Keskustelujen arkisto

Hi folks,

I have stopped subscribing to comics and now get all of them through my
local comics shop. I get the new ones much more quickly this way,
sometimes in better condition. I receive the Gladstones, as well as a
number of DC titles.

Curiously, my shop DOES NOT carry Gladstone backissues. Since Gladstone
offers these themselves, I wonder if they in some way control their own
backissue market.

Anybody know anything about this? And, btw, what is a complete of Lo$
going for these days?

Thanks in advance for any information.

Best regards,

Melanie

================ Välitettävän sanoman alku ================

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Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 22:46:42 +0200
Message-Id: <(Email removed)>
From: (Email removed) (Jyrki Vainio)
To: (Email removed)
Subject: Ducks, comics and everything
Reply-To: (Email removed)

ALL:

Today, arguably Finland's foremost cartoonist Tarmo Koivisto was
featured on a tv talk show. He talked about his 20 year career
and his way of describing Finnish everyday reality. He has gone
on record about Carl Barks being his main artistic influence
before, but this time his words especially got my attention. He
said: "The world is yet to realize the real value of these
stories... I really see Barks's works as a part of world
litterature classics. In his stories I see structures and
qualities that to me are comparable with Shakespeare. And plus
that, they have superior drawings as well!" And again later:
"I've been surprised many times how Barks's stories from 50's
can present the reality of Finland in 90's - there are these
unbelievably stupid tv quiz shows and highway jungles..."

MELANIE:

If I may interrupt this hot argument about who's saying nasty
remarks on who just for a minute. Let me just remind you all on
one thing: I know that the comics industry has suffered painfully
for a long time because they have been regarded only as something
for kids. Well, no offence, but doesn't that argument happen to
be TRUE for Disney comics? Yes, I know, there these real hardcore
fans (like we f. ex...? ;-) but at least in Finland the main
audience for Ducks et al. are children. And yes, I also know that
kids are not as stupid and many would like to think and I
personally am also very much against everything that is under-
estimating their intelligence. (Ooops - just to note a typing'
error which I can't correct anymore: I ofcourse meant 'as stupid
AS many would like to think') But isn't it still a bit out of
context to demand as I think you said it "social commentary"
from Disney comics? Yes, I know that there are, can be and also
should be SOME of these aspects in a good story but in this
conversation it seems to be the one and only important thing.
What I think to be some of the best stories (so yes - this is
just IMHO ;-) I've ever read happen to mostly belong to the very
same kiddie comics genre I've been talking about, and my single
favourite might be Andre Franquin's album "QRN sur Bretzelburg".
(yeah, I guess Franquin is unknown in America - as far as I've
heard one publisher has just began a line of albums which
includes some of his stuff also... so maybe this one will reach
USA also!) When viewed from an adult viewpoint the story can be
seen as an excellent satire of the socialistic system - but
when a child sees it - and here we finally reach the point of
this overlong paragraph - THE FOREMOST ASPECT IS THE ONE OF
ENTERTAINING, HUMOROUS ADVENTURE. If deeper meanings are added
they should, as I see it, come only after the main purpose of
entertainment. Thus they'll serve their real audience.
The deeper meanings can also take place unconciously to the
artist. I know that at least Barks has been irritated by the
fact that people have sought these aspects from his stories.
I quote him in a letter (just a photocopied one but anyways)
saying: "As for business that seemed to carry political or
philosophical meanings, i assure you that such meanings were
either unintentional or were burlesqued to beef up the humor.
In twenty-five years of writing I hope I never preached
convincingly about anything".
Thank you for your time.

MIKE:

Gak! I never intented to write about that one for so long - so
maybe I'll leave my article for the next letter...

--- Jyrki Vainio ---

Don,
I am all for not repeating messages. repeating messages. repeating messages.
Kathy

I've been away for a few days, and I finally got time to read my
mail again. A bit anxious to read what I'm supposed to have insulted
_someone_ for this time, but I'll have to go through it.

Sorry to all of you who don't want to read this, but there still
seems to be some things to clear up. This is not about feminism,
BTW. It's rather about language.

If I'm sounding different in this letter than I usually do, its
because this incident got me quite upset and frustrated. I think
Daniel knows what I mean by frustrated. I have never experienced
to be misinterpreted systematically in this way before, as I have
been by Melanie Massengale.

I'm through with the discussion with Melanie Massengale. Its not
worth it anyway. I just hate to see some of her statements about
me and my letters stand uncommented.

Melanie Massengale quite effectively stopped me from commenting
her last letter to me by sending it in private mail. I never quote
from or comment private mail in public without permission, and I see
no use in sending her a private mail back.

