Keskustelujen arkisto

DAVID on Sambo's:

>I don't really think [the story, Little Black Sambo is racist] ... WAS
>meant to be set in India ... [beyond that story,] the term "Sambo" has
>always been used derogatorily, and thus dragged this completely well-meaning
>children's book down with it.

I quite agree about the story; and thanks for reminding me that the
original setting was in India (I had forgotten that) which makes sense with
the Tiger. I wonder now if the use of "sambo" as a derogatory term has no
connection to the story and is meerly coincidence?

>The Sambo's restaurants became Friendly's, not Denny's.

Hmmm.. I ownder if the Sambo franchises were not simply sold off to other
chains? The ones around here became, Denny's. I originally thouht they
just changed their name, but it sounds like the Denny's chain may have
existed already and simply bought them out.

>Sambo restaurant is in (!!!) Santa Barbara, and it alone still goes
>by the original name (and shows Sambo in a TURBAN on its shopfront

The Sambo's around here didn't have that, but they did have sequences of
pictures inside roughly illustrating the story of Sambo's encounter with
the tiger.

DAVID on Martians:

> Was the line about union workers deleted from Gladstone's 1989
>reprint of "Lost Beneath the Sea", or from an earlier one (Whitman)?

The original text from U$ 46 refering to labor union members was reprinted
in Walt Dinsey's Comic Digest 10. A decade or so later, the text was
changed in the U$ 149 reprint. The Carl Barks Library, however, came out
after that with the original text. The original text also appears in the
Gladstone Uncle $scroge Adventures 17.

ALL on Lurkers:

In the past couple of months we've really seen quite a few lurkers post the
first message. It's great to see new people posting here. Keep those
message coming!

DWIGHT on Newt Gingrich as Uncle Scrooge:

>the Time cover had a caricature of Newt Gingrich [...] as a combination
>of Uncle Sam and Ebeneezer Scrooge. The caption, in big letters, read:
>"UNCLE SCROOGE."

I too wonder if this was a reference to Uncle $crooge or Dicken's character
since his nephew called him "Uncle Scrooge" in the Christmas Carol. It is
true that many Americans (at least those in the USA) have no idea who Uncle
$crooge is. That may be changing somewhat with DuckTales and the Disney
Channel, though. In any case, I have a hard time thinking of Newt as our
$crooge.

Tryg

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

Hi, Folks!

Maybe you think I'm Fabio Gadducci, But it's me, David Gerstein. I'm
in Pisa today and have been having a fine visit with Fabio (who's been kind
enough to board me) as well as with Luca Boschi and Alberto Becattini. But
you're not wrong if you at first assumed that this WAS a letter from Fabio,
because he'll be joining me here just shortly. Several things have
occurred:

I HAVE LOCATED PAGE PROOFS TO CARL BARKS' "DARKEST AFRICA" ART in an
obscure Italian "complete Barks" BW series of years ago. Some pages are
better than others in quality. The quality is quite mediocre, but they
don't look worse than the CBL version of "Too Many Pets" -- in fact, that's
what the general quality reminds me of the most. The worst-looking pages
are the first few, which Jippes did an excellent job of mimicking (I've
compared them), so Gladstone could perhaps keep the Jippes versions. On
the other hand, many of Dick Vlottes' worst-reinked pages are among the
sharper pages here.
The album containing the story was just solicited this month and is
still, thus, four months from publication. DON -- IF YOU CAN, PLEASE TRY
TO REACH JOHN CLARK AND SEE IF HE CAN STOP THE PRESSES HERE. I will try to
reach him Monday but may not succeed.
Fabio and I will be looking into "Race to the South Seas." The
Italian big white books have used Barks' original art, but it is unusable
(horribly muddy -- that version reached the U. S. in 1983's Abbeville _DD
AND HIS NEPHEWS_). We will see about whether this same reprint series
included a better version.

Fabio has the Italian book some of you spoke of which contains
"Horsing Around..." in both English and Italian. IMHO, this is better than
many of Barks' mid-1960s tales, but not much. There's a big logic flaw --
Barks' dialogue explains quite clearly that what is discovered is the REAL
Trojan Horse. So how did the BEAGLE BOYS find it? It's never explained.
Then, the dialogue has some wit but is far below, say, what Rosa, Geoffrey
Blum or Van Horn himself can do with interesting lingo. In all, it's still
above a lot of Egmont stuff. (Fabio says, "You are too kind to that
story." He also wonders, rightly, why the Beagle Boys didn't take the
Trojan Horse for themselves, due to its great value, rather than merely
using it for a trick on Scrooge.) He's sitting next to me, here.)

