Keskustelujen arkisto

DWIGHT:

Thanks for the explanation about Egmont's house language being English. If
I understand correctly, then, Rota sends a first draft in Italian to
Egmont, they then send it to you for translation into English, they then
edit it and resend it back (in English?) to Rota who does the final
dialogue (in Italian?) and the art and sends it to Egmont; they send it
back to you (or whoever else) to have the final dialogue translated into
English; and finally the English final dialogue is translated n times into
the various different national editions. Whew! Is that more or less right?

By the way, how many languages can you translate a comic story into English
from? I'm impressed!

DON:

More interesting stuff about colouring. You mention "Hearts of the Yukon"
which has been published by Gladstone, with good colours, before Egmont;
and you say, let's see how Egmont colours it when they publish it next
year. In such a case why wouldn't Egmont reuse Gladstone's colours which
are already available? If they ask their computer technicians to spend as
little time as possible on their pages, it seems that recycling someone
else's colouring should be the ultimate deal for them...

HARRY:

>Yes, the bigger comic shops have a stock of Gladstone comics. The smaller
>ones will be happy to order a comic or album for you from Gladstone.
>At least, that's the Dutch situation.

The only big comic shop I know of in Cambridge, "Forbidden Planet", has
racks full of comics of all sorts, and then posters, toys, Star Trek, D&D,
misc fantasy stuff and so on, but NO Disney Comics of any sort. I asked
them several times, trying to get answers from different salespeople, but
the most "informed" reply I got was that they are somehow not allowed to
sell the Gladstone comics because of licensing problems. Ie, this guy knew
that these comics existed but said that as a shop they couldn't get them
from the distributor. Didn't know who else might get them either... Sounds
a bit bogus to me, but on the other hand the incompetence of some comics
resellers has already been discussed on this list.

If you or anybody else has tips on where to find Gladstone comics in
England (preferably London if not Cambridge) please let me know. Otherwise
I'll consider subscribing.

Many thanks for the info about the database: I'll give it a try asap! Which
authors do you like best among the Dutch and Danish ones? So I know what to
look for -- and maybe compare my tastes with yours when I find some of
these stories.

DON:

>You realize that this "scanner" can't be something that you feed a
>page into or something which exerts ANY pressure whatsoever on the
original,
>and the original can be the size of a two-page spread of a comic book?

What about the "photostat" process which you described a few days earlier?
Doesn't that require the comic to be flat, too? How do you hold it in place
then?

JOHN:

I think your public-spirited idea of having the pros write up their own
index for the archives is great, if they have the time and inclination to
do it. First-hand knowledge can't be beaten. Of course the rest of us will
be more than happy to take a skeleton index as a starting point and to fill
in the gaps (e.g. reprints etc given the story code).

JAKOB:

>Well, there's a second-hand comic book store in Goteborg that
>sells (I think) fresh editions of CBL. It's called Serieknodden.
>Ever heard of it? The owner is a member of NAFS(k) that is called
>Bengt Sollenby. He's got (I think) 8 different parts on his
>shelves. Unfortunately they cost 1.675 Kr EACH! It's awful, but

That's 1675 Kr for a three-volume set, or about twice the original price,
right? Do you know exactly which sets he's got in stock?

DAVID:

> Gladstone tells me that the Carl Barks Library, in its
>hardback form, is *NOT* going to be reprinted at any known time in the
>future.

I rate this as one of these classical rip-off operations. The trouble (for
us story-lovers) is that the Gladstone guys are not only in the comics
publishing business, they're also in the "selling older comics to
collectors at a considerable premium" business. So what happens? They do a
very good edition of all of Barks' Disney stories, the CBL. Everybody loves
it, all around the world. Then the books become sold out; so what do they
do? Instead of printing another run (which BTW would have the lowest
possible marginal cost, because all the editorial work has already been
done) they treasure the last few remaining copies, happy to see them become
collector's items, and offer them at more than THREE TIMES the normal
price! (I got a letter from them saying so, about a year ago. $3000 +
shipping). I think this is really a dirty trick. Besides, none of this
extra money gives any royalties to Barks or even the Disney company. They
could run the same plates through the printing press and make "fair" money
that way, and instead they play their little auction games on the
collector's market which they're only too happy to encourage. Sigh.

ROBERT:

>Wes is toooooo kind. The European stories are all pretty lame compared to
>even the most mediocre material produced by the American Disney writers
and

I think this is another example of lumping everything one doesn't know into
one big blob... I bet you only have a vague idea of all the different
"streams" of Disney stories that have been produced in Europe since the
'50s!

