Keskustelujen arkisto

PER:
>Would it be inconvenient for any of you if I removed the ftp archive
>for the list and made everything there available on the WWW server
>instead?

Well, I'm not that keen on using the mouse and pushing small buttons
all over the screen (yes, I know there are other clients than Mosaic)
-- I like to move around in directories were I can see everything at
a glance. So, if it's not inconvenient for you, Per, I would like
the ftp archive to stay.
The ftp archive can be accessed with WWW anyway.

Jorgen

HARRY:
Yes, I have been familiar with the Oak Island Treasure for decades; Barks
made me a treasure buff when I was a tad, and I used to buy treasure-hunter
magazines back in the 60s (do they still publish those?). The Oak Island
Treasure was covered in one issue. But I can never do a story about it for
several reasons.
First, somebody or other wrote an Uncle $crooge story about the Oak
Island Treasure for Bob Foster during the dark days of the Disney Disney Comics.
I recall he had trouble finding an artist (naturally, as we all know, it's near
impossible finding any American artist willing to work in the white-slavery
system of Disney comics), and that script is probably still sitting in a file
somewhere. But knowing someone has written such a story, I don't think I'd want
to step on toes by presuming to beat them to publication with my own version.
Secondly... I know all the details of the Oak Island mystery -- and
there's just not an interesting adventure there. Foster told me his version
involved a lot of "fantasy" elements thrown in to punch up the plot. All the Oak
Island Treasure is is a mysterious filled-in pit on an Atlantic coast island
that people have vague reasons to think is where, perhaps maybe could-be,
pirates buried treasure. Supposedly it is booby-trapped with channels running
off into the sea that cause the pit to flood when anyone tries to excavate it.
That's about all there is to it. Various companies have formed over the past 100
years to try to dig the pit out, but they all fail. I personally find the story
sorta dubious -- I can't picture 17th-18th century pirates having the ability to
sink deep mine shafts in loose sand and then drill these horizontal
water-channels out into the sea. I have the feeling it's a combination of
treasure-hunting promotors who form companies with other peoples' money then
claim bancruptcy due to "pirate booby-traps", as well as treasure-magazine
writers blowing the whole idea up in order to sell articles. But I've never been
there, so these are just my impressions. All I know is that the story has so
little actual bearing in recorded fact that one would need to create a whole
phony history in order to do a story about it (which may be why Foster said that
his story was very "fantasy" oriented... something about underground munchkins
or something). Besides, I doubt if many people have ever heard of the treasure
anyway -- how many here have ever heard of it?
Anyway, since I find the tale uninspiring, it's better that I leave
someone else to write such a story... which is what has happened, as I said. But
now the script is in the files of a company not licensed to produce it... unless
they did a special titled "The Little Mermaid Finds the Oak Island Treasure",
and that would be taking a potentially dull story and turning it lethal. Well...
I see I'm confusing myself -- I'm mixing Disney Disney Comics with Marvel Disney
Comics. But then, that's what was wrong with the Disney Disney Comics, eh?

Regarding the Beagle Boys numbers:

Apparently, Barks often used other numbers than the 671-176
variations, but that was earier on. Later, he stuck to those....

--Ron

Tryg: "how did you arrive at there only being 7 readers
hailing from the United States?"

It was really quite a simple calculation, and while I have NEVER CLAIMED TO
BE A GOOD COUNTER, if you will hear me out, I shall explain: Pick any
number, multiply by 2, add 32, divide by three and a half and add four.
Sevens every time! (I believe Barks used a similar formula to calculate the
Beagle Boys' numbers.)

Jorgen: "I just read an Italian story with 177 pages :)"

Holy Cow! -- Printed in ONE magazine?? See, here in the U.S., Gladstone has
shown some mercy to us -- they print stories of any length in a serial format
-- for instance, they've been printing "Monarch of Medioka" in WDCS since
August of '94. This is more my pace. And don't think I didn't pick up on
your European maniacal smugness, "I _just_ read 177 pages." As if to say, "I
_just_ inhaled," or "I _just_ saw a butterfly." Give yourself some credit,
man. 177 pages! Phew. Or whew. You decide.

And thanks to every one who reminded me that Marvel is now shipping the
movie-based comics. See what I mean about only being able to keep track of
three titles a month. ;)

World Peace.

