Keskustelujen arkisto

> From: Mikko Aittola <maittola at snakemail.hut.fi>
> Heeeeeeeeeeyyyy, wait a minute.................
> Hauskaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa wappua!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who said Finnish people didn't use long words? Try to fit this in a normal-
sized word balloon!

8-)
--Harry.

subscribe disney-comics

WES:
>I also don't approve of
>censoring an artist's work without the artist's consent...

David:
> Maybe you didn't know it, but this is why we have not seen a
Complete Gottfredson or Taliaferro Library set.

David, what you're talking about is _total_ censorship, which I certainly
don't like. As a big Gottfredson fan and possibly the only member of this
list who enjoys Taliaferro's strips in Gladstone's DD, your information disapp
oints me quite a bit.

Wes

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

WES:
>I also don't approve of
>censoring an artist's work without the artist's consent...

Maybe you didn't know it, but this is why we have not seen a
Complete Gottfredson or Taliaferro Library set. When Disney bans a
NEWSPAPER STRIP for even the SLIGHTEST reason -- even something that can
easily be changed -- they will not allow a change to be made even if it
means that the strip, and an entire 150-strip serial with nothing
objectionable except for that one strip, will never be seen again.
On the other hand, if Disney finds something objectionable in a
comic book story, it can be altered and the story reprinted.
MM "In the Foreign Legion," a newspaper strip story, is found
objectionable by Disney due to a big-lipped black caricature in two
strips and big noses on a few Arabs in about ten strips. Gladstone was
originally given the okay to make these changes and print the story (way
back in MM 240), but then Disney turned around and said no.
I consider this largely fantastic story's complete suppression
much worse than printing a version that's been slightly modified. Would
people feel it was more respectful to Barks if "Voodoo Hoodoo" was
banned, not censored, and the Barks Library thus never published? I
don't think Gottfredson would like to see how his stories are treated
today, supposedly out of respect for him.

Of course, we can all note exceptions to the above rule, but most
of them occurred in or prior to 1988 (when the rules began to take
effect) or when Disney Comics personell SNUCK something by the censors
(as with "Sky Island" which really is entirely uncensored).

>"But, Mickey! It's SUICIDE!"
I'll say so, fer gosh sakes! ;-)

On a related note, CBLDD 14's printing of "Race to the South Seas"
does illuminate ONE tiny change that was made in DDAD 29, a change I had
not known about before. In the original, a servant calls Scrooge
"Massa," which was changed to "Boss" in Disney's 1992 reprint.

David Gerstein
"Poor little kid! She was so brave -- she didn't want to see me
go on this treasure hunt by myself! And now -- I'll never see her
again! ... Sob! Sniff!"
<9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>

>JACOB:
You say you haven't read the "Solvent" story, so I can't guess what
parts of the scientific bizniz you aren't aware of.
Perhaps you didn't realize that my shaft was not FULL of air. That
was the very problem I was trying to deal with -- I needed the characters to
be able to talk and breathe at the bottom, yet not be squished into jelly by
the titanic pressure of 4000 miles of air. So I allowed only a BIT of air to
leak into the shaft which would flow to the bottom. This isn't designed as a
fool-proof solution, just an indication that I was not ignoring the glaring
impossibilities that center-of-the-earth stories usually do.

BOB:
I don't know how you could expect Gladstone to mail their albums out
in better containers. Those folded up cardboard things function exactly like
a solid box as near as I can tell. Not a single issue of any of the 50-60
albums I've received from them has ever been the slightest bit damaged. I
think you should blame the postal workers in Maine and wait and see how the
next albums arrive.

DAVID:
I guess I must see $crooge stories differently than other readers or
writers. I can't imagine what interest there could be in a story about the
world's richest Duck getting richer. Note that in all the $crooge
quest-for-treasure stories I've ever done, he has NEVER attained his
treasure, and usually loses something in his attempt to get more of what he
already has plenty of.
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" would have meant nothing
whatsoever if anyone had gotten out with an ounce of gold. That was the
whole point.

And what was that weird message about "Bux Bunny"? A gag?

WES: You call yourself "possibly the only member of this list who
enjoys Taliaferro's strips in Gladstone's DD." Gawrsh, say it ain't
so! I enjoy AT strips a lot. And I wouldn't mind them in such large
numbers -- in trade paperbacks along the lines of Garfield books.
The reason I gripe about the material is that I have actually been
around Europe, looking extensively at all the duck and mouse stuff
available. When I see great stories being ignored so that AT can
simply hog lots of an issue, I feel it's a shame. Not because I
don't like the gags, but because I think that a comic BOOK should
take advantage of its format to present more full stories, while
paperbacks are a more logical place to anthologize droves of short,
individual gags.
I AM all for seeing SOME AT strips in Gladstone's comics. I
was disappointed that Disney Comics didn't use them, and wrote in
continually until they finally dredged up a few (right near the end,
in 1993), although they were the original 2-pagers he'd done for
WDC&S in 1949 rather than dailies. Before Gladstone started, I
pleaded with them to print the Silly Symphony DD Sundays (which they
were already planning to do before I asked them!). But I feel the
material is now being used at modern writers' expense, which is
nothing like I had envisioned.

JOHN LUSTIG: We've talked a lot about censorship of many stories,
but I've never known if Disney censored the stories you did with Van
Horn. Do they? I can't actually tell if a Van Horn-lettered
balloon has been partly relettered, for instance. But I do notice
things like a train-station sign being deleted from "Stampede and
Deliver" in the American edition. Whose choice was this?
Van Horn's stories always involve DD insulting the nephews
with a lot of colorful language. ("Drones! Idlers! Indolent --"
CLONK!) My stories start out the same way, but Disney butchers them
so Donald becomes nice and polite. How does Van Horn get away
with it? Does he actually include a lot more verbal horseplay than
we end up seeing?

One interesting thing I read about "Horsing Around with
History" in an Egmont in-house journal was that Barks asked Van Horn
to reduce the size of the noses on the Beagle Boys' tailor costumes,
because he thought that the original outsize schnozzes made them look
like caricatured Jews! So it's not only Disney that censors stories.
Gottfredson would now and then use an obvious Jewish character
(the antique salesman in "The Miracle Master," for instance, who
originally wore a yarmulke). I enjoy these characters, because
otherwise I would never be sure that I had any "kindred spirits",
religion-wise, in Mickey's world. ;-) Why censor such obviously
harmless things?

David Gerstein
<9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>
"You want this fiddle maybe Nero fiddled with? It went with
Washington when he crossed the Delaware in the Mayflower!"
"Yeah! An' if Caesar gave it to him at Napoleon's funeral, so much
the better!"

DAVID:
>> Who would care if a rich $crooge got richer?
>Isn't that just what we've been reading about in almost every issue

I personally do not enjoy reading stories, which are only about as thing
usually go: Scrooge gets money from all over the world or he goes there
and finds a treasure. My opinion is that there should always be some risk.
If it is not for his/somebody else's life then it should be for his fortune.

--

Mike - The Finnish Trekkie