Keskustelujen arkisto

DON:
A short gag story? Nice! I was afraid you weren't doing them any
longer. Another Lo$ addition? When does it take place?

> And yes, it did not escape me that Gladstone snuck some panels from
>"War of the Wendigo" into the background of my "Profile" page. (chuckle)

Way to go! I'm sure they'll publish it eventually. Tell you the truth,
I think all that American-style "being politically correct" stuff has a sortuva
stupid feeling to me. (or was that politically uncorrect thing to say?-)

MARCO:
Don has stated, that he simply chose to ignore the fact that Scrooge
would've had his glasses back then.

HENRI:
There's actually been three (!) Rosa covers in Aku Ankka weekly.
One with "Return to Plain Awful", one with "Lo$ #3" and the last one recently
with "Lost Charts of you-know-who". Only the first one had any back-ground.

MELANIE:
Would you not consider Magica DeSpell a STRONG female character?

--

Mike - The Finnish Trekkie

Marco:
> OK OK I surrender: there was only ONE sketch drawn by Barks (and anyway
> isn't that enough for my point?)

I was just curious, since I want to have (a copy of) all artwork Barks ever
made.

> BUT the suggestion WAS used by Scarpa and
> next time (if nobody does it earlier) I shall give a reference.

Yes, please!

--Harry.
((Email removed))

> MELANIE (about Lo$):
>
> > Which, out of all of the panels, left the greatest impression?
> > I'd like to hear from others on this.
>
> The panel of Lo$ I keep remembering as the greatest *amusing* moment
> is one of Lo$ 4. (I know, maybe not an impressive scene as you meant it,
> but later about that.)

Ok, fair enough :-)

> While reading Lo$ 4 for the first time I saw at a certain point the
> young Scrooge hopelessly surrounded by all those angry animals. In
> Holland this scene was published on the page on the right, so I had to
> turn on the page to see how Scrooge would get himself out of that
> situation.

A good one! The talent in storytelling in this comic series is the
mixture of real drama with humor, visual puns, and inside jokes. I am
reminded of "Alice in Wonderland;" not the rather lame Disney version, but
the book, with the John Tenniel illustrations. Those illustrations lend
so much to the narrative, that (to me, anyway) others would deprive the
story of half its power.

> And I really burst out laughing (in public, I sat in a train!) when I
> had turned the page and saw that large panel where Scrooge jumps up in
> anger, terrifying the animals with doing so. This really was the
> greatest amusing moment for me in Lo$.

I have much enjoyed the humor. I did wonder if anyone complained about
the humorous scenes aboard the RMS TITANIC. I am a great fan of
Titanic-lore, and I loved the cover scene with the sinking ship. I've
read several books on the subject, and appreciated the knowledgeable
references. However, the sinking and loss of 1,500 lives was a great
tragedy in our century, and I am curious whether this passage was
uncomfortable for anyone, or if Gladstone got negative reactions to it.

> > For me, it's the graveyard scene in which $ silently pays his respects to
> > his departed parents. I kept returning to that page to stare at it,
> > thinking it one of the most profound, as well as expertly executed, comic
> > book panels I'd ever seen.

> Yeah, that was a very impressive moment. Even more when you realize
> that it's happening in a *Disney* comic! I had to look twice at it to
> believe I *was* reading a Disney-comic.

I think that's why I was taken by surprise. One doesn't expect it in a
"funny animal" comic, especially a Disney comic (though death is a common
enough theme in Disney animated features such as BAMBI).

> For me an even more impressive moment in Lo$ was to see the actual
> dying of Scrooge's father happening (but that was in another part?).
> Just like the graveyard scene you mentioned, this scene just gave me a
> moment of... impression... and somehow... emptyness...

Exactly.

> > I hope this doesn't sound silly or too much like gushing.
>
> Yes, that's what I was also asking about myself while writing this
> mail. But I can convince you, with all those other Rosa-fans here:
> We're not the only ones! ;-)

I'm not in habit of writing about comics, and don't wish to sound
slavishly adoring or obsequious, which seems very phony and adolescent.

