Sometimes a movie, actor or product appears on the American scene to be greeted with a collective "meh" but then make its way overseas and struggles onshore like Gulliver from Gulliver's Travels. Suddenly it finds itself a celebrated giant in this new land.
the first: Disney Comics In Europe.
Even if you're a fan of Disney, or comics, you might not know that Disney publishes, for example, Donald Duck comics. That's because the readership of these comics in the U.S. is - and I'm giving a rough estimate here - zero.
It's bewildering that the actual home of Disneyland, Disney World, and the corporate headquarters of Disney, not to mention the native home of comic book nerds, has no interest in classic Disney character comic books, while more than one out of every four Norwegians reads Donald Duck & Co.
It's not just Mickey and Donald, either. Some countries are really fixated on obscure Disney characters, like the Netherlands on the Big Bad Wolf (apparently from a Three Little Pigs cartoon I don't remember).
and bit players like Scamp, who is apparently the son of Lady and the Tramp, from um, Lady and the Tramp.
Why isn't classic Disney popular in its homeland? Well, first of all, comic books in America aren't an all-ages product sold at the grocery store like they are in Europe, and second of all, due to being constantly bombarded with Disney marketing in the U.S., we've OD'd on classic Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and can only see them as corny corporate mascots.
Which is why all attempts to bring them back here involve a ham-fisted attempt to make them "relevant," like the upcoming gritty Wii game (how did those words get together) Epic Mickey.
