Keskustelujen arkisto

HELLO, Y'ALL!

Yesterday, someone asked for "thumbnail bios" of us people who
subscribe to/are active on the <disney-comics> list. As Per Starback might have
told people already (I wouldn't know since I'm on digests), there exists a file
with introduc(k)tions, called "Intros", I think, at "our" ftp site at
ftp.lysator.liu.se, dir <pub/comics/disney> that I originally compiled some
9 or 10 months back. I think it contains short auto-bios by some 10 or 12
listmembers.

However, I think it'd be nice to add more introduc(k)tions to this file, so:

Anyone who'd care to be introduc(k)ed in this file, please send *me* (*not* the
list!) a short auto-bio, outlining e.g. your name, age, occupation, any
particular Disney or donaldistic interests/qualifications you might have and
of course any other relevant or irrelevant information about yourself you'd
like to tell the rest of us!

My e-mail adress is <Mattias.Hallin at jurenh-lu.se>.

All the best to one, all and sundry!

Mattias

**** Mattias Hallin ** Lund * Sweden ** <Mattias.Hallin at jurenh.lu.se> ****
* *
* "Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar! *
************** A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!" *************

Dear Folks,

Many things to talk about today.

So Bob Ingersoll wrote "Temper Fugit," then. All I remembered
was that one of the Egmont writers who spoke at the Disney comics
Comic-Con panel last August, had done the story, and told me about it
over dinner. I believe both Dave Rawson and Bob Ingersoll were at
the dinner. I just remembered the wrong Duck man, mainly because
someone spoke of Bob lately as only writing Mickey stuff. That was
in regard to getting him on the list. Why don't we?
BTW, I saw no script or art for "Temper Fugit" at the Con. Bob
told me about the story over dinner (and I erroneously remembered
this as Dave doing the telling).

JAMES: Vic Lockman wrote Dell comics in the '50s, Gold Key
comics in the '60s, Whitman in the 70s-80s (although all of these,
remember, were really PRODUCED by Western Publishing). At least one
of the Disney Studio (Jaime Diaz-drawn) DuckTales stories which
Gladstone published in 1989 was by him. And then he did a lot of
writing for Disney Comics comics, as well. I hate to say this, but
I'm not especially keen on his writing. It just has too much of that
kids-only feeling, and the characters are, in my opinion, often
misinterpreted.

AUGIE mentioned that Ducktales "didn't redefine the characters
the way everyone (including me) fears DuckDaze will. Did it?"
Nope. Scrooge was unfortunately characterized as his kinder, gentler
1960s self in most episodes, but since that was based on some comic
version of him, I don't call it uncanonical. The addition of new
characters to the series included some moves I'd not have taken, but
at least that didn't affect the personalities of the regular
characters. But things have changed since 1987. A new manager at
Disney TV, and his cost-cutting procedures, caused most of the
writers there to defect to Warner Bros. and other places. Jymn
Magon, the fellow who originated DuckTales, has left too at some
point, at least so I've heard. The new writers there have
obvious talent -- the shows from Disney are still well-written, for
TV cartoons -- but they subscribe to this "Toontown" mythology of all
cartoon characters having no real existence but as actors. When
Bambi appeared in the film "Bambi," then, that wasn't his real
existence. He really lives in wacky, zany Toontown. I purposely
cite Bambi because he seems so unlikely, but the recent show
"Bonkers" -- as well as the earlier "Raw Toonage" -- both subscribe
to this ethos. For example, there have been cartoons about Sebastian
the crab living in Hollywood, racing to work at the studio while
pursued by a chef (the same one as in the original film). "Bonkers"
has had at least one episode featuring Donald Duck, pointing out that
he lives in Toontown.
From this it's only a small step to declaring that the entire
comic book Duck universe is just another thing that Toontown-Donald
acts in. So all things carefully constructed fall apart, and
"recasting" is just taken lightly. As I once posted on
rec.arts.disney, it's like taking Huck Finn and putting him in a
futuristic outer space series. The character's world matters as much
as his personality.
Remember, this is just MY opinion -- I don't mean to offend anyone
who writes for these shows, who may be reading this. But to me,
the characters have one 'real' existence, and it isn't in Toontown.

