Keskustelujen arkisto

Harry on the script for Barks's new story "Horsing Around With History":
> So maybe the pencils are Van Horn's. Maybe Barks reviewed these pages before
> Van Horn inked them?

As I recall it, what Barks said at the Stockholm meeting about how
close together he and Van Horn had worked, they met only once during
the creation of the story, and Barks wanted Van Horn to change one or
two things he had done then. In those very pencils I guess.

PS1: Welcome back, Don!

PS2: Oops, I had totally forgot about David's quote quiz. I'd better
dig it up soon... But not now. I'm going to play some croquet right
now.
-- "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden. email: starback at minsk.docs.uu.se
"Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"

>Harry:
>>Mattias:
>> Yes. as I think I said the other day what art I was able to see at the Kulorte
>> Bibliotek in Copenhagen looked entirely van horn-ish to me; and if Barks
>> hisself says he's done no artwork on "Horsing around..." -- well then that
>> orter be settled, then!
>
>OK. Fine. But Michel Nadorp told me he had the full 24-page *script* of the
>story, in the form of penciled pages. And the first half page *script* was
>published in a Dutch fanzine. (BTW: This half page splash panel does not
>contain any Ducks, and I can't see whether or not it's Barks' drawing style.)
>
>So maybe the pencils are Van Horn's. Maybe Barks reviewed these pages before
>Van Horn inked them?

In the interview on Norwegian television we saw the meeting between Barks and
van Horn. This was supposed to be the first time Barks saw van Horns work
(except for the few hours he spent looking over them before the interview
started :)

The pencilled pages were quite detailed, and looked ready for inking. They
looked nothing like the scripts for the Junior Woodchucks stories that were
reprinted in CBL.

-Dag Nummedal

MATTIAS:
Well, you can't fear what Grandey can do to you for some mere
opinion you might express. Recall what I'm going to sue him for is not
his "opinions" offered to a group of peers; it's for outright lies,
even accusations of me committing an actual crime, made with sloppy
secrecy to my employers with the obvious intent to influence their
opinion of me and their future use of my work and person. This is the
definition of libel in the nth degree. I've also found that he's tried
to hire magazine writers to write pans of all my work based on his
ideas (as you might tell from his press releases, Grandey is incapable
of writing something himself).
Actually, someone encouraged me to post that information about
Grandey's activities, even though I had previously been keeping quiet
about them. I think I might have saved myself the trouble judging by
the lack of reaction it's gotten on here... but perhaps people either
find it hard to believe, or they fear Grandey themselves, or they just
don't know HOW to react to something so outlandishly evil.
I know how *I* plan to react. I have been pretty disgusted for
15-20 years by the way the American collectibles rackets have
flourished since the Reagan years of selfishness. But I was helpless to
react to such a huge, nameless mind-set beast. However, NOW I have ONE
chap who represents to me the WORST of the greed and selfishness and
avariciousness and dishonesty... and this damn fool was careless enough
to direct such an incredibly clumsy attack at such an idealist as
myself; I have a target now, and I plan to make him pay for his crime
as much as possible, even if I split the proceeds between the lawyers
and my usual wildlife charities.

Anyway, as to your critiques -- I welcome them. And while I
won't argue with your ideas, I'll at least prove that, as I always
claim, I considered every angle and had a distinct reason for my
decisions, even if they might have been wrong.
Your idea on how the philosophy of the JWs in my "GotLL" as
regards the use of their Guidebook seems wrong: I'll agree with you. But
without that attitude, I would have lost my "motivation". At least you
can agree that the Woodchucks shouldn't allow the Guidebook to be used
as $crooge planned, and if he could've just borrowed it from some non-JW
who had a copy for some noble reason, that would also blow my plot. As a
matter of fact, I included the idea that the JW Guidebook was for the
exclusive use of JWs in the early pages of my very FIRST story ("The Son
of the Sun")... and I did receive a letter at that long-ago time that it
was a wrong-headed attitude for a JW type group.
Another mild complaint I just heard from another person (who
also said they loved the GotLL story) was that the story was a JW story,
and should have ended on the gag of the JW finding they were founded by
a girl (ecch!). But when I wrote the story, I WAS confused on the issue
of WHO was the story's main character. Was it a DD story or an U$
story? It must have been a DD story since it opened with DD; but U$ was
the obvious star and therefore needed to be the subject of the close. I
finally had the idea of sneaking in a last throw-away gag back with DD.
But I never realized that Europe would make it a HD&L story -- I didn't
know that was an option.

