Keskustelujen arkisto

It was only a matter of time, it had to happen once: I replied a mail
to Don Rosa instead of forwarding it to the list.
Here it is:

----- Begin message to: 72260.2635 at COMPUSERVE.COM 24-May-93

From: athena.research.ptt.::harry 24-MAY-1993 12:30
To: 72260.2635 at compuserve.com
Subj: Reply on Rosa's Re: Digest #24

Don Rosa:
> Yes, that's right, "War of the Wendigo", my long Peeweegah sequel, will
> NEVER be used in America simply because it involves Indians.

But you also said in that interview that you hoped Gladstone would be less
narrow-minded. Does this mean you are sure even Gladstone won't print the
story?

> Harry: I think I have the Dutch comic that used "On a Silver Platter",
> but I'd better check since you should know such stuff better
> than me.

I have never seen a non-American version of the story. According to our
Don Rosa Index, it hasn't been printed in Scandinavia, either.

> But why would they NOT use that story, particularly since I did it
> for THEM?

I didn't say they wouldn't use it, only that it will be printed in Scandinavia
*first*. It's a matter of cost: Holland lets Egmont do the colouring, and
then they buy the story back *with* colours. It's cheaper than colouring
the story themselves... (I got this information from Dutch editor Thom Roep)

(BTW: the Dutch publisher is not "Oberon" anymore. Oberon was part of the
largest Dutch publisher VNU. VNU got rid of their comic publishing parts, and
Disney comics got to "De Geillustreerde Pers".
Does anyone know why Gutenberghus is now called Egmont?)

> They've used some that were far worse,
> including those that they had written FOR me (which were REAL stinkers).

I don't think they were written specially for you. They just let some people
write scripts (like Jan Kruse), and decide later which artist should do
the drawings. In your case, one of the scripts is from 1985 (looking at the
code), while you drew the story a few years later, I guess.

> That "On a Silver Platter" was (in my opinion) my very
> best 10-page gag story!

It is! No question about that! (the story is "stranger than fiction"... 8-)

--Harry.

Harry Fluks ()_() Dutch Disney comics freak
PTT Research, Leidschendam (NL) (_) H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl
"Yeah... I've _heard_ of coral barques!"

----- End forwarded message

Per:
> (I'm sending Harry a copy of this.)

Well, since I am a member of the list, I get a copy anyway... 8-)

I wrote some months ago, about the Dutch 'complete Barks' books:
> They also included a French copy of the page the panel was on,
> so the story must have been published in France sometime.

David:
> Most important is that GLADSTONE will want to know where the
> French version appeared. They are apparently (according to some Comic
> Buyers' Guide issue) going to put all the MOCS in one album soon, and
> I'm sure they'd rather restore the dialog (and, presumably, redo
> Disney's required changes) to the original Barks art rather than
> Jippes' and Vlottes' version.

The books don't say where the French publication was from. But the page
was re-formatted (the French always reformat their comics: they have a standard
of 5 rows of panels per page in "Le Journal de Mickey") and the copies
were very bad. I know Per has photocopies of the story that look much
better...

Maybe Gladstone can re-edit the story like they did with the "Atom bomb"
story (also published in one of the Disney Comics comics): they took
Jippes's version and put some original Barks panels back. In that way,
they could replace the worst Vlottes panels by Barks ones...
(of course it would be better if they published an 'all Barks' version,
but I don't think the available copies are all acceptable for a colour
reprint).

BTW: if a CBGuide is already announcing the album, it may be too late
to change the contents of it...

--Harry.

Harry Fluks ()_() Dutch Disney comics freak
PTT Research, Leidschendam (NL) (_) H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl
"Yeah... I've _heard_ of coral barques!"

Harry Fluks wrote:
>Does anyone know why Gutenberghus is now called Egmont?)

According to the version I have heard, Gutenberghus was too difficult
for a lot of foregners to pronounce, and that was the reason for the
change. Egmont was apparently the name of the person who founded
Gutenberghus.

On a completely different matter: The next version of the international
names list is due to appear soon! Would you rather have it appear here
on the list, or should I just send it to Per so he can put it on the
ftp archieve and then inform you that it's there? I guess Don Rosa, at
least, would prefer the latter method.

