Keskustelujen arkisto

Hi!

In addition to a list of email abbreviations, I also have a list of email
smileys. It's 168 lines long. Please email me ((Email removed)) if you'd
like to have it.

Here's a sample:

8(:-) Submitter is Walt Disney
_:^) Submitter is an Indian

"Walt Disney" is the only Disney-related smiley, though.

Eric

People, would you please explain to mw what in the
world is so scary about a good comic story? Is it
that they are drawn more realistic or the storyline
more intruiging the mind? What do you think about
the fact that every (sorry, many) five-year old
Americans love to watch stuff like Mortal Kombat
or these Power Rangers, which are officially
not legal to watch for under 16-year olds here in
Germany... That sounds pretty odd to me!!!

We sorta were discussing Bark's politics. Plese note that I'm not going to
say the pros and cons of his politics, this isn't a political debate (my
personal politics are more in line with Walt Kelly than Barks)/ I would not
say that Barks is a country club republican. His history is of the small
town guy who tries a small buisness and works hard. He was a lumberjack,
chicken rancher, animation writer, comic book writer and artist. Upon his
retirement; his wife teaches him to paint; and he works hard at it. Doing
countless landscapes, until he stumbles across a money making opportunity and
does Duck paintings. Which comic book fans enjoy( and pay big bucks for).
Throughout Barks stories, the theme of working hard is repeated and
repeated. His most obvious political story has Scrooge losing all his money
in a storm and gaining it back by good old fashion capitalism (inflationary
capitalism). Barks' history as a lumberjack and living in small town/rural
area gives him an appreciation of nature and the enviroment. So his Jr.
Woodchuck stories generally put him fully on the side as a conservative
conservationist (which Scrooge as a power hungry explotative capitalist!)
Politics is/are an intersting buisness, and labeling an inexact science.
In America, if Richard Nixon was still alive; would he be considered a
liberal? He would to some.
Best Steven Rowe

So Walt is dead. So much for urban legends.
Thanks for quick & explicit net-information, Per.

Jan Lund Thomsen, and others:
The "DUCKMOBILES" album I described here recently,
and on which I lavished praise, can be had from
Jan P. Krogh, Langes gate 7, Oslo, tel. (+47) 22 36 34 50,
hopefully. He runs a comic book shop/gallery in central Oslo.

Taliaferro (to those who asked):
At least in Norway they've put out "Donald Duck
fra dag til dag" (DD from day to day), one book a year,
the full Taliaferro 1938 year in 1987,
the full Taliaferro 1939 year in 1988, and so on.
I do not know whether the books are _complete_, though.
Are these published in Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic as well?

Regarding other recent themes:
Yes, they do acknowledge Al Taliaferro here, on the back
cover of the books. And Paul Murry has been mentioned
a couple of times, _inside_ the weekly comic (how often?,
when, for the first time?, I don't know).
But Van Horn seems still to be humanoid # 3 on the _cover_
of the weekly DD (after Barks and Rosa).

Nils Lid Hjort

GERARD (Hallo en welkom!):

> How about getting the enormous job of adding the publication to the
> database?

That's a splendid idea. In fact, we have been doing just that in the past
years! (And it sure *was* an enourmous job!)

You have probably only seen the WWW pages on Per's site. But there
are also a lot of plain text files, available from ftp. In total they are
about 10 megabytes, and contain:
- American publications (ALL of Dell, SOME of Gold Key/Whitman,
a LOT of Disney Comics, MOST of Gladstone)
- MOST Dutch publications (you can help filling in the missing stuff,
if you want! Contact me in private mail)
- MOST Swedish publications,
- a LOT of Danish publications (will be MOST in the next version),
- a LOT of German publications,
- SOME Finnish, British, and Colombian publications.

And I probably forgot to mention something.

A new version of the database will be available on ftp somewhere next
month. I'll post a message with a summary of all new things included.

--Harry.
(Fluks, that is. 8-)

OLE R. NIELSEN

> A special welcome to two new 'Danes' on pip.net, my buddy Jan - of
whom I make
> fun - and Byron, of whom I am a fan. As long time readers will remember David
> repeatedly got blamed for the wonderful MM adventures, like "Fantasy Island"
> and "A Mouse and His Dog", but humbly corrected me that the credit was Byron's.
> Of course it must be great as both a writer and an editor to pick the very
> best artists to illustrate your stories. Now I would like to know if the
> fine Ferioli story in #36 (D 95115) about Mickey writing a book of nursery
> rhymes is _also_ yours, or David's as I suspect? And has Ferioli ever drawn
> ducks? There is a fine 30's style picture of him in it...

Thanks for the kind words. As far as your questions/comments go:

Naturally as editor-in-chief I get to be very picky about who draws my
stories (and assign the scripts of my deadly enemies -- they know who
they are! -- to artists who still think they need to first find the ink
with the little colored dots in it before they can actually start
drawing!). I mean, there's got to be *some* perks to make up for the
fact that it's 11 pm and I'm still sitting here at work (and no, you
wise guys, I haven't been spending the time surfing the net at company
expense!).

