Keskustelujen arkisto

RoC:
The Swedish editors do all they can, but often their hands are tied by the
inefficiency of the system. For instance, I just heard from the Swedish
translator (the great Duck fan, Stefan Dios) that they found that they were
putting two parts of my 3-part "The Once and Future Duck" into one
double-issue of KALLE ANKA, and had a hard time reworking the splash panel
of the second chapter to fit into the one-part appearance. Of course, there
already EXISTS specially done pages for any publisher who wishes to do so to
very easilly make my stories appear as 1, 2 or 3-parters, and all editors
are supposed to know that... but I guess communications in such a large
company aren't so simple.
But the Swedish editors will be making less and less decisions as the Egmont
DD weeklies are slowly put under the control of one international editor.
All the weeklies will then be basically the same (with different ads, of
course).

TERJE:
My comments about when HD&L were born stem from my private notes on the Duck
Family Tree, and will never enter into one of my stories. I figure Donald
was born around 1920 and HD&L around 1940. If this doesn't agree with
something you've seen in a DD animated cartoon or newspaper strip, I never
intended it should. I treat the comic-book Donald Universe as being
obviously completely unique from those other media, as with the TV-world of
"DuckTales".

Correct, Barks never did a time-machine story. And when I tried to turn one
of my old "Pertwillaby Papers" adventures into a Duck story in "The Once and
Future Duck", I had some trouble. Actually, in agreement with Barks' work, I
wanted to do a story where time-travel was something impossible that even
Gyro had some difficulty achieving, which was part of the story's basis.
However, quite apart from Barks' stories, other European stories have
featured a Gearloose time machine for decades, and it would have been too
confusing for readers for me to suddenly decide that the thing never
existed, even that's what I wanted to do. So, I stumbled around the problem
with some difficulty. But, yes, I HAVE done a time-travel tale in this "The
Once and Future Duck" which should be appearing fairly soon since I just
helped numerous translators with their questions on that story.

OLE:
As for my Mice vs. my Ducks, I think you will see an
improvement when the stories are published in America. I think they
were fairly savaged by their translations in some countries. But
saying this, I point out that "In Macavity's Shadow," "A Fouled-Up
Fairy Tale," and "Return to Morgan's Island" have yet to be published,
and I think they're my best Duck stories.
What a wonderful surprise to find out that "The Egg Collector"
was just published! When I said it was going to be published soon, I
didn't have an actual ballpark date, I just got the feeling it would
appear this summer. But looks like it turned up sooner!
"I remember seing Butch, but can't place him. Cousin Mortimer
... I recognize from a Gottfredson story c. 1934."
Butch is from some 1930-31 stories. Mortimer, under that
name, appeared first in a 1936 story; he later reappeared in a 1941
story as "Montmorency" or Monty, and Byron preferred that later
version, so that's the one I used. (He was called Mortimer in his one
animated appearance, but I think Byron preferred Monty because
"Mortimer" would conflict with both Minnie's uncle and one of Mickey's
nephews. The uncle, by the way, is in one of my upcoming stories.
"It was a bit longwinded for it's 8 pages. Throwing Mickey
into the water no less than *five* times is overdoing it. Three is the
correct number."
I see you noticed my running gag. ;-) This would certainly
have been a ten-pager were I not restricted to 8-pagers at the time;
I would have liked to play up Mickey and Butch's struggle with the
great blue heron a little more. (Since then, on the other hand, I've
gotten several opportunities to do Mickey 10-pagers.)
"Again this story shows how strongly you are influenced by the
cartoons; there's a lot more of, say, "The Moose Hunters" in it than
Gottfredson's adventures..."
If you look at the Sunday pages of the early 1930s, you'll see
lots of animation-styled gags like this. I have been given the task
of doing Mickey comedies as well as adventures, and I determined that
the best way to do them was to apply some of the stylings of those
early Sundays. So I am working under the Gottfredson influence; you
just may not know the source material so well. Do you have anything
in your country like the Dutch albums collecting FG Sundays?
"The visual gags are lacking in Estebans execution. I can't
wait for a true Gerstein/Ferioli story. In English, please!"
While the latter may be nice, I'll have to wait until
Gladstone has used up a big pile of my translations, which they've
already lettered and colored, before they use many of my original
stories. On the other hand, the next of my Mickey stories that Egmont
will publish, "A Mouse Against the World," has great Ferioli art!
I agree with you about Esteban's stuff, BTW. He is a great
artist when allowed to work in his own style (remember the great
William Tell story of early 1990?), but the front office encouraged
him to draw more like Paul Murry, and it makes his style a rather odd
mixture at times. Did you notice Mickey wringing the water out of his
tail on page 2? Or the frog jumping out of Mickey's pants? Or the
guy at the egg competition who unwillingly brought a mother pelican
along with him?
"The quote "If you want to get ahead of Mickey Mouse, you have
go get up pretty early in the morning" reminds me of your signature a
while ago. Was this original or an old Gottfredson qoute you've
slipped in?"
The quote was indeed the same as my signature line in the
original script. And that, in turn, is taken from a line Walt Disney
himself gave to Mickey in 1930's "MM in Death Valley". Like Don and
Geoff Blum using famous Scrooge lines as catchphrases, I figured I'd
revive a few of my old favorites. Once again...

