Keskustelujen arkisto

To all Marco Rota fans:
In the new series of "Zio Paperone" ("Uncle $crooge") in wich is published

the Don Rosa "Life of Uncle $crooge", Rota is the author of ]" the
ufront and back coverss, the second one in water colors.
In #4 of the critical comics magazine "IF" (||uscheduled for october) will
be published an illustrated essay (with interview) on Rota by Fabio
Gadducci and Mirko Tavosanis (and a lot of other comics-ralated stuff, like
Sydney Jordan, Hugo Pratt, etc,)
I'm serching for a mailing list concerning sindycated comic strips of the
past (like Flash Gordon, Prince Valiant, The Phantom, etc.). Can anyone hel
p me?
Thanks and excuse for the english!
Leonardo Gori

unsubscribe

On 10 Sep 95 disney-comics at minsk.docs.uu.se wrote:

DON:
Yes, I was quite interested in the French title for "Tour de Jour."
"Un Guide a la Hauteur"? Sounds like maybe their is a play on words there as
well. Maybe not only "heights," but "haughtiness" is suggested. That would be
consistent with the characters on the tour bus and their pretty
self-interested view of touring. Maybe Dwight or someone else might know. At
any rate, thanks much for checking. I appreciate it.
Regarding, ProCon and San Diego, I haven't been hiding particularly.
In Oakland I (with most of the other attendees) usually assume the position
of the bent elbow at one of the tables in the bar area.
In San Diego, I usually end up wherever I'm invited. This year my
friend Eileen White was working in Del Mar (about 20 minutes north) and her
suite faced the sunset. I spent a coupla evenings watching it set with her
before trying out the jacuzzi. Other than that, I was around, here and there.
In fact, you and I did get to chat (just briefly) during the Egmont dinner,
though I never did make it to the Horton Grand. Congratulations, again, on
the Eisner!

... DCR -- http://www.wp.com/DCRawson/home.html
* Evaluation copy of Silver Xpress. Day # 38
--- via Silver Xpress V4.01 [NR]

DON:

Thanks for your response on which editions of your comics you consider
original. That's an interesting question -- I wouldn't expect it to be
usual for an author to be first published in a language he doesn't
even read! By the way, Jerry Siegel, the creator of Superman, wrote a
number of scripts for Italian Disney stories, many of which were
pretty good (while some others were relatively poor, I should add --
but let's only judge an author on his best work, that's my
philosophy!). I would be curious to find out if Siegel could read
Italian. His scripts were illustrated by Italian artists: Scarpa did a
number of these in the '70s, and there are many which I like a lot
like "Zio Paperone e la scorribanda nei secoli", TL 911 (1973) (lit.:
U$ and the ride through centuries); Cavazzano also did some good ones,
I remember "Paperino e la macchina dell'eroismo", TL 878 (1972) (lit.:
DD and the heroism machine). I have no idea if these have ever been
reprinted in the US and, if not, how/whether Siegel could see the
final result of his work.

>it's not until Gladstone prints them that they are
>lettered or colored well

What do you mean? Is Egmont's colour sub-standard? I've seen
Gladstone's new computer colour, which is nice and, usually,
tastefully applied. How does the Egmont colour compare? Is it just
"flat" instead of 16 million colours? Is it dotty, like the US comics
of not-very-long-ago? Or is it technologically ok but artistically
"wrong"?

JACOB:

Thanks for translating "Lustiges Taschenbuch". You asked how far the
Italian CWD got to, given that the Danish "Jumboboger" is at 170. I
think they must be around issue 220-230. Note that this is the new
monthly series (CWDNS) which restarted from issue 1 in 1977. The
original CWD series (1 to 71) wasn't monthly and ran from 1957 to
1977. Many of the CWDs were then reprinted in the CWDNSs: for a long
while, the odd-numbered CWDNSs were reprints of CWDs, whereas the
even-numbered ones had "new" reprints. Note that there is no
guarantee that the Danish reprint follows the CWDNS issue by
issue. The LTs I saw which were exact replicas of CWDNS booklets did
not carry the same issue number as the corresponding Italian
originals. So it may be that they intersperse the CWDNS translations
with something else. The Danish edition may well do so too.