KATHY & KNUT:

>RE: <Well, it's a little difficult to guarantee anything when I mostly
read
>norwegian translations, but it sounds very much like you're talking about
>the "April fools" story where the nephews try to fool DD by putting
wallets
>in front of him on his way to go fishing. After several unsuccesful
attempts

In the Italian translation I have, the "patting himself" quote was
completely lost, so it's no wonder I couldn't think of that story from
Kathy's message. But with this identification from Knut I now know which
story you're talking about (great one, BTW!). Unfortunately I don't know
about all the US reprints, but hoping this helps in tracking it down I can
tell you that it's a 10-pager which originally appeared in WDC&S 127 (1951)
and was reprinted in WDC 344 (1969).

DANIEL:

>Brings up another question, which I have since I saw the English
>version of the story: Is fooling each other on 1 April a worldwide
>tradition?
>I used to think it was typical Dutch...

Just to add a few data points that I have first-hand knowledge of: the
custom definitely exists in France, Belgium, Italy, UK.

Frank (Filologo Disneyano)

Daniel: "Although I am not very fond of Van Horn's work, I like this one.
It is a good improvement to see Van Horn working with the 4-stroke
format. It is also good to see Van Horn's ducks looking better in
this story."

Daniel, this is my favorite Van Horn story. Gladstone printed it last year
just in time for raking autumn leaves. For some reason, I got very
sentimental over this one (Kathy, did you get sentimental also?)

What do you mean by a 4-stroke format?

-- Wes

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

Hi, all. I've received and read the first four digests before I found time to
comment -- I don't know how you keep up, Don!
First, I just reread "The Golden Helmet" reprinted inDD ADV. 33, and
noted the following: Donald: "Sharky, I wonder if there isn't such a thing as
Punishment!" Sharky: "Not with a smart lawyer, sir!" Hmm... sounds familiar.
Also read DD Adv. 35, and enjoyed the Fernandez/Block Halloween story,
more than the others of theirs I've seen so far. Seems to be a better mix of
character development and plot to me, less of a hurricane of events.
Don, thanks as always for the kind words on the lettering. I had fun
doing the Russian bit, with the help of the Cyrillic alphabet in my
encyclopedia. I must confess that the title of part 11 was done on my
computer, the only thing in the whole series that wasn't hand-lettered. (It
was a nice even rectangle, and I had just the right font...)
I'm interested to hear Don talking about his movie influences here. I'm
probably wrong about this, but I can't recall a Barks story that seemed
inspired by a film (setting aside the Disney animateds). His inspirations
seemed to come more from National Geographic, and classic adventure stories
(Jack London? Haggard? Stevenson?), while Don often looks to films, it seems,
though both know their history and do lots of research. Any comments?
Re: "richest MAN/DUCK in the world". It's been a while, but I seem to
recall the script saying "duck", so they probably changed it at Gladstone,
which seems likely if the lettering doesn't seem to match. Don, what does
your script say?
Todd

PER:
I found my download problem! Don't resend #809 if you haven't
already. The problem was triggered by #809 being such a LOOOONG Digest that
my computer rejected it until I made an adjustment. I'm sure glad I'm no
longer paying by the word to read this stuff like I did up to a few months
ago! (Still, I think members should refrain from reposting entire messages
from previous Digests. Reprinting a line to show a referenced topic is one
thing, but there's no reason to resend entire multi-page letters, I
shouldn't think.)

MIKE:
Is modern American coinage the same as 1955? Hm. At a quick glance,
YES, it is. That's odd when you think about it, eh? Not being a coin
collector, I'm not sure when they changed the obverse side of the Lincoln
penny, but that was a tiny change. The quarters have copper edges now, but
that's a tiny detail as well. Yeah, a fistfill of American coins would look
about the same now as 40 years ago, unless you looked at dates and such.
They used the oil-tanker gag, but didn't say it was PINK? That shows
how the translator and the writer don't see the material the same. To me,
99% of the gag was the idea of a PINK oil-tanker. I mean, what's funny about
an oil-tanker? This is what I try to avoid in Gladstone editions.
How do I add a half-page to a story? Naturally, I can only add full
pages, or the equivalent of full pages in loose panels. When did I say I'd
added only a half-page? Perhaps I was referring to the new half-pages that
*take the place* of the half-page splash-panels.

