Keskustelujen arkisto

At 08:40 AM 5/23/95 +0000, 9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk wrote:
>
> HARRY:

> Wak! This is Egmont's reformatted version of I-277 which
>Gladstone published as "Andold Wild Duck" in DDA 23! This must be where
>Gladstone themselves saw the story, and when they cut it from 29 to 26
>pages, they didn't know it had already been cut from 36 in this Danish
>incarnation. In fact, now I bet Gladstone isn't aware that there IS a
>version of this story coded I-277. They must think their version of the
>story only lacks three pages... but it ain't necessarily so!
>
> David Gerstein

Double Wak! Cut from 36 to 26 pages? Now I understand why I didn't like
the story when I read it in DDA 23. Parts of it just didn't seem to make
sense! I feel shortchanged!

Neal Kinney

MARVEL DISNEYS
--------------

DAVID:
| They have just cancelled ALL their Disney titles but two

Quite funny then, that they still advertise subscriptions to all
their titles, and all the time tell young children, who adore their
magazines, to subscribe to them so that they won't miss any of the
enchanting, magic... bah!

They also said in the letter collumn of a recent issue that there
soon would be a Pocahontas, or something, title. But then again,
they said a long time ago that there would be a Lion King title.

I think the Beaty and The Beast title actually is quite good, so
I wouldn't mind if they continued it.

The really disgusting thing about the Marvels are that one third
(yes, I counted) of the magazines are used for ads.

| Hildy complained that their biggest problem is a lack of exposure -
| people don't know the titles are out there. They do get a very
| favorable response from those who are aware of them

Yes... have you ever read the letter collumn in any of these magazines?
It's a bit different from Gladstone's...

EGMONT STORIES/ISSUES
---------------------

ERIK:
| I do not have credits for Egmond stories except the ones I work on.
| Do you want those?

I do! I want them in the Norwegian index.

About "Visste du at":
| Suggestions on what to put into these pages are welcome!

Ah. I'm not sure if you have read my earlier letters about these
articles, but if you have, you'll know that I'm not exactly a fan of
them. I don't mind that they are there, of course, I do want articles,
but I want them to be a little more informative. Something like "once
Donald Duck did" isn't very useful if it doesn't say in what issue or
story. It would also help if you told who did the story, but I guess
that is asking for too much.

Norwegian DD&Co is running an old Mickey story now. They just call it
the good old kind of Mickey Mouse...

ITALIAN STORIES
---------------

GIANFRANCO GORIA: Any lists are welcome (as are you :-), and if they
aren't too long, you can send them to the list (mailing-list :).

If you have any codes for your own stories, it would be easier to
identify them.

NORWEGIAN REVIEWS
-----------------

I will try to post them in a couple of days. I'm five reviews late, or
so, now, I think.

BTW: DAVID:Did you get those things I sent to Santa Barbara?

Santa Claus/Father Christmas/Julenissen/Joulupukki/Saint Niclas/Sinterklaas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Quite old now, but since I still haven't answered Mike.
In Norway Julenissen has more or less merged with the other kind of nisse,
the fjoesnisse. Fjoesnissen is a small nisse who lives at every farm all
over the country. He's never seen by humans, but he can talk to the animals,
and he sees to that they are treated well. Every Christmas the farmers have
to give fjoesnissen a bowl of julegroet. If they don't, the nisse will
start to make a lot of trouble.

Jorgen

>MIKKO & MIKE:
Hm. Yes, I will be coming to Finland in late October. After I made
that first announcement that I expected to be coming around November, I
received indirect word from the Finnish publisher that they wanted to keep
that trip a BIG SECRET -- so I posted on here that I definitely would not be
coming to Finland in November (which is true -- it's now October). But now
you tell me that they've announced it themselves without much ballyhoo and
without even much certainty ("negotiating"? They make it sound like I demand
payment for these trips!). So I guess I can admit to it...?
As for that photo (which I haven't seen yet), if you thought I'd
look different, maybe I do. I've shaved off my beard and let my hair grow
longer since then -- supposedly that makes me look about 10-15 years
younger, so they say. So I don't look like that photo any longer. I'll send
them a new photo.

DAVE:
It seems like I read over on COMPUSERVE they were saying that this
Hildy Masnik and her staff were canned by Marvel about a week ago. Perhaps
(unless I'm disremembering the name) that means Marvel isn't even planning
to publish the single Disney title now? I can't go back and double-check
since those messages have long scrolled off that board.

HARRY:
Too bad they couldn't use the "new improved" version of "GotLL" in
Holland. And the Family Tree you say they're publishing -- you say they
redrew my Tree? How do you know it's based on my Tree? Maybe they did one of
their own? Or have they put my characters on their own Tree? Or redrew even
my characters? Uh-oh -- if they tried that, I'm sure they'll have mistakes
in accuracy since they won't know where I got all those characters. I
actually can't understand how anyone could use that Tree without also using
the page of text I wrote to explain where each character comes from. Maybe
they'll print that also -- I never know when other publishers are using ANY
of my work. Ain't supposed to work that way!

Great digest today! Our resident comic-creators are
multiplying fast!

