Keskustelujen arkisto

ARTHUR:

>Just like Don said, it's ALL European Disney comics, that 'refuse' to
>print the entire credits.

Not completely true: In Italy they started printing the names of
writer and artist in 1988 (whopee!), shortly after the newly-formed
Walt Disney Company Italia took over from Mondadori. In 1995 they
started to occasionally mention the inker when different from the
penciller. They only do this for Italian stories though, which is a
shame: I look forward to the day when, maybe with the help of the
Boschi, Sani, Gori, Becattini quartet, they start to print credits for
stories from other publishers.

HARRY:

Thanks for the welcoming!

> > childish passion for comics, and all that sort of rubbish (sounds
>
> VERY familiar.

Sigh...

[Massimo De Vita]
> If I remember well, this artist made awful drawings in th 60s or 70s.

I have a feeling that you may be confusing him with his father, the
late Pier Lorenzo, who had a completely different style (he didn't
really use perspective and he used to "bend" straight lines -- like
the trajectory of a bullet from a gun over a few metres!) His drawings
look awful at first sight, although can be seen as a historical author
in a sense.

IMHO Massimo De Vita did splendid drawings in the 70s (though you can
see a slight influence from his father in his very early stories which
I think are from the 60s) so I am strongly inclined to believe that
you are referring to P.L.

> How come some Italians change their drawing style so drastically? For
> instance, Romano Scarpa was very good in the 50s, and then he started
> drawing VERY ugly Ducks in the 60s!

WHAT? Well that must be a matter of personal preferences... I think
Scarpa's best _scripts_ are from the 50s, but that his best _art_ is
actually from the 60s and early 70s! I should actually give precise
references to stories, but I am at the office right now so I can't
check on the dates of the actual comics. However I agree with you
that there have been great changes in his style.

Another artist that changed significantly over the years is Giovan
Battista Carpi. And look at Giorgio Cavazzano! More on that later
on...

> Does the Italian editor demand style changes from time to time?

I don't think so. I think it's a personal evolution of the individual artists.

> This is very typical. There seem to be two Disney comics worlds: the
> Italian/French/Brazilian world, and the USA/Danish/Dutch world. People
> from one world seem to know very little about the other. I for instance
> know almost nothing about French or Brazilian comics.

I agree with your "isolated worlds" perspective, though I wouldn't
lump the Italian world together with the French and Brazilian -- to me
they have very little in common. It is probably more accurate to keep
them separate. The B's, especially, even use their own sets of
characters. The I's tend on average to have much longer stories than
the F's, B's, D's, H's.

DON:

> I'm glad to have another Italian in the group. That was an excellent
> introDUCKtion.

Thanks.

> It sounds like you've really seen very few of my stories -- I
> hope they'll grow on you a bit when you see more.

You may be right, actually. I think it's a bit like the rock group
Genesis: the first time I heard them, I didn't like them at all; but
as I listened to them more and more I started to like them a bit, then
a lot. And I've noticed this happening (with Genesis) to several
friends.

At this point as you say I've only read a few of your stories (4 or 5
stand-alone ones and half a dozen episodes of the Lo$) and I am at a
point where I really like you as a writer. I wouldn't say you are my
preferred artist, yet, but this may come later... :-)

> Where was this self-proclaimed Disney comics expert that you
> mentioned getting into a tiff with on some BBS? Why isn't he here?

I don't remember his name, it was 3 or 4 years ago on an inter-BBS
Italian echo area (read: newsgroup) on comics. 90% of the traffic was
evenly split between superheroes and manga, so it was rare to find
someone who would talk Disney.

Why is he not here? Well I think that Internet access isn't yet
widespread in Italy. Reasonably priced providers have only started to
appear in 1995 and the market isn't really mature yet. Maybe 1996 will
be the year where the majority of people with a modem will be
connected to the net instead of just an amateur BBS network like Fido
(which I'm not denigrating in any way, btw-- there's lots of good
things to be said for Fido IMHO).

> How many more friends would we have here if people knew where to
> find us? And I don't know what else Per can do to spread the
> word.

