re-drawn by Japanese artists for local publication. The Italian, manga-inspired, original W.I.T.C.H. was submitted to the same kind of treatment, giving birth to a Japanese-exclusive adaptation with art by Haruko Iida and published by Kadokawa Shoten. Recently, Japan has produced more original Disney material, such as the manga adaptation of the videogame Kingdom Hearts by Shiro Amano, published by Bros. Comics EX (and later translated in English by Tokyopop) or Jun Asaga's adaptation of Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (originally published by Kodansha, English version by Disney Press).
I.N.D.U.C.K.S. Database
I.N.D.U.C.K.S. is a freely available database aiming to index all Disney comics ever printed in the world. The project started in 1992; today, the database lists Disney publication, stories, characters, authors, and much more. Most people use the I.N.D.U.C.K.S. through a search engine, browser and website abbreviated COA, which is daily updated based on I.N.D.U.C.K.S. data, and is available in a dozen languages.
Notable writers and artists
Comics published by Gold Key/Whitman
External links
See also
- Donaldism - Fandom movement for Disney comics
References
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