About Gold Key
In 1962 Dell, which had been distributing Western's comics for decades, broke off its agreement with them which led to the creation of Gold Key Comics, Inc. This period is regarded as the beginning of a long decline for Disney comics as the quality of many non-Barks stories plunged. Gold Key gave a solo comic book to Barks' Beagle Boys and promoted characters like Super Goof, Moby Duck, and Mad Madam Mim (to name a few who have survived from this period), but many of their attempts did not succeed. The space taken by this glut of new stories wiped out all remaining newspaper reprints. In fact, many of the new stories Western began making at this time never appeared in the States; they were prepared in a special deal with the Walt Disney studio for foreign consumption alone. Donald's cousin Fethry, the tycoon John D. Rockerduck, and hillbilly hermit Hard-Haid Moe were some of the characters who were largely consigned to these "foreign" stories.
