Rockerduck wrote:You can also see it with the 'newest' edition of the Dutch bimonthly Disney-magazine 'Katrien' ('Daisy'). The no. 4-2006 has exactly the same contents as no. 4-2000, with even the same cover. That's money easy made.
Republishing an existant issue as if it were a new issue, just by giving it a new number and some new letters, as reported on Dutch McDuck, is misleading customers. Among them subscribers. People expect 'Katrien' to stop soon, but that isn't a reason for such an issue. 'Katrien' started good, but after some time there were reprints from relatively recent Donald Duck Extra's, mainly just Donald-stories. I think 'Katrien' could have benefited a lot from the Duckies that, amongst others, Mau Heymans created in the 1990s. The Duckies stories, mainly gags, contained a lot of fresh new characters which got permission from Disney. I think the idea became a highlight of 1990s, but as I understood the concept was killed before 'Katrien' even had began. Only a few 'Duckies' characters were allowed. Mau Heymans was doing a good job, but it only lasted a few years before getting abandoned.
I think that if 'Katrien' would have had the new Duckies-universe characters, it would have been a succes. I'm afraid this is just a case of cheap short-term thinking, as it would have need some efoort and investment to get it done. But even with the few stories that were created especially for 'Katrien', there would have been plenty of room to use the characters. And it doesn't cost anything extra, as it comes from the same bottle of ink.
Are the Dutch editors the first to republish an existant issue as new, or are there precedents? I've understood that Egmont also is making cheaper productions. The recent colour scheme looks like being just a few standard colours, and the quality of many artists has dropped. Especially Don Rosa, Marco Rota and Vicar. As if no one is really proof-reading their stories, neither script-wise or art-wise.
The Dutch and Scandinavian countries are said to have the most Disney comics buyers, so how can this happen? I think that in the Netherlands a lot has changed in the mid-1990s when the Dutch editors were sold from one company to the other. Geïllustreerde Pers, V.N.U., and now Sanoma. As I understood it, editors have to work cheaper despite the good sales. Reason is that the umbrella-company is so big that they need the profits from one branche to solve financial problems of the other, and at the stock market they are expected to make more money each year.
In the movie 'Fierce Creatures' by John Cleese (Monty Python), there's an interesting scene that explains the principle. You buy a company, you milk it out and you get rid of it, making the umbrella-company bigger.
Maybe that could be an explanation for what's going on.
Rockerduck wrote:Daniel wrote:That's why I tend to think of all comics as pulp. It's just material to attract costumers, to get their money into the editor's pocket.
No, you don't. You're always praising Barks' comics, and other Disney comics, like those from Daan Jippes, and Bernadó and Jonker's 'Madam Mim'-comics. And you're lyrical about the Dutch newspaper comic 'S1ngle'.
Comics are treat as pulp. Only relatively few people see it as art. Barks just made comics to have a job that he liked, and they were supposed to be read once and thrown away. I think that's the biggest charm about Barks's comics: many people don't want to throw them away, if though they should. And they like to see reprints of stories that they did throw away.
But look at how Barks has been first published and how, despite the good sales, his original art was burned, and how even photostats of already printed stories were cut up, edited or just thrown away. That's why some classic Barks stories are hard to reprint, having only a pulp comic of them in some instances.
A lot could be done to save the best Barks copies for the future, as should be with art. Even now Barks's work has proven again and again that it attracts customers, it's treated like pulp. For example, in the Netherlands, the recent Dutch Barks album-series contain facsimile-reproductions of Dutch issues, of Barks pages that apparently got missing from their archives. You can best recognize it by a blur over both the black and the colours. As if it's a colour-xerox, which it in fact basically is.
So, even when there are good photostats available, they just copy an old Dutch issue into a series that is meant to collect by the general audience and by fans. In 1994, NOVA showed Barks saying how much he liked the Dutch album series. The Dutch album series were known for their quality. But it has dropped. Recent albums look cheap, and they even tried to use Italian colouring, which is significantly different from the age-old Dutch colour-scheme. (Scrooge having a red jacket.)
Slowly but steadily the quality drops. It looks like the same mistake is made as in the late American 1950s, when Western decided to have cheaper, smaller paper. The quality of artists dropped, I've heard noticably Tony Strobl, and advertisements began to rule over the stories, which were butchered to make room.