DAVE RAWSON: Don't worry about your MM long adventures never
appearing here. Did you notice Dwight telling about how a 64-page DM
next year contains that 40-page "which-way" Italian MM story? If
there are other 64-pagers next year, maybe you could get John to use
one of them there. What's standing in the way are those Jaime Diaz
Goofy stories. When DM began, Egmont's MM stuff was almost never
worth reprinting here. But there's good stuff now, and we really
should have the chance to see it.

Regarding the name Harpy; the DuckTales version of "The Golden
Fleecing" called the Harpies... Harpies. AND -- here's the amazing
thing -- an above average Danish story drawn by Vicar, titled
"Daisy's Dress" (this was in the Disney period, when Danish stories
didn't get improved titles very often), involved Donald outwitting a
crook while dressed in drag. The crook said to him, "Let me loose,
yuh harpy." Guess which version of the word THAT was.

DWIGHT on the Disney Channel said that it showed "outside
properties that fit [its] format. I've seen Lucky Luke, Asterix, and
Tom Poes..." Tom Poes? When?
The Disney Channel does show two very good half-hour cartoon
shows daily (one of them twice) with its vintage cartoons (including
MANY black-and-white Mickeys, some of them colorized), but it
sandwiches two of those half hours between showings of... "The Care
Bears" and "My Little Pony," two cartoon shows aimed at babies!
(Which Disney bought from a toy manufacturer which had made them)
That's the only airtime the vintage cartoons ever have, since Disney
wants to keep them exclusive to the Channel. But given what they're
shown between, no kid over four will ever watch them. I think that
if the vintage characters are to survive as personalities, they need
exposure in something besides merchandise and the unfortunate TV
exposure they have now. The way Disney sells MM and DD products
now is like putting out one of their gigantic animated feature
marketing campaigns when the feature itself is not in release or
available on video.
"Duck Daze" will be the first animated push for Donald in about
five years (since the last DD home video release), so it can very
easily slip into that slot of being the "definitive" Donald. (The
appearance of "Duck Daze" will, BTW, also make Donald into the
lead character in Marvel's Disney Afternoon book, now that I think
about it. I wonder how that affects Gladstone.)

One thing I'm glad Disney did. They have a page in
Disney ADVENTURES which discusses the latest in comics; normally,
they discuss super heroes (as everyone might have guessed). In
September, just before I left the U. S., they did a feature on the
Gladstone comics (which were the only comics discussed in that
month's issue). Under the heading "Get $crooged" it discussed the
contents of all the comics, mentioning the LO$ -- it pointed out the
upcoming first meeting of US and Glomgold -- and reprinting a small
replica of Don's cover to USA 27. In keeping with this DA page's
contents in the past, though, it mentioned nothing about artists or
writers of the comics it blabbered about. Interestingly, while DA
touted the MM stories in WDC&S, it didn't even mention DM (the
only Gladstone comic that wasn't described).

I'm guessing that the cat in this week's GD story is Lucifer,
also from "Cinderella." Lucifer also appeared in the GD story of
WDC&S 123. Before anyone cries heresy, Lucifer is ALSO in
the BARKS DD 10-pager about putting that shell of plastic
around US's money (from WDC 172, or wherever).

EVERYONE: Gladstone seems to have SKIPPED "Race to the South
Seas" and "Darkest Africa" in preparing its CBL DDA albums. John
told me in 1993 that the album would appear Xmas '94. The albums as
scheduled are now up to the stories from mid-1950, and they've been
presented in chronological order -- EXCEPT for those two MOCs.
Disney...
Censorship...
You don't suppose Disney has banned these stories from being used in
albums, all of a sudden? After THEY were the last folks to print
each one of them, in the regular comics?
(Don, do you know anything about this?)

