Keskustelujen arkisto

Does anybody know of a copy of Carl Barks and the Art of the Comic Book
by Michael Barrier that's for sale?

Anybody have any opinions about the book itself? Would you recommend it?
___________________________________________________________________
Mark Mayerson Side Effects Software Inc.,
Internet: mayerson at sidefx.com Toronto, Ontario, Canada
(416) 366-4607

No one has a copy of the new CARL BARKS & CO. #20 that I asked
about a few digests ago???

Well, it has what appear to be nice interviews with Daan Jippes
and Marco Rota and Giorgio Cavazzano. All in Danish (i.e. gibberish!).
This is very frustrating for people like me who live in a country where
there is very little to NO attention paid to people who do Disney
comics, so I wish I could read all this!!!

I'm most curious about certain passages in Jippes interview
where he's talking about Barks or Gladstone comics... and I'm curious
about his current relationship to both. Maybe I'll try to type out some
of the passages of gibberish and someone here will translate??? Let me
try a paragraph and see how difficult it is for me to type or someone to
read back. I know I'll be entering into the middle of a train of thought
here, more than likely...

"Geoff Blum ringede til mig forleden. Han spurgte om en vis
Gronspaette-side jeg havde lavet stadig var til salg. Mit svar var
naturligvis ja. Hvad Barks angar, sa lader det til, at han er ved at ga
tilbage til sit staffeli. Denne gang arbejder ham direkte for Disney &
Co.
Han har omsider brudt forbindelsen med Bruce Hamilton. Han har
altid vaeret skeptisk over for dette Prescott-foretagende. Det var altid
Gare der udgjorde en buffer mellem dem, men Barks blev jo enkemand her i
foraret. Den gamle stoder selv har forresten skrevet et 10-siders
manuskript til en Van Horn-serie pa det seneste, fortalte Geoff mig. Det
aergede Don Rosa gevaldigt, savidt jeg forstod. Hvordan kunne den
officielle Barks-arving pa denne made sadan bare blive forbigaet?!"

Try that much and maybe I'll type another paragraph (something
about Jippes current contact with Barks).

Don:
> No one has a copy of the new CARL BARKS & CO. #20 that I asked
> about a few digests ago???

Now that you mention the contents, I remember that Per posted a message a while
ago: he has a copy of that issue.

> I'm most curious about certain passages in Jippes interview
> where he's talking about Barks or Gladstone comics... and I'm curious
> about his current relationship to both. Maybe I'll try to type out some
> of the passages of gibberish and someone here will translate???

Thank you for typing this in! But you forgot the little circles on the a's
and the strokes through the o's. Obviously, I can't translate the text now...
8-)
Seriously, I can read a little Danish, but not enough to give an accurate
translation. I'm sure someone else can.
I'll try one piece:

> Den gamle stoder selv har forresten skrevet et 10-siders
> manuskript til en Van Horn-serie pa det seneste, fortalte Geoff mig. Det
> aergede Don Rosa gevaldigt, savidt jeg forstod.

"Geoff told me the old [Barks] himself has written a 10-page script for a
Van Horn comic [..]. I understand Don Rosa was very annoyed about this."

> Try that much and maybe I'll type another paragraph (something
> about Jippes current contact with Barks).

That'll be very interesting (me being the Jippes fan here 8-).

--Harry.

Hi everybody reading the news in this hectic pre-Christmas morning!

To Don:

> And I am very curious as to what these 1937 & '39 Donald
>adventures are like! So Barks wasn't the first to do Duck adventure
>tales -- they were being done 10 years earlier? And I can't imagine what
>sort of personality Donald might have in these 30's adventures since I
>don't percieve Donald as HAVING a personality until Barks had dealt with
>him for 5 or 10 years. Or does he just act like a cantankerous
>adolescent which is all he was prior to Barks?