> I'd like to add a scene to this letter which I found the most
> impressive moment in a Barks-story. This was the last page of "Back to
> the Klondike" (SPOILER for those who didn't read it!) where the Ducks
> discover that Scrooge intentional lost the contest with Goldie...
> I really *felt* the same surprise as the nephews in that last panel,
> and I felt so sorry for Scrooge when I saw him walking that way in
> that panel...

Perhaps that is why the Klondike is such a good point for modern writers
to start up again with $. It's the most obvious place in which we find a
soft spot, some depth of character, in $.

> Maybe I'm spoiling the sentimental tone of this letter by asking this,
> but might it be possible that "Back to the Klonide" had such an
> impressive feel to it (regarding the impossible love subject) because
> Barks made it during his divorce?

It's worth pondering. What a sad time for anyone.

Best regards,

Melanie

Hi everyone!

Jakob So/derbaum just wrote to me, that his mailbox is at its very end
now and he doesn't have very much time left to write any more mails. That
way he asked me to tell everyone on the club, that he'll be back in a few
days with a new address. Any messages sent to his old address ((Email removed)) will arrive, but won't be read by Jakob.

Wait a minute. It's Christmas no!. I guess I'll wish everyone a merry
Christmas, then! ;-)

See ya,

Arthur

DAVID:

You were concerned about the new German album series which exclusively
features stories by William Van Horn. It was indeed an unnecessary mistake
by German publisher Ehapa to attribute two stories of their "60 Jahre DD"
album to Van Horn, which were in fact not by him.
But rest assured: ALL stories in the first album (which appeared 3 weeks ago)
are really by Van Horn - Ehapa learns from their mistakes.
Unfortunately the colors in the album are not the wonderful colors by Susan
Daigle-Leach used in America but the more "comic-book like" brighter European
coloring from Egmont. And they substituted the soundwords - which is in general
a rather stupid idea IMO. In the story "Der Schwarze Mond" (The Black Moon)
they sinply whitened (!) out the "WROOOM" over the black (!) space and wrote
"Brumm" over it. So now the spaceships seem to be followed by "flag-like" white
objects with German soundwords written onto them. Looks just terrible.
Let us hope that Ehapa will take more care in future issues of the series.

Cord

--------------------------------
End of dcomics-d Digest V95 Issue #21
*************************************

MARCO:
I have so many new names of new friends buzzing through my head from
my recent trip. Did I meet you in Florence or Lucca?
$crooge(Barks) said, in "The Money Well" in U$ #21, that he bought
his glasses in Scotland in 1885. And yes, this would have been after his
riverboat days. Yet, in the flashback Barks story in U$ IN DISNEYLAND we do
see U$ wearing specs. This was a very minor inaccuracy that I ignored --
you'll note that all of my chapter II of the "Lo$" carefully sticks to all
visual elements of that flashback EXCEPT $crooge's face. Let's say that U$
was describing that story to Grandma Duck (as is the framing sequence in U$
IN DISNEYLAND) and Grandma is remembering $crooge as he has always looked
since she ever knew him. (In my chapter XI, I show $crooge deciding to wear
his glasses full-time about 5 seconds before he first meets Grandma, so
that's the only way she could remember him in her mind's eye.) Say, that was
a pretty good explanation of that anachronism, eh?

HENRI:
I'll be doing a cover for "The Treasure of the Ten Avatars" because
it's a 28 page story and can only be used by Egmont as a seperate,
supplementary issue. This means the story won't be seen in Sweden. In
Finland they have a different policy where they might not object to devoting
an entire issue of the regular weekly to one story, but I'm not sure about
that. "Guardians of the Lost Library" was the last 28 pager I did, and
Finland didn't use that until the hardback edition of my stuff. So, I don't
know how they'll handle that. Maybe I'll ask -- I'm in constant contact with
them on the Internet these days.

WES and DAN:
That tie you mention is another good design spoiled. Yes, it has all
those $100 bills with one with $crooge. But the one with $crooge is NOT in
the center where it would be seen, but far down at the bottom of the tie --
I never wear mine because no one would see the $crooge face. And I won't say
what I'd think of someone who went around wearing a tie with $100 bills all
over it.
As for the $crooge face itself, it is stretched out of shape on some
ties, and it is an Italian $crooge. But, Dan, don't think they draw $crooge
stretched outof shape that way in Italian comics. And don't call me a "kid
person". I kid you not.