I think that when money is being made, it attacts a lot of people who try to milk it out. Mauybe the Dutch supermarket company Laurus (Konmar) could also be an example. It was a popular supermarket, but there came more managers and more decisions to make it all cheaper and more profitable, by putting different franchises under one name and formula, and now the company has been sold to a former competitor. There was a time the supermarket had empty shelves, as if there was hunger in the country.
Deciding to put different franchise-formulas under one name means losing diversity. Some companies have different names for basically the same product, just to create diversity and attract customers. (Unilever) So when you start putting them together, problems can be expected. I knew that by school. I could predict it would go wrong. Why hire managers that are overpayed for a cheap decision that they can't oversee? I could do that for free. Even though it's hard to have such a lack of professional vision, as to destroy a company that you are supposed to protect from being destroyed. And I think the reason is money. If only because most employees will become more and more afraid for their job, the more people get fired through the time.
Just a rough brain-storm about economy. Barks's stories could last forever, but there's too much short-term thinking.
My doom scenario is that the Dutch editors are about to stop and that slowly there will be one European publisher for all countries, from Scandinivia to Italy. The many short Dutch filler-like stories already seem to a coöperation between Egmont and the Dutch editors, as Egmont publishes mostly long stories. And with "long" I already mean a ten-pager. Most Dutch stories are 1 to 4 pages long. Daan Jippes is already working for Egmont. The Dutch editors don't even have a Dutch name. Or should they be called Sanoma? An international name?
Maybe it's not a matter of predicting, but just summing up what's going on already.
Rockerduck wrote:Look above, what I wrote there. 1994 was thé year to do it, because it was Donald's 60th birthday. Can you think of any better motive to do such a tour?
Thanks for being so critical. I had forgotten about Donald's 60th anniversary. And I should, because there were suddenly many anniversaries. About almost every character got an anniversary. I'm exaggerating, but it looked like a hype to me.
As I understand it, the life-story of Scrooge was an attempt by the (Egmont?) editor to milk out Barks's concept. Already before Rosa was given permission to do it. Rosa thought he might do it the best. At least, that how I've understood it from DCML.
Rosa repeatedly has said that he was asked to do Barks-recycling. By readers and editors. If so, Rosa can only be blamed for getting along with too much, even going further as the editors expected.
Rockerduck wrote:And why are you so eager to portray Barks as some money-grabbing old crook, when normally, on the Dutch section, you're always defending him and praising him for his working ethics and his modesty. Is this another role?
Where do you see a "money-grabbing old crook" in my postings? I could turn it around and say that you seem to see Barks as a Santa Claus who's putting his entire life into making you happy from time to time. So you wouldn't only expect him to do a good job, but also to be satisfied with a relatively low salary. You could be an editor, that way.
Barks liked to draw and he liked to earn money as well. In Van Helden, Barks says he worked for the cheque-machine. It's common knowlegde.
Maybe you mean that I've said that Rosa is more into money than Barks. That's something I base on Rosa's internet-comments about money. As someone on the Dutch forum suggested, Rosa talks a lot about money in public. It's Rosa's goods right to earn money from his work and to self-promote, but I think he should be honest about it. Ironically, what I most admire about Rosa is that he manages to get an (as I read) higher payment at Egmont.
Something I suspect Daan Jippes also has managed, or I'd be very surprised. But so far I haven't heard anything about any such deal between Jippes and Egmont. Only about Rosa, when his strike leaked out. At the time, I think it was an Egmont editor who wrote to DCML, giving information on Rosa's status.
If certain artist get an higher payment, then it could be the fault of others being too easy on their lower payment. Some grandson-like readers seem to expect an artist to work for the lowest price as possible. Preferably for free. As I theorize, readers could be relucant to find out that their relation with an artist in fact mostly is about earning money. An artist loves you, but often wants to be paid for it. That's how the system works. I'm complaining about people denying that. Especially when they are paid more than others.
Or is the higher salary even that low, that there's reason to complain?
Anyway, I think that Rosa could have expected trouble with money and royalties. As an expert Barks-fan he could have picked it up from Barks's history and the letters in which Barks tells his fans that they'd better not get into comic book industry.