I think the web will be the thing that makes us known. As some of us
put up interesting pages and the sites become well-known, people will
find the pointer to the list much more easily.

If I had known that the list existed in 1992 I would have subscribed
right away! The only thing I did was checking the *disney* newsgroups,
but I quickly discovered that none of the traffic was about
comics. It's amazing how long it took me to find out...

LUTZ:

> Barks without the verbal wit of Dr. Erika Fuchs - unthinkable!" This
> is a mean and tasteless statement.

Surely is! On the other hand I must note that when I first read the
American originals of some Barks and Gottfredson stories I knew well,
I was surprised to see the characters (even "respectable" ones like
Mickey) use slang and misspellings. I was used to the Italian versions
which made a point of always use grammatically and orthographically
correct language. So, I was fascinated to note this difference-- but
others might have been shocked!

DANIEL:

> I think that is a reason to put her on that list. But... maybe then I
> should also place "Rockerduck" on it? He seems to be used very often
> in Italy. I should know it, but was Rockerduck really a creation of
> Barks? Why did Barks create the character? (I ask this because I
> vaguely remember that I red something about this.)

I think I read a similar discussion in one of the previous monthly
digests-- try grepping for Rockerduck in 1995-02, which is what I was
reading the other day. Anyway, in short: Barks invented the character
but only used it for one story (the one about a super-fuel for racing
boats, if I were at home I'd give you a more precise reference). The
Italians, most notably Guido Martina, have rescued him from oblivion
and turned him into Scrooge's regular opponent, in a role reminiscent
of that of Flintheart Glomgold (except that Rockerduck lives in
Duckburg like Scrooge, so they get to see each other a lot more).

ALL:

Bye for now-- I'm on hols for 10 days, so I'll answer your replies
when I'm back.

Frank (Filologo Disneyano)

Yeah, yeah, I know it's just a little bit off-topic, but
I was wondering if The Aristocats had been released on
video yet in Europe. I'm particularly interested in the
German version, since I can have a friend over there
pick it up for me (and yes, I have a multistandard VCR).
If nothing else, it looks like I'll be in Amsterdam
and den Haag, Hamburg, and Copenhagen this November,
so I could buy it then (along with various other comics
goodies). (Are Volumes IV through VI of the German Life
of Scrooge album-series out by this time...?)

Dwight (der fliegende Amerikaner) Decker

James,

Your early years health wise sound identical to mine. Hope you outgrew it
all. I outgrew only the worst, but with modern meds and a conservative
lifestyle I do pretty well.

My husband and I when in business, rediscovered the joys of comics such as
the Barks and Gottfredson stories, and others such as the old Felix The Cat
storie, Richy Rich and friends. And even good old Archie, Betty, and
Veronica. We had no time to read anything else! My husband can't read most
books because he will stay up all night trying to finish them. He reads
largely nonfiction during the daytime hours, computer stuff, and in depth,
objective newsletters. I try to read it all and comics stories at night, so
much for sleep.

I have had many wonderful dreams following reading Barks and others, stories.

Kathy Fitzpatrick
1608 Hoyt Ave
Everett WA 98201 kfitz at halcyon.com

ARTHUR:
The "transcript" of your conversation with the "Disney comics
expert" was very amusing. I can assure you that not one single thing he said
is true -- it sounds like he's making his "facts" up out of the thinnest of
air. He's so full of such drastic misinformation that I suspect he was
kidding you since it would be very difficult for someone to have so MANY
completely wrong ideas!

JAMES:
The two episodes of TALESPIN I wrote were the first two produced,
"It Came from Beneath the Seaduck" and "I Only Have Ice for You". These I
did after being forced to quit doing comics for Gladstone, and before I
thought of actually seeing if Egmont/Gutenberghus had any need of me, which
I doubted. The way those shows worked was that I was given a general plot
idea which I would try to develop into something... and the title, of
course, had to be some awful pun. The first of those two was done just as I
wrote it, while the other was rewritten quite a bit by the editors. It was
okay work and the Disney people in that department were actually quite
NICE... but I just didn't enjoy working in animated cartoons. With that
kinda stuff I was simply part of a TEAM which included literally hundreds if
not thousands of people from here to Korea or France (where the animation
for the Disney TV series is/was done). Everything was a group effort,
art-by-committee, not my cuppa tea. I MUCH prefer doing comic books where
the results are a one-man show, good or bad.>

DWIGHT:

> Yeah, yeah, I know it's just a little bit off-topic, but
> I was wondering if The Aristocats had been released on
> video yet in Europe.

