Keskustelujen arkisto

Dear Folks,

Tryg Helseth said,

"I was trying to locate yet another story where Gyro appears
without a hat; there was one I remember where Gyro was quite a bit
heavier and I don't think he had a hat. As I recall, it was a brief
appearance in a US or DD story--probably in DD. Anyone remember this
pre-Jenny Craig Gyro?"

Yep. Gyro may be a chicken, but in "Hobblin' Goblins" (DD 26,
and reprinted billions of times since then) he's fat as a pig. Why
this is, is completely beyond me, because he never looked like that
before or after that story (which, BTW, is his third appearance).

He wears his hat, BTW, for the entire story.

Now my quote: anyone who guessed that the phrase "It's a
CHICKEN, I tell ya! A GIANT CHICKEN!" came from Warners' recent
"Chicken Boo" cartoons, is right. This is a series about a giant
chicken living, apparently, in the regular human world. This chicken
has no human attributes most of the time, but wants desperately to be
a person, so each cartoon revolves around him putting on an outlandish
disguise (which IMHO doesn't stop him from looking like a chicken in
the least). He fools people, at first, then fails. Again and again
and again. I don't like when a good, original idea is rammed into the
ground until it stops being original...

Back to all-Disney stuff next time, I promise.
Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh.

Yours twuly,

David Gerstein

"I'm the Fuller Brush Man! I'm givin' g'way free semple!"
<David.A.Gerstein at Williams.edu>

On February 6, David Gerstein wrote:
> I talked to my friend Jerry Beck, an animation historian in
> Los Angeles, and at last found out the whole story about Zeke Wolf's
> Hasidic disguise in 1933's THE THREE LITTLE PIGS.
>
> Here's the reason for our confusion -- there were *three*
> versions of the film!
>
> [stuff deleted]
>
> [The first version] is one of the rarest cartoons of all time.
> Mr. Beck doesn't even know if the Disney Archives has a copy. He has
> seen a French version at the Museum of Modern Art.

Here's a little something I found in NAFS(k)uriren 17. I suspect
that this is where Mattias got his original info as well. The text
is from an article about a visit to the Disney Archives. It was
written by Olof Siverbo and has been translated from Swedish by me.

"Among many, many other things, [David R Smith] told us a clearly
interesting anecdote about the short film "Three Little Pigs" from
1933. In the version we know of this film there is a scene where
the wolf is disguised as a brush salesman. Dave told us that this
very sequence is reanimated as late as the fifties! In the original
version the wolf was disguised as a distinctly _Jewish_ salesman,
who also spoke silly Jewish language! The original version was
unfortunately not available for viewing at the Archives - all film
is archived elsewhere in the studio - but Dave had gone through the
trouble of finding the original sketches for the sequence, and
after having viewed these we were not at all surprised that this
part of the film had to be redone. According to Dave it should be
very easy to see that the sequence is made later once you know
about it."

This seems to indicate that the original version is indeed NOT at
the archives, but could be elsewhere.

/F

Hello All:

I was snooping around the lysator FTP site today and was surprised not to
see any listings of Disney's US comics by title. Is it that those indeces
are so commonplace that no one wants to see one again?

The reason I ask is that I have on my PC a couple of lists I typed in years
ago. The first list is derived from Don Rosa's index of Walt Disney's
Comics and Stories that appeared in his Information Center column of the
RBCC back in the '70s. It only includes the Donald Duck stories (with
Rosa's descriptions for untitled stories) but has cross-references
to where they were reprinted in US publications. I kept thre reprint
references up to date up thorugh the Whitman "sampler" years, but never
started it back up again when Gladstone came along. (But then, there
already is a spiffy Gladstone index at the FTP site!)

The second index I have is of Uncle Scrooge (1-83) It lists the contents
of each comic and where those stories were reprinted in the States. As
with the WDC&S, the cross-references here only go up through the Whitman
years. If there is any interest in these, I'd be happy to upload them to
the FTP site (providing that someone tells me how...)