She did mention one thing in public, though, that she had complimented
my use of the English language. Thanks... I think. It may have some-
how fooled her though (and don't take that as an insult! It's not
meant as one). I might use English words in a way that seems to make
sense, but since I'm used to Norwegian, I tend to translate Norwegian
use of the language into English, and that might not always be to
fortunate.

David pointed this out with the sentence:

"It would be quite ridiculous if anyone started to demand answers to
their questions."

No, I didn't know this would sound sarcastic. This would work fine in
Norwegian (well, of course, it _could_ have been misinterpreted). What
I meant was simply that you can't be completely sure that anyone will
answer your question if you submit one, and since we all answer
questions voluntarily, since we like to talk about Disney comics, noone
should _demand_ anyone to answer anything,

I'm glad you pointed this out, David. No need to be sorry. I tried
to tell Melanie Massengale about the problems with the language, and
the possi- bilities of misinterpreting by this sentence:

"Maybe you should also remember that quite a lot of us is doing this
in a foreign language."

But I guess my point was lost.

I also mentioned in one letter, that on Usenet you are supposed to
read a group for a least a couple of months, to see how it works,
before posting to it. I did not say that this is Usenet, but
Melanie Massengale's answer to David puzzles me a bit:

"Well, this isn't Usenet and there aren't specific groundrules."

So, not being Usenet means no specific groundrules. Well, that's new
to me. No, we don't have any written rules, as many mailing lists do,
but to assume there are no specific groundrules...

And then we have the point were I "admit" that I'm using sarcasm.
Let's start with _how_ I showed it:

<sarcasm>

(some text, meant sarcastic)

</sarcasm>

Melanie Massengale says I'm pointing out more than one time that
I'm using sarcasm. I take it that she means "<sarcasm>" and
"</sarcasm>". Maybe it's not very easy to see it, but there is
actually a difference between those two. Seems that I have gone
right into the same trap as she did with using language not known
to everybody. I did think that most people using computers connected
to Internet knew some SGML or HTML these days. What I did was simply
playing a joke on these computer languages. <sarcasm> marks the
beginning of the part containing sarcasm, and </sarcasm> marks the
end of it.

Sarcasm and irony are very much used in the Norwegian language.
I had no idea that Americans would find it insulting, especially
not when I marked it so clearly. The reason why I marked it was
not to admit it (the very idea...) but to remove the sting from
it by clearly mark it as sarcasm, and therefore a joke. Cynical
or not.

I see that I instead have given her a chance to claim that I use a
lot of sarcasm everywhere.

At last. I know I shouldn't do this, but I simply can't resist:

In one of the last messages Melanie Massengale wrote to the list,
she says:

"I would really appreciate it if, in the future, my detractors
would do me the simply courtesy of quoting me correctly."

Which seems quite funny when you regard this:

Daniel:

"I don't think I deserve to be treatened that way."

Melanie Massengale:

"I really can't see that I have threatened you in any way."

BTW: Isn't it rather funny that people are complaining at the
discussion of feminism? Maybe they will get intimidated by it
and unsubscribe?

Jorgen

I'm leaving for about a week now, so I'm afraid I won't be
answering any mail for about the same amount of time. If any
of you leave in the meantime, Happy Christmas (or whatever ;-) !

Per, I have unsubscribed to the list. That was no mistake,
in case it should look like that. The administration here at
Ifi cleans the disks at the end of every semester, and a week
of mail from this list could fill quite an amount of diskspace.
Since every letter is ending up in the Usenet group
fa.disney-comics, I'll read them anyway.

Jorgen

MELANIE:

I, too, get my Gladstones from the local store (in part 'cos I get'em
sooner but mainly to support my local dealer and help him stay in business,
which, since he carries more stuff than just what I *know* that I want is to my
benefit); and I too have a problem with the back issues. However, I don't
*think* that this is due to any devious practices on the part of Gladstone but
stems from the way American comic books are distributed to retailers. At least
I've been made to understand (by various dealers I've talked to) that the
distributors (Diamond et al.), though they claim to have a back issue service,
are not really interested in handling back issues since these are capricious
things, businesswise: you don't know just what you ought to stock and what not,
and that stock will probably move rather slow and erringly. There are quicker,
bigger and more forseeable returns to be had from just handling current issues.

BTW -- what explanation does *your* dealer offer as an excuse for not getting
back issues for you?

