Keskustelujen arkisto

DAVID:
Where did you get the info that Disney-Disney's all-time
best-seller was U$ #261-262? I'd never been given a clue about that
being the case. Maybe that's understandable since Disney is about the
only American company that doesn't offer royalties to the "creators",
and even though they aren't obligated to do so, particularly as regards
material they were merely reprinting from Europe, I'm sure they see the
safety in not letting the "creators" involved KNOW that theirs were the
best-selling issues, just to avoid potential demands. All I ever
demanded was my art back... and if those issues sold well, that might
explain why they actually decided to give in to that demand. I wanted
to think that it was because somebody there finally realized that it
was simply the RIGHT thing to do.
You actually know sales figures on individual issues?
I hope John C. will be nice enough to tell me the sales figures
on U$ #285.

Dear Don,

I'm sending this letter to the whole group because I think
others may be interested in your response.

In the wdc index, made originally from your RBCC listings,
which we now have on ftp access, you summarize that one story involves
a "captive baby coyote," then comment, "Sorry, Charlie."

Why have you quoted the advertising figure, Charlie the Tuna,
here? Or is this a reference to the old Our Gang Comics feature "Wuff
the Prairie Dog," which featured a character called Charlie Coyote? I
always have found those Wuff stories pretty darn good in fact. Vivie
Risto -- who also did Li'l Bad Wolf and Bucky Bug every once in a long
while -- has a super style which he also got to show off in the LOONEY
TUNES comics ("Henery Hawk", as well as "Elmer Fudd" prior to 1950).

Auf wiedersehen, folks.

David Gerstein

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

DAVID:

you wrote:
> Fer gosh sakes! I may not shout about it all the time, but
>*I* am, no-holds-barred, Mickey Mouse's greatest fan. Well, okay, the
>greatest fan of _Gottfredson's_ Mickey. And the Mouse of the earlier
>cartoons.
>
If anyone ever deserved that title, it would be Horst Schroeder of
Stockholm. Even though he is angry with everyone by default he has done
most to save all Gottfredsons strips from being kept safely in the vaults
of Disney.

The reason he is so harsh is that he has fought alone for so many years
against Disney and all other mighty forces within the capitalist empire of
comics, including the political forces within Sweden, etc. He was the first
to embark on that Disney-indexing journey that Alberto Becattini was able
to finish. If there is one person who shouldnt be forgotten within
Disneydom it is him. I even think he should be named Barkses biggest fan
also, because of his struggle with Barks Portfolio, also against the will
of the mighty kingdom of Disney capitalists, and his struggle to have the
stories reprinted, uncensored, many years ago.

FREDRIK:

you wrote:
>About the brand of Donald's car; a couple of years ago it was
>concluded by one Swede and a group of Norwegians (of which I
>believe Geir was a member?) independently of each other came
>to the conclusion that Donald's car is an A-Ford Roadster.
>Recently, a friend of mine came up with some new information
>on the subject. In the January-February issue of "Classic
>Motor Magasin" (a Swedish magazine about old cars) there is
>an article about old Austins. It begins with a full-page...

Well, I never concluded this myself because I dont know that much about
cars. But the Norwegian American-Car people and the Swedish Donaldists made
a good job. I just picked all the illustrations. And we also found that a
Chevrolet model with Jumbo tires from that period had a terrible likeness
to Donalds car.

TO ALL:

If you wonder where I have been the last few months, I have simply been
reading through ALL the Norwegian Donald Duck comic books, and even made
some notes about them. For many reasons, really, but also so that I could
have something to say about the various artists and writers in future
discussions. Since I have sometimes been accused of being too harsh with
the non-Barks, non-Rosa stories.

It is more than 4000 Duck stories alone, not to mention the rest of it.

The conclusions are too many to present here just now, so I will take them
as the themes appear on the digest.

Carl Barks is superior, even more superior to the other writers than I had
believed before, except for Don Rosa.

Don Rosa is superior to all other contemporary writers, even William van
Horn and Daan Jippes. However, Don, your Olympics story was uninspired.

William van Horn is shallow and one-dimensional. He is completely
predictable and his stories follow the same patterns always. But I laugh at
some of his stories, yes.

Daan Jippes have done some good work, and also Fred Milton. However, there
is a deep misunderstanding in Miltons view on the Ducks personality.

I am sick and tired of Magica and the quest for the holy dime.

I am sick and tired of Donalds lack of luck.

