Disney comics
| Parent company | The Walt Disney Company |
|---|---|
| Status | Defunct (1993) |
| Founded | 1990 |
| Key people |
Len Wein (editor-in-chief) Art Young (editor) Bob Foster (editor) Cris Palomino (editor) David Seidman |
| Publication types | Comic books |
| Imprints | Vista Comics (planned) Touchmark Comics (announced; never published) |
Disney Comics was a comic book publishing company operated by The Walt Disney Company which ran from 1990 to 1993. It was connected with W. D. Publications, Inc., which was a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company that published "Disney Comics" during that time span. W. D. Publications, Inc. created Disney Comics in 1990 so that The Walt Disney Company would not have to rely on outside publishers such as Gladstone Publishing. In the USA, Disney only licensed their comic books to other publishers prior to 1990. Since the demise of the Disney Comics line, Disney has licensed out their properties to various US comics publishers, while continuing to publish comics in the since-defunct magazines Disney Adventures and Disney Adventures Comic Zone, as well as numerous book projects, and has reentered the periodical comics market through their 2009 purchase of Marvel Entertainment. Marvel and Disney Publishing began jointly publishing Disney/Pixar Presents magazine in May 2011 but did not revive the Disney Comics imprint as Boom! Studios would continue to publish classic Disney character comics. Prior to 1990, the only Disney-published Disney comics were the ones published in Italy, after Disney Italia took over from Mondadori in 1988.
In its first year and a half, Disney Comics published:
Additionally, during the company's first year, eight trade paperbacks called Disney Comics Album (sic) were published. These featured older stories, prefaced by opening editorials similar to the earlier Gladstone Comic Album series.
Giant-sized seasonal specials included two issues apiece of Autumn Adventures and Holiday Parade, and one issue apiece of Spring Fever and Summer Fun. All of these titles were new to Disney and most were published only by them, with the exception of Spring Fever (revived by Gemstone Publishing in 2007-2008).
In this period, plans for expansion were announced. At one Comic Con panel, slides of a realistic European barbarian strip were previewed as one of many new titles in development. One planned imprint, Vista Comics, would showcase superheroes, many to be adapted from Disney films such as Tron and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, and was being developed by comic book writer and animated TV story-editor Martin Pasko. A second imprint, Touchmark Comics, was actually announced, with former DC Comics editor Art Young at its head. Among the scripts Touchmark acquired was Enigma by Peter Milligan and Sebastian O by Grant Morrison.
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