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Don Rosa wrote:

>...of ALL the Disney publishers in the world, ONLY GLADSTONE must pass
>>everything through Disney scrutiny before it's published. This is what I
>>referred to...as the forces lined up to discourage Gladstone... the one
>Disney >publisher in the world who has the most disinterested public, the
>one public >MOST influenced to avoid Disney comics like the plague, and
>they are the one >publisher who has the most red tape to deal with in
>trying to produce their >comics!

And, in the perpetual fury of getting the darn things produced, the issues
go by like greased pigs on linoleum! If folks could imagine trying to
literally wrap red tape around such a beast, they'd get an inkling not only
of what Gladstone has to tackle but why Disney got knocked head-over-tail
when they took a stab at it.

>I would guess that Disney ordered those changes [to "Of Ducks, Dimes and
>>Destinies]... but perhaps Gary will have a more definite answer.

In this instance, the variant script of that story came from Egmont, so
those revisions are all Byron's fault! (That'll teach him to go off to the
Riviera for two weeks!)

>The same thing explains why they can publish a story where all the Indians
>look alike, while Disney won't allow Gladstone to use my Pygmy Indian sequel
>-- Disney does not excercise that sort of control over what KOMIX prints.
>What KOMIX prints cannot be used as an "arguement" to lift the burden of
>political-correctitude off Gladstone.

Here's my version (based on a true story, Kriton) of what happened to that
very argument:
Gladstone: But you yourselves printed a story with lookalike
Indians in US #271!
Disney: We wouldn't publish a story like that now.
Gladstone: Oh?
Disney: Yes. So we certainly can't allow Gladstone to do so.
Gut-wrenching drama, eh?

HARALD:

Disney told us that Launchpad is one DuckTales character who can, under
certain circumstances, appear elsewhere than under the DuckTales banner.
This goes along with the fact that he does seem to have gained something of
a following. As for the other DuckTales characters, frankly, we never
bothered to ask.

JONATHAN:

"Land of the Pygmy Indians" will appear, unaltered, in the USA in Color
albums (Barks series). Our agreement with Disney as to these albums is that
we can reprint anything that appeared in the original, hardbound, 30-volume
Carl Bark Library. Because the albums are specifically designed for and
targeted to the Barks collectors market, Disney essentially agrees with
Gladstone that there is only one special interest group that might be
significantly offended by content: the Barks collector, and only if any
content was omitted or further revised.

GARYB98294:

U$ Adventures #41, Donald Duck #299 and the two U$ Adventures albums (#7,
>8) were indeed all we shipped in August.

Hi again, folks!

DON R.:

> [to Harald]
> How did the "SPIRIT jam" work? I think various professional and fan artists
> who were known to love Will Eisner's work were invited to contribute to the
> "jam", a "jam" being a work done by a volunteer group of interested parties,
> like a musical jam-session. I only inked the one panel since I was invited
> during a Chicago Comicon weekend in whatever year that might have been. When
> was it, anyway? Around 1980?

Naturally I must own a copy of this issue because of this. (Yes, I *am*
extreme!)

(To anyone who can help me:) Which issue was it, and where can I
find it? Please don't ignore this question! NERLGH!!

> That's because, of ALL
> the Disney publishers in the world, ONLY GLADSTONE must pass everything
> through Disney scrutiny before it's published. This is what I referred to in
> the previous Digest as the forces lined up to discourage Gladstone... the
> one Disney publisher in the world who has the most disinterested public, the
> one public MOST influenced to avoid Disney comics like the plague, and they
> are the one publisher who has the most red tape to deal with in trying to
> produce their comics!

I thought Gladstone were the lucky one...

> That's why I help them whenever I can, as should we
> all, always cutting them some slack!

I don't think we "regular fans" can help out with things like that. It's up
to you guys who's working full-time for the Syndicate to do that...

> The same thing explains why they can publish a story where all the Indians
> look alike, while Disney won't allow Gladstone to use my Pygmy Indian sequel
> -- Disney does not excercise that sort of control over what KOMIX prints.
> What KOMIX prints cannot be used as an "arguement" to lift the burden of
> political-correctitude off Gladstone.