I am sick and tired of the jealousy stories of Donald, Daisy and Gladstone.

I am sick and tired of the traditional story patterns that are used again
and again.

I have laughed at some of Vicars stories and even more at some of Brancas
stories. I am however sick and tired of their mindless copying of poses, of
cars, of houses, of landscapes, of all kinds of story patterns or details
taken from Barks, in short their almost total non-originality. Milton and
Jippes, and also van Horn, at least TRY to be original. I am so tired of
their copying parts of Barkses stories and make their own version (much
worse) of them.

The last few years the stories have become incredibly much more wordy than
before. Not that I dont like it when it is significant, like with Don Rosa,
but not at all in those Vicar and Branca stories.

It is obvious that not only within Don Rosa, but also within the other
artists, that the Ducks live in the 50s. The Duck Tales tales are an
exception, but they are nevertheless remakes of the usual patterns.

The stories besides Barks were terrible in the 60s, even more terrible in
the 70s, much better in the 80s and even better in the 90s. With this I
mean the ratio of good to bad. The Strobl and Bradbury stories of the 60s
and 70s make me ashamed, but they delivered good stories in the 50s and
very early 60s.

Donald Duck as a comic book in Norway is better than ever after the great
decline in 1962 / 63. The production is quite good. However, the problem is
shallowness. You can see it especially when the writers become ambitious,
then they fail much more.

And if you ask me why I read it, well, I am a Barks fanatic and a Rosa
fanatic. And now and then other stories read well. In fact, I love the
Beagle Boys stories of Egmont, they are intelligent although the follow the
usual patterns, so there are occasionally new twists that make me laugh.

I admit that Barks in the 60s declined. However, that was more by
inspiration than ability, for occasionally, his stories from the 60s rise
to heights far above even his own average. The structure of his stories is
much more dynamic and with much more twists than any Egmont story, even in
his later years, and he has a certain feeling for musicality in his mind
that makes him able to vary the dynamics in his stories like advanced
musical compositional structures.

Thats all folks. BTW, I enjoy Tom and Jerry more and more, but I never
enjoyed the kind of humour of Daffy Duck and his likes. Roger Rabbit, well,
saw him on video and laughed, but a little too nervous for me. I dont laugh
at people throwing cakes in faces either.

Geir Hasnes

Dear Folks,

Geir talked about various things, and I'll take on a few of
them. Lessee here...

"William van Horn is shallow and one-dimensional. He is
completely predictable and his stories follow the same patterns
always. But I laugh at some of his stories, yes."

In some stories Van Horn holds a hatred for the Ducks as human
beings. No, I don't mean for doing Duck stories, which he obviously
loves, but in these tales the captions have bitter sarcasm directed
towards the Ducks, some of it verbal, and a lot of it visual. The
last panel of "Just a Humble Bumbling Duck" (DDAD 13, 1991) was one of
the bleakest panels I have ever seen in a Duck story. Unlike Barks,
who seemed to sympathize with Donald despite his general 1949-1951
cynicism, Van Horn likes to make his Donald extremely sympathetic,
then kick him when he's down.

This has improved lately. Donald has become more of a
blowhard (as he was prior to 1990 -- I actually think that the trend I
described above peaked in 1991), making what happens to him funnier.
I thought "The Black Moon," for instance, was very well done.

"Daan Jippes has done some good work, and also Fred Milton.
However, there is a deep misunderstanding in Miltons view on the
Ducks personality."

Gee! In what stories? One of my personal favorites, "Sauce
for the Duck," is a Fred Milton story, and he continues to have, for
me, a remarkably high batting average. In fact I have done the
American script for "The Clock Watcher," a Milton story to appear in
the United States soon.

"I am sick and tired of Magica and the quest for the holy
dime. I am sick and tired of Donalds lack of luck. I am sick and
tired of the jealousy stories of Donald, Daisy and Gladstone."

Gee again! Barks used these concepts a LOT. So why can't
other artists use them a lot, too?

I actually feel that some of the best Magica stories are not
by Barks. For example: "The Robot Raiders of Magica De Spell" (US
210, 1986), "The Sunken Chest" (US 212, 1986), "A Witch in Crime"
(some US in 1988, I'm not sure which)... I almost think, Geir, that
you feel other writers and artists copy Barks simply by using plot
devices -- such as the three mentioned above -- that Barks did. When
incidents like Magica's dime-hunger occur frequently in non-Barks
stories, I find that not derivative -- simply an attempt to recreate
Barks' universe by showing that things that happened there go on in
the Duckburg of others.