>Gasp< My fountain runneth dry for today. But I'll be back!

David Gerstein
<9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>

David Gerstein asked about my statement that I had seen
a Tom Poes movie on the Disney Channel. I'd guess it
was about four years ago (I haven't had cable since
moving to Arizona from Chicago three and a half years
ago). The movie's American title was something on the
order of "The Dragon Who Thought He Wasn't (Or Was He)".
Our Dutch friends will recognize the original Dutch
title of "Als Je Begrijp Wat Ik Bedoel" ("If you get
what I mean" -- one of the recurring phrases in the
Tom Poes strip). It's not a very good movie, and
unbelievably the American releasing company changed
not only Tom Poes's name (to "Kitkat") but made him
female!
Tom Poes is a Dutch newspaper comic strip by
Marten Toonder that has appeared in Holland since
the late '30s. In line with Dutch tradition, the
newspaper strip doesn't have word balloons but
consists of three wordless panels with typeset
narrative text and dialogue underneath. The
strip is very well written and even though it's
a comic strip about anthropomorphic animals who
talk and wear clothes, it's considered an authentic
expression of Dutch literature in some quarters.
Tom Poes ("Tom Poes") is a white cat that is
nominally the star of the strip, but it has long
since been taken over by his comic-relief sidekick,
a wealthy, pompous bear named Olivier Bommel (some
people call collections of the strip "Bommel-Boeken").
While the newspaper strip had the odd hybrid format
of pictures and text, Toonder's studio also produced
serialized comic-book stories in standard word-balloon
format for the weekly Donald Duck comic book, one of
the few examples of non-Disney material in a Disney
comic that I can think of (though no doubt people on
the disney-comics list can help me on this point).
The comic-book Tom Poes stories have been collected in
album format over the years and I've read about eight
of them. Large panels, minimal dialogue, simple
stories, but often beautiful artwork. The stories could
be a little strange at times, in the sense of downright
surreal. The best Tom Poes stories appeared in the
newspaper strip, but I think American audiences would
find the unusual format offputting; the comic-book
stories, on the other hand, would surely go over nicely
here. Toonder competes successfully with Disney in the
funny-animal domain, I think, with a flavor all his own.

--Dwight Decker

This may be off-topic, but since we have some Dutch members and since
Tom Poes HAS been published in Dutch Donald Duck and since the newspaper
strip in its better moments are one of my favourite comics, well, you'll
just have to forgive me.

Does anyone know how much of the strip Toonder actually made himself? I
know that he had a studio, but I suppose that at some time he did all or
most of the work himself, gradually shifting more and more over to other
people. Are the names of any of the other creators known?

/F

Life of $crooge
---------------
Augie: I was wondering about something, and now you show up as exactly
the person I need to answer my question.
Don's Life of Scrooge story is certainly a _great_ story, I'm
getting more and more impressed over the amount of work put into it,
the more I think about it. But my question. As I said, I'm impressed
over the amount of work put into it, and that's one of the main reasons
why I like the story. Except for the few things Don left out of it,
because it wasn't "real", the story includes all (Barks) details of
Scrooges life, but since you started reading these comics quite short
time ago, I guess you don't know much about his earlier days.
So, then, how do you look upon the story?
I was wondering if Don's story maybe was a bit "inside". That it only
would be understood by people who have known and read these stories since
they were very young. Since this apply to almost any Norwegian, I haven't
found anyone who could possibly answer this question.

I don't think there is any reason to be afraid of answering my question.
I don't think Don will bite any of us :-)

Some years ago I tried to figure out in what order Herge made his Tintin
stories (I had a list that I'd got in Denmark, but to check that wouldn't
have been as much fun). There aren't many of these albums, but it
certainly was a lot of work to check these stories (maybe as much as 1500
pages). All I did was to check were the characters appeared for the first
time, and such details, but Don did a _lot_ more than that with over 6000
pages! And then to put all this information into a looong story, which
wasn't just supposed to be a listing of details, but also an entertaining
story with great art.