MIKE:
The next episode of "The Life and Times of $crooge McDuck" will
probably be chapter 6B, the adventure of $crooge as a gold prospector in
Pizen Bluff, Arizona.
I guess you saw my explanation of $crooge's glasses being in the U$
IN DISNEYLAND story. I didn't ignore when U$ would have had his glasses -- I
ignored how that story showed him having his glasses when he WOULDN'T have.
And what was it you say about seeing my cover for the Lo$ episode
III in Finland? No, that wasn't my cover. That cover showed a jolly $crooge
playing with a lariat. I didn't do a cover for that story until Ehapa used
it in their albun series, then I did a different version of the same scene
for Gladstone. But that was quite different from the cover you saw in
Finland. My covers for the Lo$ are slightly more... "rip-snortin'" than that
one was. Egmont has only created two covers for my stories as they appeared
in their weeklies. That cover and another one for "War of the Wendigo" (in
the same "gag cover" motif, rather than an "adventure" scene). Those two
covers came as a surprise to me, partly because I didn't expect them, and
partly because Egmont (to my limited knowledge) has never done any other
weekly covers that are indicative of a particular story in the issue. So,
I'm not even sure why they did those two -- particularly the $crooge-lariat
cover. It didn't also say that there was a "Lo$" story in the issue, and I'm
sure 99.999% of the buyers simply thought it was Donald with the lariat, and
wondered why he had bits of fuzz on his cheeks.

JYRKI:
If I was in closer touch with anyone who knew anything about art, I
wouldn't overdo scenes like that graveyard scene. But another problem is
that, though I would prefer to be more subtle, and leave lighting effects to
the colorist (such as the gloom or the setting sunlight), I've found I just
can't do that. So, any special effects I want in a scene, I need to put it
ALL in the line art. Makes it VERY cluttered with hatching and such at
times, I agree!
But you'll always get that sort of "more is better", "Less is not
nearly enough" style from me since I have no training to tell me otherwise.
Recent reviews, even favorable reviews, have called my art "baroque" which I
think is a very good adjective for it. Baroque is the artistic term for the
other phrase I've always used: "needless and irritating detail".
As for Europe not seeing my work for a while, I must have been
talking about how my stories don't appear in Europe until nearly a year
after I do them, but there's always other stories waiting in the "pipeline"
and appearing during that year. On the other hand, I've had a VERY low
output this past year, due to so many promotional trips and so forth.

CORD:
I know that lots of readers complain about the Egmont coloring as
compared to the Gladstone or Italian or Greek coloring. But it's a whole
different coloring system and I don't think it can change. The Ehapa
coloring you refer to in their albums is not done by Ehapa, but is a reprint
of the same coloring as in the weekly version which appeared earlier. They
say that they can't add sound-effects over the top of art (and must make
those big square holes to insert their solid all-black lettering), and that
they can't do special lettering on signs or do "tilted" lettering on tilted
signs. And yet, I've been in an Egmont office and had one of the computer
technicians tell me they CAN do all those sorts of things, and then
proceeded to demonstrate. (This was in Norway... maybe they have better
computers than the main office?) So, I don't know the answer or the reasons.
When Ehapa reprints the "Lo$" in one book, as well as future album
editions of that regular series, we're trying to see if it's possible to use
Gladstone's coloring -- but I doubt that it can happen, since, as I said,
it's two incompatible systems.

Finally, I'd like to again PLEAD for people to STOP using the
technique of reprinting large sections of past Digests just to make a few
new comments. One group of messages last Digest was 60% reprint and only 40%
new... and another recent Digest had a reprint of an entire screen just to
then say "thanks for that". Maybe we might adopt a new "rule of etiquette"
that eliminates that practice or limits it to ONE short phrase per any new
comments? The rest of us simply open with "Joe: As to what you said about
issue #37, I think...blah blah." That works perfectly well, doesn't fill the
Digests up with deadwood and isn't annoying to read.
Pleeeeaaaase?