KNUT:

See response to Jacob :-)

HARRY:

I agree, Perego's art is ugly. Not only his glue, but his full-length
stories too. He could take beautiful scripts from, say, Rodolfo
Cimino, and turn them into something you wouldn't want to read :-( The
worst thing though is not his glue (you just skip it) or his stories,
but the panels he used to draw to join the episodes of the same story
by someone else! The longer (>30 pages) stories were normally
published in two or three weekly installments in Topolino; when
reprinted in the CWDs, the editor (curse on him, whoever he was)
thought it was a good idea to pretend that the stories had never been
splitted in the first place, so they consistently removed the opening
page from the 2nd and subsequent installments, butchered the last few
panels of the 1st to n-1th installments and stitched the lot together
with some Perego junk... Arghhh!

Having said all this, I think it's hard to say that Perego is the
worst Disney comics artist ever. There's no lower bound, believe me,
and there are several I consider even worse (Giancarlo Gatti to name
one...)

By the way, congratulations for knowing Perego's name -- you do pretty
well for one who said he didn't know much about the Italian Disney
comics universe...

DAVID:

"[the Germans] ... keep all their pocketbooks in print"
What? Do you mean that, say, issue no 126 from 1983 is still reprinted
today so that people can find it in the newsagents? If so, this is a
wonderful and meritorious way to proceed (I wish the Italians did so)
but... how on Earth can the newsagents not run out of shelf space?

About Scarpa: Scarpa himself says he prefers Mickey to Donald, so
there you go! He did write the Legend of Donald Hood, although this is
not what he'll be remembered for.

KATHY:

Thanks for the info on "Cash Flow". Maybe when I have a few more US
comics I'll be able to read it!

DON:

You say Marco Rota is "the best Disney Duck artist of all right now"
-- what does the "right now" refer to? He sadly stopped doing Disney
stories when Walt Disney Company Italia took over from Mondadori in
1988... Is he doing new stories for the foreign markets? I knew they
recently agreed to have him do the covers for Zio Paperone, but
nothing more. I'd like to see him do new stuff. Perhaps
Gladstone/Egmont/whoever is reprinting some of his old classics, and
that's what you refer to? I think Marco Rota is great, and he's the
most Barksian of the Italian artists; but Scarpa has such an
incredible creative and narrative power (look at his Atomino Bip Bip
stories) that I consider him even greater. Who is "Ferolli"? Off the
top of my head I can't think of any name I know resembling this. Can
you describe the plot of some of his stories, to see if this brings
anything to mind? Or does he work for Egmont _directly_?

"Un guide ` la hauteur" literally means "A guide (who is) up to it". I
don't know the story so I can't say any more nor comment on the
appropriateness. I'll leave that to you and Dave...

Frank (Filologo Disneyano)

I just heard that Dutch DD weekly #43 will print the Barks/Van Horn
story "Horsing Around with History".
Not much of a surprise, really. Issue 43 always celebrates the birthday
of Dutch DD weekly (October, 1952). They always have something "special"
in issue 43.

--Harry.

FRANK:
> What? Do you mean that, say, issue no 126 [of the German LUSTIGE
> TASCHENBUECHER pocketbook] from 1983 is still reprinted today so that
> people can find it in the newsagents?
Yup, that's right. Issues go in and out of print, though...
it's basically like they spend a year on the stands, and then a year
off, or something like that. And the first 30 issues are rarely
reprinted, to keep them sought-after I assume (although ONE time that
I was in Germany, the whole lot was in reprint with a special
grocery-store stand to grab attention).
Last time I was in Germany, a whole lot from around issue
40-60 seemed to be the most recent reprints; then those from around
#100 were in reprint, and those from #150 on were fairly easy to find
(with one exception: Janet Gilbert's DD birthday-story issue).

