• Dutch Comic History
• Bulgarian Comic History
• Comics Code
• Disney artists
  • Disney comic artists in the Comiclopedia
  • Disney artists USA
  • Disney artists UK
  • Disney Artists Italy
  • Disney Artists Former Yugoslavia
  • Disney Artists Brazil
  • Disney Artists France
  • Disney Artists Denmark
  • Disney Artists The Netherlands
  • Disney Agency Artists
• Erotic Comics
• Underground

Comics History

Disney artists USA

The first of all Disney comics appeared on 13 January 1930. That day, the 'Mickey Mouse' newspaper comic was launched. Soon followed by the 'Silly Symphony' Sunday page and the 'Donald Duck' newspaper strip. In 1939, the American publisher Western Printing (in cooperation with Dell Publishing) began publishing a series of one-shot comics called 'Four Color Comics', which also contained Disney material. It was a big success, and a year later, the Disney comics got their own title, 'Walt Disney's Comics and Stories'. Artists that worked for these titles were former Disney animators or staff artists at Western. The most notable of them wasCarl Barks, who developed the entire Duck universe. Throughout the years, various characters got their own spin-off title, such as 'Uncle Scrooge' and 'Chip 'n Dale'. When the cooperation with Dell folded, the WDCS title was transferred to Gold Key in 1962, and in the 1970s to Whitman.

Because the Disney comic book stories produced in the US weren't enough to fill the overseas comics, the Disney Studios also began producing stories for publications abroad. This production program of so-called S-coded stories was initiated by the head of Disney's Publications Department, George Sherman, in 1962. Chief writer was Dick Kinney, who developed new characters for this line of comics, such as Fethry Duck and Hard Haid Moe. Arists assigned to draw the comics were artists also working for Western, but also foreign studios, mainly the Jaime Diaz Studios in Argentina, but also Toonder Studio's in the Netherlands.

All US publications were cancelled in 1984, and there was a lot of shifting in the licenses throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Several companies published Disney comics, such as Gladstone (Walt Disney Adventures), Marvel (comics based on recent movies and TV productions), Disney Comics (mainstream characters and TV characters), Gemstone and Boom! Studios.