Last week’s DCW giveaway has ended. I used random.org to pick a random number and the winner of the six comics of The Incredibles, Toy Story and Cars by Boom! Studios is … (drum roll) … Alan Huestis with comment #103.

There were a total of 152 entries, but 7 of these had not read the instructions correctly and did not comment with their favorite Disney comics characters, so I did not include those 7 in the drawing. Sorry guys.

Alan, congratulations! I will will be contacting you shortly so that I can send you the comics.

It was fun to do this giveaway and I’ll definitely do more of these in the future. Follow this blog via RSS Feed, email or Twitter to find out about future giveaways.

I have a few Boom! comics to give away. This is my first giveaway here on the Disney Comics Worldwide Blog and if this goes well I’ll do more of these in the future.

The prize
Six new and unread comics from Boom! Studios: Toy Story 1 and 2, Cars 1 and 2 and The Incredibles 1 and 3. They are all new and unread. These are some of the first comics from Boom! Studios since the publisher landed the Disney license here in the United States.

How to win?
All you have to do to enter in this giveaway is to leave a comment on this blog post with your favorite Disney comic character by the end of Sunday August 2nd. Anyone can participate but please leave only one comment per person. Remember to enter your email address correctly so that I can contact you if you win.

After August 2nd I’ll pick a random comment using the random number generator on random.org.

Disney comics are going mobile! Two Italians of the New Media division at Disney Publishing Worldwide in Milan are working on getting Disney comics pubished on digital devices. They’re planning to launch Disney DigiComics in Italy and the United States some time between September and the end of this year and globally after that.

Gianfranco Cordara (writer of 100+ stories) and his colleague Dario Di Zanni started their idea last year when they developed a working demo of a Disney comic on their iPhone. They showed it to their boss in Milan, then went to Disney offices in London, New York and eventually to Disney HQ in California. After convincing the Americans of their idea the two have been working hard to get Disney DigiComics off the ground. The plan is to release traditional Disney comic stories in animated format to iPhones, iPods, other mobile phones, Nintendo DSi, Playstation Portable and regular computers. Consumers will be able to purchase stories as they do music on their iPod through a digital comic store (similar to the Apple Store) and play them in a special Disney DigiComics player on their device.

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BOOM! Studios has lots of paperback and hardcover Disney books coming out starting later this year, including ones with classic Carl Barks stories and a reprinting of The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa is slated for February. The publisher revealed yesterday that it will release its first Disney hardcovers at Comic-Con ’09 in San Diego next week. Hardcover collections of The Incredibles: Family Matters, Cars: The Rookie and The Muppet Show will be available at a limited numbered set of 250 and writers Mark Waid, Alan Porter and Roger Langridge will be doing signings of these exclusive editions (see schedule).

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Did you know that in the United States you can subscribe to several European weekly and monthly Disney comics through Amazon.com? You can get Lustiges Taschenbuch from Germany, Musse Pigg & Co from Sweden or Picsou Magazine from France. Here’s an overview of the Disney periodicals that I found. These titles can be shipped only within the U.S. and the prices listed here include shipping costs.

• Lustiges Taschenbuch (Germany)
  Price: $100 for 12 issues / 12 months
   
• Musse Pigg & Co (Sweden)
  Price: $30.08 for 12 issues / 12 months
   
• Le Journal de Mickey (France)
  Price: $239.93 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Picsou Magazine (France)
  Price: $89.93 for 12 issues / 12 months
   
• Super Picsou Geant (France)
  Price: $50.62 for 6 issues / 12 months
   
• Mickey Parade Geant (France)
  Price: $45.48 for 6 issues / 12 months
   
• Disney Princesse (France)
  Price: $40.53 for 6 issues / 12 months
   
• Micky Maus (Germany)
  No longer available
  Price: $180 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Kalle Anka & Co (Sweden)
  No longer available
  Price: $194.99 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Witch Magazine (France)
  No longer available
  Price: $90.23 for 12 issues / 12 months
   
• Anders And (Denmark)
  No longer available
  Price: $331.81 for 52 issues / 12 months
   
• Disney Adventures (Australia)
  No longer available
  Price: $52.36 for 12 issues / 12 months
   

If you’re going to be in the Baltimore area between July 17th and September 8th, you may want to stop by at Geppi’s Entertainment Museum to see a unique exhibit featuring the largest collection of original Carl Barks artwork ever assembled! A significant percentage of the artist’s 125 oil paintings will be on display, along with preliminaries, studies, statues and comic book pages. The Carl Barks Retrospective will also host a sale of Barks originals, lithographs, statues and other items by Diamond International Galleries during this period.

Check out this great 12-minute documentary about Carl Barks which I found on the Geppi Entertainment Museum website. It’s a very nice video in two parts about Barks’ career. The video ends with Barks’ 95th birthday held at a gallery of his oil paintings.

Source: geppismuseum.com

Dark Horse is releasing some gorgeous Disney statuettes in the Syroco-style based on the artwork by Carl Barks. The statues will be released in a special litho-printed full-color tin with a vintage pin-back button and booklet and are limited to 950 numbered pieces. The statues can be pre-ordered at TFAW.com for $49.99 each, although the Scrooge statue has apparently already sold out (source: here and here).

