Keskustelujen arkisto

Arthur wrote:
> Talking about Japanese Disney comics (?!?), someone-on-this-list-
> who's-name-I-can't-remember-right-now once said there were no Disney
> comics sold in Japan at ALL, not even foreign ones! Is that really true?

I happen to have a Spanish Disney comic book from 1991 which has a listing
on the inside front cover of all languages in which Disney comics are
produced. Japanese is among those listed, so it would seem there were
Japanese Disney comics at least at that time.

Also, insofar as I remember the message you mention, the person did not
actually claim that there ARE no Disney comics in Japan, just that he
could not find any. Right?

/F

DAVID G.
I'd argue with you that Air Pirates was intended more of an homage than a
satire. In fact, it was an attempt to stand up to the establishment (Disney)
and as a complaint that Mickey's stories were mush compared to the adventures
he used to have. Of course, satire came in as a defense (poorly, I might add)
in court. Mad, Help and Harvey Kurtzman all came under legal challenges with
their satires on Superman, Batman, and (especially) Archie. At least those
were (much) funnier than the Air Pirates.
However, I still look back at the Air Pirates as some pretty good Mickey
stories.

Saw a Pinky & the Brain cartoon the other night in which the lab mice decide
to rob all the gold out of Fort Knox. When they finally get in the vault,
Pinky blurts out: "Gee, this is better than a 'Duck Tales' cartoon."

Gary Brown
Bradenton, FLA.

On the subject of a fourth nephew a couple of people wrote back to me in the
last digest:

Kathy Fitzpatrick wrote:
"No, wait! Phooey could be an alien, or maybe he fell out of an
interdimensional leak, let's see...a communist plot.. hey, there is a story
there somewhere... the long lost brother..."

And Henri Sivonen wrote:
"Phooey can be "translated" in the same way as the others. I've seen a
Finnish name for Phooey (Rupu) that rhymes with the others and has the
required sort of meaning.

"So there's Huey, Dewey, Louie and Phooey and Hupu, Tupu, Lupu and Rupu. IMHO
Rupu is a good name for the fourth nephew."

Frankly--as I said before--I like "Phooey" as a name. If it can work in other
languages besides English then great. As far as Kathy's suggestion/joke about
Phooey being an alien--well, I rather like it. I wasn't seriously thinking of
doing a story with four nephews, but I think I just might take a crack at it
in the future. (So I've got first dibs on the idea.) I've already cleared
this with Kathy. At this point I'm not totally sure it'll work, but it sounds
like a lot of fun to deliberately have four nephews in a story.

By the way, every once in awhile someone suggests a story idea to me. Usually
it's not something I'm interested in using. That doesn't mean the idea is
bad, but an idea either clicks for you or it doesn't. In addition, the
original idea for a story is often just a situation or a joke--which often
don't even make it into the finished story. Ideas are just jumping off
places. I usually have an idea as to where I'm going with a story--but I'm
never really sure until I get to the end.

This may be as good a time as any to state that the idea for "Snow Smitten"
(D95020--printed in the Danish Anders And & Co. Nr 2 -1. Januar 1996 as "Rim
og roer") was suggested by my wife, Shelagh. My editor Byron Erickson wanted
a snow story and Shelagh suggested that Daisy and Donald could somehow end up
snow bound together and drive each other nuts. Anyway, I justed wanted to
give credit where it was due.

By the way, as long as I'm identifying stories, my "Terror in the Trash" was
printed in Anders And & Co. Nr. 15 - 11. april 1996 as "Bidt af en gal
samler." For better or worse, it was all my idea so I'll have to take the
sole blame or credit for that one.

--John Lustig

HARRY: (about new artist Sander Gulien)

> Gulien looked very much at Jippes' recent artwork. His art looks
> very good indeed, and I hope it will remain that way in the future,
> when he developed more a style of his own.

As you already know from me, I've complained a lot lately about the
current Dutch weeklies (having rather 'un-inspired' stories, except for
the Heymans-stories and a few exceptions). So, it was really good to
see this new artist. His art looks very much like Jippes' work and it's
very good to see the Barksian/Jippesian use of expressions on the Ducks.

It could be that he will develop a style of his own in the future, but
that's sure not nescessary for me. This is because I really like to see
an artist being able to work in a Jippes-style (that is: being more
Barkish than Barks himself). There are still not enough stories like
that, at least not for me. ;-)

One minor thing about Gulien's art is that some drawings have some
(I hope) 'beginner-mistakes'. In some panels, the ducks are drawn with
some mistakes (too small arms, too long necks, etc.). I hope that
Gulien is aware of that and that he will try to correct such mistakes
in future stories. But for the time being, this is only nitpicking from
my side because his style looks so 'inspired' that it's very easy to
'forgive' such little mistakes.

A new star is born in the duck-artist universe?

(It might be a bit too soon to have such a thought, but I just can't
help wishing this.) ;-)

HARRY: (about Rosa-reprints)

> Nobody's Business is the 2nd story Rosa made, and was printed before
> in Uncle $crooge #220. Actually, there have been Rosa reprints before
> (not counting the albums): The "Nostrildamus" story in a 3-D comic,
> [...]

A Rosa-story in a 3-D comic? I didn't know that! (And even if I did,
how could I have forgotten it!?) ;-) Do you know what that story looks
like, Harry? I know that those 3-D stories were not drawn that way by
the original artists (at least not nescessarily), but I really would
like to see how it is done. The same counts for the 3-D Barks stories
I've heard of.

I know such 3-D stories look rather 'forced', but I think it's nice to
have some of them as something extra to normal Duck-comics. It's the
same for me as with parodies.