I have mentioned my upcoming original story "Two in One,"
which is to me something I'm very proud of. Do I need to worry, Geir,
that you will find me unoriginal simply for using the concept of
Magica going after the dime? Did you find Rosa's superb "On a Silver
Platter" unoriginal in this same way? I guarantee that you've never
seen a Magica story quite like "Two in One"...

BY THE WAY... something NO other writer has taken up is the
idea that Magica not only wants the dime, but other mythical magical
objects, and that she can compete with Scrooge for *them!* How about
"Isle of Golden Geese," where she wants the golden eggs, or "Rug
Riders in the Sky"? I think that doing more stories like *that* with
Magica is a good idea, and I may do some of them.

"I have laughed at some of Vicars stories and even more at
some of Branca's stories. I am however sick and tired of their
mindless copying of poses, of cars, of houses, of landscapes..."

I find that Vicar does a lot of copying, and Branca is more
original. I generally prefer Vicar to Branca up to about the stories
made in 1989, when Vicar shows a marked improvement. Maybe he sacked
some of his inkers (he works with some assistants in a sort of studio,
pencilling everything himself but having others ink it).

(continued from above) "...of all kinds of story patterns or
details taken from Barks, in short their almost total
non-originality."

Whoa there! Vicar and Branca almost NEVER write their own
scripts. It's always drawing someone else's thing. They've gotten a
lot of new writers in the late 1980s, undoubtedly the cause of the
improvements you have mentioned in their work.

"The stories besides Barks were terrible in the 60s, even
more terrible in the 70s, much better in the 80s..."

I assume you're talking about foreign stories now. The
American stories of Whitman in the 1980s were the worst crap you can
ever imagine...

"... and even better in the 90s. With this I mean the ratio
of good to bad. The Strobl and Bradbury stories of the 60s and 70s
make me ashamed, but they delivered good stories in the 50s and very
early 60s."

Not in my opinion. What bothers me the most is that the
Strobl and Bradbury stories, notably usually written by someone other
than Strobl and Bradbury, who often only did the art, don't try for
any type of realism. The earlier ones -- for example, the ones in
WDC&S during 1950 -- strike me just as bad as the later ones. Some
have good ideas now and then -- I think back to "Donald Duck in
Panama," by Bradbury, with a very stingy Scrooge -- but for every good
idea, there's a bad one. And these two are usually just as bad with
Mickey, IMHO, although they do a good Goofy. In fact, I'd go as far
as to say that all of Western Publishing's creators made the big
mistake of relying on Goofy, not Mickey, to carry their "Mickey"
stories. Only Gottfredson and Scarpa make Mickey the central
figure.

There I go again, getting started on Mickey. Jeez... I
maintain that I am Gottfredson's biggest fan. I simply do not have
the facilities to try to do what Horst has done (presumably with the
Sunday pages) in whatever country it would be legal to do it in.
Maybe some day I can convince Disney to let the strips appear in a
library set, and the only way to do that is to talk to Jeff Katzenberg
himself via one of the animation historians I know...

That's all for now.

David Gerstein

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

From: Don Rosa <72260.2635 at CompuServe.COM>:
> Yes, I saw where U$ #285 supposedly sold out, but that tells me
>nothing of how many issues that was, particularly in the light of the ad
>saying that orders for the issue were not more than normal.

OK, Don, how come you *refuse* to acknowledge that you are very
talented and that there are a lot of people who like and follow your
work? I know of many people who speak of "Don Rosa", "Will Eisner",
"Dave Sim", "Scott McCloud", and "Neil Gaiman" as the only people who
currently make comics that are worth reading.

David has already told us that the Don Rosa Disney's were the top
sellers.

You state above that Gladstone's ad claims "orders for the issue were
not more than normal." THIS IS NOT WHAT IT SAYS - You are only
reading *part* of the text!

The ad states that some retailers didn't increase their orders for
Uncle Scrooge *but that others did*! So the total number of U$ #285s
ordered by retailers was *above average* for that title. In addition
to the increased orders, the issue *sold out!* What other Uncle
Scrooge issue has *ever* sold out!? This means that there were
many people who wanted copies but couldn't find them, and that there
were even more people who would have purchased the issue had they seen
it or known about it. Here in Boston and Cambridge, *every* comic book
store sold out of U$ 285 *in one day* and people were asking for it
over the next *month*!