All my best; and, since I'll probably be back in lurk-mode until the next year:

MERRY
CHRISTMAS/CHANUKKAH/DENOMINATIONAL-OR-NONDENOMINATIONAL-HOLIDAY-TYPE-OF-YOUR-
CHOOSING/ please check according to inclination! /AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR to all
friends and folks, old or new, at <disney-comics>!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

/Mattias

**** Mattias Hallin ** Lund * Sweden ** <(Email removed)> ****
* *
* "Oh bury me thar! With my battered git-tar! *
************** A-screamin' my heart out fer yew!" *************

As a fellow countryman of Jorgen (though I dont' know you, as fas as I know :-)) I'll
support you completely in your analysis of the language challenge. I understood what
you tried to say on this spesific subject (which we will not mention for some time :-)) and
was just as puzzled as you by the response until I slowly began to realise how it had
been read by some others. I've also gotten into puzzling discussions after having written
(or spoken) something I meant quite innocently or believed was an amusing joke or pun,
not understanding the major differences in thought and language between even very
similar cultures. For one fond of pun and jokes that's really hard. There's a lot of
frustration to experience for us poor Norwegians when talking to Swedes or Danes and
believing we always mean the same thing even with the same word. And very amusing
to talk about afterwards.

On this list I had some of the same experience the first few times I tried to write
messages, back in early 94. I received one or two brusk comments and was a bit
shocked (though I manged to live on :-)) by the response. Trying to explain myself the
next day only made matters worse as I hadn't quite seen what the real problem was (and
for parts of it I have not to this day).

However, having lurked on the list with great interest and gone on writing on topics which
interest me or where there may be some possibility for me of adding value, I have come
to understand a lot better the tone and intention behind most of the comments. I'm not so
easily disturbed as in the first weeks when meeting seemingly nasty statements. But it
has taken some time!

Regarding the amusing misunderstanding between Daniel's

"I don't think I deserve to be treatened that way."

and Melanie's:

"I really can't see that I have threatened you in any way."

This is not the first time its happened with these two annoyingly similar words. I have
myself (on other lists) commented on this, especially when people tell they have been
"threatened as friends" or insist they should be.

However, this is not to say that real differences in opinion or attitude should be hurrily
covered up. Though, hopefully this important, even if at the moment perhaps somewhat
overstated one, on Ducks and Dames (that is a pun) may rest awhile. And in general I
apprediate discussions where the "contestants" really demonstrate - also in the way
they interprete what the other really says - that they give one another a lot of benefits of
doubts, regarding intentions and attitudes. End of lecture...

So to my standard subject: Someone just said he had been to Istanbul (Constantinople, I
presume), and seen Hagia Sophia (yes, one g). And made a comment on todays color.
For some reason its been changed (yes, by the Turks) from the yellow one may see in
every picture from the fifties and up to about 1985, to red. What the original colour was
(prior to the 1950's and even to 1453) I have no idea. Perhaps Don did make a right
choice here, even if he tended to make the rest of the buildings in ancient
Constantinople too square :-)

Bjo/rn Are

(Email removed)

FRANK:
The first $crooge item you mention came out around 20 years ago and
I believe was sold in the theme parks. It is another unfortunate use of the
"Ludwig Von Drake dressed as $crooge" motif from UNCLE $CROOGE AND MONEY, is
it not? As I recall (I'm not near my Duck collections), it has him wearing a
green coat with fur trim and with gray hair which goes around the back of
his head... the U$ AND MONEY look. I don't know what you paid, but that
wouldn't be a common item anymore, and it's breakable. I think you should
feel glad if you got it for $20... but ill-used if you paid over $50.
The $crooge in the tub is a brand new item, and is only rare because
you're in America and the toy comes from Europe. I might guess you should be
paying about half as much for this as that older one.
But it's impossible to say what this sort of stuff is "worth". The
system used to arrive at a price is however much the seller thinks he can
get someone to pay, and that's his right. You need to decide for yourself if
you want the toy bad enough to pay the asking price so that it might pass
from their ownership into yours.
I was at a toy show here in Louisville a few weeks ago, one of the
first we've had in this "remote" corner for such specialized hobbies, and as
anxious as I'd been to visit a toy show, I found myself very depressed by
the entire atmosphere very soon. It always saddens me to see hobbies that
were begun by people who have honest, personal interests in something
ultimately taken over by people with Price Guides. But that's the way of the
world. It's as unavoidable as the way the new toy stores were depleted of
those special Barbie dolls this season by people who just wanted to sell
them at a profit to the people who didn't get to the stores as fast. I'm
afraid some of the people paying the "Barbie for ransom" prices might have
just wanted the dolls for their children... but since it's a
"collectible"(ugh!) doll, perhaps the people who are paying the
secondary-market prices are speculators as well, so it doesn't really matter.