Disney comics

Disney comics are comic books and comic strips featuring Walt Disney characters.

The first Disney comics were newspaper strips appearing from 1930 on. In 1940, Western Publishing began producing Disney comic books in the United States. The most notable American Disney comics books are Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and Uncle Scrooge. In recent decades, Disney comics have seen a decline of popularity in their country of origin.

In the rest of the world Disney comics have been very successful, especially in Europe.

Production by country

United States and United Kingdom

Early Comic strips

The first Disney comics appeared in daily newspapers, syndicated by King Features with production done in-house by a Disney comic strip department at the studio. The Mickey Mouse daily comic strip began on January 13, 1930, featuring Mickey as an optimistic, adventure-seeking young mouse. It was initially written by Walt Disney (who early in his career had aspirations to be a comic strip creator, attempting without success to sell a strip titled Mr. George's Wife) with art by Ub Iwerks and Win Smith. Beginning with the May 5, 1930 installment the art chores were taken up by Floyd Gottfredson (often aided by various inkers), who also either wrote or supervised the story continuities (relying on various writers to flesh out his plots). Gottfredson continued with the strip until 1975. A Sunday strip started January 10, 1932 with a topper Silly Symphony strip.

Disney Comics

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.