FRANK:
Sadly, the beautiful coloring on "Hearts of the Yukon" cannot be
reused by any Egmont company. Gladstone preserves all that coloring on
"film", Egmont needs computer discs. But let's even say they COULD use
Gladstone's film. Still no go, because Gladstone has SHRUNK all my word
balloons as well as colored in sound effects and signage and so forth. If a
SINGLE thing needs to be changed on that film, the entire film is useless,
and they must start from scratch.
I've never said Egmont's coloring is "bad". It's... uninspired? At
the rate they turn that stuff out, it's the best they are able to take time
to do. But maybe they can look at one of Gladstone's copies as a guide while
they do their own coloring? I NEVER interfere in that part of their
business... I don't see it as my place. But... maybe I'll send somebody a
copy of WD GIANT #1 and see what they want to do.
To make a photostat of a comic, all you need to do is lay it open on
the machine doohickey. Gravity holds it down. It would seem unlikely that an
old comic would have so much "body" left that the spine would refuse to open
nice and smoothly, but I guess a piece of glass could be gently placed over
the thing, but not so as to crush it. But I was truly curious -- what does a
"scanner" do? Do you feed stuff in, or does it work like this photostat thingie?
You drastically misunderstand Gladstone's situation as regards the
hardback CBL. When that license expired, they had to stop producing new
volumes, stop selling any old volumes, and (I'm told) destroy all unsold
volumes. This is not something you should hold against them in the least.

"The Incredible Shrinking Tightwad" closet: Let me try to get this out of
the way!
In order of appearance, here's what I have coming out of that junk
closet. The (restored)ball of string from "Second Richest Duck", CFK's sled,
the crown from "His Majesty McDuck", the atom-subtractor from "Billions in
the Hole", the aligator purse from "The Crocodile Collector", $crooge's old
shoeshine box, his trunk from "Lo$"(containing ?), a Peeweegah peacepipe, a
didgeridoo, Sir Francis Drake's plaque from "His Majesty McDuck", the
ray-guns from "Cash Flow", the bear costume from "Christmas on Bear
Mountain", the square glasses from "Return to Plain Awful", the Qwak Qwak
tribe drum (just seen in "Lo$" XI as well), the telescoping coffeecup and
sponge doughnut, the sled from "Last Sled to Dawson", ate-up books from the
Lost Library, the flattened 1916 quarter from the Atlantis story, $crooge's
carpetbag from the "Lo$"; in part two I add a copy of JOLT magazine from
"North of the Yukon" and the Maltese Falcon. Also there are guns and saddles
and other items that $crooge might have used at many times in the early
days. Did I miss any of my own in-jokes?

I forgot to mention that the extra issue #9 1995 came with this
issue. It reprints 29 sundays by Bob Karp and Al Taliaferro.
They range from 27. october 1940 to 11. may 1941.

Jorgen

John:

| I also scripted a 62-page graphic novel (a fancy word for a really long
| comic book) adaption of Disney's "DuckTales The Movie: Treasure of the Lost
| Lamp." It was published by Walt Disney Publications in 1990 and the art was
| by Cosme Quartieri, Robert Bat, Carlos Valenti and Ruben Torreiro. The
| original movie script was written by Alan Burnett. There's no story code for
| this comic either.

This was published in Norway in 1991, but it's only 45 pages. Is it
another version, or is it cut? No story code.

Jorgen

> DWIGHT:
>
> Thanks for the explanation about Egmont's house language being English. If
> I understand correctly, then, Rota sends a first draft in Italian to
> Egmont, they then send it to you for translation into English, they then
> edit it and resend it back (in English?) to Rota who does the final
> dialogue (in Italian?) and the art and sends it to Egmont; they send it
> back to you (or whoever else) to have the final dialogue translated into
> English; and finally the English final dialogue is translated n times into
> the various different national editions. Whew! Is that more or less right?

Well, it's more or less right except that so far, I've only seen each
individual script once, for the first translation. I suppose Egmont's
edits are in English (which I believe Rota can read), and maybe somebody
in the office (like Byron Erickson) does the final polish/edit to avoid
yet another trip across the Atlantic.
>
> By the way, how many languages can you translate a comic story into English
> from? I'm impressed!
>
I've done six languages: German, Dutch, French, Danish, Swedish, and
Italian into English. It's amazing what you can do with a dictionary...
(fortunately, Disney comics aren't exactly rocket science).

--Dwight