The prejudice that comics are for people who don’t like to read books gained a new dimension this week with the launch of Donald Duck Junior magazine. NRC quotes Sanoma publisher Suzanne Schouten (Dutch): “The age at which children start with Donald Duck [magazine] went from 6 to 8 years old in the last few years. The magazine turns out to be too difficult for many 6 and 7 year olds. Children read less these days. That’s why we wanted to develop a magazine that is much simpler and with which children learn to read while having fun.”

As daily NRC puts it, Junior has “less text, bigger balloons, and simpler puzzles.” I took a quick look at the magazine in the super market today, and noticed that numbers were spelled with digits, and were emphasized. Also, the text mostly used short words, single or double syllable.

Image: SanomaCrossing.

Left-leaning newspaper of record De Volkskrant came to a shocking discovery (Dutch): it’s no longer the students’ darling. Instead, university students are flocking to a magazine they know from their elementary school years, Donald Duck.

The “merry weekly” is the most popular periodical among students, beating magazines and newspapers like Intermediair and NRC.next which consider students and former students to be part of their target audience. So says the Nationaal Studentenonderzoek (National Student Survey) held by marketing agency StudentServices from Rotterdam. The agency questioned a whole campus worth of students (1,775 to be precise).

Editor-in-chief of Donald Duck magazine Thom Roep is not surprised though. “An earlier study already showed that we’re passing magazines like Playboy as a popular men’s magazine,” he told De Volkskrant.

When I was a student our house was subscribed to the Volkskrant. In a “red-pink” town like Nijmegen a subscription to a lefty paper was almost mandatory. As it happened I also read Donald Duck magazine quite a lot but that was because I considered it homework, as I was trying to sell comics scripts to the magazine.

Illustration copyright 2007 Disney.
- Scrooge: Plus a fine for PIRACY! Ten thousand euro, you sneaky thief!
- Donald: M-mercy! I am so sorry! And I finally BOUGHT the original CD!

This week Donald Duck magazine has decided that their customers should be treated to what amounts to a lesson about copyright. In a two page story (issue 49-2007) Huey, Dewey and Lewey download the latest Jan Goudsmid CD, but only so that they can already listen to it until they can afford to buy the real thing. Donald Duck suddenly realises how much money he could make if he bought a 20 euro CD and sold 100 copies at 10 euro a piece, and starts to put his nefarious scheme into practice. But record company owner Scrooge McDuck finds out and puts a stop to Donald’s plan.

Downloading music for private use is legal in the Netherlands, but selling unlicensed copies is not. The over-the-top moralistic tone of the story caught the attention of FOK forum subscribers, who immediately started pointing to the similarities between this story and the Brein foundation’s party line. The dialogue is preposterous at times. Donald: “Why don’t you guys keep this [downloaded copy]?” The nephews: “But that’s not fair! This CD is COPYRIGHTED! If nobody would buy CDs anymore, the record companies and artists would become beggars!” (Remember: the record company is owned by Scrooge McDuck.) One of the FOK forum subscribers: “They used to print »(advertisement)« about items like that.”

Disclaimer: I have written for Donald Duck magazine myself. Although they paid significantly less than the competing Sjors en Sjimmie franchise, it was always fun to write stories for them, simply because they pretty much let you decide what to write. As a result, stories for the magazine may have a tone of voice that implies grown-ups talking down to kids, but typically the stories are just fun adventures. Moralistic tales like this copyright story are rare. Indeed, in the next story of this week’s issue Chip ‘n’ Dale try to break into what looks like a military compound in order to steal nuts. Their three attempts fail because the compound is well secured – even underground – indicating the owners’ unambiguous desire to keep out intruders. But in the end, the two chipmunks luck out, and end up with a mountain of nuts. Moral of that Disney story: crime pays.

Also: the MPAA is a member of Brein. Disney is a member of the MPAA.

Update December 4: Thom Roep (Dutch), Donald Duck’s editor-in-chief, denies to FOK that the Brein foundation is in any way connected with this story, and admits that the dialogue is a little heavy handed for a magazine that dubs itself “het vrolijke weekblad” (the happy weekly):

Specifically the things that the nephews say on page 25, frame 7 [the bit I quoted before - Branko] should have been a lot less goody-two-shoes, and does indeed not correspond to the style of the magazine, which often tries to look at certain situations with a somewhat cheeky wink. We regret it a lot that this story has caused so much irritation and reactions, and we will definitely stay alert to remain a “happy weekly” in the future.

Albeit an American export, the Donald Duck comic is something typically European. For some reason, Donald Duck comics haven’t done much in their country of origin. In the Netherlands however, Donald Duck magazine — subtitled “The merry weekly” — is considered the blueprint of how to make a successful magazine. It has existed for well over 50 years, and has always been a hit, not in the least because grown-ups kept buying the magazines for themselves and their children long after they supposedly should have grown out of comics themselves.

Donald Duck’s adventures often take place in Duck Town, which is a generic city in the US. Whenever couleur locale managed to creep into a locally produced comic, it would be an exception. But the Dutch magazine is now sending its main characters on the road, and is working on a story that takes Donald, Scrooge, and the three nephews to Amsterdam. Daily De Telegraaf reports (Dutch) that there will be gables, canals, and the royal palace on Dam Square (so-called because it is where the actual dam was built in the river Amstel).

Disclaimer: I have co-written a few stories for Donald Duck magazine myself in the past, but I have no ties to the magazine.