Soda wrote:Since I got my hands on a couple of Gladstone and Walt Disney Publication's Disney comics I could update several things:
- I added all the creators, stories and characters on the issues I had at hand (bummer that I didn't have more as basically all issues are skeleton data only. Meh)
- I renamed "Uncle Scrooge" to "Walt Disney's Uncle Scrooge" for both Gemstone and the Disney series as it is written this way in the indicia (can't confirm it for the other ones so I left them as they were)
- I completely removed Gemstone as a publisher and added it as an imprint of The Bruce Hamilton Company on ALL issues (what a hassle!)
- while I were at it I also removed "Hamilton (USA - 1950)" as a publisher, added the "Hamilton Comics" imprint and switched all issues (like "Power Rangers") to this.
Some questions remain:
- Why are "Uncle Scrooge" and "Donald Duck" divided into several series depending on the publisher while "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories" is only one series despite the publisher changing quite some times? Can't those be merged? It's rather annoying if you have to look which series you need when adding an issue that has been reprinted to a new entry.
- What should happen with the "Disney" series? Some are filed under W.D. Publications, some uner Disney comics. According to the indicia on the comics I have, Disney Comics is only used on the cover, while the indicia names the publisher as "Walt Disney Publications" (don't know where W.D. Publications comes from) which is a susidiary of The Walt Disney Company, so "W.D. Publications" would be an imprint, right? Which means removing "Disney Comics" and using "Walt Disney Company" as publisher and "Walt Disney Publications" as the imprint. Would that be okay? Has somebody additional information on this?
Oh, and those two series would have to be merged:
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title.php?ID=9614
http://www.comicbookdb.com/title.php?ID=11931
The series is named "Walt Disney's Donald Duck" in the indicia.
You meant to say that you completely removed Gladstone as publisher, not Gemstone, right? Thanks for sorting that all out though. For future reference, I believe Chris can make a batch edit to publishers and imprints. Just send him a message with the title(s), span of issues and what they need to be changed to.
I imagine the Scrooge and Donald titles were split, at least in part, because some had the leading title "Walt Disney's..." and others didn't. I wasn't a participant of the database from its beginning, but I understand that early in its history when a series switched companies, a new title was created even if the indicia title remained the same. That point of view later changed, and titles were merged. Some of the more complex titles like the Disney series and Tarzan haven't been merged yet. WDC&S has an earlier title index number than the Scrooge and Donald titles though, so it was either a fluke or it's already been merged. We need to gather information regarding indicia titles and publisher/imprints (like you provided) to correct them all. It's on a huge list of "projects" I'm working on for the site, but I don't have access to many physical copies of those series myself, so it hasn't been a top priority. If we can put all that together, we can start merging where appropriate.
As to your question about the various Disney publishers, Disney has tried publishing itself several times under different publishing arms. I don't know if they used a new company name every time, or they may have even published under different companies simultaneously at times. The various publishers should not be switched to imprints of a catch all "Disney" publisher. A subsidiary does not equal an imprint. This is the reason that DC Comics is not an imprint of Time Warner, or Marvel now an imprint of Disney's. There are undoubtedly issues indexed under the wrong publisher and/or imprint though which need to be fixed. There may be some publishers that are indeed imprints that should be linked under the same publishing arm. I have never seen "Disney Comics" anywhere but on the cover like you, and believe it to be an imprint (but of which publisher?), but I don't know for a fact that it was not an actual publisher sometime. I have seen "W.D. Publications" listed as publisher in the indicia, however. When the publisher/imprint mess is sorted out, we could put some links to the various identities in each of the publisher notes to help direct people.