In Italy, they included a few long stories in the socalled Giant Mondadori
books (those that rearranged the Barksian art to 5 or 6 panels high and 3
panels wide) in 1984 or thereabout that was produced before 1940 in Italy.
These books were translated all over Europe, and also in Norway, many more
than those that were printed in USA at Abbeville Press. A rather crude
Donald and Goofy thing, acting with personality a la Gottfredson late 30s.
I have forgotten if Mickey was in the stories, I sold the book quickly. (I
think the Italian stories generally horrible, and the stories that
Gladstone printed might be the best Italian stories, but they never meant
anything to me.)

To Don and Mattias:

>seems to me to be, at the same time original AND aware of tradition, the result
>of conscious and thoroughly thought through efforts with a very personal
>"Rosaesque" feel to it. Even if it's only intended as ephemereal escapist
>entertainment.

Don Rosa may say and utter and exclaim exactly what he wants to say about
"escapist", "entertainment only", etc. One should never trust an artists
opinions on his own work. We are tired (:-)) of hearing from his own mouth
that he cant draw and all that bosh, so:

Don, please stop being silly. To me, your remarks that you cant draw and
never intended to seem to me like an excuse, to fend off people before they
start doing their silly remarks about your style and crudeness, to
_disclaim_ that you have ambitions and so on. It is _not_ very interesting
to hear that you say again and again that you cant draw, certainly you can!
Or what is the skill of drawing? The way you tell stories in pictures, you
have balance, the story reads very well, the ideas are flowing and
elegantly incorporated in the tale so that the dynamics are extremely good,
you constantly shift viewpoint, perspective, zoom in and out, vary
character in all the main persons, use a lot more poses in both face and
body to express character and attitude, use details cleverly, pace the
stories incredibly well, tell a lot of different types of stories, utilize
counterpoint between dialogue/captions and pictures, make use of puns both
in words and pictures, etc. etc. Aint this the art of drawing? I have a
note at home I made for a lecture I made at the students union here in
Trondheim in November, pity I dont have it here.

Drawing is not just the thickness of the pen and the roundness of the curves!

And if you think that your work is not literature, that is your concern,
not ours. It _is_ literature, even good literature, regardless of how silly
you think it is to say so. It is not up to you to decide. You cant choose
to write just entertainment and keep it with that. If you have that extra
quality inside you, you will make literature in spite of your efforts not
to. It will show in all your work - as it really does. I could of course
give a detailed study but that is outside the scope of this early morning
letter before diving into my work!

A serious advice to you: Never disclaim anything. Dont say: It is just
entertainment. Say nothing. Dont say: I know I cant draw well. Say nothing.
Dont say: I know it is not literature. Say nothing. Let people say what
they want to say and keep your integrity. Even if you stopped writing at
this moment yoy have made stories that will live forever. And isnt what
live forever the real literature? Many of your stories rank in the highest
class along with the best Barks stories. I gather there is at least a few
hundred thousand people in Europe and maybe a few thousands in the USA that
buy the Disney comics mainly because of your stories, isnt that something
compared with the lousy authors that cant sell the 2000 printed copies of
serious literature they pour out every other year.

Vicar and Branca and all those other silly stories Egmont produces, they
are all escapist entertainment and consequently junk. I get sick when I
browse through the weekly Donald Duck that comes in the post for free (yes,
I have to disclaim that I _buy_ the Donald Duck comic book, what a terrible
thought), sometimes it is so bad I can throw up, it is so helplessly
copying what has been done thousands of times before. I mused over one
story the other day by Vicar, the various ideas were either stretched or
unbelievable in view of the rest of the story, the story was badly paced,
no dynamics, only unoriginal ideas, silly no-content dialogue, the nature
laws were followed in one panel and broken in the next, and this was
because I wanted to put words upon what phenomena that made me sick of it.