The nursery rhyme story is, of course, mine, but I wrote it under the
name of my alter ego, David Gerstein. I know this will come as a shock
to many people (not least of all to David!), but this Gerstein guy is a
fictional character. He does not exist. Those who claim to have seen him
in person are either victims of bad fungi or have fallen under the spell
of my mutant ability to cloud the minds of comic fans.

Uh... it should not be necessary to add a disclaimer, but in the
recogniton of the fact that the world has become far too literal, THE
ABOVE PARAGRAPH IS A JOKE!!! Of course David Gerstein exists (well, I
won't get into the philosophical defintion of existance here) and he
alone wrote the wonderful story in question. Although I still contend
Ferioli made him look good!

However, just to add to the confusion, perhaps David would like to tell
people who "wrote" a certain little yet-unpublished tale titled
"Barnyard Olympics"? Hmm...

And yes, Ferioli has drawn ducks. Check out "The Road to Mandalay" (D
95173 -- scheduled for AA&Co. 41 and 42, 1996. It's the new and improved
version of the Donald and Mickey story published by Gladstone under the
title "On the Ball".

He's also drawn ducks for our pocket book production. Check out the
Danish Jumbobook 179 (issue numbers vary in other countries) for D
90175, Maharajahens Svaerd (The Sword of the Maharajah). And many other
such stories drawn under the name of Manrique (not to be confused with
the actual Manrique, who inked my Fantasy Island for Ferioli). Confused?
Well, if you're not, you're not trying hard enough!!!

Say goodnight, Gracie.

DANNY:
You don't need my endorsement of your ideas... but that Money Bin theory you
put forth sounds good to me. Any idea is good that helps clear up the
contradictions in old Barks stories for us anal-retentive fan-boys, and your
explanation would disarm those few folks who think I changed "history" when
I had $crooge build the Money Bin earlier than 1952, even though other Barks
stories set its construction even before my choice of 1902.
Speaking of other Money Bin notions I never put into use, but considered --
there was one Barks story... actually just a panel... that showed the Bin as
the normal big cube but with a smaller narrow building stuck to the front.
This would show that the entire cube is fulla money, and the offices that we
know are there somewhere are in the seperate wing. I thought about using
that as my Bin, but all other Bins in all other $crooge (and Barks) stories
were always simple cubes, and I thought my design woulda been too confusing.
So now I just envision the Bin as having the offices in a one-room-wide,
ten-story-tall facade portion in the front of the Bin. In fact, I have
several detailed Bin diagrams sent in to me by Duckfans that show it as
such, so that's an obvious choice. (That facade section also contains
$crooge's Spartan apartment, since we all know that he would NEVER live in a
plush mansion as in Ducktales stuff.)

DANIEL VAN EIJMEREN:

> I really like that new look of "Mickey" in Runaway Brain, can't he stay
> this way forever? Please? ;-)

If only... several artist work on the Mickey-comics, so it would be
impossible to have all the Mickey-comics drawn in that particular style.
Donald Duck-comics also look very different. I can tell you that most of my
collegues think that Mickey-comics SHOULD look this way...

>There are still a lot of stories which I would like to see in Donald Duck
>Extra, for example: "Lost Charts of Columbus", the story with the Avatars,
>the story in which the Ducks meet King Arthur and "A Matter of Gravity".
>Will they be published in Holland?

"A Matter of Gravity" will be published (we recently bought the story).

>I like the work by Sander Gulien. You told us in which issues there will
>be more work of him, can you also tell this concerning Mau Heymans?

No more Mau Heymans-funnystuff till early next year. But his brother has
some stories on the shelf:
Bas Heymans (his style looks very similar to that of his brother's) will be
published in DD38, DD48 and DD51.

>Maybe the following is a question you've heard already thousands of
>times. ;-) Is Jippes still working on Junior Woodchuck-stories?

Not that I know of. Just recently May Heymans did a Barks-script (DD 23-1996
I believe).

TO DON:

>Instead of going to the trouble of deleting the caption boxes and
rescripting and then
>still only ending up with very awkward 9th and 17th pages, why don't you
>ever use the single-part versions of those stories?

We order the films of the stories at Egmont, and they probably just send us
"standard"-packages. We never knew it was possible to order films WITHOUT
those stupid splash panels. I can tell you how much trouble it is to write
text for those extra caption-boxes: just when jou're in a moment of action,
the story stops and opens with a half page-drawing and a caption-box.
(Almost like watching a good movie on tv and suddenly you have a commercial
break).

So, thanks for your advice. We publish your stories completely (without
interruptions like: SEE HOW IT ENDS NEXT WEEK!) so it would be very nice to
use the single-partversions.

>I only refer to the fact that my work never appears there because they tell
me the editors don't like my art.

Well okay, some of us think your artwork doesn't look BARKS enough
(especially the inking makes most of the characters look like wood
carvings), but that doesn't mean it's BAD. Your stories are among the "best
in the business", because I know how much work it is to find a good script.
The scripts are an exception among the containers full of ordinairy
"mainstream" boring stuff I find on my desk every day.
Please read for more details my comment on what Arthur asked me in digest #
182.