Tryg Helseth <trygve at maroon.tc.umn.edu> Minneapolis, MN, USA
or <tryg.helseth at tstation.mn.org>

"I wish they all could be Calisota Ducks!" -The Beach Drakes

Greetings all,

Well, I've been chugging along here on the information superhighway for
three or four months now and "lurking" in this group almost as long.
I've passed everybody's comments about the Disney corporation on to
Uncle Eisner and now I'm here to basically say "Hi."

First, last semester in animation history class, I did a paper on
Carl Barks, Uncle Scrooge, and Ducktales. This was, of course, before
the real McDuck/imposter McDuck discussions. Anyway, one of the things
that I found in my "research" was that Barks didn't like working in the
Disney animation studios. So, comics were perfect work for him and now
people like us read and reread his stories. Now I always thought he was
a nice, old guy, so why all the negativity from him (as I sense it from
this list)?

Second, as another Don worshipper (hi Don!) might I just say you can
ramble all you want. I am proud to admit that I paid twelve bucks for
a copy of "Son of the Sun." It was only one of three or five issues
I needed to have Gladstone's entire first run.
I love the detail in your art. I know your covers from twenty feet away
and your pages from ten. It's distinctive and makes use of all its space.

I don't have any specific story comments, as I don't have all that much
duck stuff here with me at the moment and I don't know what's going on
at the news stands here that I usually pick my comics up at. They seem
to have stopped carrying the Disney comics or lost all their issues,
cause they haven't had any for quite awhile. I'll have to pick them up
at home, because I am very much looking forward to the Lo$.

Finally, though I haven't been posting long enough to have earned the right
to post so long a message, I thought you all might find it interesting
that during the beginning of Gladstone's run I sent them a bunch of
Duck one pagers a couple of times. I got back "not interested in
one pagers," so I sent plot summaries for a couple of longer stories.
Then Disney took over and some of my stuff got sent back to me from Gladstone
saying "try Bob Foster." I did and he sent me his "writer's guidelines,"
and I sent stuff back and this is where I forget what happened next.
I know I got an internship at MAD magazine (I've been thisclose to a sale
since) but I was wondering what the situation would be for occasional new
stories from unknowns like myself.
David, I imagine we're about the same age, any comment?

Okay, that's enough.
Cheerio and fare thee well...

BUTCH

David:
> Tryg commented that he had a list of U$ 1-83 with reprint
> status of everything through Whitman. If he sends it to me, I can add
> what I remember offhand of post-Whitman reprints, then toss it on to
> Per. Same for WDC&S, although what I'd really like the most is a copy
> of Don's *whole* index complete with the pre-Barks issues.

But, as Tryg said, we already HAVE all the post-Whitman (meaning Gladstone/
Disney/Gladstone) information! I guess we DO have to think about making
one big 'source' index with several indexes derived from it.

And yes Tryg, please send those lists to Per, or David, or me!

David again:
> Someone noted that the recent foreign reprint of Gottfredson's
> "An Education for Thursday" has raised protest. I am not surprised.
> The story has its good moments, but only if you don't imagine Thursday
> to be like ANY real human being. No one looks or acts like that.

What I remember from the version I read (Paul Murry's remake, and I read
it a long time ago) Thursday acts like a young child. So maybe the
story could be reprinted when explicitly stating that Thursday is about
3 years old?
(I hope to see the Gottfredson version one day...)

--Harry.

Harry PTT Research ()_() Dutch Disney comics freak
Fluks Leidschendam (_) H.W.Fluks at research.ptt.nl

"Yeah... I've _heard_ of coral barques!"

On 14 Feb 1994, Don Rosa wrote:
> Your comments combined with others in that Digest indicate a
> fact I've learned in the last 7 years of doing these Duck comics -- no
> matter what story I do, it will be some people's favorite, some people's
> least favorite, with everyone else somewhere in between. Already I've
> heard comments that the Lo$ #1 is one of my very best stories, as well
> as people who think it was not much of a story, just a string of facts.
> Myself, I agree sorta with that latter view, while at the same time I
> feel that it was EXACTLY what I was trying to do; given the list of
> facts I needed to cover in that chapter, and the progress I needed to
> make in $crooge's life and character, I'm QUITE pleased with that
> chapter, which is rare for me in regards to most of my own work. I will
> apologise to you and any others who didn't think that was much of a
> story... I'm afraid that you'll finf the REST of this series as being
> similar -- I have a list of facts to deal with, a specific era in
> $crooge's life and development to cover, and usually ONLY 15 PAGES to do
> it in. I have always thought that this whole series will only read well
> when it's printed in ONE volume. More on that in a sec.