"The only way for anyone to get ahead of Mickey Mouse -- is to
run in front of him!"
David Gerstein
<(Email removed)>

JUNIOR WOODCHUCKS
It would be interesting to see a comic, or a series of comics, titled
"The Junior Woodchucks Manual" which would actually be **about** the
manual rather than being the manual itself, in the same way that
Douglas Adams' "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is a book
**about** another book titled "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
Of course, "Guardians of the Lost Library" already explains the
background of the Manual, but it would be nice to have more such stories
completely based around the Manual instead of just stories in which the
ducklings whip out their copy as a "deus ex machina" (look it up in the
"Latin" section of your copy of the Manual!) whenever they need to know
what to do next.

HARALD:
> Did you know.... that Al Taliaferros sister-in -law was called Della?
Now that's (exciting) news to me! Do you have any way of knowing
whether he and his sister-in-law were on good terms, or might he have
ever called her "Dumbella" behind her back?

ROBERT:
> (Tch, tch. You shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition:>)
As Winston Churchill replied when he was criticized for committing that
same grammatical lapse, "It is a lot of nonsense up with which I shall
not put!"

PER (AND EVRYONE ELSE):
Forgive me for being so tardy in reporting, but I did attend the Carl
Barks 95th Birthday Celebration which Steve Geppi's Diamond Comics
distributors held on March 27. I shall post a more complete report on
it this weekend (as a way of postponing the completion of my Income
Tax forms, due on Monday). There were at least 120 people present at
the celebration, and everyone felt it was a splendid evening indeed.
Mr. Geppi can really put on a grand party!

Wilmer Rivers

On Apr 12, 9:02pm, Mike Pohjola wrote:
> Subject: Re: Disney comics Digest V96 #77
>
> DWIGHT:
> Are you the same Dwight Decker whose interviews fill the ElfQuest
> Gatherum?

Yes. That's another one of my projects from many years ago. (I'm
answering this in public in case anyone else wants to know.)

> What were the Pinies irl? (please reply personally)

I'm not sure what you want to know here. I'd guess "irl"
stands for "in real life" and you want to know what they
are like in person, but you'll have to clarify that for me.
In private e-mail, of course, so Don Rosa doesn't find out
he's paying for two guys to gas about elves instead of ducks.

--Dwight Decker

TO DON ROSA:

>>I also find it amusing to see one person who reads Donald Duck >>comic
books telling other people who read the same stuff with a >>slightly
different slant to "get a life". Heh heh. If this doesn't >>approach the
definition of a "loony", it at least crosses over >>intosimple boorishness.
But like Harry, I think anonymous opinions >>written by people unwilling to
put their names on their messages >>are not worth the paper they're printed
on or the electrons they're >>transmitted by... so, I won't bother to
comment further on any >>anonymous postings. I'm glad that everyone else on
this Mailing >>List has always been proud to be seen here.

Gee, we are a bit touchy, aren't we? Or are you another "evil genius"?