/Fredrik Ekman

___________________________
______| |______
\ | In Donaldismo Veritas | /
> |___________________________| <
/______\| |/______\"

I really messed things up yesterday, sending public mail privately, and
private mail to the list.

I sent a mail to Don privately, then directly after that I found out my
mistake and sent it to the list as well.
Then I got a private answer from Don to that mail. There were two
possibilities:

1. Don sent the message to me, because he didn't mean the list to read it;
2. Don just "replied" to my message, but actually meant it to be for the list.

Though possibility 2 seemed most likely, I just waited for Don's next mail
to see what he wanted. I could have asked him by private mail, but that would
co$t 2 extra mails, and I want to avoid that.

So, after all this (boring) explanation, here is Don Rosa's reply.
--Harry.

----- Begin message from 72260.2635 at compuserve.com 24-May-93

Date: 24 May 1993 10:19:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: Don Rosa <72260.2635 at compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: Reply on Rosa's Re: Digest #24

Harry...
I used poor wording if I said somewhere that I hoped Gladstone would be less narrow-minded than Disney. I knew Gladstone would never
be such. But I was hoping that Disney would allow Gladstone to do something that they were afraid to do themselves. However, no
such luck. Gladstone has begged for permission to use my Peeweegah tale, and Disney has flatly refused. Unless they start firing and
hiring people inside Disney (which does happen constantly) there is NO chance that the Peeweegah tale will be printed in America.

Why did Gutenberghus change its name to Egmont after 125+ years of
business? I'm not sure. I think that the founder, Egmont Peterson, was such a humble altuist that he named his company after the
inventor of the printing press rather than himself. Gutenberhus ("House of Gutenberg") finally must have gotten tired of that sort
of name and decided to honor its illustrious founder. However, (and I'm sure they conducted a long, expensive investigation before
deciding this) they determined that "Peterson" was difficult to pronounce in certain languages (this being a global company), but
"Egmont" did not present that problem. I would assume that "Egmont" is only a funny sounding name in ENGLISH, which shouldn't
bother Egmont a bit, America being such a poor market for reading material.

----- End forwarded message

Don Rosa's COMMENTS ON DIGEST #whatsit:

> I'm still confused by your description of how this
> first-Egmont-then-Oberon story printing system works.

Holland (I'll just call it Holland) has two ways of using stories of other
countries:

1. they buy the black-and-white comic art, and colour it themselves. This
is what they *always* do in the regular Donald Duck Weekly.

2. they buy the comic art *plus* the colouring. Most colours in other
countries are of less quality than their own colouring. They use
these coloured stories in the monthly Donald Duck Extra, and in holiday
specials. It's cheaper.

Almost all your stories are published in DD Extra. They bought the coloured
stories from the USA or Egmont. Some other stories are published in
black-and-white (!) in a holiday special. Only a few stories, like "The Pied
Piper", were coloured in Holland, and published in DD Weekly.

For reasons mentioned in earlier mails 8-), Thom Roep decided not to publish
Rosa stories anymore in the DD Weekly, but only in DD Extra or specials.
But they still had that "Silver Platter" story. So they did the following:

- give the story to Egmont (black&white copies). Egmont would have it
coloured, for their use in Scandinavian comics.
- buy the story back from Egmont, *plus colours*. Just as if it were a
regular D-coded Egmont story.

This way, Holland can publish the story cheaper, because buying a coloured
story is cheaper than colour it yourself.

> Maybe I haven't really
> seen an Oberon version of "Silver Platter", but there WAS an Oberon version
> of "Pied Piper of Duckburg", another tale I did FOR
> Oberon... and there has only recently been an Egmont version.

This was one of the few stories they did publish in DD Weekly. I guess it's
because it's (partly) Barks.

> More confusing, when Egmont requested the photostats of "Piper"
> Roep, he sent the art but not the SCRIPT because he said Oberon had never
> used the story and he'd mislaid the script (yet they
> HAD used it).

Even in Holland, in 1993, stories are thrown away that are used only once...
And even Thom Roep is not as accurate as he should be...

> And what's slightly irritating is that when they DID use "Piper", Oberon
> failed to put even one line of text to
> explain the unique story behind that tale.