This video is released months ago here in Holland.

> Dwight (der fliegende Amerikaner) Decker

Gosh! Are you a pilot? ;-)

--- Daniel

DON:

>Whatever opinion you may have of your German Disney publishers,
>don't lump the weekly comic publisher together with the album publisher.
>Those are virtually two entirely separate companies, not even located in the
>same city. They are two publishers owned by a common corporation (Egmont).
>Surely they hobnob to some extent, but the workforces and editorial staffs
>and ideas are completely separate.

Oops! Good point. Actually I didn't know that. Thanks for pointing it out. It
was
just that I was sort of angry at them for badmouthing Carl Barks' original
dialogues
which I absolutely adore. Maybe they had not intended for it to sound that way
but... Someone was real clumsy here!

Speaking of the album publishers, it somehow figures that they are a separate
company. They do a moderately good job with your albums and the CBL (I say
moderately because of the coloring; as you already mentioned, it's the same
cheap-shot coloring they use for the weekly) while the weekly has really
degenerated into a kiddie magazine with an awful layout and the beforementioned
editorial stuff that I would really like to push down their throats...
And to make matters worse, they haven't printed a Don Rosa story in months...

FRANK:

You said to Don:
>I am at a point where I really like you as a writer. I wouldn't say you are my
>preferred artist, yet, but this may come later...

It will. Early on when I was reading Don's stories I felt kind of funny about
his
drawings. Though they have a lot in common with Barks' style, they are also
radically different (sounds strange but that's how I feel about them). But again
there's the Genesis effect <g>: Don's art really keeps growing on you. For
years I have preferred Daan Jippes' style because it's so incredibly close to
Barks, but today I must say I really prefer Don's style over that of any other
active
Disney artist in the world.

>when I first read the American originals of some Barks and Gottfredson stories
>I knew well, I was surprised to see the characters (even "respectable" ones
like
>Mickey) use slang and misspellings.

Same here! I grew up on the German versions all through the 60s and didn't
have a chance to read the originals until the 80s. But what a revelation that
was! For some strange reason I just adore American slang. One of my favorite
TV shows is still to this day "The Beverly Hillbillies", just for the sheer
pleasure
of hearing them talk... <g>

DWIGHT:

Yes, THE ARISTOCATS has been released in Europe. I don't know about
other countries, but here in Germany it's no problem to buy either the British
or German version. If there's a Disney Store in Hamburg (there should be),
look there.
The final Lo$ album (Vol. VI) is scheduled to be in stores in September.
Personally, I can't wait! They have been printing the cover ($crooge escaping
from the sinking Titanic, followed by Bombie the Zombie) for months in
various ads, and this cover alone is enough to make me VERY curious...

--Lutz

Forgive me, as I am a digest reader, so won't
be able to reply to the thread on the list.

Marvel has folded many of its Disney comics into
one comic title that will rotate "Little Mermaid,"
"Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin."

The "Gargoyles" title, based on the Disney Afternoon
show by the same name, will still remain its own
title.

Sherline

ALL:
Maybe this will be my last mail for the next ten months, as I depart
to the U.S. tomorrow, and I don`t know yet if I`ll have the chance
of using the Internet there. So I want to thank everyone, especially
Per as the administrator of this list, who helped making this a forum
where Disney-Comic fans from all over the world can discuss and share
their knowledge with each other. I learned very much through this list,
and I hope that my mails helped some of you as well. I really hope that
I will have the opportunity to stay in contact, if not...see you next
June. I will miss you!
All the best, and have a nice time!

Danny Coenen
f.coenen at kfa-juelich.de

"I wonder if I will match it. Or will America turn me back?"
($crooge McDuck in the German version of Don`s Lo$, chapter 1)