LOS #12: I'm anxious to hear opinions on where this story can be
extended because I'm positive that that's what I'll do when Gladstone's
use of it rolls around. I'll add several pages into the chase
sequence... and, yes, I'd LIKE to add a page or two into the rekindling
of the McDuck Spirit, but that is psycho-drama that might require more
knack than I have. I knew for 2 1/2 years that #12 would require some
fancy character motivation, and I always figured that I'd neither have
the pages or the ability to pull it off with complete success; as it
stands, the last part of that story seems to me to be a good OUTLINE for
an excellent story. Maybe I'll have some better ideas in 1 1/2 years
when I add pages to it.
As for me mistreating DD yet again in that #12, I plead
purposefully guilty. DD couldn't be expressing many good qualities in
that story since it was intended that his LACK of those qualities was
what would inspire (or incense) U$ to return to life. But I'll keep that
in mind when I add pages.
Right... I figured DD had never seen U$ since he kicked his
fanny in 1930, 17 years earlier. But $crooge was still the most famous
Duckburger and surely DD and everyone else had often heard or read such
quotes of his as regards his bragging of his past and greatness (though
they never knew the details). And that particular quote would be just
the one which would irritate the world-owes-me-a-living DD.
Another aspect I plan to change was the idea of U$ having been
retired for TEN years. My original script had him retired for 5 or less
years... fairly recently in other words. I forget why Byron preferred
the full 10 -- but that seems like such a long time for the Bin to sit
untouched and U$ to be totally idle.

EXISTANCE OF A BARKS STORYBOARD SCRIPT FOR HIS NEW STORY:
As I understand how this story was written, such a thing could
not exist, at least not one that matched the final version. The
storyboard-script that has been referred to having been seen could only
be by Van Horn.

Don:

Like Bjorn-Are said:

> I am sorry if not all of us have been quick or clear enough with expressing
> our indignation on Grandeys behaviour, but I think it is fairly obvious that
> a lot of us lurkers and others out there in cyberspace really do support you!

You can count on that!

I had another reason for not reacting (except in my signature), though:
I could not find the right words. It's so unbelievable...

Bjorn-Are also mentioned
> eagerly following every move made by Norway's Soccer team [..] in the
> World Cup these days...

And when you know that some of the games are played (and broadcasted) in the
middle of the European night (01:30 - 03:00!) you can figure we may be a
bit sleepy the next day...

--Harry.

(I liked it when Norway beat Mexico. May they become 2nd in the Cup, and
The Netherlands be first!)

WILMER:
Thanks for your comments -- and as a reward... no, I mean, I was
planning on doing this anyway, as soon as I saw you next pop up on the
Digest. As I think I told you in one of our private note exchanges, I'm
lazy enough to know it's easier to simply direct notes to you over the
Digest than to look up a line-long address to send you something
directly.
Anyway, I finished that "Universal Solvent" story just hours
before I went to Germany a few weeks back. I would like to send you a
set of copies of the storyboard-script and of the final art in return
for your advice and help in putting the story together. It would be
better for you to wait and see the final story all in one piece, script
with art, and in color, when Gladstone uses it; but that will be most of
a year or so, and you might enjoy seeing what my work looks like in its
various stages (that is, if you are easilly amused). I'll need an
address...

rivers at seismo.CSS.GOV (Wilmer Rivers) writes:
>I see from the ads in CBG that you will be one of the artists at
>the big comics show in Chicago in a couple of weeks.