Anyway, Don, you're jumping to conclusions on two points. First, I made the
"get a life" remark not because these guys are reading Disney Comics, but for
their apparent reason for doing so. I read them for pleasure, fun,
relaxation, and staying in touch with my inner child. It seems to me that
people who obsess on Donald's family tree (God, I'll bet Barks is really
sorry he didn't burn that thing!) or worry about what Scrooge was really
doing in 1930 have a misplaced sense of values. With global warming, famine
in Africa, AIDS, and drive-by shootings to worry about, does it really make a
difference whether Huey's hat was red or blue?

Second, as I stated in yesterday's Digest, Robert D. IS MY REAL NAME, so I am
not really posting "anonymously". The reasons I am reticent about flashing
my full last name on a public Net forum have nothing to do with not being
"proud" to be here. I have had several bad experiences on America OnLine,
including a death threat. If you really need to know my surname that badly,
I'll be glad to correspond with you, or anyone else, individually via
e-mail.

Robert D.

Here we go again!

Steve Rowe wrote:

<<How do we come up with who drew or wrote what? By their styles. Every
writer, penciler and inker has an individual style and quirk. But studying
someone's style long enough, you can start to recognize their work.
For example: I love the work of Ken Hultgren and have read 100s of his
comics, I now can spot his Disney work.>>

Being a friend and collaborator of the ranking expert on comic book
writing styles, Martin O'Hearn (who isn't on the Internet yet and probably
won't be for awhile, though I keep trying to persuade him), I can clarify.
Jerry Siegel, for instance, has very characteristic grammatical styles and
expressions. Will Murray (himself a skilled writing analyst in the field of
pulp magazines: he's done similar lists for publications like DOC SAVAGE),
after talking to Martin and me, mentioned a few of them in his recent COMICS
SCENE obituary, though one or two he got slightly wrong. "Awp!" is indeed a
definite Siegelism (which isn't to say nobody else ever used it, but to
nothing like Siegel's extent), but "Gasp!" was used by many, many people, and
"Gaah!" was a typographical error. (Siegel always spelled it "Gaa!" or
"Gaa-aa!": "Gaah!" was more characteristic of Leo Dorfman.)
But Martin's method only works when the author actually does the final
script. When the story is rewritten by the editor or even the artist, that's
the style that surfaces. I've already mentioned the Uncle Scrooge story,
"Invisible Intruder," in which the style is entirely that of Carl Barks, not
Vic Lockman. Other companies from other publishers had similar artistic
rewrites. Jack Kirby apparently rescripted the entire first 10 issues of the
Golden Age CAPTAIN AMERICA as he drew them (and, surprisingly, even the 11th
issue, which he didn't draw), even though other writers like Joe Simon, Bill
Finger, Ed Herron, and Otto Binder are known to have written (the original)
scripts for many of them.
So it would be next to impossible, even for Martin, to identify a
story that appeared only in Italian, unless Siegel wrote an original script
in English that's still available. Otherwise, even if he did know Italian and
wrote the original scripts in that language (which, to the best of my
knowledge, he didn't), it'd involve a whole different grammar and sets of
expressions.

L. Gori wrote:

<<The Disney Encyclopedia you described is, in effect, italian. It seems
it was made *all* by a single man at Mondadori, Guido Martina, one of the
most important Italian Disney authors (he was a writer).>>

He was credited, but only in fine print on the copyright page, not on
the cover or title page like most authors. Have any of his stories been
reprinted in America? I seem to recall that he wrote the story that
introduced me and other Americans to Scarpa (the Mickey Mouse story in which
the Phantom Blot framed Mickey, and Eega Beeva helped him out), but maybe I'm
thinking of someone else.
And I confess I hadn't even realized that one of the volumes had been
originally narrated by Fethry, changed to Donald in the American edition.
Fethry did show up as himself in the "Capitals of the World" volume narrated
by Grandma Duck, in which she and Goofy took a world tour. They met many
other Disney characters in their travels, including, besides Fethry, Donald's
nephews, Rockerduck, and Pete, all of whom (even Pete) helped point things
out to them. (Interestingly, they never met probably the greatest traveller
in all of Duckburg, Uncle Scrooge...nor did they encounter Flintheart
Glomgold, whom I don't recall being mentioned in the Encyclopedia at all.)
Still, I can see the editors deciding that a cameo appearance was one thing,
a full-fledged narration by a character little known in America another. Even
so, they did leave Jose Carioca as narrator of another volume, but at least
he'd been in a couple of movies. (I understand that, though now obscure here,
he's very popular in his "native" Brazil, with his own regular comic and many
new solo adventures. It makes one wonder how the Italian publishers and
readers react to Magica di Spell...)