And now I'm talking about parodies...

ARTHUR: (about non-Disney Disney comics)

> The kind of 'fake' Disney comics I was talking about were, like
> Mr Rosa once said, "counterfeit copies of western Disney comics, which
> can be referred to as bootlegs". The reason I'm interested in those
> 'bootlegs', which is in my opinion a better name for it to save
> confusion, is my homepage about Disney Comics Of The World.

It might just be a personal use of words, but I rather like the word
"counterfeit" being used for illegal copies which look exactly the same
like an already existing legal publication.

What I think of while using the word "bootleg" is an illegal publication
with 'previously unreleased' stories and/or stories which will never
see an official reprint.

To give an example:

If there would circulate an illegal Rosa-comic with, let's say, "Hearts
of Yukon" which looks exactly or almost like the original comic, then
I would prefer to call it a counterfeit.

If there would circulate an illegal Rosa-comic with the banned story
"War of the Wendigo" (for example called "The Unseen Rosa-works") then
I would prefer to call it a bootleg.

The reason why I like to keep such illegal publications apart from each
other, is the difference in purpose they seem to have:

An exact illegal copy of an already existing comic could be made just
for the 'easy cash'.

But on the other side, an illegal comic with stories we would otherwise
never see being (re)printed officially, could also have something
respectable as a reason for being printed: Giving comic-fans a chance
to see a story they would have to miss otherwise.

For this reason, I'm not against 'bootlegs' as a principle (although
it's sad that they need to exist), but I don't like 'counterfeits'
(because they're only made to *fool* people and getting a lot of money
out of that).

So far my letter this time.

Greetings,

--- Daniel

"Hooray! I'm cured! My mind doesn't hurt anymore!"

The Mad Musician, OG 11 --- Carl Barks

On May 4 Steve Rowe wrote to me:
"I have been "reading" your First Kiss covers. They are clever. I
frankly don't think that there's too much you can do with the idea... On the
other hand, you've done a better job than Marvel and Boris the Bear did with
the idea.
"I'm seeing some Giordano inks on those covers. Am I right?"

Well, to tell you the truth I'm not very good at identifying art styles.
Giordano, of course, was an editor at Charlton so I wouldn't be surprised if
he didn't ink a lot of the covers. I can tell you that at least one cover
that I'll eventually be "writing" was signed by Giordano. (I don't know what
number it'll be yet but it features a man at a piano.)

Unfortunately, when I purchased the rights to the old First Kiss series I
didn't receive any info about creator credits. Most of the art is unsigned.
Even when the artist did sign the work the signature sometimes gets covered
up or removed when I put in the word balloons and caption boxes. The woods
scene on cover #2 and the cheerleader-football player on cover #3 were both
signed by either "Nicholas & Alascia" or "Nicholas Alascia." The person or
team seem to have done more artwork than anyone else for the series. (At the
very least the signature shows up more often than any other.) My favorite
cover so far was #4--the soldier returning home by taxi only to find that his
"beloved sea monkeys are dead." It was signed by Jon D'Agostino. (By the way
there is a slight Disney connection to this one. Avid Disney fan Joe Torcivia
is the person who gave me the idea to submit these covers to Comics Buyer's
Guide. To pay Joe back in a very small way--as opposed to actually giving him
money--I changed the wording on the door of the cab on cover #4 so that it
read "TORCIVIA TAXI SERVICE," but then I flubbed up when I made a "final"
revision on my computer and inadvertently sent CBG a copy without Torcivia on
it. I'm going to try to put Joe's name on another cover to make up for this.

As to how much I can do with my series of "Too-Real-To-Be TRUE
ROMANCES"--well I don't know. It's certainly a longshot in terms of making
much money. Financially it's been a lot more trouble than it's worth so far.
I do have some ideas as to how I might eventually make a profit with this
material. In the meantime, though, I'm having a lot of fun. Of course, I have
fun writing Disney comics too--and I get paid a whole lot better. So I guess
I better get back to work and stop jabbering on.

--John Lustig

Thanks to our "Wolfman" for his international
Disney comics pages, which I just sampled.
Good work, enlightening and delightening at the same time.

Some time ago I noticed an entry about the number of
different languages in which Disney comics appear
or have appeared; I think the claim was 51.
A suggestion to Mr Wolfman is to include such a
separate list of languages, with perhaps very brief
annotations, in the Disney Comics of the World.

I don't know if _Latin_ was included? It should, since
we have the Donaldus Anas and Michael Musculus albums
of 1984. And have comics ever been published in _esperanto_?

The list should also include the _Sami_ language
(used by some in our lapp minority, in the very northernest
parts of Norway and Sweden, and partly Finland).
"Ville Vuojas" (Donald Duck) was published here,
but only for a couple of years.
And finally the list ought to include _New Norwegian_,
"nynorsk", which is our second official language,
and could be thought of as "Old Norwegian" since its
roots are from the pre-Danish-influence days.
The traditional comics/albums have only been published
in (plain) Norwegian, but the "Kabatek Albums"
(for lack of a better label) were simultaneously
published in both Norwegian and New Norwegian
["The Rain God from Uxmaal", "The Expedition to Key West",
and so on].

Nils Lid Hjort

Steve wrote:
>The story circulated here in the USA, was that everything was fine, until
>the Howard the Duck newspaper strip. Disney complained, and Marvel
>changed the appearance to avoid a lawsuit.

I'll have to check my old files before I can say for certain, but I have
my information directly from Steve Gerber, and I vaguely recall him saying
that the thing about the newspaper strip and some other story are just
rumours.

/F

PS. Arthur: I will mail you the list as soon as I remember to bring the
comic book with me to school.