> And I also saw the tag-line "The New King of Ducks". That's just
>Bruce Hamilton using me as a club against Barks, which will only cause
>him to hate me more than ever, if possible.

Perhaps, but it's ALSO TRUE!

>I called them up instantly
>and asked that they not use that phrase. Fans will get sore about that
>phrase, but they'll get sore at ME, not Bruce.

Oh, so? Don, it's *fans that think this*!! Do you think that Bruce
pulled the sentiment out of thin air??

Geir wrote:
> Daan Jippes has done some good work, and also Fred Milton.
> However, there is a deep misunderstanding in Miltons view on the
> Ducks personality.

David replied:
> Gee! In what stories?

And I could add the question: in what way is the view misunderstood?

David:
> In fact I have done the American script for "The Clock Watcher," a
> Milton story to appear in the United States soon.

Personally I don't find this a very good story. The early Milton/Jippes
stories were much better. And there are still two very good stories
that have not been reprinted by Gladstone!

Geir:
> I am sick and tired of Magica and the quest for the holy
> dime. I am sick and tired of Donalds lack of luck. I am sick and
> tired of the jealousy stories of Donald, Daisy and Gladstone.

David:
> Gee again! Barks used these concepts a LOT. So why can't
> other artists use them a lot, too?

Maybe you are talking about different stories? There has been a lot of
JUNK published in Europe in the 60s and 70s, mostly 'Disney Studios' stories
(we talked about that before. Remember Jim Fletcher?) and Americans can be
happy to NEVER see them. Also, the early Danish (and Dutch) stories were
of same low quality.
On the other hand, the Whitman stories of the 70s and 80s are maybe even
worse... most of them have never been reprinted in Europe.

David, if you had read all the 'Studios' stories about Magica, you would
be sick and tired too.

> BY THE WAY... something NO other writer has taken up is the
> idea that Magica not only wants the dime, but other mythical magical
> objects (...)

There are a lot of 'Studios' stories where Magica and Madam Mim are after
a 'magic phrase' (translation?).

> I think that doing more stories like *that* with
> Magica is a good idea, and I may do some of them.

I don't think that's a good idea. I didn't like the Barks stories without
the dime either, and mostly because Magica didn't play the right role to me.

(Still quoting David:)
> I maintain that I am Gottfredson's biggest fan. I simply do not have
> the facilities to try to do what Horst has done (presumably with the
> Sunday pages)

I have seen a 'complete MM daily' series in a Dutch comic shop. It was
organised per year (breaking stories in two). The shop only had the years
1939, 1955 and 1956 (if I remember well). They contain A4 copies of 2 or 3
newspaper strips per page. I couldn't find an editor, but a statement on
the back said "limited to 300 copies". I assume this is Horst Schro"ders
work...

--Harry.

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

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

I know that Harry Gladstone was the head of merchandising art in Disney's
New York office for several years in the late '80's. I know a several
people who worked there and they all thought Harry was a terrific guy and
good artist.

I don't know what Harry is up to these days.
___________________________________________________________________
Mark Mayerson Side Effects Software Inc.,
Internet: mayerson at sidefx.com Toronto, Ontario, Canada
(416) 366-4607

I started with converting the current index files into a Disney-comics
database.
So far, I made a new WDC index, with information from various sources,
including the WDC updates from David Gerstein (never before put on ftp...)
I think WDC is the hardest part, because a lot of information is missing,
and it's a combination of an issue file and a story file.

The file now looks like this:

Code (with W)Pg Ex Date or Plo Wri Pen Ink Hero Title
or issue = reprint Tag
------------ ---## -------- --- --- --- --- -- - ------------

W WDC 1-FC 1 DD O:Opening the book
W WDC 1-01 4 -- T:THE ROBBER KITTEN
WDC 1-02 0+ = YD AT DD
WDC 1-03 0+ = YD AT DD

....

W WDC 158-FC 1 52-12-06 CB DD H:<worm in appel>
W WDC 158-*1 10 53-03-26 CB CB DD D:Bzazz
W WDC 158 2 PM GD O:Box Seats
W WDC 158 3 LH
W WDC 158 6 PM PL
W WDC 158 8 BW
W WDC 158 8 CF PM MM H:in camera capriolen

....

W WDC 483 5 PM MM

I added one field to my 'proposed database format': the page layout (not
visible in the example above). It contains information about the number of
rows on a page, wether or not a page is printed sideways, etc.

There's still a lot of work to do, like adding all the reprint information.
So be patient with me...

--Harry.