Keskustelujen arkisto

David writes about sending some letters on to Gladstone:
>condensed, specialized letters in chronological order. I prepared
>them on a word-processing file, and if you guys give me the go-ahead,
>I'll send 'em as listed to John and Gary at Gladstone.

Sure is OK with me. Just one thing...

> 21. Frederick Ekman: Praise for long Goofy "historical"
>stories, and suggestion of long Mickey/Scrooge Italian story.

That "Italian story" definitely wasn't meant as a suggestion, and even
less as a praise. I don't think the quality is good enough to be cause
for publication and even if it was, the story is WAY outdated by now.
I mentioned it only because someone else had mentioned a Mickey/$crooge
cross-over in a previous letter. You don't need to delete it from the
letter, of course, but at least remove the "suggestion" part. I still
like those Goofy stories though. (You wanna fight?)

Oh, and try to spell my name right, will you? ;-)

/Fredrik Ekman (why does Americans always have problems with that?)
^^^^^^^

Hi, one and all; and in particular Don,

with whom I've been through the argument
to follow, before. At first, however, special greetings to Don from Stefan Di|s
who says: "yes, yes, I know, I really should, I just never get around to it,
and when there's a problem with some translation it always has to be solved on
the spot, but I really should; gee, I feel so bad about that..." Well, you know
what Stefan is like, when basically he means that he's a d****d sluggard, but
to lazy to do something about it. BUT he also asked me to tell you that he
recently translated your woodchucks story, and that he loved it all from one
end to the other; EXCEPT possibly the relative dating of Marco Polo and some
crusade (?) - that's what he said, at least. I don't know - haven't seen it
yet. Egmont will, he said too, be publishing it specially in an album of some
kind, not in KA&C:o.

But: the moneybin - Don, there is NO WAY you can have $crooge build the
solitary, square Killmotor Hill moneybin in 1902 or thereabouts, AND still
claim that "Life of $crooge" sticks strictly to Barks. Nope. NOT ONLY does
Donald in a 1951 WDC call it "Unca $crooge's NEW moneybin"; but a few panels
later he informs the kids that $crooge has had 20 blocks of buildings removed
in order to build it. ERGO: prior to approx. 1951 Killmotor Hill had a more
ordinary set of buildings on it, one of which might well enough have been some
kind of office cum moneystorage belonging to $crooge. ALSO check out the WDC
prior to this story, and take a look at what kind of moneybin is there
destroyed by the combined efforts of Donald and the Boer War cannon; and THEN
compare this moneybin to the one in "Only a Poor Old Man"... You are wrong if
you insist on building THE moneybin in 1902, Don, as much as you might like it.
AND you should check the mid 1940's WDC where $crooge gets hayfever from his
money

(to be continued...)

Mattias Hallin

...as I was saying (when rudely interrupted by WORK (shudder)): check out the
midforties WDC where $crooge gets hayfever from his money, has to go live in a
cave, and Donald squanders his moola; and how $crooges moneystorage at that
time is pictured. Yes: a barn-like NUMBERED (and highly numbered, too)
one-storey building, that is, I think, called moneybin No 37 or something like
that.

Also - why on earth should $crooge need to build THE moneybin as early as 1902
when he still counts his money in billions - not in fantasillions. I actually
doubt he could even AFFORD it at that time; and even in the forties he
obviously could be hard pressed for money - as in "The Old Castle's Secret",
where he claims he has to get his hands on "a few millions" real quick to avoid
some unmentioned financial disaster...

Now, I'm well aware that you've (Don, I mean) has already finished that part of
the "Life"; so I guess my criticism won't do you much good anymore, anyway -
but! Please remember what I wrote in my first letter to this list: I sincerly
meant every word of that letter (I hope Per included at least it's general
outline in your digest; in case not, it lavished prize on the "Life" for being
in the main true to Barks AND history, for your masterful building of $crooge's
character, and for the fact it's so dadblasted funny you had me howling with
laughter all the time), and don't feel too unhappy just because I love to
ferret out these kind of details and sling'em at you. Ain't I a lowdown,
bushwackin' so-and-so?!

Well - all my best to you, Don, and to all the other ugly li'l ducklings out
there in networkspace (no - yer not ugly: yer beauties, the lot of ya!)

"A flier! A frier! I must shave the women and children!"

Mattias Hallin

David> Here's my Disney Comics K-Index. Hardly any time to talk now.

Thanks! I've put it at the ftp archive now, with some apostrophes
reinserted.

As for Don's complaint about long digests, Harry has it right. The
digests are just all the messages sent to the list automatically
collected in bunches. I wouldn't *want* to decide what posts should
be there and what shouldn't, and I wouldn't have the time anyway.
Haven't I said all this before?

There is one thing I maybe ought to do, though. I could adjust the
program so that it sends messages bigger than a certain threshold by
their own, and not together with other messages. Would that be a good
idea?

Harry:
> 1. Don't mail large indexes to the list; send them to Per to put on ftp
> or announce them and send them in private mail to people who ask for them.

I think that's a good idea, too. Not really because it's big---a long
report from a Disney panel at a comics convention or a wordy essay on
Barks's use of Scrooge's cane would of course (?) go to the list---but
because an index is not something you normally read from beginning to
end. And indexes are almost never finished. They tend to be
corrected and updated from time to time, and posting them every time
that happens would create a lot of traffic in which only the latest
message really is interesting.

Another thing about this very list (and not about Disney comics
such):
Torsten> First, have them [Gladstone] tell their readers about this
Torsten> group. Per could probably write a decent introduction.