On the other hand, your stories are like oases in the desert (if I choose
to go into the desert at all). I read through all your stories in Norwegian
for the (4 oldest) kids now, and yesterday evening we read the first part
of Last Sled to Dawson (broken into parts in Norway). I will always
remember how my kids three years ago laughed as they approached me with the
new Donald comic with your story in, they laughed endlessly about Scrooge
playing in the money bin with a kiddie shovel and bucket. And last evening,
I had to agree to read one more part because it was so exciting after the
first part, they couldnt really go to bed yet. And that in spite of them
being able to read it for themselves many times; all my Duck comics are
available for my kids, I have teached them to treat comics properly. And of
course, I have to explain this and that for them, so it is really a
marvellous evening being able to read your comics for them, they become so
engaged in your comics, even more than in lots of Barkses stories, the only
other ones that are worth reading aloud. Sometimes the translation is a bit
silly so I have to tell the children from memory what there ought to be.
(Cant you ask those editors in Norway to pay me for revising their
translations before it goes into print, sometimes they are incredible.)
Like translating the poet Robert Frosts name into a worse false Norwegian
one even when Robert Frosts name is a good Norwegian pun also in that
context, the same meaning as in English.

Keep up the good work, and dont use time on disclaiming. I would not like a
polished Don Rosa story, and not one that consciously tried to be just
entertainment. Let the ideas flow and stick to your ideals of high quality.
And please let us the readers choose the world literature for the future.

To Mark:

>Does anybody know of a copy of Carl Barks and the Art of the Comic Book
>by Michael Barrier that's for sale?

Try John Nichols, Bear Mountain Enterprises. P. O. Box 616, Victoria, VA
23974, USA. Not long ago, he got a large set of the softcover edition.

>Anybody have any opinions about the book itself? Would you recommend it?

Recommended because it is the only book that even attempts to cover all of
Barks. In English, as far as I know there are only two books, and the other
is the small booklet accompanying the figurine production.

The biographical section is at its best sketchy but it is at least
something on the pre-Disney time and the life in the studio, then there is
something on the 40s which quickly develops into a sort of essay on the
stories itself (a shallow essay, no depth, just a fan), and after the
middle 50s there is nothing except for a few photographs. I was _so_
disappointed myself when I read it, I couldnt understand how a decent
fellow could turn out such a poor production and how a publisher could
allow it. The bibliographical part, however, is indeed excellent and it
fills half the book. I have used it thoroughly all these years.

It is a shame that noone has even attempted to write a serious book on
Barks, but in the USA noone cares and in Europe few people seem to care and
the Disney publishers are afraid of anything that can give any impression
that Donald Duck was much better in the 40s and 50s. When the editor of
Norwegian DD&Co tells me that he thinks some Vicar stories just as good as
Barks, and afterwards prints some horrible Vicar stories presented as
classics, I choose to think that there is absolutely no use in trying to
get those people in charge of the legacy of Barks to understand what it
really is that they have between their hands!

BTW, books on Barks (apart from general translation Indexes) can be found
in Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch and Italian, in case you didnt know.

Geir Hasnes

Geir:

that semiquote about "ephemereal..." and so on was meant to be ironic; I
rather agree with your vivid and vehement views on the status of Don's ducks,
as I think should be clear from what I wrote in the rest of that posting. Just
wanted to make that clear.

All my best

Mattias

Dear Folks,

Geir Hasnes said:

"Vicar and Branca and all those other silly stories Egmont produces, they
are all escapist entertainment and consequently junk. I get sick when I
browse through the weekly Donald Duck that comes in the post for free (yes,
I have to disclaim that I _buy_ the Donald Duck comic book, what a terrible
thought), sometimes it is so bad I can throw up, it is so helplessly
copying what has been done thousands of times before. I mused over one
story the other day by Vicar, the various ideas were either stretched or
unbelievable in view of the rest of the story, the story was badly paced,
no dynamics, only unoriginal ideas, silly no-content dialogue, the nature
laws were followed in one panel and broken in the next..."

Geir, please don't attack the artists for the faults of the
writers! Vicar and Branca only very seldom, if ever, write the
stories they draw. I think the writers' qualities vary wildly. Some
really are extremely bad, just as you said. In fact, I will agree
with you that a majority of them are bad. BUT...

There are some good stories out there! They are hard to find,
but if you read through a year of the Egmont DD, bad as many of the
stories are, there are some good ones.