Harry Fluks wrote:

<<Don Arr? Is that an alias for Christensen?>>

Yes, a phonetic rendering of his name and initial (Don R.
Christiansen). Jerry Siegel used a similar pseudonym (Jerry Ess) at Archie in
the '60's, though that was probably the nadir of his writing career, very
likely more due to the editor than to Siegel himself.

<<Well... there was one (Egmont) story that shows young Scrooge and young
Flintheart being rivals in a grocery shop. There's no other way of explaining
this than by declaring the story non-canon...>>

Where was this grocery shop? Scotland? South Africa? Duckburg? Right,
that'd hardly work, especially in the final case...unless the story was so
good that it's worth working in, like Don Rosa's chapter with Scrooge and a
young Flintheart meeting in South Africa. But of course Rosa made sure it did
fit in with the grand Barks originals, which I doubt the other story did.

Don Rosa wrote:

<<I wish I had gotten that info on the Duck stories written by Jerry Siegel
from you sooner. They were calling me from THE COMICS JOURNAL wanting
detailed information on Siegel's Duck career, and I was very anxious to see
the addition of some lengthier comments regarding the Ducks into Siegel's
obituary. Sorry I didn't think to ask you!>>

With Siegel's death, I think this would be a perfect time for Gladstone
to reprint some of his Duck stories. And I'd like to see more of Guido
Martina's, too!

<<And when I tried to turn one of my old "Pertwillaby Papers" adventures into
a Duck story in "The Once and Future Duck", I had some trouble. Actually, in
agreement with Barks' work, I wanted to do a story where time-travel was
something impossible that even Gyro had some difficulty achieving, which was
part of the story's basis.>>

Since that's the one story you never finished, I'm eagerly awaiting it!
Some of the gags will have to be changed, of course (though you could keep
the alignment of the planets as being too early in that: now it'd be too
late). It was clear where Lancelot Pertwillaby would fit into Arthurian
legend (with a bit of time paradox thrown in, since he was probably named
*after* the legendary hero he would've turned out to be), but there wasn't
any Sir Donald or Sir Scrooge in the legends.

<<However, quite apart from Barks' stories, other European stories have
featured a Gearloose time machine for decades, and it would have been too
confusing for readers for me to suddenly decide that the thing never existed,
even that's what I wanted to do. So, I stumbled around the problem with some
difficulty. But, yes, I HAVE done a time-travel tale in this "The Once and
Future Duck" which should be appearing fairly soon since I just helped
numerous translators with their questions on that story.>>

Not to mention a few American stories. I remember one from the Phantom
Blot's short-lived magazine that was also one of the few to feature both
Mickey, Donald, and Scrooge in the same story against enemies of both: the
Blot teaming up with the Beagle Boys. The original printing featured a money
tree, but the reprint was changed to be a more logical (without overtones of
counterfeiting) tree with oily leaves.

Ole Neilsen wrote:

<<I assume it's the old story about nobody being able to do both Donald AND
Mickey well. Not that Don has really tried...>>

Romano Scarpa seems to have done both characters well, from what little
I've seen of his stories. He's not quite up there with Barks or Rosa on the
Ducks or with Gottfredson on Mickey, but he ranks with almost everyone else
I've seen on either character. (Bob Ingersoll's also written some very decent
stories with both characters.)

<<But trust me; I'm working on it: I just bought "The Good Ol' Mickey Mouse"
book for 30$ containing almost all the daily strips from 1930-32. That's what
I call 'digging up gold'. ;)>>

I definitely want that, but only if it's in English. Like all too many
Americans, I'm functionally illiterate in every language but English, so
items like the Barks interview in German, even more than a comic book story
(where at least there are pictures to help) I have to pass on unless someone
(are you listening, Dwight?) is kind enough to translate them. (Come to think
of it, does Barks speak German? If he doesn't, the interview was probably
conducted *in* English, so maybe there's an original transcript somewhere.)