I got it as he said that he had compared the KOMIX-version with the Gladstone-
version. Am I wrong, Zeus? (your name must've slipped out of my mind, guy-
from-Greece, sorry. ;-))

JAN:

>> Tsk, tsk. "Med plutonium och Gottfredsonstrippar far vi dansken pa kna!" :-)
>
> Saa var der den om Svenskeren som taendte radioen og skreg "Jeg er blind!" :)

Vet du varfor Dansken tar med sig ett sandpapper ut i oknen da? Jo, for att
"Det var den enda karta over stallet jag kunde hitta". Heh-he! ;-)

See ya!
---

Greetings from J a k o b

JAKI... er.. I mean DIDIER:
(Here comes answers to Didier that most of you should skip reading... it has
nothing to do with Disney.)
I drew "Tagdenah" for THE COMICS JOURNAL back around 1978. It was the only
comic story they ever printed, as I recall. It was done because I was living
in an apartment complex at the time, and there was a girl there who was a
bit messed up with drugs, and I knew she had an interest in writing fantasy
and sword-and-sorcery... and I was hoping the chance of writing a comic book
might put her on some new direction mentally... or something. I guess it
didn't... she died of a drug overdose about 8 years later.
I did "Phalanx" with a professor-pal from the history department while I was
in the college of engineering at the University of Kentucky around 1972. (It
was very odd to have an engineering student hobnobbing with a history
professor!) This was a newspaper type strip inspired by our beloved
Asterix... I think we were two of the 37 Americans at the time who had heard
of Asterix (there are about 59 of us now). This was an historically accurate
comedy set in 350 BC Greece. I'm not sure who I thought was going to want it
-- it wasn't bad, but I can see I had no concept of what newspapers were
looking for by then, or what I was going to do with it. It was because I was
only interested in doing comics as a hobby, and I only showed it to the one
local newspaper. When they weren't interested, I dropped the whole idea,
since it wouldn't matter if some other newspaper wanted to use it (and pay
us) -- if it didn't appear in MY local paper, there was no point to the
project as far as I was concerned.
What other strips did I do? Hm. There was another one back around 1969 that
I did with a high school chum titled "Khulan", a sword-and-sorcery thing.
(Those were the days when sword-and-sorcery was a new idea in comics, and as
I've said, fantasy and horror and history (which is what S&S sorta is a
combo of) is the sort of stuff that interested me, not funny-animals. That
was printed in a fanzine called THE COLLECTOR.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot...I did an "underground" style parody of Disney
comics called "Return to Duckburg Place" which no one ever used. The last I
heard it was in the hands of someone I've lost touch with named Dick Reiche,
and he had told me he'd given it to the art director of THE NATIONAL
LAMPOON. This woulda' been around 1970-72. I'd sure like to see that story
again... it would have been the very first time I ever drew the Ducks (and
Mickey, too)! Maybe it'll turn up someday. Just today I saw a catalogue of a
German art dealer who has for sale the cover of the (Comic) BUYER'S GUIDE
#27 that I did in 1972. I have no idea where he got that art! They never
returned it to me from TBG. (Yes, that problem is not NEW to me.)
There was another SF story I did in the early 70s that I've lost track of
also. This was before they had copy stores on every corner, so I never kept
copies of this stuff.
There were probably other comics that I did that I'll think of later. Of
course, as a wee tad I filled books with my own comic stories, say around
1957-1965. Happilly, I still have ALL these piles of books. You should come
here and go down in my basement and read that stuff and stop bothering these
nice people with these discussions! Actually, a local collector is currently
going through my closets and files and making a huge index of everything
I've ever done... and he might be who you need to talk to for this crazy
book idea of yours.

JAKOB:
What did you mean that we who "work for the syndicate" are the ones who need
to cut Gladstone some slack? If you meant that Disney should give them a
break, I agree, but we who do Disney comics have no connection with the
Disney corporation whatsoever. We are part of no "syndicate". We work for
Egmont or Gladstone or GP or some other comic publisher. I don't know that
Disney even knows we exist... they act as if we don't. At least *I've* never
heard from them. And there'd be a few other things I'd want to discuss with
them before I got around to Gladstone Comics.
I think Jonathan gave the best answer about those look-alike munchkins in
that story that Kriton asked me the question about (which I misunderstood).
As he said, elves are not a big letter-writing contingent or political force
in America, so big corporations don't need to worry about offending them. It
sounds like you thought the objection was that all the funnybook characters
looked alike. The worry was that all the ETHNIC characters looked alike.

"ANIMAL QUACKERS":
There seems to be lots of messages about this book, and whether it's sold
out or not sold out. My philosophy gives me no taste for limited editions or
collectibles, but I was ordering a copy of this book for a Mailing List
member in Europe who couldn't call the free 800 phone-number to place an
order. This was about 2 weeks ago, and at the time they had sold exactly
half of the edition. Could they have sold the entire other half of the
planned print run in less than 2 weeks?

GARY:
> Disney told us that Launchpad is one DuckTales character who can,
> under certain circumstances, appear elsewhere than under the
> DuckTales banner.
In that case, you'll be glad to know that William Van Horn's two
Gyro/Launchpad two-pagers were just published last month (just a few issues
apart). John Lustig mentioned them on the list once -- that's how I know about
them. Anyway, perhaps Gladstone has them already? Now you can go ahead
and use 'em, I guess (?)
Best,
David Gerstein (@Harry Fluks)
<(Email removed)>

Wait...wait... 5 minutes after I sent that last message, I think I realized
an answer to one of my own questions. 2 weeks ago they had 500 of those
"Animal Quackers" books left to sell. 1 week ago there was a Disneyana
convention someplace or other... I see it mentioned in the Disney forums I
prowl looking for Duck toys. So, I bet somebody was there at that convention
and sold 500 books to those conventioneers. If that's the case, I hope at
least a couple of those books found homes with somebody who had ever opened
a Disney comic book.