There will be six statues in total: Uncle Scrooge (release date: September 16th), Donald Duck (September 9th), Gyro Gearloose and Helper (October 21st), Magica de Spell (October 7th), Gladstone Gander and one of the Beagle Boys. All except Donald are characters created by Carl Barks.

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I picked up a copy of Disney twenty-three today at Barnes and Noble (where I was pleased to also find all of Boom’s Pixar comics). I thought that the magazine was exclusive to members of the D23 community, but apparently they also sell it to regular people. It’s a huge magazine (11 by 12 inches) with 60 beautiful glossy pages full of large photos and interesting articles about everything Disney in the style of Disney Magazine (†2005).

The cover story of the new magazine’s second issue is about Donald Duck’s 75th anniversary. There’s a 10-page article covering his origins and cartoon career. Unfortunately, there’s hardly any mention of Donald Duck in the comic books. The article basically skips all this and jumps right from the 1940s cartoons to his appearance in Fantasia 2000, the video game Kingdom Hearts and the Mickey’s PhilharMagic attraction at Walt Disney World.

Carl Barks is mentioned briefly as “the artist who helped create many of Donald’s best cartoons and went on to make the Duck an international star of the printed page with his masterful comic book stories.”

The back inside-cover of the magazine does feature three vintage newspaper comics with Donald, Mickey and Bucky Bug.

More attention to the comic books is given on the website of D23 in this article about Huey, Duey and Louie, which was apparently written by comics writer and editor David Gerstein.

Searching for Boom! Studios on Amazon reveals a long list (see below) of upcoming trade paperbacks and hardcover books (Please note that these releases are not set in stone; in the past Gemstone titles listed on Amazon were later changed or never came out!). Some of the titles listed feature classic reprints of stories by Carl Barks, Floyd Gottfredson and Don Rosa. The first book, a hardcover Christmas album, is scheduled to come out in November and the other books in the first half of 2010.

A lot of fans will be pleased to see another reprint of Don Rosa’s The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, which has been out of print for a while and is still in high demand, but Boom’s version will be more expensive than the previous release. It will take at least three of their 112-page volumes to cover the more than 300 pages in the Life of Scrooge series, which will set you back $75. When Gemstone released these stories in 2005 and 2006 they came in two paperbacks (of 268 and 208 pages respectively) for ‘only’ $16.99 each. At least Boom’s books will be in hardcover. More »

Boom! Studios will be distributing its new Disney comics through newsstands and mass market bookstores in the United States. Back in March, Boom announced a deal with Kable Distribution Services for newsstand distribution of their monthly Disney/Pixar comics The Incredibles and Cars. It is this same distribution channel that will be used for the new titles that start in September, including Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories (WDC&S) and Mickey Mouse and Friends.

Kable has a lot of experience in getting comics to kids with the distribution of their Archie Comics, which is virtually the only comic book available at grocery stores like Wal-Mart. To purchase any other comic book, Americans need to find a specialty comic book store or go online. This is quite different from the situation in many European countries, where Disney comics are sold nearly everywhere and reach huge distribution.

A friend in the comic book industry has informed me that Kable will be handling Boom’s Disney comics, including WDC&S and Mickey Mouse, putting the single $2.99 issues in regular stores across the country. Trade paperbacks will be available in book stores like Barnes & Nobles. Wow, this is great news! If Disney comics are to be displayed at stores like Walmart and Target it will greatly improve the exposure of these comics to the younger readers that Boom! is targeting.

Remember that back in 2002, Steve Geppi, owner of Gemstone Publishing, also announced his plan to bring his Disney comics to stores like Wal-Mart and Target, via Diamond Book Distributors. At that time he seemed pretty confident about being able to do this, but we all know how that ended. I hope that this will not happen again.

So what do we know about the new Boom Disney comics so far? Here is a rundown of the facts:

• Boom! has obtained the license to publish Disney comics with characters from Pixar’s animated feature films as well as classic characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse
• The Pixar titles, including The Incredibles and Cars, were launched in March 2009 and from the latest Previews magazine we’ve learned that WDC&S and Mickey Mouse will start in September
• Each monthly issue will have 24 pages (with 22 pages of comics) and sell for $2.99. This is a lower price-per-issue, but a comparable price-per-page to Gemstone’s publications
• All of Boom’s new Disney comics will be sold at newsstands, book stores and specialty comic book stores
• WDC&S and Mickey Mouse will start off with two multi-part Italian series called Ultraheroes and Wizards of Mickey, which are intended to appeal more to the younger audience that Boom is targeting. Both stories run for more than 240 pages so it is likely that this will occupy both titles for nearly a year
• At a later stage Boom will also be handling the ‘classic’ material that Gemstone published, as Boom’s co-founder Ross Richie commented: “We’re not going to abandon the fans that are buying that material, so we will have programs and products for them.”

Sounds promising, doesn’t it? I’m excited!