Walt Disney

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Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was a multiple Academy Award-winning American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Disney became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $35 billion.

Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created a number of the world's most famous fictional characters including Mickey Mouse. He received fifty-nine Academy Award nominations and won twenty-six Oscars, including a record four in one year, and thus holds the record for the individual with the most awards and the most nominations. He also won seven Emmy Awards. He is the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, Japan, France, and China.

Disney died of lung cancer on December 15, 1966, a few years prior to the opening of his Walt Disney World Resort dream project in Florida.

Comics

Disney Characters have been very popular over the years especially during the Golden Age of Comic Books.

Comic book publisher Western Publishing brought the Disney strips to comic books in 1940, through Dell Comics Four Color title. The Four Color books reprinted a variety of newspaper strip material, and issue #4 featured a selection of Donald Duck strips. The Disney reprints were a big seller, and encouraged Western to convert Mickey Mouse Magazine third series (which had included comics along with text stories, poems, jokes, puzzles, games and full-page illustrations) into a full-fledged comic book, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, whose first issue was dated October 1940 and by the mid-1950s was the best selling comic book in America with a circulation hovering around three million a month (with the highest level reached being 3,038,000 for the Sept. 1953 issue). In addition many releases in its popular Big Little Books series adapted Disney comic book and comic strip stories. By the late-1950s relations between Dell and Western had become strained. Former Western writer Mark Evanier states part of this was due to "... a small battle going on between the two companies over the ownership of properties in non-licensed comics." Eventually in 1962 Western ended the partnership and continued their comic book line under the Gold Key Comics label. Comic book historian Joe Torcivia has dubbed the mid-1960s "... a period of creativity for Western Publishing’s Disney line not seen since its formation, and never seen again." By the 1970s Disney comics were undergoing a steep decline in circulation, with newstand distribution discontinued in 1981. Western thereafter released its comics under the Whitman label, distributing them to candy stores and other outlets in bags containing three comics and also eventually distributed them to the emerging network of comic book stores. Western ceased publishing comics in 1984.

Disney comics in the USA were later published by Gladstone Publishing and then by Disney Comics, then Gladstone again (for the classic characters) and Marvel Comics (for the modern characters). In 2003, after a couple of years' hiatus, regular publication was restarted by Gemstone Publishing.

Currently, Gemstone's two monthly Disney titles are Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge, but publication is interrupted for unknown reasons.

Dark Horse Comics has also published occasional adaptations of the more recent Disney movies.

Notable American Disney comic book writers and artists include Carl Barks, Tony Strobl, Paul Murry, William Van Horn, and Don Rosa. Van Horn and Rosa now work for European publishers.

Disney Studio Program

From 1962 to 1990 the Walt Disney Studio had a unit producing comic book stories exclusively for foreign consumption, in response to complaints of foreign comic book licensees that Western Publishing was producing less stories they could reprint plus their voracious need for material (some European titles are weekly) was using up the available inventory of stories. Tony Strobl, Al Hubbard, Jack Bradbury, Carson Van Osten and Romano Scarpa were among the artists for this program during its early years. Carl Fallberg, Floyd Norman, Dick Kinney and Mark Evanier were among those who at some point did scripts for the program. From the late 1970s on, the Jaime Diaz Studios of Argentina drew most of the stories. In a few instances studio program stories were reprinted in the United States in promotional giveaways of Gulf Oil (Wonderful World of Disney) in the late 1960s and Procter & Gamble (Disney Magazine) in the mid-1970s. A Mickey and the Sleuth story was published by Gold Key in Walt Disney Showcase #39 (1977). Besides the Sleuth other characters created for the program include Donald's cousin Fethry Duck and the hillbilly hermit Hard Haid Moe. Also while Carl Barks created John D. Rockerduck, he used the character only in a single story ("Boat Buster", Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #255, Dec. 1961) while the progam subsequently created numerous stories with the Scrooge McDuck rival and helped refine him (along with stories by Brazilian and Italian Disney comic book licensees).

Domestic printing of studio program stories ceased being a unique event starting in the late 1980s as the Disney comics published by Gladstone and Gemstone have featured them on a regular basis, along with reprints from Gold Key/Dell and material produced by foreign licensees.

This program was merged into Disney Comics and is the precursor of the comics that subsequently appeared in Disney Adventures.