Kids love the comics medium," says Deborah Dugan, president of Disney Publishing Worldwide, "and there's been a distribution issue with Disney's comics material in the U.S.—we haven't been serving it up right."
As popular as they are in the rest of the world, comics starring the classic Disney characters—Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, etc.—have often not been published at all in the U.S. over the last decade, and when they have been, they're generally aimed at the older collectors' market. (At the moment, Gemstone is publishing two upscale, squarebound monthly series, Walt Disney Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge, and a digest-sized bimonthly, Donald Duck Adventures, aimed more at kids.)
"Worldwide, we're number one in comics, so we have scouts all over," Dugan says. "We're forging long-term relationships with Asian publishers, and we've got big plans to serve up content in a new way. Right now, Tokyopop's top kids' titles are coming from Disney—Digimon, Lizzie McGuire, Kim Possible," referring to Tokyopop's "cine-manga" line of comics made from film stills. Disney's also been testing out new comics talent in its Disney Adventures magazine, looking particularly to develop material for boys. The company's currently working on a new comics project based on Tron (the 1982 movie and the new computer game) put together by the Canadian 88 MPH Studios, which will appear in graphic novel form next year. Graphic novels with the classic Disney characters will be advertised in Disney's video releases this holiday season—"We're going to use the Disney machine to get them into the hands of kids," Dugan laughs.
Disney has a very big project coming next year, too. W.I.T.C.H., aimed squarely at 9-to-14-year-old girls, was developed as a comics series in Europe, and now appears in 42 countries worldwide. It will be a TV show on the Disney Channel, but it will be introduced as a series of graphic novels and "hybrid" books, with comics at the beginning and end and prose in the middle, to be published by the Hyperion imprint Volo.
What Dugan would like to see is more bookstores moving comics material for kids out of the graphic novel section and into the children's section. "You serve up Digimon and Spy Kids and Lizzie McGuire and Kim Possible and Mickey Mouse and Power Rangers and W.I.T.C.H. in this new medium, and watch sales. We intend to be a big player in this market," she says. "Quite frankly, we're just beginning."
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