Augie: don't let my opinions make an influence on you :)

Don: I just read some of the letters from the time when "Guardians of
the Lost Library" were published in Norway (about a year ago). You were
worried that the story would just be something like an educational listing
of details, and look like "Donald Duck and the Wheel".
It certainly doesn't. It's some kind of listing of details, and it's
educational, yes, but it's at the same time a great story! The exitement
grows bigger for each step in the listing, which is not the case in "the
Wheel" story. Also your art is much better than Strobl's in his story (well,
the _story_ isn't his...).
I _do_ like "Donald Duck and the Wheel" and "Donald Duck in Mathmagic
Land", though.

And Augie, in case you are interested in this subject (this doesn't have
anything to do with Don's stories, or Disney comics at all...).
Norway has one channel, NRK, which is owned by the state. No commercials.
The style isn't unlike the BBC.
In addition there are three commercial channels, TV2 which is partly
owned by the state, TV3 which is a Norwegian/Swedish/Danish company, and
TVNorge (Norge = Norway).
A second channel owned by the state is planned.

In Sweden there are two channels owned by the state, SVT1 and SVT2, and
at least two commercial channels, TV3 (the same as in Norway) and TV4.

I don't know of any more Swedish channels, or any Danish. The ones
mentioned above are the only ones I can recieve. There's also one channel
called TV1000, which only sends movies, like FilmNet. It works as the
Disney Channel (you have to pay extra).

Jorgen

Dear Folks,

MATTIAS: You asked for folks' introduc(k)tions. Looking at
the file you have, I'm not included, but I did already send you one
for myself some months ago. I seem to recall that it began with a
Goofy joke, the first line of which got accidentally removed when it
was included in our introduc(k)tions list. I notified you of that,
and at that point my contribution vanished from the list and hasn't
returned since. I hope everything's okay with it.

DWIGHT: The American name of the Tom Poes special was "The
Dragon That Wasn't -- Or Was He?" I assumed from the description (in
the Disney Channel magazine) that this was a typical kids' TV special
that Disney had bought rights to show -- I mean, a typical special
from the United States. I'll have to see it some day. I'm incensed
that we Americans gave Tom a sex change and such a dumb name. ("Tom
Tabby" would be better, methinks.) What did they call the Bear?

FREDRIK: Isn't the Hillbilly's name "Hard-Haid Moe"? I thought we
were using that monicker when discussing the character last month. I
can't check old digests now, but maybe someone can help. We were
talking about hogs a lot in regard to the character due to that
Hog-Calling story involving him. What's the inside story?

Jorgen mentioned a 30-page MM gag story. I've read PLENTY of
Italian gag stories that are about 30 pages long. For example, one
in which DD tries to cure US's hiccups lasted that long! One bizarre
method of trying to cure them after another, including paying Indians
at a local reservation to act savage to scare Scrooge. Ouch. And
there are others, like DD as a race car driver, DD dreaming of being
rich, many more (I don't have codes just now).
Please don't drive me crazy, Jorgen! ;-) Who IS the real
identity of the alien in this Mickey story? My mind comes to Eega
Beeva and Scarpa's Atomino character, but neither of them are really
aliens -- they just look like them.
The "something with Goofy and Peg Leg Pete" that you saw, made
by Disney TV would be "Goof Troop." This series is a sequel to the
1950s film cartoons that showed Goofy as a father with a young son,
only now the son is older. They showed his growth by turning his
brown hair black, lengthening his ears, and (although this makes him
rather ugly, I think) giving him teeth like his dad. But the voice
and personality are the same.
Pegleg Pete is Goofy's next-door neighbor in this series -- they
show him as being married with a much smarter wife and two kids,
one of whom is friends with Goofy's son. Pete is the same crook
as always, though they don't show him out to rob banks -- he's
basically a swindler and con artist here.
There are some funny moments in these, although (IMHO) many of
them are not all that good. But in general, I just can't take the
notion of the characters as Toontown role-players. With Goofy it's
less important (since he's got relatives and ancestors who are
constantly shown to be like him), but it's still a bit confusing.
Muddying the waters further is how "Goof Troop" purposely drew Goofy
with smaller eyes and jowls, as he was drawn in the '50s cartoons
this series attempts to follow up.
Romano Scarpa gives Pete a girlfriend in the female feline
felon Trudy. She's a great match for him. But I don't imagine that
the makers of "Goof Troop," in giving Pete a wife (whose name is
'Peg' -- a clear Pete in-joke), knew anything of Scarpa's work. The
designer of the Goof Troop universe named the town where it takes
place after himself!