Hi!
Yesterday evening I had time to read the last 4 digests which
came over the weekend. There were several questions on
SUPER-DUCK,
which I might be able to answer.

Bent Pedersen wrote (on Phantomime = 'Super-Daisy'):
> I can only recall seing her in one story. Is she a regular
> in Germany?

Harald Havas replied:
> Regarding Daisy as "Phantomime" (what's her Italien and English
> name BTW?) I frankly dont know: she was on the cover of a
> "Lustiges Taschenbuch", that featured a (the?) story with her.

I wouldn't say she's a regular. I would estimate her appearing in
about five stories, but I cannot check right now, since some of
my comics (including these) are about 270 km away from me (in Celle
where my parents live). I don't know her English name, but her
Italian name is Paperinika, as Harald guessed correctly in #201.

Talking about Paperinika ...

Fabio Gadducci wrote:
> Actually, you know that in general the Italian version of Disney
> characters usually is much more violent than their American-Danish
> one.

I can only agree with that. I remember having read an Italian
Paperinika story, where she strikes the head off some man (he is a
robot, but Paperinika didn't know in the first place). Perhaps this
violence is the reason why this very story never appeared in any
German comic book.

Jakob Soederbaum wrote:
> What about the alien guy that live off of bubble gums? (I don't
> know if he has an English name, in Sweden he's called Lille Gummi,

In Germany this guy is called Bubble Billy. This sounds pretty
English, doesn't it?

STRANDED IN TIME:
This story also appeared in German Micky Maus 23-25/96, but
unfortunately I cannot provide the title discussion with the
German title. (Why? See above.)

CITY MAP OF DUCKBURGH:
Harald Havas wrote:
> Well, German "Micky Maus" 37/96 came out today and it features
> the already mentioned Duckburgh-map. It's not _very_ good IMHO
> but it's nicely done and VERY big: ca. 60x85 cm.

I am quite sure that this cannot be the DER DONALDIST version of the
city map of Duckburgh Danny Coenen wrote about in #196. Also from my
point of view the 'Micky Maus' map wasn't done very well. The worst
example is: If you stand outside $crooge's money bin, you just have
to cross the street and you stand in front of *Grandma Duck's farm*!
I am sure the DONALDISTs would protest also. This map is not their
level.

That's all from here for today
Sven

I see that once again the folks on this List are engaged in one of
our favorite activities, namely trying to read the minds of the
censors at Disney to figure out why the Peeweegahs are taboo. As we
have noted time and time again, there seems to be no consistency in
the reasoning there. First, it seemed to be just that they were
Indians, and any treatment at all of Indians would be disallowed.
Obviously, that policy died with Disney's release of "Pocahontas".
Then, maybe it was because they were tiny. But Disney still markets
lots of stuff associated with Snow White and the Seven - er, Little
People. So lately we have been hearing that it was because they all
look alike. Apparently that's OK for elves or Terries and Fermies,
who don't have pressure groups to write nasty letters to Disney, but
it's forbidden for human characters. If this is indeed the case,
how can the Peeweegahs be re-introduced into the literature? Maybe
in one of two ways: (1) write a "prequel" to Barks' story, in which
the origin of the tribe is now explained in terms of a cloning experi-
ment gone awry; or (2) draw them wearing masks over their eyes and
shirts with numbers to identify them, make them criminals, and call
them the "Peeweegah Boys". Apparently **then** it's OK for them all
to look alike (or most of them, anyway).

Oh, and before he left for the south of France (tough work, but someone
has to do it, I suppose), Byron wrote:
> I only want to talk about the stories and the guys who create
> them--the other stuff, to quote my favorite expression, don't mean
> shit to a tree. (And a special "you're-older-than-you-look" award to
> the person who can identify the source of that phrase.
Even now, I can hear the voice of Grace Slick ringing in my ears: it's
"Eskimo Blue Day", by Jefferson Airplane. And yes, I really **am**
that old. :-( :-( :-(

Wilmer Rivers

To the subscribers in the US:

Do any of you know any other number for Gladstone than the one they
usually list on their subscription forms. I haven't gotten my Uncle
$crooge Adventures for quite a while now, and every time I call that
number, it rings busy.

(Email removed) http://www.middlebury.edu/~raul
Hudson: Magic book? --Gargoyles (Disney Afternoon)-- J.F.: Aren't they all?
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