Walt Disney Treasures - Disney
Comics: 75 Years of Innovation by Al
Taliaferro by Floyd Gottfredson
Gemstone And Gladstone
Short stories and long adventures marking milestones in Disney Comics
history. Join us as we travel from the Mickey Mouse epics of Floyd
Gottfredson and Paul Murry to the long Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge
adventures of Carl Barks and Don Rosa! Also included are Romano
Scarpas Goofy and Renato Caninis Jose Carioca; Dutch Donaldism by
Daan Jippes and Mau Heymans; Egmont creators Vicar, Daniel Branca,
Byron Erickson, Cesar Ferioli and more!
Personal Review: Walt Disney Treasures - Disney Comics: 75
Years of Innovation by Al Taliaferro by Floyd Gottfredson
Comics were made to sell for 5 or 10 cents, but the modern comic, even
full of distracting ads, runs two or three dollars. Gladstone/ Another
Rainbow Publishing came up with a great idea. In the '90s they presented

Carl Barks' duck comics in graphic novel format, which they called comic
albums, for between six and ten dollars.
Absolutely great, what? You bet, until in one of a string of bloomers the
proprietary Disney Company snatched back the license and made a
botched effort at doing its own comics (this sort of thing was legion at that
time and stirred Roy Disney to make a website called Save Disney). Now
for the good news: the entire Gladstone run is still available, and some
have even been combined into larger albums including two to four of the
original oversize full-color comic albums.
"Disney Treasures", of course, refers to the lavishly packaged metal-boxed
DVD sets of cartoons and other retro Disney shows. It's a brainstorm to lay
this book out in that format and it holds up quite well, since this brief
overview samples the American and European comics from the 1930s to
the present.
David Gerstein contributes an invaluable two page essay for this book in
which the comics are otherwise presented without comment. He alludes,
ever so briefly, to the '50s book, Seduction of the Innocents, which started
a crusade against comic books on the grounds that they were too violent
and graphic in the gory sense. The result of that was the Comics Code,
which was on every Gold Key and thus Disney comic. Dell had its own
version of the code, and assured parents that "Dell Comics are Good
Comics," thus assuring free access for kids.
Gerstein repeats the old saw that until then comics weren't for kids, and
that graphic novels have brought back the pre-code days with a
vengeance. I merely retort that the very idea of comics in this era
fashioned them for youth and that this innocence brought out the best in
Disney and other artists and made Gold Key comics the good part of being
sick, since you'd inevitably get the latest adventures of the Junior
Woodchucks or Mickey VS the Phantom Blot.
When the license went from Dell to Western Publishing the printing quality
declined, but Gladstone later lifted it to a level of archival quality with its
beautiful volumes. The general view is that in terms of the silver screen
cartoon shorts, Donald was a much more interesting protagonist than
Mickey, but in the comics, I think fans of Carl Barks' duck comics
(translated well to TV in DuckTales) will enjoy discovering Floyd
Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse.
So what is the relation of Gemstone to Gladstone? Gerstein assures me
that it's the same crew. Whatever the reason for the name change, Steve
Geppi, a close friend of the late Bruce Hamilton, founder of Gladstone, is
now carrying the torch. The many great cartoons now available on DVD
make this a new Golden Age for animation, and more good news:
Gladstone/ Gemstone are now leading a comics revival.

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