Hooray! I, too, thought Don had sworn off such things. Don't worry,
Don, I'll be *glad* to hang around your table in a sycophantic manner :-)

I hope I can dig up some stuff for you to sign, though; most of my Ducks
are back home in Kentucky.

greg
--
"What'll it be next? Choice extracts from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations?
Trotting out the Nietzsche and the Shelley and the Shakespeare to dignify some
old costumed claptrap?"--Grant Morrison

elmo (morrow at physics.rice.edu,morrow at fnal.fnal.gov)

DONALD DUCK'S 60th FROM GLADSTONE - "The Duck Who Never Was":
I just bought a copy of DD #286 with my "The Duck Who Never Was"
story, and I was displeased for numerous reasons. First off, as usual,
my art looks awful to me... but it isn't helped by the fact that they
again seem to have gotten ever-so-slightly "muddy" photostats from
Egmont, making it all look too dark; and, once again, the too-dark
coloring doesn't help it a bit. But the letterer made numerous mistakes
which caused me to actually CUSS the poor guy. They were, in reverse
order of irritation-level:
In my script, no one in the story is supposed to actually say
"It's a wonderful life"... they're supposed to keep dancing around it,
and DD is supposed to START to say it but interrupt himself when he sees
the surprise party. The letterer must not have understood my frequent
use of an ellipsis in my script (for an interruption in mid-sentence),
and was kind enough to complete Donald's sentence for him. @#!
In one panel there is a totally EMPTY word balloon at the bottom
which the letterer didn't seem to see. He put the intended line into
the balloon above, but left the lower balloon void. #$%!
In the family-tree that Gus Goose chalks out on the brick wall,
I went to great pains to make it quite accurate, and left room for the
letterer to write in the two names which were needed for that
discussion... $crooge and Gus. But even though the script showed the
proper placement, and even though common sense would tell you that
$crooge is older than Gus, and even though a blind guy woulda' had a
50-50 chance of labelling it correctly, this letterer got it
bass-ackwards. @&%$!!
Finally, the story is built around a key gag involving DD
writing his date of birth down in a personnel file which somebody then
misreads; and the whole issue is scheduled and built on the fact that
June 9 is DD's birthday. Well, this letterer has DD writing into the
file that he is born on the 6th day of the 9th month. September 6th. And
everyone will figure *I* made that unbelievable bone-head error.

@#$%^&<@%$#&*)(*{!!!!!!!!!!

Note also that there is a museum case labelled "ancient icons"
with one space empty. In that space was a 1930s Mickey Mouse doll.
However, in the next panel that shows the case (then broken), we see the
MM doll sprawled upon the broken glass (stabbed?); Disney told Gladstone
to remove MM from the one panel, but did not expressly tell them to
remove him from the OTHER panel. So they did exactly what they were
told. By the way, my script called for the case to be labelled "ancient
demon worship", even though I didn't really expect or want the scripters
to use that -- however, in Europe (where Disney doesn't bully the
publishers) they not only left both MMs in, but they used "demon
worship" (or "voodoo dolls"). Heh heh.

I heard from Gladstone editor John Clark that he had a meeting
with one of the Disney guys who inspects and approves the comics they
print... and he told two interesting stories.
Recall how I was rather appalled that they took a line in
"GotLL" where I used the term "technicolor yawn" (an admittedly modern
bit of soft-grossness that I really figured the translators would
change) and Disney insisted it be changed to "BARF" -- making ME look
like the first person to use the lovely word "barf" in a Disney comic!
(More @#$#%$@&!) Well, though I'm still astounded Disney would choose
such crass language, I always wondered why they found "barf" nicer than
my phrase. The answer is so obvious! "Technicolor" is a COPYWRITED TERM!
And a company whose MAIN business is making MOVIES had better not screw
around with the misuse of motion picture trademarks of rival production
companies!
Also, the Disney guy, without prompting, brought up the matter
of the banning of my "War of the Wendigo", my sequel to "The Laned of
the Pygmy Indians". John had figured he could slip that by Disney when
they weren't looking, but now we know better. It was banned by a Disney
official because ALL THE INDIANS LOOKED ALIKE which the guy considered
to be an insulting stereotype. And yes, this means that Barks' original
Peeweegah story ALSO can never again be used in American comic books.
Therefore, simply because I feel very anxious for THIS
PARTICULAR story to see print in English, due to the loads of extra work
I put into the Peeweegah's Longfellowian dialogue, I offered to REDRAW
all the Peeweegahs (except the Chief). I'm not sure how to make them all
different... or how to explain to readers why the Peeweegahs don't look
like they're supposed to... but we'll make that offer, and if that was
the problem, we'll get that story into America, if in a censored form.
Censored is better than nothing?