ERIK:
Eli Squinch's Egmont appearance was in D 91420, MM in "The
Secret of Shark Reef" (16 pages, art Esteban).
It appeared in Germany (and other Egmont countries, I suppose)
in 1992 and Holland in 1993. In some countries, the local
translators didn't know that Eli was a character from old stories, so
they gave him a new name. For example, in Holland, Squinch got the
name Udo J. Uitziger, when the old stories called him something else
(thanks to Harry for that information).
Some translations also implied that Mickey (and even Pete) had
not met Squinch before, but the German translation isn't like this,
so I'd suspect that the original version of the story had it that
Squinch was a recognized character. (On the other hand, the German
version DOES give Squinch a new name...)
If you have some way of accessing the original English version
of this story, I'd like to confirm that the character in this story
is indeed Squinch, and not merely drawn to look like him.
Our own Dave Rawson and myself have used Squinch in more recent
stories which have yet to be published (and in my case, drawn).
Egmont does have a character guide for Squinch, so all further
stories with him should seem canonical enough and be drawn correctly
as well.

KNUT:
Squinch's personality is based (loosely) on Charles Dickens'
Uriah Heep, and I think Gottfredson was just trying to get a
Dickens-style flavor to the name when he came up with Eli Squinch.
If anything, I think that Squinch's name simply relates to his
frequent squinty expression.

LAFFALOT (I hope that's not your real name):
> Eli Squinch is the name of the man in Shawshank Redemption who actully killed
> the wife and lover of Andy Dufrense, a crime for which Andy went to jail.
The plot thickens! "Shawshank Redemption" (a great film, IMHO)
was based on a Stephen King story, which suggests King must be a
Gottfredson fan. But King based his story on a real incident, so
maybe there was a real Eli Squinch out there somewhere!
I can imagine Stephen King being inspired to his (sometimes
rather potboilerish, IMHO) tales of horror by "The Phantom Blot".

GIANFRANCO:
Interesting to hear about your recent Italian stories. Ever
thought of using Eli Squinch (or Eli Squick, as he's called over
there)? ;-)

JORGEN:
>> [Marvel has] just cancelled ALL their Disney titles but two
> Quite funny then, that they still advertise subscriptions to all
> their titles
This is because the comics we're seeing in the shops now were
sent to be printed before news of the cutdown was issued. Remember,
only three months before Gladstone's first run of comics stopped,
they were still advertising subscriptions to them. Same goes for
Disney Comics. There's a big time-lag between when management makes
a decision and when it's reflected in the comics themselves.
[In regard to Marvel's audience liking their Disneys]
> Yes... have you ever read the letter collumn in any of these magazines?
Do you honestly think Marvel would print many letters that
implied readers didn't like their comics? I think most people who
don't like the Marvel Disneys simply don't write at all. They don't
have much hope that Marvel, with its company ego, would want to think
it was doing anything really wrong.
When I said yesterday that my local shops ordered less of the
Marvel Disneys, I forgot to mention that BEAUTY AND THE BEAST still
leads the pack. So I'm willing to bet that it's the style and
quality of the comics that has caused their failure, although I
haven't read a lot of the issues and am not in a position to make a
judgement as to their quality, myself.

JORGEN ALSO SAID:
> Norwegian DD&Co is running an old Mickey story now.
It's in the British weekly, too: "The Mysterious Crystal Ball"
(1954). Quite a surprise to see it...
> They just call it the good old kind of Mickey Mouse...
I don't think the story itself is anything really great (it
follows the rule that "only Goofy is funny," and since Goofy isn't in
it, the story lacks humor), but the art -- WOW! Mickey even has his
pie-eyes back! This is the period of Murry's art that I genuinely
adore! (He does give MM a hat, but he was just copying how MM was
drawn in the cartoons of the period...)
Quite a shame that Egmont didn't run "The Lost Legion" (the
story that follows this one) instead. As we've mentioned, there's a
danged good Mickey story, regardless of who wrote it (we don't know).

JORGEN:
> BTW: DAVID:Did you get those things I sent to Santa Barbara?
Gosh -- YES! Of course! What a swell Rosa picture -- and of
course, a comic book with a certain story in it ;-) Thanks a lot!
Do I still owe you something for it? (I think I still owe something
to Fabio and Gilbert, too. You'll get yours, folks.)

David Gerstein
<9475609 at arran.sms.ed.ac.uk>
"Oh, I wouldn't THINK of giving ye my gun for such a purpose!
But if you should borrow it, without me knowin', an' Mickey jest
HAPPENED to get shot with it -- well, don't forget ter bring it back
when you're finished with it!" -- Eli Squinch

Don:
> Too bad they couldn't use the "new improved" version of "GotLL" in Holland.

Yes - but there's one advantage: I now have both versions of that story.
In my attempt to get all Disney art you make, I now don't have to look
for Scandinavian issues of this story.

> And the Family Tree you say they're publishing -- you say they
> redrew my Tree?

You could also call it re-inking. In the announcement, they showed a part
of the tree. It is exactly your layout, your characters, your face expressions
et cetera. But the drawing (inking) style is not yours.
I'll send you a copy of the issue in a few weeks.

--Harry.

David wrote:
> If you can supply us with writer/artist credits for virtually any
> and all recent Egmont stories, Harry Fluks and I would be very grateful.

Well, I happened to spend some time at the residence of the Swedish
translator of Disney comics recently, so when I had nothing better to
do I looked through a few issues lying around. The only comic by any
of the list members I found there was John Lustig's Donald Duck story
"Fifty-Cent Frenzy" (D93155) with art by Gual (to appear in 34/95 in
Scandinavia). In the papers they send the translator there are
credits for all the Egmont stories (first "idea" + "script" or just
"story", and then "art").
-- "
Per Starback, Uppsala, Sweden. email: starback at minsk.docs.uu.se
"Life is but a gamble! Let flipism chart your ramble!"

Jorgen:

D 93303 DD weekly 37/95:

Mickey-story art: Serioli
writer: Michael T. Gilbert
Erik Horthe
egil at telepost.no