NEWS FROM GLADSTONE:
My original Scrooge/Magica Egmont story, "Two in One," will
probably be in US #298 now, rather than #297. On the other hand, DDA
#37 will have my _Animal Farm_ satire "Pork-Barrel Politics" in it, so
things are still looking good. Thus, my second original story will be
the first one published in the United States.
US #297 _will_ have one of my TRANSLATIONS in it, a Magica
story entitled "No Dime for Stardom" in which a Hollywood producer
decides to film a LO$ movie, and Magica horns in. (The life of
Scrooge, as shown there, is very different from Don's version, but
don't throttle me -- I translated this in 1992, before I knew about
the LO$ project.)
And WDC&S 602 will have a 10-page Fred Milton story I
translated and dialogued way back in _1990_. It's called "The Clock
Watcher" and is the only Milton story I've ever seen which used the
Beagle Boys. (HARRY: Are there more?)
And what else?
DDA #36 will have John Lustig's "Piece in Pieces" and a Barks
ten-page story, "Ice Taxis."
DDA #37 will have (in front of my story) Pat and Shelly Block's
"Three Little Cupids," in which HDL's attempt to rekindle romance
between Donald and Daisy turns sour and gets the ducks involved with
spies and espionage.
DDA #38 will have some foreign stories from Gladstone's
backlog, which Dwight and I may have had something to do with, but I'm
not sure which ones will be used.

That's the news at the top of the hour, gang.

David Gerstein
<96dag at williams.edu>

FRANK:
Looks like others have told you the scoop on Marco Rota and Ferioli.
As for Egmont's coloring, it's not that they don't have limitless
computer capabilities, and it's not that it's actually "bad". It's just that
it's done by computer technicians who are trying to get the job done as
quickly and simply as possible. As near as I can tell, there is never any
thought given to doing anything but filling spaces with color. No thought to
improving the look of the scene. No lighting effects, no dramatic
techniques. I always think of the scene in the "Lo$" where $crooge is
drowning at the bottom of a stagnant, peaty moat in the middle of a rainy
night. In the Gladstone version it was dark and murky. In the Egmont version
they just colored it like he was on dry land at high noon. The difference is
that at Gladstone the stuff is colored by artists who take time and effort
to improve the look. And those same comments apply to the lettering. At
Gladstone the sound effects are very creative and special... at Egmont the
sound effects and ancient signs and everything else are typeset or scribbled
in with a black marker pen. Egmont is simply a company trying to put out a
weekly comic as fast as possible -- Gladstone's product probably would look
the same if they didn't have as much time as they do.
One interesting thing about Egmont/Gladstone coloring where Egmont
is superior: in a very complex scene with lotsa Rosa details, Gladstone will
simply color everything one color since it's too difficult to do it all by
hand. At Egmont where it's all done on computer, they simply blow that area
up and color it at a larger scale -- though it's still the same, uninspired
coloring, it still looks better than all orange or all yellow.

DAVE R.:
And now I have an extra copy of the French PICSOU that I've been
discussing. What is your address... I will send it to you.
Oh, fer Pete's sake -- the Egmont dinner! I even remember you and I
ate the same dish. Whatsamattah with me?! Gad!

David:
> "The Clock Watcher" is the only Milton story I've ever seen which used the
> Beagle Boys. (HARRY: Are there more?)

Freddy Milton is now mostly doing the layouts and pencils of (shorter)
Dutch stories, written by Jan Kruse, Frank Jonker, and others. The art
is then done by someone from a Spanish studio.
Some of these stories also feature the Beagle Boys.

From Milton's own stories, I can't remember one with the BB in it. And
our Database does not list one.

--Harry.