Why doesn't Fabio take over the writing for a bit?

* * * * *

So, it seems I'm not a lurker anymore.

As usual, I had a lot of things to do for my Ph.D. work, and was not
able to write any mail for a while. There are a lot of things I'd like to
talk about, raised in the latest digests: about the Big Pocket Editions,
as an example -- they started in Italy in 1957, btw -- and about that great
artist Harry likes so much, Gius..... whoops...
Btw, Harry, David has your Index!!! Yes, I know, you feel such
anticipation. And for all you who has to receive stuff from me: I ask
forgiveness. Actually, finally I have all the things I have to send you,
Ole: they will leave next week. About Ron: I received your Collector
issues a month ago. But when I went to the post office, they didn't know
anything about the stuff I sent you. Anyway, just in case, I bought again
those issues in Lucca at the convention: if at the end of the year you
have't yet received anything, please let me know, and I'll send you another
pack with those issues. One last thing for Don, before passing again the
keyboard to David: I just received your packet. It is really nice, and
next Monday I'll send the stuff to the magazine. It will arrive in time, or
so they told me. Actually, the sad thing is that I haven't yet received
that Gladstone album... I hope it wasn't lost in the mail...
Ooopppsss, truly the last thing: did you receive your comic book,
Elon? I sent it a lot of time ago... And yes, I just received your Tio
Patinhas comics. Quite interesting...

Ahhh, that's enough. And now, something completely different...

* * * * *

I'm back, folks. Fabio and I have been told that another Rosa story
did appear in Italy at some point several YEARS ago -- one of the early AR
stories with Neighbor Jones, and we don't know which one. We also don't
know which comic it appeared in. I have looked for it in bins of dusty
PAPERINO MESE issues, but without luck.

On the Disney's-banning-policy front: Some early Gottfredson stories
involve guns being fired. Barks showed guns being fired in "North of the
Yukon" and "Ghost of the Grotto." Maybe in "The Golden Helmet," too? A
Paul Murry DD story in DDOS 300 (reprinted by Gladstone in DDCD 3) about
firefighting, shows Scrooge firing at Donald. A 1932 Bucky strip has BB
and Bo as tramps looking for work, and one home's irate owner fires a gun
at them for absolutely no reason except that they are bums. And a 1936 AT
Three Pigs story has Practical firing a loaded blunderbuss at Zeke from
underneath (as the wolf is climbing down a tree), and sends him up again,
fast.
Aside from the Bucky story, I'd say that there is a reasonable
motivation of desperation or particularly horrid villainy behind what the
villains do. Only in the two AT stories do characters actually get hit by
the bullets, and they only end up bruised.

That's it for now, gang. I'll be back in a couple of weeks, and now
that I've mentioned "Darkest Africa," everything else can wait 'til then.

Ciao!

David Gerstein + Fabio Gadducci
<gadducci at di.unipi.it>
<9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>

================================================================
Fabio Gadducci Dip. di Informatica
Home: +39-50-541725 Universita` di Pisa
Off.: +39-50-887268 Corso Italia 40, 56100 PISA (ITALY)
FAX: +39-50-887226 E-mail:gadducci at di.unipi.it
================================================================

>Ohhhh.....$crooge merchandise. Please, please tell me where you got
>'em.

$crooge goodies are hard to come by in the States, for the very reason we're
discussing. Most of my stuff comes from overseas through friends.

Anders wrote:
>Extras? Like those facsimiles of old issues that have been included
>occasionally? In those cases I just added a bit of text, e.g.
>'91-48 was delivered with a facsimile of 48-03'.

That is exactly what I meant, and I think that that is what Jorgen meant,
too, when assigning these a special code, like '1991-48E' if I remember
correctly.

B-nummer, which Harry mentioned, is something different again. These
should be counted as separate titles and put in separate files, as is now
being done.

Jorgen:

I think you should try to sort out your format differences with Harry.
The whole idea with having one standardized format for all comics is
defeated otherwise. Your point about using '1994' rather than '94' is
valid. What do you say, Harry?

Your comments about normalization of codes have struck me too. The
normalization process is for simplified sorting. Couldn't we have some
kind of "denormalization" of the output files, making searches easier
even if one is not aware of this normalization? Or is there some point in
leaving the codes be in output files as well?

The problem with exceeding 80 characters on one line has been discussed
before and as long as we stick with the "one story, one line" principle
there must always be a trade-off. More information will mean longer lines
and it will never be possible to stay within the 80 character boundary
for every entry.