That's all for today, folks (and all I'll say about "Goof
Troop," unless all of you plead with me). Doesn't ANYONE know
about the fate of "Race to the South Seas" and "Darkest Africa"?

David Gerstein
<9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>

Lucifer; Barks giveaways
------------------------
David:
> Lucifer is ALSO in the BARKS DD 10-pager about putting that shell of plastic
> around US's money (from WDC 172, or wherever). [it's WDC 171]

I hate to think that that's Lucifer. It's just a cat looking a lot like
him. Just like the rich guy in WDC 45: that's not Black Pete, he just
looks like him. And the official hound in the Junior Woodchuck stories
looks like Pluto, but that was a mistake from the editors.

> Gladstone seems to have SKIPPED "Race to the South
> Seas" and "Darkest Africa" in preparing its CBL DDA albums.

Maybe (wishful thinking) they have a BETTER version of those stories
(not re-inked by Jippes and Vlottes), and need more time to restore,
re-letter and re-colour those versions? (If only that could be true..)

Dutch Tales
-----------
A non-Disney subject again, with side relations to Disney (I'm
replying to Dwight and Fredrik here).

Dwight about Tom Poes (is that also his English name?):
> Our Dutch friends will recognize the original Dutch
> title of "Als Je Begrijpt Wat Ik Bedoel"

As Dwight said: there are at least two kinds of Tom Poes stories:
- The newspaper stories, without balloons, with separate text. They reprinted
a lot of these stories in books, but the drawings were made very small.
Obviously, the editor thought the text was much more important.
All newspaper strips are now reprinted in albums in their original format
(2/3 drawings, 1/3 text).

Marten Toonder did all the texts himself, and most of the drawings. He
got drawing assistance from various studio artists, like Fred Julsing.

Dwight said "it's considered Dutch literature in some quarters". I think
it is. At least the Dutch language got some new expressions and words
from Toonder's work.

- The balloon strips as were published in Dutch Donald Duck Weekly, starting
in 1953. Toonder did nothing himself on these stories. They were made
by writers and artists from the Toonder studio. These same artists also
made Disney stories for the Dutch DD Weekly in the 60s (people like
Patty Klein, Jan van Haasteren, Jan Steeman, Piet Wijn).

Dwight:
> Tom Poes is a white cat that is nominally the star of the strip, but [..]
> (some people call collections of the strip "Bommel-Boeken").

The newspaper strips mostly carry titles like "Heer Bommel and ...", while
the DD Weekly strips were called "Tom Poes and ...". So the 'newspaper'
fans call them Bommel comics, while fans that know the strip from DD Weekly
(like I) talk about "Tom Poes comics"...

Dwight about Tom Poes in Dutch DD Weekly:
> one of the few examples of non-Disney material in a Disney
> comic that I can think of

The Dutch DD Weekly (almost) always had a non-Disney sequence strip
from 1953 on. Up to 1969 it was Tom Poes. After that a lot of (mostly
Dutch) stories appeared. For example by Dick Matena (we discussed this
briefly before) and Piet Wijn ("Douwe Dabbert"). Sometimes, a Disney
story is published in stead, like at this moment: The Lion King.

--Harry.