They *never* give any credits or other story background explanations in the
regular DD Weekly. In Holland, they only did that in the Barks Album series,
and in the 17-issue "Complete Barks" books. In one of these books, your
story and its background *is* mentioned (though the story is not published
in that book).

Just look at the Dutch DD Weekly as the old Dell comics: all stories are
made by Walt Disney. It is only recently that they put a few names in it,
like the names of the editors (...Th. Roep). But still no story credits.

> And again.... what are we supposed to call Oberon now?

"De Geillustreerde Pers" (abbrev: GP). This name is impossible for non-Dutch
people. An English translation would be: "The Illustrated Press".

--Harry.

Harry Fluks ()_() Dutch Disney comics freak
PTT Research, Leidschendam (NL) (_) H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl
"Yeah... I've _heard_ of coral barques!"

COMMENTS to digest #XXX:

I don't think Egmont has a company policy of compelling their various publishers to treat the readerships in various countries as
if they were 2 year olds -- that's the decision of each individual publisher/editor. Actually, I can GUARANTEE that Egmont has no
such corporate attitude now that Byron Erickson and Bob Foster are the two top decision makers in the main Disney-Egmont office!
It's my attitude that the way to treat the readers is as a mixed group: some features for the younger readers, and some features
(like MY overly-complex, eye-burning stories) for the older readers. And that is how the Norwegian editor, Svein-Erik Soland,
handles his version of the weekly. Too bad all the Egmont publishers aren't as good as the Norwegian and Finnish ones. The Danish
one doesn't seem too bad, but that Swedish one seems to have no regard for the readers (doing such things as printing my "Life of
$crooge" series beginning with chapter 3 and not caring that the whole shebang will not make much sense to anyone as a result).
Of course, I can't READ any of them, so this is all just based on my impressions of the situation.

Oh, and I don't think anyone needs to worry (if they ARE) any longer about what being connected to this Internet is costing me!
The length of the mail is not such a problem (though I'd personally still rather not see indexes or long contests included since I
just skip those parts). After Internet, my COMPUSERVE bill jumped to $20-$30 per week!!! But when I finally got through to them on
their busy 800 number line, I found there was a different standard membership option that I didn't know about -- I switched to that
and now my connect-charges are back to what they were in the old days. So I'm all fixed up.

Hello all,
Of all the comics that appear on the stands these days,
the only stuff I consistently buy are Don's Duck
stories and the equally excellent "Bone" by Jeff Smith
(Bone is the first comic I've actually subscribed to).
While collecting Bone is simple, collecting Don's stories is
another matter. I'm constantly groping through the credits
section of the recent Disney's looking for a story by Don.

So, my question is: is there a list of Don's work that has
recently appeared or about to appear in English
and a list of Don's (completed) work that has yet to appear in
English? With regard to the latter, I get the impression (after
lurking here for a couple of months) that there is a possibility
that some of Don's recent work will not appear in English anytime
soon.

-George

Don Rosa wrote:
> I don't think Egmont has a company policy of compelling their various
> publishers to treat the readerships in various countries as
> if they were 2 year olds -- that's the decision of each individual
> publisher/editor.

The Dutch have the following policy:
It appears that most parents read the DD comic too, and even that *they*
mostly buy the comics (for their children, so to say).
So the Dutch editor always puts a lead story in the comic that's attractive
to the 'older' reader (age 14, 15 and higher).
Not only the story should be good, but also the artwork (and that's where
Rosa stories don't pass the test...). The rest of the comic is filled
with stories and gags for younger children.

Hm.. sounds a bit like Norway...

> Too bad all the Egmont publishers aren't as good as the Norwegian and
> Finnish ones. The Danish
> one doesn't seem too bad, but that Swedish one seems to have no regard for
> the readers (doing such things as printing my "Life of
> $crooge" series beginning with chapter 3 and not caring that the whole
> shebang will not make much sense to anyone as a result).

Well, Swedish list members: do the Life of Scrooge series make sense to
you when you haven't read parts 1 and 2?

> Oh, and I don't think anyone needs to worry (if they ARE) any longer
> about what being connected to this Internet is costing me!

That's good news!

--Harry.

Harry Fluks ()_() Dutch Disney comics freak
PTT Research, Leidschendam (NL) (_) H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl
"Yeah... I've _heard_ of coral barques!"