Who? Me? I've got a belly-ache!
Well, if they do mention it, I wonder if that would result in an
explosion of subscription requests...
-- "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden. email: starback at student.docs.uu.se
"Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"

On Tue, 5 Oct 1993, Chris Lawton wrote:
> >Dear Folks,
> Agreed. This is a very good issue. I think I like the latest Donald &
> Mickey better, though. Goofy as King Midas is great! (Although Mickey seems
> to be in just a co-starring role here...) I absolutly *loved* the background
> gags! All the way through the story I kept saying to myself "This stuff is
> great! So bizzare!". Then when I got to the end and read that one of the
> authors (I don't have the issue here at work with me so I can't remember which
> one it is) used to work on MAD Magazine. That explains the style.

If someone can tell me the name, I will be happy to look through my MAD
archives for his work.

Torsten Adair torsten at cwis.unomaha.edu Omaha, NE, USA

"I never saw a movie I didn't like, for free." A.E. Neuman

COMMENTS TO #119:

First off, I had another large message "returned" to me as
"undeliverable". These always seem to actually have been delivered and
posted, but I didn't notice for sure if this'n made it. Before I erase
it, did my message come through where, among MANY other things, I was
saying Hi to Mattias?
Anyway, to Mattias: I think I went into some detail a month or
so ago on the subject of how my "Life and Times of $McD" sticks or does
not stick to Barks. It is IMPOSSIBLE to stick to 100% of everything that
Barks had $crooge do or say about himself. Some is self-contradictory,
some is impossible. But NOT MUCH. Off the top of my head, I think there
were less than 5 total items in old Barks $crooge stories that I had to
ignore. One was the "Magic Hourglass" -- its very existance goes against
everything we hold true about $crooge being a self-made Duck (I also
debunk the notion of the "Lucky" Dime in part XII). Two other stories
that I had to ignore bits of was "The Ghosttown Railroad" and "Voodoo
Hoodoo", mostly in the aspect of DATES -- the flashbacks could not occur
when Barks/$crooge says they do. And another story I ignore details from
is that 10-pager when Barks introduced the Money Bin. The whole idea of
$crooge came to Barks gradually, and when he finally decided he wanted
$crooge to have such a Bin, this is the only way he could introduce it.
I won't go into, again, all the reasons why I'm sure that the way I
introduce it as the first building in Duckburg was the best way to
handle it -- you can judge for yourself when the story is used. But I
show $crooge having it built when he was a billionaire (easilly able to
afford it) in 1902 as the container for the next 50 years of his
money... he starts out with just 8 barrels of coins in the bottom, and
it takes him until about 1942 to fill it to the 99 ft. mark. If he had
all that money in 1952 and no bin to keep it in, where WAS it all? We
can discuss whether or not I handle my $crooge history properly... I'm
sure I don't always. But there's no use trying to tell me that I should
have stuck 100% to Barks' "facts" because that's plain impossible.
Cripes, this history may not end up being very entertaining, but I think
I deserve a Congressional Medal of Honor in the way I sweated blood to
fit ALL the facts about $crooge into one timeline in a logical manner
and made it work! But just wait and read it, and we'll talk about it
later.

Gladstone did print some posters early on, and they might have
been caught at it and told to pull them off the market. You'll notice
that they later rereleased some after having Barks SIGN them, after
which it sold for $80 -- that way their poster was not in competition
with the $3 posters that Disney had licensed the rights to do to another
company. But whatever the story was on those other posters, Gladstone
CANNOT do posters. People wanted poster versions of the cover to my
"Last Sled to Dawson" story, and Gladstone couldn't produce them at that
point either.

HARRY FLUKS: the comics arrived! Yes, thank you veddy much!!! I
don't recall, but we must have discussed which ones I already had, as
the ones you sent dovetailed perfectly into the issues I already had,
with no duplication. When I was in Norway last week, I found at the
Egmont office a copy of the newest issue #11 with part 1 of the "Life of
$" thing (part 3 was in #9 -- go figure). Watch out for future issues
for me, right?
Gosh, it looks like the DONALD DUCK EXTRA has virtually turned
into a Don Rosa publication! Nearly every issue of the past year and a
half has used one of my stories with a new cover for it. (I don't know
why this should please me so much! This is the sort of thing that makes
me slowly realize how much I and others are getting SCREWED by not
receiving the royalties we richly deserve for the use of our work!) But
anyway, I was glad to get these issues. (Maybe I'll use them in 20 or 30
years when I sue the Disney corporation for $30 billion.)
Anyway, Harry -- I can see now whether there are any issues that
I still need. Can you sometime check your stacks and see if I have work
in the issues that I don't have copies of??? The issues I don't have are
the weekly -- 1991: #3-5,7,8,10,12,13. 1992: #1,2,5-8,11,12. And
1993: #8-10. Any Rosa junk in those issues? (I guess not, or you would
have sent them, eh?)
So... how much do I owe you for all this????

About what James Williams asked concerning why Disney don't allow $crooge and
Mickey to appear together, I think I remember reading something a few years ago
about how Disney feels this would weaken each characters commercial pontential.
I dunno, but I think I saw sumpin' to that effect.

BUT, also from a donaldistic viewpoint, it is HIGHLY debateable at least wether
the (Barks) ducks live in the same town or even the same part of the USA as
Mickey and his friends. I wrote an article (alas! in Swedish) in NAFS(k)uriren
23 about this very matter, and I found that with the basic exception for the
Murry "Phantom Blot" stories, $crooge and Donald lives in Duckburg, Calisota,
probably on the westcoast, while Mickey's adressess over the years has been
"Hometown", "Mouseville", "Burbank" and "Mouseton". At least Hometwon and
Mouseville seems to have been on the eastcoast of USA. I can't go into any
detailed account of my argument here, but it seems to me that Mickey and the
Ducks would see fairly little of one another, at least on any regular basis.

Well - there's two kinds of answers for you... have yer pick!

Mattias Hallin