Wes

"But, Mickey! It's SUICIDE! We'll be KILLED! How'll we ever land without
wheels?" -- Captain Doberman

TRYG:
No, No... Mr.Doberman did not say there were 8 American readers on-line
here. As you see in the very snip of his message that you reposted, he said
there were only *4* American readers on-line here... he said there were 8
American readers of Disney comics TOTAL, on-line or not.
In other words, he's exaggerating (slightly). He's kidding. S'only a
joke.
You did seem to accept his comments about what short attention spans
Americans have and what poor writers/readers we are without questioning those
remarks. But then, that was no exaggeration, was it? I see your point.

NEAL:

The Beagle Boys, in Barks' canon, have always had 1, 6, 7 in some
order on the first three digits of their codes. In later stories this
half of the code became 176, for good. It's stayed that way for Egmont
almost all the time.
The second half of the code is usually derived from 1, 6, 7, but
in early stories this wasn't the case. In "Only a Poor Old Man" the
Beagles' technical expert is 176-840, for instance.
Anyway, Egmont only uses 1, 6, and 7 in the last three digits,
which suggests that there can only be six "real" Beagle Boys. But of
course, even Barks used more of them than that. And Egmont themselves
knuckled under; in a short Madam Mim story six weeks ago, twelve Beagle
Boys appeared at the end.
I think Don Rosa came to grips with the maximum number of Beagle
Boys that ever appeared in a story both drawn and written by Barks, in
an old letter column. Maybe he remembers the number?
But the most important thing is that for Egmont, the three "main"
Beagle Boys have PERSONALITIES as per their code numbers! 176-167 is
the down-to-earth, often-impatient leader. 176-671 and 176-761 are the
slightly more personable followers who have certain weak spots. For 761
the weak spot is food, while for 671 it's a sort of childish silliness
that causes the foul-ups.
Here's a panel from the script of my next-to-be-published Duck
story, as in Egmont's script, which illustrates how important the
numbers are:

* * * * *

Pic 3: Wildly excited 176-167 bursts into the Beagle Boys' hideout.
The hideout is a ramshackle room with a wall of unpainted boards, some
of which are cracked. In foreground, 176-671 and 176-761 play checkers
on a card table. The card table has one sagging broken leg which has
been bound with tape. 176-671 (sitting at left of table) is moving a
chess piece on the board, while 176-761 (sitting at right of table) is
munching down prunes from a small, wide-mouthed jar. Next to the jar on
176-761's side of the table rests a small box in which several
"captured" chess pieces lie. 176-671 turns his head quickly to look at
the entering 176-167. 176-761, his mouth full and cheeks bulging, looks
up with a start. Sign on jar.

Sign (jar): PRUNES

176-167: It's time for a BEAGLE BLITZ, men! McDuck's hidden his money
from us again, and I know WHERE!

* * * * *

Before any of you think I'm doing the old saw about hiding the
money in a weird place, don't worry... I'm not! The story (this is the
one titled "Rolling in Dough") should have a lot of things you don't
expect.

JORGEN:
>- Donald Duck (93552, 12 pages). Art by Vicar.
>Donald is trying to become an astronaut. >snip<
Sigh! If only the British had printed this one...

>- Donald Duck (H8316, 10 pages). Art by Jan Guldbrandsen.
... instead they printed THIS one. In English, this one has to be
one of the very worst Dutch stories I have ever read! I can only
imagine that some other translations must have been more inspired.
DD decides he can get rich looking for money on the street with
the right kinds of methods. That's fine -- but he dresses up as if he's
expecting to hire himself out to perform some service. He even gives a
demonstration to others. Why? Who'd pay a guy to find money for them?
If Donald hadn't managed to nab the dollar bill Scrooge threw over
the bridge, wouldn't Scrooge have had to have given back the coin he
took from Donald? He took the coin BEFORE making any kind of deal to
trade it for anything!
The coin ends up getting lost in the money bin. But DD and
Gladstone both wanted merely to give it to Scrooge, and now it's
certainly with Scrooge. So why should DD hunt to find it again? It's
not stated that whoever personally GIVES the coin to Scrooge was going
to get the reward for it.
Last (and maybe this is kind of nitpicky) the story seems to take
an awfully long time to get going. The ducks spend a LONG time arguing
at the theatre, and just when you think there's going to be a classic
competition with Gladstone, Gladstone disappears.
I imagine Geoffrey Blum could sort out all of this, but doggoned
if I can. This story leaves me at a loss.

