You learn something new everyday

This evening I was going through more comics when I came across a very early Donald Duck comic from Gladstone. Now I don’t know about you but when I am sorting and bagging comics it is very hard to not stop and read. In my case it is especially difficult when I get to a Disney Duck book. I started looking through this issue and decided to read the editorial column. In my opinion Gladstone was one of the finest publishers of comics there ever was. They really cared about producing a excellent product and it was especially important for them that the creators were credited. Anyway the point of all this is that I learned something while reading the opening column. 

This was written by Gladstone assistant editor and resident letterer Leonard (John) Clark. In the column he is discussing the process of buying Disney stories that were created in Europe. He mentions that the stories could be purchased from Disney or the foreign licensee. The really fascinating thing is that the stories were ordered by code number. This code number is in the left corner of the first panel, see below. 

Speaking for myself I have always noticed the code but have never known what it meant. Thanks to Mr. Clark I learned something new thirty four years later.