The 400th issue comes out on March 9th. To celebrate this milestone, Ehapa is also releasing a four-volume special edition presenting a selection of some of the best stories by the best artists. The four books will be released one per week in the month of March.

• Micky Maus (Germany)
  Price: $180 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Lustiges Taschenbuch (Germany)
  Price: $90 for 12 issues / 12 months
   
• Kalle Anka & Co (Sweden)
  Price: $194.99 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Musse Pigg & Co (Sweden)
  Price: $25.17 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Le Journal de Mickey (France)
  Price: $197.98 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Witch Magazine (France)
  Price: $90.23 for 12 issues / 12 months
   
• Picsou Magazine (France)
  Price: $88.78 for 12 issues / 12 months
   
• Super Picsou Geant (France)
  Price: $47.86 for 6 issues / 12 months
   
• Mickey Parade Geant (France)
  Price: $45.48 for 6 issues / 12 months
   
• Anders And (Denmark)
  Price: $331.81 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Disney Adventures (Australia)
  Price: $52.36 for 12 issues / 12 months
   

I received an email from someone at the communication department at Ehapa who wrote that, for the time being, the English edition of Lustiges Taschenbuch will not be available to order outside Germany. However, I was not the first one to express interest in getting the books and they are actually thinking about alternative ways to distribute the new title through channels such as Amazon.

The main reason for publishing the new English-language Disney comic in Germany is not to enter the international market, but rather to bring local children in contact with the English language at an early age as English becomes ever more important as the world’s lingua franca. Editor-in-chief Peter Höpfner commented that they are publishing the new English edition of Lustiges Taschenbuch because English is becoming more and more important as it gets taught as early as pre-school and elementary school and secondly, because access to learning another language becomes easier in comic books when words and images are combined.

Donald Duck’s popularity was helped along by Erika Fuchs, a free spirit in owlish glasses who was tasked with translating the stories. A Ph.D. in art history, Dr. Fuchs had never laid eyes on a comic book before the day an editor handed her a Donald Duck story, but no matter. She had a knack for breathing life into the German version of Carl Barks’s duck. Her talent was so great she continued to fill speech bubbles for the denizens of Duckburg (which she renamed Entenhausen, based on the German word for “duck”) until shortly before her death in 2005 at the age of 98.

Ehapa directed Dr. Fuchs to crank up the erudition level of the comics she translated, a task she took seriously. Her interpretations of the comic books often quote (and misquote) from the great classics of German literature, sometimes even inserting political subtexts into the duck tales. Dr. Fuchs both thickens and deepens Mr. Barks’s often sparse dialogues, and the hilariousness of the result may explain why Donald Duck remains the most popular children’s comic in Germany to this day.

Unfortunately the article hardly mentions Carl Barks himself, whom was undoubtedly the reason for Donald’s success in Germany. It was his stories that Dr. Fuchs so elegantly translated. It is still a great article though, acknowledging the greatness of Disney comics and their continued popularity in Europe.

Read the entire article here.

(via DCF)

This is great news for all those people saddened by the loss of English Disney comics after the news that Gemstone Publishing in the United States has (for now) ceased publication. I wonder if this is in some part a reaction to that news; surely there is a huge market for English Disney comics and this is a great start.

The German version of Lustiges Taschenbuch, which was launched in 1967, is a newsstand title, but the new English version is expected to be available by mail order to people outside Germany. Information on pricing or how to subscribe is not yet available. I will publish that information here as soon as it becomes available.

Visit the LTB official website and see the TV commercial for the 4 special issues on the homepage. Here’s the cover of the first special issue that came out on 19 September.

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