>- Mickey Mouse (D94073, 8+ pages, total 16 pages). Pat McGreal,
I think Ferioli's art in this part of the story ranks with his
absolute best. Mickey is especially appealing. But I agree with you
about the plot.

>I-1993 [set in the Middle Ages with 177 pages!]
I actually like the Italian stories with alternate timespans for
the characters, because the characters STILL ACT LIKE THEMSELVES.
I-1948 ("Mickey Mouse in King Arthur's Court") is my favorite, and I
plan to redo it for DM one day. (I found this in a German edition after
someone -- Fabio, I think -- recommended it.)

> Marvel also quite recently published the old adaption of Snowwhite
>and the Seven Dwarfs (the official adaption they called it...). They
>also put into the magazine a ten-pager with the Dwarfs fighting against
>The Witch.
No credits?! But... but... if this is that same, 1937 adaptation
that's appeared umpteen times (including Whitman and Gladstone
reprints). The credits for the 1987 Gladstone version are in our
index... but only for the regular film adaptation, not the backup.
The ten-pager could be one from around WDC&S 46 (there were
several Seven Dwarfs stories around that period). But I don't know.
I'll know when I see the comic.
I'd really like to get a copy of Marvel's edition, though. The
1987 reprint was on good paper, but the color was pre-computer. I'll
try to get one at home, but if someone has a spare copy, hold onto it --
I'll contact the Digest from California if I can't grab one.

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

Don Rosa writes:
> Yes, I have been familiar with the Oak Island Treasure for decades;
> Barks made me a treasure buff when I was a tad, and I used to buy
> treasure-hunter magazines back in the 60s (do they still publish those?).
Ah, "Argosy" magazine! What would a USA barber shop of the early 1960s
have been without a rack full of them? (Along with "Field and Stream"
and "Guns and Ammo", of course.)

> But knowing someone has written such a story, I don't think I'd want
> to step on toes by presuming to beat them to publication with my own version.
Well, it's not exactly as if you were trying to win a race; as you point
out, the other story has been sitting on the shelf for a LONG time, and
(given the licensing situation) it's likely to stay there unread for-
ever. [Remember the final, "warehouse", scene of "Raiders of the Lost
Ark"? Appropriate, since of course that movie started out with a Barks-
inspired treasure hunt, complete with the same rolling-boulder booby
traps.]

> I can't picture 17th-18th century pirates having the ability to
> sink deep mine shafts in loose sand and then drill these horizontal
> water-channels out into the sea. [...]
> All I know is that the story has so little actual bearing in recorded
> fact that one would need to create a whole phony history in order to
> do a story about it
Which is the prototypical treatment of such a tale in Disney comics.
Simply going to Oak Island and digging up real buried treasure would be
much too mundane. A Disney comics treatment would have to contain some
fanciful elements about what's there, e.g.:

(1) Scrooge finds out about Oak Island (you can bet HE subscribed to
"Argosy"!); (2) he hires Gyro to build him a super pumping apparatus to
get around the flooded tunnels; (3) he makes Donald and HD&L be his
crew to go to Oak Island and excavate the pit; (4) on-site, studying the
layout of the tunnels, the geology of the rocks and sand, the time of
day of the floods versus the tides, the known history of Oak Island, and
Junior Woodchuck Guidebook accounts of how 17th century pirates did
their engineering, HD&L reach the same conclusions that you do about
there being some other explanation for the pit; (5) with the help of
Gyro's pump to get around the floods, and HD&L's resourcefulness to get
around a host of hitherto unknown booby traps activated by Donald, the
ducks finally reach the bottom of the pit, where they find...