I find that Barks' work starts going downhill around 1954. It
starts going REALLY downhill around 1958. I'd say that 1958 is when
the Scrooge stories begin losing their special quality; I think that
the ten-pagers do that in '54. Oh, of course there are some great
ones from after those dates! But I'm just implying that only for a
brief time did Barks do stories which could be considered PERFECT.

When it comes to stories like the midget racecar story (WDC&S
166), the story about Donald as a carnival con-artist ("Once Upon a
Carnival", I forget the name), the story of Donald and the kids trying
to scare each other with huge balloons ("Balloonatics"), etc. I find
that I actually *prefer* some good Egmont stories.

Barks only began doing short stories with the Beagles and
Magica trying assaults on the money bin toward the end of his career.
I find that some Branca-drawn stories start from there and IMPROVE.
For example, I really enjoyed "The Sunken Chest" (US 212), "The Robot
Raiders of Magica de Spell" (US 210), "An Honest Mistake" (US 220),
"Con Job for a Snob" (US 240), "Better Safe than Sorry" (US 264), etc.
There are some very good Danish stories involving the relationship
between Scrooge and Donald, with real pent-up anxiety and fury in them
-- "My Way" (US 265) is one, though the translation is uninspired
there, and my own upcoming dialog "His Master's Voice" is another.

Just follow my rule, Geir: for every ONE good Danish story,
there are automatically five BAD ones. And there are very few good
Danish stories that hit the level of a "classic" -- I'd say that my
example of one would be "The Quest for the Curious Constable" in
Gladstone Album 14. I don't think I can even hit on FIVE Danish
stories that strike me as being up to "prime Barks" quality, but
that's one of them.

Reading the Egmont-produced DD is a blueprint for
disappointment, Geir... but when you read EVERY story in search of the
best ones to dialog, you find good ones. (Not that Gladstone and
Disney always have... the earlier stories Disney ran, and many of
those Gladstone is running now, are frankly JUST like the types of
things you describe.)

As for the Italian stuff, I think you're making a BIG MISTAKE
by lumping it all together as garbage... you mention that Gladstone
and Disney only have printed the very few good things from Italy out
of a slime pit of the bad, but actually there are many others well
worth reprinting -- they're just too damned LONG to print often,
because they chew up space which American Disney comics don't have.

Perhaps the Donald/Goofy story you saw in a Mondadori big
white book is the same "DD Necromancer" story I may be working on
sooner or later. Bits of the art are indeed crude, but those parts
appear to be RE-INKED a la the Dutch reinks of Barks stories; since
these stories originally appeared as serials, some parts may now be
missing. I will be extensively re-working that story so that I can
avoid using all the re-inked stuff and make the thing overall a
tighter piece. But I think that for what it's trying to do -- bring
the Taliaferro Donald of the late '30s into a full story --
"Necromancer" does a fair job.

"Mistero di Marte" is better, though... this one is JUST
Donald, no other Gottfredson characters whatsoever. Donald is also a
much more deeply defined character. I think that this story is the
one where the comic book Donald first gets some of his traits that he
didn't have on the screen -- for example, bravery and thoughtfulness.

Anyway, there's my two cents. What do you think of Dutch
stories? As bad as Danish stories?

Sincerely,

David Gerstein

"When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it, nephew!"
<David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu>

Don:

There's been some back-bitin' goin' on... What Ah wants t'know is WHO? Ah
mean: WHO bites you on your back? /Adapted from "Moan You Moaners", Bessie
Smith ca 1929/.

But seriously: huccome there seems to be more than just a little malicious
slander circulating about you among what is (or should be) the higher echelons
of duck-production & -publishing? That German article, the Jippes interview,
the Comics Buyers Guide... what else has been on our agenda this fall? Is this
some sort of active campaign against you? For any particular reason(s)? Or
don't you know? Or don't you care to discuss it? (I can understand that, if
that it is). As usual, I don't give a hoot what might have killed the cat; but
give my unending curiosity full vent. If you don't wanna discuss this - please
just say so, and the subject'll be deader'n one of those famous coffin-nails!

Anyway: have a nice week-end, Don an' all; meself I'm out of here right...

...now!

Mattias