<<Now, there's a hint I can dig! Michael Gilbert is, as his wife revealed
here a while ago, a fan of DC's Plastic Man (not Marvel's Mr. Richards), but
it seems likely that this is also one of Michael's stories, related to a (to
me) unknown DC super hero.>>

Actually, Plastic Man was originally published by Quality Comics, owned
by a man called "Busy" Arnold who made the shrewd business decision of hiring
Will Eisner away from the production shop that was subcontracting most of his
stories. Eisner brought most of his best people from the shop--Lou Fine,
Chuck Cuidera, and Plastic Man creator Jack Cole--to Quality with him,
resulting in some of the best characters of the Golden Age like The Spirit ,
Blackhawk, and Plastic Man. Plastic Man was a brilliant work of art in Jack
Cole's hands (he originally wrote and drew all the stories, though many later
ones were drawn by him from scripts by Joe Millard and William Woolfolk), but
quickly died after Cole's departure in 1954 and his suicide a couple of years
later. Quality went out of business in 1956, and sold out to DC (with a few
exceptions like The Spirit, a character for whom Will Eisner had retained
ownership). DC kept BLACKHAWK going until 1969, with sporadic revivals
thereafter, but has never been able to revive Plastic Man successfully,
despite no less than four attempts by very talented people including Gil
Kane, Ramona Fradon, Joe Staton, and Phil Foglio. I'd say Plastic Man is as
impossible for anyone but Jack Cole to do right as Krazy Kat was for anyone
but George Herriman to do right (and Dell *did* try it at one time).

Mark Mayerson wrote:

<<Please don't refer to the Tom and Jerry films as having been made by Fred
Quimby. Quimby was a business man in charge of the animated shorts
department at MGM from the late '30's to the early or mid '50's. He had
nothing to do with the content of the cartoons. The Tom and Jerrys are the
work of Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera.>>

The first and arguably best creation of the famous team of animators
whose work I grew up with in the '60's, when they were doing Yogi Bear, The
Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, and many other cartoon series. Tom and
Jerry weren't owned by them, since MGM retained the rights, but now all the
characters are back together, subsumed into Ted Turner's media empire. With
Turner himself in the process of selling out to Time Warner, that'll make for
a whole lot of cartoon characters under one corporate roof!

Robert D. wrote:

<<SO WHY DOES MY LA TIMES COST 50 CENTS, ONE-THIRD AS MUCH AS A CHEAP COMIC?
Something is very wrong here. I know that collectors and speculators have
had a lot to do with it, but I can't help feeling that the comic industry has
been as mismanaged as the American auto industry and Apple computers.>>

Because it sells so much better than any comic book, driving the unit
cost way down--not to mention not having to pay for glossy cover stock
(except maybe in magazines once a week--I don't agree exactly, but I see why
Gladstone dropped it). Furthermore, that means advertisers will pay a lot
more for space in the paper, so the advertisers, not the buyers, pick up most
of the tab. The wider audience makes advertising more cost effective... if
only one tenth of one percent of readers of the paper buy a car from it, the
auto companies are still ahead millions of dollars, whereas if only one tenth
of one percent of DC readers buy a video game (a narrower audience, even
though I've bought three cars in my life and no video games), the ad's not
worthwhile.

Mike Pohjola wrote:

<<Don's universe has stopped somewhere in the mid 50's. Mostly that is 1954.
He says the ducklings are about twelve. He also says that most of the birht
years aren't exact, so that would lead us to believe that HDL were born in
1942. Now, if they had been about twelve (okay, let's say seven) in 1937 they
would be twenty-something grown-ups AND they would've been born when their
mother (who is Donald's twin sister) was only seventeen. Well, that would
well explain why he wasn't shown in the family-tree... Perhaps Della herself
doesn't know who exactly was their father ;)>>

The Ducklings' age has always been vague, probably deliberately so
children of all ages can identify with them. (The use of animal characters is
also a factor, since real ducks age much faster than people: presumably the
Disney Ducks age like the human beings they, for all practical purposes,
are.)