Scenario # 1: the hideout of the Phantom Blot [no, wrong comic book]
# 2: duck mermaids and mermen of Atlantis [no, it's been done]
# 3: a lost tribe of Peeweegah Indians [not any more, they won't!]
# 4: (variant of #3) a whole civilization of tiny pirates, descended
from the smallest members of the original crew, who due to their
size were left inside the pit to guard the treasure, and who now
have multiplied (requiring the digging of more numerous and elabo-
rate tunnel systems) and learned modern drilling and hydrology
technology (from raiding parties' stealing books from libraries
at night) but who still speak 17th Century buckaneer-type English
[are these the "Munchkins" in the unpublished story?]
# 5: the crew of an alien spaceship (whose fuselage forms the shaft of
the pit), wrecked on earth for centuries, who are using the tides
in the tunnels to turn the generators needed for them to store up
enough enery to return to their home planet [nah; too predictable]
# 6: an underground passage to Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy (where the
steep channel has the world's strongest tides), inhabited by Terry-
Fermi-type "tide creatures" who use the Oak Island pit as an atmos-
pheric pressure valve on the machine that they use to pump the
world's oceanic currents, which they filter for gold to store in
Davy Jones' locker [hmmm....]
# 7: you name it [and given 5 minutes or less, I'm sure you can]

Anyway, you get the idea. The whole basis of a good Duck adventure is
to take a basic premise of real history, such as the destruction of the
Library of Alexandria, or a familiar legend, such as the Labyrinth of
Crete, and build a whole new history or legend (or both) on top of it.
So why not give Oak Island the same treatment?

Wilmer Rivers

WES:
I hope your recent posting was a joke! Does anyone actually like
seeing serialized stories presented in BIMONTHLY chapters? Or stories
that weren't meant to be serials presented in serial form?
"Monarch of Medioka" is my favorite Mickey story, and since it WAS
originally published as a serial, I don't mind seeing it that way. But
on a bimonthly schedule which causes it to take a full year to be
completely published? >Sigh< I remember 1990, when I went down to the
shop and blew two weeks' allowance to buy "Monarch" all in one part,
then sat down for a King Michael-size orgy of reading pleasure.

MORE LENTILS!
Speaking of serials... has anyone picked up USA 33 yet? I'd like
to know what people think of the last part of the Lentil story. Again
quite wordy, but I think the dialogue, on the whole, FEELS better.
Among the first few pages of this part were these lines for U$:
"Did you really think I was going home? I'm thinking you don't
know me very well, nephew!"
"Simple, cretin! I heard someone in the Beagle Boys' building...
and if they think we're gone, they'll GO, themselves!"
"Just as I thought! Now button your beaks, and shuffle along!"
Since Disney chopped out any phrases that involved one character
insulting another in the first two parts of this story, I think these
three panels will show a very impatient Scrooge saying things to Donald
that don't sound remotely cross whatsoever.
I finished "Colossus of the Nile" a few weeks ago, and IMHO it's a
much better story which I was able to give much more interesting
dialogue.

THE BEAGLE BOY DEBATE:
In the Lentil story, Scarpa looked back to the earlier Barks
stories in which numbers aside from 1, 7, and 6 were used. His Beagles
have numbers which are PALINDROMES: 342-243, and so on. Any numbers
could be used. There was even 313-313!
When I rewrote the story, I left everything as it was, and
Gladstone changed all the numbers to 176 variants themselves. I think
they did the right thing.
There's an Egmont Magica story, "A Witch in Crime" (one of my
FAVORITE Egmont stories, BTW) in which Magica briefly transforms herself
into a Beagle Boy. She gets the number 176-276, and the BBs eventually
figure out something's awfully amiss.

WILMER:
># 4: (variant of #3) a whole civilization of tiny pirates [have]
> learned modern drilling and hydrology technology (from raiding
> parties' stealing books from libraries)
...This begins to sound like the Vicar story "The Little Gronins"
that was in USA 24. In fact, VERY much like it. The idea of an
underground civilization having tremendous technical capability has been
done, even if the pirate angle is completely original.
Back in 1990 I did a story (with my own characters) called "The
Underground Kingdom" which was a lost-civilization story a la Barks. I
hadn't yet read Egmont stories like "The Secret of the Shogun's Stone"
(US 270), "Return to Bear Mountain" (DDAD 33), and "The Little Gronins"
(USA 24) which sort of retroactively "copied" my idea (although they
were actually created before it!). I'm going to rework my own story for
Egmont, too, but I'm worried it will seem like a cliche now... Maybe
I'll make it into a MICKEY story, which will differentiate it
substantially.

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