/F

On Wed, 14 Dec 1994, H.W. Fluks wrote:
> Per answered to Dennis Recla about that new Barks story. One interesting
> thing to add is that it is (pencilled and) drawn by William Van Horn.
> This also means that our Van Horn expert, Fredrik Ekman, should know
> all about it.

Ouch! Who invented this crap about me being the local Van Horn expert?
Anyway, it was published (finally) in the latest (double-sized Christmas
special) issue of Kalle Anka & Co, so at least I can now comment on it.
I guess I feel about the same as most other people who have commented.
It is certainly not up to the best of Barks' previous works, nor to
Don's, but it is far better than the average Egmont. Van Horn's drawing
style, like others have pointed out, is not at its best in an adventure
story like this. Van Horn should stick to the gag-filled ten-to-twelve
pagers that he is best at.

> Its publications can (or should) be found in the most recent
> version of our ftp file 'van-horn.index' (ftp.lysator.liu.se, subdir
> pub/comics/disney).

Correct, save for that Swedish publication, and the Italian (with English
text!) mentioned by Luigi. You Americans will just have to go to Italy or
wait for Gladstone.

/F

Hi,

I usually just lurk. However, I have a question that I have been
wondering about for awhile. I hope that you will have patience with my
ignorance. First a little background. I have been collecting Donald Duck
and Scrooge McDuck stories since I was 6 years old. I started buying and
collecting them in 1956. I have continued buying and collecting them. I
have every Donald Duck Comic and Scrooge McDuck comic every published
from 1956 thru 1988. At that time, they were hard to find. However, I
have many of them with only a few missing.

Now for my question. I have hear everybody talking about Barks, Don
Rosa etc. How can you tell if they did these comics? Are they signed or
something? I have comic books that Don Rosa did and they were great. I
know they were his because it was said in the letters section by the
publisher etc. I really enjoyed them. I would like to be able to know
who did my other comics.

I have one more question that I hope somebody could help me with. All
my comics are in very good or excellent shape. I have them in plastic
covers to protect them. I would like to insure my comics but I do not
know what their value may be except what I paid for them. I assume that
they are worth more than that since I bought some when their selling
price was 10 cents and up.

I know that these questions show a lot of ignorance on my part but I
am hoping that someone on the list could help me. :-) :-)

I would appreciate any help that anyone could give me with these
questions. :-) :-) :-)

Have a good day! :-) :-)

Sincerely,

Ed Berndt
Basin Elementary * *
E-Mail Address: eberndt at mirage.esd123.wednet.edu @
:-) :-) :-) :-) Have a good day. :-) :-) <->

>I would like to insure my comics but I do not
>know what their value may be except what I paid for them.

ED:

The so-called "collector's value" of old comics can be obtained through
Overstreet's Comic Book Price Guide, obtainable at just about any bookstore
or comic specialty store.

I am not a fan of the method valuation used to ascertain the supposed
"market value" of old items. I remember too fondly the days when we used to
go to yard sales and find stacks of comics, boxes of View-Master reels (a
favourite hobby of mine) and lots of other neat stuff for LESS than the
owner paid, not more. Such sales got the books and toys into the hands of
people who would read or use them, not just horde them because they were
"collectible."

Still, for insurance purposes it is probably a good idea for people with
extensive collections to know how much it would cost to replace them, though
getting all lost comics replaced would be practically impossible at any cost.

Well, maybe not that new, but at least new this year. CNN (the Cable
News Network) has a weekly show called "Pinnacle", which features a
half-hour interview with some millionaire, who describes how he became
a success in his chosen business. This week's show consisted of an
interview with Steve Geppi, the owner of Diamond Comics Distributors
(from whom most comics store owners buy their stock), Geppi's Comics
World chain of comics stores, and (partly) the Baltimore Orioles
baseball team. The CNN cameras toured Geppi's office, which is full
of comics- and animation-oriented souvenirs. Principal among these
was a new oil painting by Carl Barks, which Geppi says is his favorite
possession. He commissioned it himself, and he says the value is
$200,000. I don't know how much he paid Barks for it. Anyway, they
didn't show it for long, and so I didn't get a good look at it, but it
appears to be a painting of some kind of "money mine", with Scrooge
hauling out carts full of coins. Has anyone seen this painting in
more detail, or at least for more than 3 seconds? What exactly is it
all about? Is it an original concept, or is it based on a Barks story?
(I know, I should have searched our database before posting this, but
I got lazy. Sorry if this painting is described in there!)

Wilmer Rivers