I once asked Carl Barks flat out how old he saw them as being, and he
said, "around six," which seemed very young to most people around us. Yet a
few of his stories, especially the early ones, seem to bear this out ("Kite
Weather" has them entering a contest open only to children under seven, and
several other stories place them in kindergarten), though in a rather
surrealistic manner (said "kindergarten" has integral calculus equations on
the blackboard). On the other hand, one cartoon had them as Boy Scouts,
indicating they were at least 12 (the minimum age for admission at the time,
though it was later reduced to 11). But I agree with Don R. that the cartoons
aren't necessarily consistent with the comic books, or even with each other.
(At least one had the nephews as teenagers, and supposedly a new Disney
series in the works will do the same.)

In Barks' comics, of course, the Ducklings weren't Scouts but Junior
Woodchucks. Yet even if we consider the Junior Woodchucks as paralleling the
Cub Scouts rather than the Boy Scouts (and Barks has said that was his
intention), that would still place the boys between eight and (at the time)
eleven. (And then, too, Bill Watterson once had Calvin in the Cub Scouts,
even though he was two years too young...but he quickly admitted that had
been a mistake.) Still, the Junior Woodchucks, being fictional, aren't
necessarily bound by the actual age limits set by the Boy Scouts of America.
Other factors are equally inconclusive (e.g., they believe in Santa Claus,
but in the Disney universe, Santa Claus really exists). And Jack Chalker has
even suggested that the Woodchucks are adults now, not aging at anything like
a normal rate (any more than the other ducks do; even in the '50's Scrooge
would've been a centenarian) because of the events of Barks' "Poncey de Loon"
story wherein they drank from a fountain of youth.

Probably the most logical conclusion is that Huey, Dewey and Louie did
indeed start out as 5- or 6-year-olds in the early Barks stories, though very
precocious ones (not unlike the 7-year-old girl who recently died trying to
pilot a plane, leading to constant recriminations against her parents but
rather unjustified ones. She died because of the irresponsibility of the
adults around her, not her own, and surely the Ducklings flirted with even
more danger). By the time of the Scrooge title, they'd reached the age of
about 10 or 12, and seemed more mature (though, just like real 12-year-olds,
not incapable of some mischief and childish behavior) than in the earlier
Barks stories.

Take care,

Rich Morrissey

>>It's a matter of advertisements. A newspaper has more readers >>than a
comic book, so they can sell space at higher price. They also >>just a couple
of pages for ads. If a comic book had 25% of each >>spread (the lower half
of right page for example) for ads and a full >>page ad every second spread,
the page count would be greater >>(=more weight) and the price would be
lower. Who wants to read a >>comic like that? In Germany they had (or still
have) half page ads in >>the middle of the stories. They look horrible, IMHO.

No doubt. But it seems logical to me that if a comic could have been
produced for the same price as a newspaper from the 1940s until the 1970s,
but is now much more expensive, that other factors are involved besides
production costs. I have to wonder out loud whether it has been an
editorship replaced by "fans" who cater to collectors by using higher priced
paper and fewer ads than necessary.

Robert D.

HENRI & WES:
Of course, you're right about something like the LA TIMES being primarilly
bouyed up by ads, and circulation to a lesser extent. Another MAIN reason is
that a newspaper is sold in one, small area, and distributed by the
publisher in its own trucks. A major portion of any magazine's budget is
taken by the national distributing company. But I'm surprised no one here
realized that newspapers are so much cheaper than magazines for two other
reasons. They are printed on "newsprint", the cheapest of paper stock...
and, unlike comics or magazines, they are not printed by normal lithography.
More ads, larger circulation and in a tiny area, different paper, different
printing... you might as well wonder why there's a difference between the
cost of a magazine and a hamburger. It's "apples and oranges".

MIKE:
Why do you think that my bit in that unused script page about the MacDuichs
and the picts and the Scandanavians is a reference to any other past story?
I don't believe any of that unused "history of the MacDuichs" was a
reference to a past story except the very few that made it into the final
story... such as the parts with the Hound and Seafoam.

DWIGHT:
Oh, hey, listen... I thought you knew! I haven't had to pay-per-word to read
these Digests since I gained a direct link to the Internet two Marches ago!
Have all the elf discussions you like!

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End of Disney comics Digest V96 Issue #79
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