>By the way, how can I persuade you folks to send me copies of that "Lo$"
>album or the monthlies with my stories so that fans like Arthur and Harry
>don't have to do it at their expense. Please?

Sorry, but if we start sending all our published material to all our artists
worldwide, we have to hire extra people to do the job. We can make an
exception, but within three weeks I got ten writers and twenty drawers and
inkers on the phone who want the same thing. I believe it's possible to have
a foreign subscription to the Monthly (but maybe that's more expenisve than
simply sending it by mail).

Sorry again... maybe a million bucks will help.

TO ARTHUR:
> 1. Why are Don Rosa's stories not printed in the weekly;
As I said, we don't think the style is "BARKS" enough. Our editors believe
that the work of, say Van Horn, is more suitable for our readers of the
DDWeekly. But it's not just an "art-thing". Let me tell you something about
the difference between the readers of the Weekly and the Monthly (in which
the Rosa-stories are published): we always do research on these things,
because we like to know what our readers like.

The weekly-readers are about 8 to 12 years old. While the Montly-readers
turned out to be much older (about 10-15 years).That was a real surprise to
us. And when I look in my own "social environment" I noticed that the
Monthly is very popular among college- and university-students.
THAT is what made us decide to publish Rosa in the Monthly, because his
complex en well-documented stories are more suitable for these older
readers. Our younger readers in the Weekly especially appreciate the more
"funny" comics like Vicar, Heymans, Barks etc.

>2. What will happen with the "Oom Dagobert"-series after the 12 chapters of
the "Life of Scrooge" >are all printed?
We don't know yet. The sales of the first part of the Lo$-series turned out
to be extremely succesful! 17.000 albums have been sold, while usually we
sell about 12.000. The Lo$ seemed to be very popular stuff for the Monthly
readers, and when we received al lot of letters of Lo$-fans who wanted to
order old Monthly-issues, we decided it would be a good idea to publish the
whole series in 5 albums. The second album is lying on my desk for two weeks
now, so I assume it must be in the shops about now. (Go get it, boys!)

>3. I've heard that Daan Jippes is still working on Barks' JW-scripts.
What's the status?

*SIGH!* Like I said. I haven't seen a thing.

>will Mau Heymans make more?

Maybe. He just finished a New Years- story.

> and 4. Why haven't you ever used one of Don's beautifull covers on a Dutch
Disney comic?

Making our own covers is cheaper than buying them. Sorry... company-policy I
guess...

We also don't want to "mix" styles. All covers have to look "recognizable"
(like Jippes draws most of the covers of "The best stories of Donald Duck").
It would not be wise to make different covers (with different lay-outs) of
different artists for every next album. That's also why we don't use Don's
covers for the Monthly's.

> I couldn't help noticing, though, that you changed some little details in
the cover,
>like lines on Scrooge's coat, that Don interrupted and you made smooth
>lines of it! Why do you go through all these troubles, when Don's covers
>are already perfect on itself?

We used a part of Don's original published cover-illustration, and the
"scan-quality" turned out to be a bit "poor". We had to "polish and brush"
things up a bit.

>I think you should change the entire layout of the cover
>of the Extra and remove the annoying blue/white border around the picture
and
>make the picture over the full size of the cover (like the weekly)

The Monthly should not look the same like the Weekly (to avoid confusion),
that's why we use these borders.

>Why do you always go through all the trouble of drawing covers
>for the Extra (which are mostly of VERY poor quality)

Thanks, Arthur. I'll give your compliments to our artist Michel Nadorp, who
is IMHO the best Dutch cover-artist. His work is excellent.

>I think you should also change the paper on which the Extra
>is printed to the same paper the weekly is printed on

When all the readers of the Montly are willing to pay about f 3,95 for the
32-page Montly, we'll consider it. And because they probably won't... using
better paper and a higher selling-price, the Monthly will stop being
published within 3 months due to incredible expensive overhead. You don't
have to study economics to understand that!

>And it would be great when you mention artist's names in the "Next
month"-box
>on the last page of the Extra once in a while

Mind you: 99% of our readers are NOT interested in Don Rosa of Van Horn ,
they are interested in Donald Duck and the upcoming adventures and stories.
Sad, but true... I think most of those kids don't even realise that these
stories are WRITTEN and DRAWN by ordinairy, everyday people...
Adding names of artists and writers has no commercial value... (except for
you, maybe)

Concerning the mentioning of credits... I'll get back to that later on. I'll
have to ask some people about that.

Arthur wrote:
> [..] I think they belong [..]
> I think you should [..]
> Why do you always [..]
> I think you should also [..]
> And I also think you should [..]

Harry wrote:
>Well, tastes differ. And I'm sure the Dutch editors are doing what
>they think is right. "I think you should" give them a break. OK?

And I write:
Thanks for saving our butts, Harry!

That's all, folks! (Woops, wrong department!)