Don, for what it's worth, I usually have the same reaction to Neil
Gaiman's Sandman. It isn't until I read the entire story arc in one
sitting that I understand all the intricacies of the story. Same goes for
Frank Miller's Sin City, which reads much better as a book and not as a
serial.

Also, I read the third part in German three months ago, and I enjoyed it
immensely, even though I had to translate the text. I rarely laugh out
loud when reading humourous stories, but I did when I saw the "rodeo" at
the end of part three.

Just remember, Don, that what you do is excellent work, and is at least in
the top 25% of what is being published in comic books today.

> I wonder if that old Pogo baby was in the back of my head when I
> gave Hortense her "glxblt". If it's the same gurgle, that would be
> interesting.

Either it's from "Pogo", or it's from MAD Magazine. Somewhere in
the back of my brain, I have this picture of a drooling child saying that.
May be Wally Wood, maybe Will Elder or Harvey Kurtzman. Could even be
the MAD comicbook. Of course, if we see any avocado plants or dirigibles
in future parts, then we'll know for certain.

I prefer chaotic, non-linear stories, as it prevents a lot of
mistakes from happening. A good example of this is the Marvel Comics
universe. It is now thirty years old in "real time", but the characters
have only aged about ten years. This causes problems with characters
which experienced the Vietnam War, disco, campus protests, etc.
Superman was once non-linear (remember Superbaby and Superboy?), but fifty
years of multicolored kryptonite, Superanimals, and Lois trying to
discover Kal-El's identity created a lot of baggage. Currently, the
Superman editorial staff is doing an excellent job of organizing the
various stories. (Take a look at the cover. Ever wonder what those
triangles are for? They tell the reader what order to read the issues.)
However, I think organizing a non-linear character like Uncle
Scrooge could lead to trouble. Why? Because I think that others will
try to shoehorn stories into the timeline, or use facts and forget others
so that mistakes are made, and when someone tries to organize it all,
well, it makes it very difficult.
Don, you already had this problem (the magic hourglass), and
perhaps others will not try to organize the Ducks like you have.
Furthermore, I hope that fans don't get to involved with setting up
genealogies and histories, as it tends to dilute the fun and excitement of
reading.
And no, I don't think that TLaTo$M is a bad thing. Don did a lot
of research and hard work, and I am certain that it will be appreciated by
most of the readers.

Torsten Adair torsten at cwis.unomaha.edu Omaha, NE, USA (via NZ)

Torsten, on the subject of Lo$:
> Also, I read the third part in German three months ago, and I enjoyed it
> immensely, even though I had to translate the text. I rarely laugh out
> loud when reading humourous stories, but I did when I saw the "rodeo" at
> the end of part three.

That's very interesting, and I guess it just proves what Don wrote in a
previous post. Because of those parts of Lo$ that I've read so far, part
three has been my LEAST favourite. And my least favourite sequence of
part three was that very "rodeo". I guess I found it too silly or
whatever.
>
> Just remember, Don, that what you do is excellent work, and is at least in
> the top 25% of what is being published in comic books today.
>
On that, however, I have to agree. I would actually say top 10%, without
doubt.

> Furthermore, I hope that fans don't get to involved with setting up
> genealogies and histories, as it tends to dilute the fun and excitement of
> reading.

In an article by Per Sjoblom in an old NAFS(k)uriren, this is called
"the knowledge paradox". It says that the more you like a certain comic,
the more you will want to know about the creator, the history behind it
and things like those Torsten lists above. But that knowledge will in
turn lead to a loss of the original magic of reading the comic. I tend
to agree with this, but I still can't help trying to get that info all
the same.

> And no, I don't think that TLaTo$M is a bad thing. Don did a lot
> of research and hard work, and I am certain that it will be appreciated by
> most of the readers.

For me, emotions have been mixed so far. I won't make up my mind as to
what I think about it until I've read it all.

/F